The Underworld Captain: From Gangland Goodfella To Army Officer Page 11
In April 1984, just five weeks after Alex had journeyed south, someone set fire to the home of a young van driver at Ruchazie in the north-east of the city. The inferno that ensued cost him his life and those of five other family members, among them a baby. Outrage and a demand for an end to the Ice Cream Wars, as they became known, followed.
Police made a series of arrests, but nervousness had gripped the underworld. The killings were an indication that the gloves were off and, in future, gangland arguments would be settled not by beatings, slashings and shootings but by murder. Alex had kept up with events at home through phone calls and news passed around by other Scots, but he had his own problems to resolve.
* * *
Angie and I had spent the previous five months 8,000 miles apart. During that time, our relationship had gone from high to low. Now I was back home, determined to mend the tear that was ripping us apart. The Falklands had been a profitable tour for me in lots of ways and I arrived back in Glasgow with around £5,000, a lot of money for a young man of just 18, and headed for the city centre and the clothes shops. But not the run of the mill stores where everyone else went; I wanted nothing but the best. I had always loved top-of-the-range gear and now I could afford it. When I met up with Angie again, I wanted to be looking my best because I needed to make a good impression. I was still unsure where we stood as a couple and admit I was pretty nervous when I made my way up to her house. Her young brother, Paddy, let me in, but warned me, ‘She’s in bed, drunk.’ It was around two in the afternoon, but when I went in to see her, sure enough, she was lying on her bed, a bottle of vodka beside her. I tried speaking to her but got nowhere, so I took the vodka, poured it down the sink and left. I set off to walk back down the road to Posso, thinking, ‘That’s it. It’s over.’ It was a dreadful feeling.
I started to make plans with all my mates for that evening’s activities. It was back to the old routine of my house first for a few drinks, then nip along to the Brothers and finally on to the dancing. Part one was going along fine until I heard someone at the door and my mum shouting down the corridor, ‘Ally, it’s that Angie Scullion for you.’
When I went out to see her, she looked stunning in bleached jeans and blue boots. Best of all, she was sober. She said she was sorry and asked to come in. Well, immediately the words were out of her mouth, I was helpless. It was a case of come into my house, and my room, and into my heart. I knew then that I loved her more than life.
That night we sat by ourselves, talking over what had gone wrong and how we could repair the cracks in our relationship and get our lives back on track. We decided not to get married on her birthday in September as we had originally planned, but on my 19th birthday the following February. We were young and scared, and in reality this was the first time we had both really been 100 per cent serious about the future. She stayed with me throughout the night, the first time we had been together like that. I was blown away, overwhelmed with love and passion.
Next morning I was walking on air as I made my way to Ritchie Camp, in Kirknewton, West Lothian, a former RAF station and one-time prisoner of war camp for German officers. I still had a week to go before I was due some leave, but I felt the previous night had more than made up for all the hurt, heartache and worry I’d endured while I had been in the Falklands.
It had been a year since Angie and I had first dated, and I know others had been telling her to wait before making a commitment, but now she had, and it was to me. During the years that have gone by since then, I have come to realise that often her reticence is simply shyness. She has always put others first but has a severe lack of confidence in her looks and ability. This has resulted in her suffering from severe bi-polar depression. Yet, to me, she has looks that would take her from the kitchen to the catwalk.
Over the next few months we began planning our future engagement and marriage. I was still serving in 5 Platoon, Bravo Company and we were now beginning training in preparation for our transfer to West Germany in March 1985. Compared with the excitement of the Falklands and the ever present threat of another Argentine attack, hanging around in the barracks and the routine of training was pretty boring, but at least the number of guys in our contingent from the west coast had risen. It meant having more of my own around me, plus each night we could drive one another home.
