Up until that point, Steele had said no more than ‘Hello’. When Billy had finished talking, Steele simply replied, ‘I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about, mate.’ Then he put the phone down.
The second call was made two days later. ‘Pat owed us £40,000,’ ranted Billy. ‘We want our fucking money. Where is it? This isn’t a fucking game.’
Steele remained calm. ‘I think the police have got it. Why don’t you talk to them?’ Once more, he hung up.
Since Billy didn’t appear to be getting anywhere with Steele, his brother, John, decided to have a go. When Steele picked up the phone for the third call, John hissed, ‘We want our money or you’ll be sorted out just like Pat was.’ The threats became more sinister. Steele was warned that his car would be blown up, but he just listened rather than inflame the situation by arguing.
Eventually, Steele grew tired of being threatened about Tate’s money and said, ‘I haven’t got a clue about it. Now then, I wonder what’s happened to it. Perhaps I’ve got it under my floorboards, eh?’
John, laughing, replied, ‘Now there’s a thing.’
‘Aye?’
‘There’s a thing. Have you?’
‘Well, I haven’t got floorboards, for a start; I’ve got a concrete floor,’ Steele replied.
‘Right.’
‘And I wish I did have that sort of money about me because I’d be a very happy man.’
‘Right.’
‘Now then, what I want to say to you—’
‘Right.’
‘Is the fact that you keep ringing up here; I mean, every fortnight or so.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I mean, your Billy, was it? Billy, was it, on the phone making all sorts of threats? You know, like I said, I’m one of these people, I’m a little bit laid-back. Nothing really worries me.’
‘Mmm.’
‘And Billy was saying to me he’s got A levels in – what is it he said? – A levels in whacking people, I think his expression was. I honestly don’t give a fuck.’ Steele replaced the receiver.
The calls became more and more frequent and the threats more and more serious. Billy and John talked about the recent IRA bombing at Canary Wharf, implying they were members of that terrorist organisation. ‘You’d better watch your back,’ John told Steele. ‘The ceasefire has gone, Mickey, and your ceasefire’s gone.’ During one of the calls, Billy said, ‘You’re going to have to emigrate one day, that’s the only way. I’m going to have to follow these matters up.’
Steele’s response was short and to the point. ‘Why don’t the pair of you just fuck off and bother someone else.’
A few days later, Sarah Saunders received similar threats from Billy and John. Sarah, fearing for her safety and that of her young son, immediately reported the threats to Basildon Police. Their response brought Sarah little comfort. The contact number Billy and John had given Sarah, they said, was the number of a well-known IRA bar in Belfast. Billy and John, they added, had been identified as known members of a major terrorist cell that had recently moved to mainland Britain. They had been tracked entering the country, but the officers watching them had now lost them. Sarah was naturally terrified but almost as soon as the threatening calls had started, they stopped.
Chapter 12
On Friday, 1 March, I was asked to attend South Woodham Ferrers
police station, where the Rettendon murder inquiry team was based. DS Saunders and DC Chapple led me through the back to an interview room. In the corridor outside was a storeroom and on the door a sign read: ‘Risk of health hazard, Rettendon exhibits’. In that cupboard, behind that door, were my friends’ clothing and personal effects, no doubt soaked in their blood. I don’t know if I had been shown it deliberately for effect, or if it was a mere coincidence, but it made the whole horror story real.
When the detectives sat me down, they asked me about my military career, adding that the gunman had executed the trio with ruthless efficiency. ‘Someone who knew what they were doing, Bernie. An ex-military man, perhaps?’ I said I knew what it looked like, but I had not murdered my friends. I was told that I had to understand that a lot of people believed I was involved. ‘Even if you didn’t pull the trigger, Bernie, you had good reason to see the back of them. They were threatening to shoot you. Maybe it was a case of you or them? You could have done it out of fear.’
All the time they were ‘chatting’ to me, I was aware that one of the detectives kept his gaze fixed firmly on my eyes, as if he was looking for a reaction. When they had finished their ‘chat’, which had lasted for an hour and forty-five minutes, they said they would need to see me again. They gave me their names and numbers on a piece of paper – ‘Just in case you remember anything, Bernie,’ they said – and told me to go.