Following a rift with my own mum, I had moved in with Angie’s mum, Margaret. She was brilliant with me. I became her confidant and punch bag, willing to do any job she had for me. While she believed I was good for Angie, she continued to have this image in her head of the Shannons of years gone by. Whenever she introduced me to her friends, she would tell them, ‘This is Ally Shannon, but he is one of the good ones, not like the rest of them.’ I just laughed it off. Throughout my time there, I was made to sleep on the settee. Often when it came to 10 p.m. I would be thrown out of Angie’s room and told to get to bed in the lounge.
Just when I thought army life was getting boring, something happened that would leave a terrible stain on the history of the great regiment in which I was privileged to serve. Each morning, a couple of mates from the Stepps area of Glasgow would pick me up and together we would head to Kirknewton. One day, during parade, I noticed a strange face. The man was a corporal – he stood out like a sore thumb. He was standing, arms folded, with the look of someone who had a complete attitude problem. I wondered who he was exactly. Later that day I found out. A friend told me he was called Andy Walker and had just returned from training recruits. He advised me, ‘I know you can handle yourself, but give him a wide berth. He has a reputation as a bit of a bully and can be very handy with his fists.’ I wasn’t worried. It was well known that 5 Platoon had all the regimental hard men in it. Andy had clearly got wind of the fact that there were so many characters in the platoon and it was best for him to give us a wide berth!
Walker also had a reputation as a cadger – always borrowing money, never seeming to spend any. ‘Give me a tenner. I promise you’ll get it back,’ he would say. He was known to be forever short.
I thought nothing more of Walker – strangers were always turning up, some of them staying on, others leaving. He didn’t interest me any more than anybody else. But, as the weeks passed, and Christmas and New Year went by and our wedding day in February 1985 drew nearer, I found myself seeing more and more of him. This was largely due to the company as a whole participating in weapons training and other activities in preparation for going to Germany. As a weapons instructor, Walker had been moving between Glencorse Barracks near Penicuik, to the south-west of Edinburgh, and the Royal Scots base at Kirknewton, where we were ordered to do guard and sentry duties, basically guarding the camp.
On Thursday, 17 January 1985, I was in 5 Platoon on duty at the main gate. It had been a cold night, the ground was frost-covered and we were stamping our feet to keep warm. There was snow in the air. That morning I had been manning the vehicle barrier and remember a familiar car passing through. I knew right away who was driving. I had been doing that same duty for a few days and had become used to seeing the car. Its colour made it distinctive. It belonged to one of the camp storemen, who had loaned it to Walker. After a quick check to make sure all was in order, I opened the barrier and gave the thumbs up to wave on Walker, who was wearing combat clothing. He nodded, as if to say, ‘I’ll see you later,’ and disappeared. There was no reason to think any more of it. I would have every reason to remember this seemingly trivial meeting. It would later transpire that Walker was on a very personal and deadly mission.
Everything seemed to go crazy the next evening when it came through on radio and television news broadcasts that three soldiers had been killed in an armed robbery. By the time I got back to work the following morning, there were all sorts of stories going about as to what had happened and who was responsible.
The rumour mill was having a field day. Suggestions as to the identity of who was behind the massacre ranged from a team of London gangsters to an undercover unit of the IRA. At the
time it was widely believed that the IRA was building up to mainland attacks, beliefs that were shown to be well founded later in the year. Groups of men sat around in the NAAFI at Ritchie Barracks that day discussing the murders and trying to ascertain precisely what had happened. Guesswork abounded, but I was conscious that one man was especially vociferous in his condemnation of those behind the horror. Most men in ‘B’ Company had an opinion, but Walker was louder than any other in expressing his disgust.
* * *
The day Alex had seen Walker drive off in the yellow motor, paymaster Major David Cunningham, aged 56, Staff Sergeant Terence Hosker, 39, and married dad-of-one Private John Thomson, 25, all from the Royal Scots, had called by appointment at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Penicuik and collected a £19,000 payroll. They then set off in a Land-Rover to drive back through falling snow to Glencorse Barracks, where all were based. At this stage, they were joined by evil. Walker, then aged 30, had been waiting as they left the bank and had asked for a lift. He was armed with a sub-machine gun, which he had signed out from the barracks armoury, and as soon as they drove away he aimed it at his three colleagues. They immediately realised they were being held up and knew what their probable fate would be.
Walker knew that in all likelihood one or more of the men had recognised him. He had decided their fate long before they had even drawn the money from the bank.
Hosker was determined not to give up without a fight, and as they drove along the town’s Mauricewood Road he struggled to wrest the weapon away from the robber. He was shot twice, then the gun was turned on Cunningham, who died with a bullet through his head. Thomson, petrified and convinced, despite Walker’s denials, that he too was about to die, was made to drive three miles to Loganlea Reservoir, where his fears were realised. To make sure all three were dead, Walker fired into their bodies. He then took the Land-Rover back to the spot at Penicuik where he had left the yellow car. En route he skidded and crashed and had to abandon the army vehicle – his carefully worked out plan would now have to be changed. Instead of driving to get the borrowed motor, he now had to walk.
His fury at the accident turned to rage when he looked into the bags carrying the money. He had expected to find between £70,000 and £80,000. The murderer had already ordered a new £8,000 MC Maestro, intending to use some of the proceeds to pay for it.
The bulk of the money was hidden somewhere between the abandoned Land-Rover and Penicuik, and the killer took some of it home, telling his wife he had found it hidden under a drystone dyke.
Meanwhile, when the payroll team were late back, Colonel Clive Fairweather, commanding officer at Glencorse, called the police and joined the search himself. He wondered, at one point, whether they might have stopped for a beer on the way back at the Flotterstone Inn near Penicuik, but a trail of blood in the snow led them to the bodies. The hunt for the triple slayer began.
* * *
Rumours soon emerged that it may have been a soldier or a team of soldiers who had carried out this terrible act. Before long, we were all confined to camp, which was surrounded by the police while everyone was questioned, searched and investigated. Then the police came in and scanned all our clothing for traces of blood using ultraviolet light. That went on right through the night. We were ordered to stay in our rooms overnight. Eventually, they whittled the suspects down to someone or a group from ‘B’ Company.
The next day, everything changed. We were all paraded and told to go to certain areas around the camp to ensure no one entered or left. I was ordered to stand on guard, facing battalion headquarters, which meant I was able to see all the comings and goings. Once, I saw Andy standing outside headquarters with his tam-o’-shanter on the back of his head; on another occasion, he looked over to me and shouted, ‘Del, got any smokes?’ So over I went and gave him a cigarette and a light. I asked him what was going on, if everything was OK. He laughed and said, ‘These fuckers are trying to stitch me up for this robbery.’ Just then a couple of detectives emerged and asked him back inside. That was the last I would see of him until a few years later, when I came across him during a prison visit.
Three days after the slaughter, Walker was arrested and charged with the murders of the three soldiers and robbery. During his brief spell of freedom following the killings, word reached the camp that on the night of the robbery he had been seen in a pub in Kirknewton on the other side of the Pentlands from Penicuik throwing money about.
We all knew about that, even when we were talking about the murders the next day. Of course we realised it could have been somebody in the army, and once we began suggesting that, we all started looking at one another. The day before Walker was lifted, fingers were being pointed and comments passed like, ‘Hang on, he’s suddenly been cutting about with quite a bit of money.’ He was even throwing it about the night before his arrest.
Walker was charged because an investigation showed that on the day the three men died, he had taken the sub-machine gun used in the crime from the armoury. He claimed it was to give a lesson to another soldier, but the pupil knew nothing about it.
While he was on remand, he shared a cell with a teenager who told police the corporal blackmailed him into carrying a letter blaming the murders on the Provisional IRA.
Walker pleaded not guilty at his trial but was convicted and jailed for 30 years, at the time the longest sentence ever passed in a Scottish court. It was later reduced to 27 years on appeal.