As we walked past the storeroom again, I felt myself reaching out to touch the door. Tucker’s thick gold neck chain with its solid-gold boxing glove, I knew, would be in there. He always wore it. I imagined it caked in blood and the police having to clean it before they returned it to his loved ones. These morbid thoughts saddened me and made me feel deeply depressed. I found it hard to accept that I would never see them again, though I felt annoyed at myself for feeling sorry for them. Those three bastards would have murdered me at the drop of a hat. How on earth did we arrive at all this?
The detectives couldn’t resist a parting shot. ‘Keep your head down, Bernie. You know some people think you had a hand in this and they aren’t happy.’
It wasn’t a threat. I knew as well as they did it was a fact. Whether they actually cared about my well-being was another matter. When I got outside, I had an urge to run, to get away from this bloody mess, but I thought the detectives would be watching me from the police station windows, so I walked around the corner before running to the nearby gymnasium car park where I had left my vehicle – I was still on the 12-month driving ban I’d picked up in Birmingham. I felt stupid. I felt hunted by the police and hunted by the people who, according to the police, were plotting my murder. For others in the murky drug world I had left behind, it was business as usual.
Twenty miles away in Braintree, Darren Nicholls continued to use his suicide jockeys to import cannabis. He had also become heavily involved with an Essex detective. One day, he had been in the Sailing Oak public house having a drink when somebody tapped him on the shoulder. A voice said, ‘I know you’re a drug dealer.’ When Nicholls turned around, he saw DC Wolfgang Bird looking at him with a big smirk on his face. Nicholls had never spoken to the detective, but he knew who he was because their paths had crossed twice in the past. The first time had been in that very pub. DC Bird had lent his car, a Ford Escort XR3i, to three friends, who had crashed it and one of them had ended up in intensive care. Nicholls and a group of his friends had mocked the detective about the incident. On the second occasion, in the same pub around Christmas time, Nicholls had seen DC Bird unloading bottles of spirits from the boot of his car and taking them into the pub. Enquiries by Nicholls among the regulars revealed the detective was a friend of the landlord and supplied him with booze he bought cheaply at police auctions.
As Nicholls stared back at the detective, who had just accused him of being a drug dealer, he was trying to think of something to say. Before he had a chance, DC Bird said, ‘I suppose you’re going to deny it? Everyone always denies it.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ replied Nicholls. ‘All of that was a long time ago. You’re out of date.’ He turned and walked away.
Two days later, Nicholls received a call on his mobile from DC Bird. Paul, the boss of an electrical company Nicholls worked for, was a friend of the detective’s and he had given him Nicholls’s number. ‘What do you want?’ Nicholls asked.
‘I’m only telling you this because you’re a friend of Paul’s,’ DC Bird replied. ‘You’re about to get spun. The drug squad is planning a raid on your place because they reckon you’ve got a load of gear stashed there.’
Nicholls laughed. ‘I didn’t think the drugs squad was that slow. I’ve told you, mate, that was all in the past.’
DC Bird was persistent. He told Nicholls that he was looking at a note on the CID office wall that had details of a raid that was going to be carried out at Nicholls’s home address. ‘Tell you what,’ DC Bird said, ‘if you’re telling me the truth and you’re not at it any more, I will stop it from happening.’
A few days later, DC Bird telephoned Nicholls again. ‘I told you, Darren. I stopped it happening. Your home didn’t get searched, did it?’ Nicholls was far from naive: he knew the officer had probably made up the whole story just so Nicholls felt in his debt. He also knew what would come next – a meeting to talk to the officer about how he could repay that debt. DC Bird did not disappoint. A few days later, at his request, the pair met. The detective made it clear from the outset that he wanted Nicholls to be his informant. He knew Nicholls was a major supplier of drugs on his patch.
At first, Nicholls was reluctant to comply, but he soon realised that he could use DC Bird instead of being used himself. If anybody threatened or upset him, he could simply get them removed by setting them up and informing on them to his police handler. In order to test the water, Nicholls told DC Bird about the dud cannabis that he had dumped in the gravel pits lake. Nicholls said that he used to smuggle cannabis, but those days were long gone. He then told the officer that he had imported a load that had turned out to be dud, so he dumped it in the lake. As soon as Nicholls mentioned the drugs, DC Bird grew visibly excited. He told Nicholls to get in his car and the pair drove to the lake, where Nicholls pointed to the spot where he had dumped the drugs.