Although I know the whole story about how he got the sub-machine gun under the pretence that our armourer was away somewhere, he had signed it out to ‘D’ Company instead of ‘B’, his own. Then, normally when a weapon is cleaned, you lightly soak it in oil and then wipe off the oil so you barely see it. When he returned, he more or less dipped the gun in some sort of oil drum and stuck it in a locker with no doors on it.
Whatever the truth about what actually happened that terrible day, I can never forget it was me who let him out of the camp to carry out the robbery and murders. We continued to wonder what had happened to the missing money. He knew the Pentlands like the back of his hand because he was up there every day training the Glencorse recruits. Mind you, so did many of us because of our pre-Falklands training, going up there once a month to tab 18 miles over the hills carrying our full kit. Rumours continued to float about as to how he was up to his ears in debt, he owed money all over and the cash was still buried in the Pentlands waiting for the day when he was released from prison.
Andy had a lot of pals, he was right good mates with some of them, and after he was locked up they kept in touch.
* * *
By the time Walker was safely in prison, Alex was a married man and had deployed to Germany. But the marriage, already called off once, came close to ending in disaster and yet again his army career faced ruin.
The big day was to be 16 February 1985 at Colston Wellpark Church, Springburn, followed by a reception at St George’s Cross. Pawny would be best man. All had not gone well in the lead-up to the wedding, but then such occasions created for the joining of couples are notorious for also being the cause of bitter splits and arguments among those closest to them. With the wedding a week off, Angie and Alex headed into Glasgow for their respective hen and stag nights.
Friction between one of the girls and Angie had been mounting in the run-up to the big day and at the end of the evening, as the various groups spilled out onto Sauchiehall Street, the women found themselves next to one another. Trouble was inevitable. A fight started and all hell broke loose, with the two women rolling around on the ground. There were a lot of people with them and, as more joined in, it became a free-for-all. William Lobban was with Alex. Neither of them got involved, but they both found themselves in jail.
* * *
I had on a suit and tie, and Angie had given me her handbag and shoes to hold when the fighting began. I thought: ‘Women! Just let them crack on. Stay out of it,’ so I was just standing at the side, holding a woman’s handbag and shoes, while they w
ere rolling around, going at each other. Somebody had called the police, who soon arrived, broke it up and proceeded to arrest anybody who happened to be nearby. That included me.
There were so many of us that there weren’t enough seats, so I was shoved into the back of a police van and told to sit down among a whole load of traffic cones and road signs. There I was looking out of the window as we went along Sauchiehall Street still hanging onto the handbag and shoes, wondering what was going on. I was still holding onto them when we reached the police station. And I was still standing with the bag and shoes when they lined us up and started pointing at us and shouting, ‘Police assault. Two police assaults. Breach of the peace. Two police assaults.’ It seemed a bit hit-or-miss to me.
I don’t have anything to hide about that night. I had done nothing wrong. I was a bystander, but again it demonstrated to me how the police could get things wrong. But what chance have you got? The police, they are always right.
We were bailed and allowed home. I had explained I was a serving soldier and, with my wedding just a few days off, here I was with charges over me that could ruin my career, and Angie in trouble, too.
When the wedding day arrived, everything was ready, all the arrangements made, but as we waited for a car to take us to the church, I had to tell Pawny to stop smoking hash. He was sparking them up one after another. I didn’t want our special day to be messed up, but he didn’t want to stop smoking. When the white Mercedes limousine drew up, the pair of us were all ready in our top hats and tails. I had been prepared for the traditional Scottish wedding scramble, where coins are thrown as you are getting into the car taking you to church. In some areas it is the bride’s father who scatters the money, an action meant to bring the happy couple financial good luck. In our case, I had the bag of coins ready, but when we looked around for the customary crowd of youngsters there was only one wee boy waiting. Whether it was in the hope of getting some money, I will never know. I told him to just take it all. There was no point in scattering the coppers. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. His luck was better than ours.