‘This will look blinding on your record,’ Nicholls told DC Bird. ‘You’ll have this find because of your initiative.’
DC Bird told Nicholls that he would get a reward if the cannabis was still in the lake, but first he would have to come up with a story of how it got there. If Nicholls was the one who smuggled it and then dumped it, he could hardly expect the police to do anything other than arrest him. They certainly wouldn’t reward him. Nicholls concocted a story about the origin of the drugs. He blamed two innocent men whom Nicholls claimed he had overheard talking in a Braintree pub. When it came to collecting the reward, Nicholls was told that he would have to become a registered police informant and meet a senior officer. At the meeting, he was handed £400 for his ‘public spiritedness’ and was told that from now on if he had any contact with his police handlers, he would have to use the name Ken Rugby. This was to protect him from people eavesdropping on police conversations or dubious officers seeing his real name on informant sheets at the police station.
Two years before Nicholls had become involved with DC Bird, the sister of his wife Sandra had been going out with a local man named Alan Richards. Sandra, Nicholls and Richards all got on well until one drunken night when Richards gave Sandra a lift home. Instead of taking her to her own home, he took her to his, where she stayed the night. When Nicholls found out, he went berserk. A few days later, he confronted Richards, who told him he had been too drunk to drive Sandra home, so she had slept on his settee. Nicholls refused to believe him. From that day onwards, the atmosphere between the two men was dire. It was obvious that eventually they would come to blows.
That night came in the Sailing Oak pub, where DC Bird was also drinking. Nicholls, who was drunk at the time, began calling Richards names. Eventually, Richards lost his temper, stood up and suggested they both go outside to resolve the matter once and for all. Before Nicholls could reply, Richards sat back down awkwardly and fell off his chair. Everybody in the bar burst out laughing. The landlord quickly appeared on the scene and accused Nicholls of causing the trouble. Nicholls flew into a rage, badmouthed the landlord and walked out of the pub.
Seconds later, DC Bird was at Nicholls’s side. He said he had spoken to the landlord and he had apologised. If Nicholls returned to the pub, he could have free drinks all night. At that moment, Nicholls realised DC Bird could be more than his handler, he could be his friend and protector. Instead of returning to the pub, the pair stood in the car park talking about Nicholls importing drugs, selling them, telling DC Bird who had purchased them and DC Bird then arresting them.
‘That’s a bit strong,’ Nicholls replied when DC Bird had first suggested it. ‘You are kidding, aren’t you?’
DC Bird paused momentarily. ‘Of course, I’m serious,’ he said, ‘of course, I am.’
Unbeknown to Nicholls and DC Bird, Alan Richards, still smarting from being humiliated, was watching them from the pub window. It all made sense to him now. When Nicholls started being abusive to him, DC Bird had remained in his seat and said nothing. When Nicholls had a go at the landlord, DC Bird had gone out of his way to smooth things over on Nicholls’s behalf. Watching them talk in the car park, Richards felt uneasy. A voice in his head told him that they were talking about him. That same voice warned him that Nicholls might be thinking about setting him up.
Early the next morning, Alan Richards presented himself at Essex Police headquarters in Chelmsford and asked to speak to a senior officer. He told them he had information about one of their officers who he believed might be involved in criminal activity. ‘I think I can prove it,’ he said.
When the police realised who DC Bird was involved with, they had little doubt that the allegations needed investigating. A massive surveillance operation codenamed Operation Apache was mounted, which involved tailing Nicholls and DC Bird and taping all of the phone calls DC Bird made and received. In all, 35 officers were assigned to Operation Apache. It remains the biggest internal investigation ever undertaken by Essex Police.
All Customs officers have some sort of system to relieve the boredom of watching hundreds of cars, then pulling one over at random. George Stephens had several, but his favourite was to add together all of the figures in that day’s date and then count off the passing vehicles until he reached that number. On 14 April 1996, vehicle number 43 happened to be a white Mondeo that was passing through Dover at 9.45 a.m. Stephens flagged the car down and asked the driver his name, where he had been and why. The driver, Craig Androliakos, appeared nervous. ‘I’ve been to Paris,’ he said. ‘I was visiting a girl I met a couple of weeks ago.’