The Underworld Captain: From Gangland Goodfella To Army Officer Page 16
Hours after Tam and Pawny had fired shots during the run-in that followed the rumpus at the Talisman, a man strode into the Spring Inn on Springburn Road and, after looking around, spotted a close relative of Duncan McIntyre enjoying a harmless and peaceful drink with friends. In gangland circles, this relative would be regarded as a non-combatant, someone not involved in nefarious activity and therefore to be left alone. The visitor held no such respect for this unwritten code. He invited the drinker outside and as he reached Springburn Road whipped a pistol from his trousers, stuck it in the man’s mouth and told him to take a message back to McIntyre that a reckoning would come soon for the attack in the Talisman. ‘I’m giving you a break,’ said the gunman. ‘You have three seconds to get away from here before I shoot you.’
As he began his count, his hapless victim fled. When it reached three, true to his word he fired, but into the gantry of the bar. As the gunman left, startled drinkers noted how similar he was in appearance and demeanour to William Lobban. It was a nasty incident, but things were about to worsen.
George Madden was a good friend of Duncan McIntyre and the McGoverns. His brother Charles, a friend of Pawny, had been only 27 when he was killed in a knife attack in Possilpark in 1985. George would later become a partner with the youngest of the McGovern brothers, Paul, in a legitimate and successful security firm, M and M Security. He was loyal and could be trusted, and the extent of that loyalty was about to be tested.
Knowing of his friendship with Duncan, Pawny, Tam and Lobban went up to George’s house on Springburn Road. The madcap plan was simple. Lobban would go to the door dressed as a gas board worker with the others hiding at his shoulder and when the door was opened they would pile in and tie Madden up. He would then be forced to lure Duncan to the house, where they could shoot him. What they did not take into account was George’s determination not to set anybody up at any cost, even though the potential was there for him to be seriously injured. Alex heard from his brothers what happened.
They got into the house, Lobban carrying a length of rope, but when they found Madden, they didn’t have to tie him up. He told them there was no way he was going to telephone and set somebody up. He didn’t want to be involved in whatever it was they had going. They could see where he was coming from and realised that there was no point in roping a guy in who had nothing to do with it. George saw at the time why they were doing it and as they left they told him they wouldn’t take things any further – but they were determined to get their target one way or another.
The problem was actually getting to Duncan. If he was at home with his wife, then attacking him there would be a non-starter because of her presence. And usually if he was not in his house then he was in the heart of Springburn visiting the McGoverns. Timing was crucial. It was a case of waiting, no matter how long that took, and eventually someone would get their man.
Of course, business had to continue, even in the midst of a war. The incident on the Kingston Bridge had not deterred the successful operations of Pawny and Tam. Alex had by now moved to an area in Maryhill, Glasgow, known appropriately as the Barracks, and his family soon joined him there. Angie was glad to leave Lasswade, while he felt more comfortable now he was nearer to help out his brothers.
Not long before Lobban absconded, a bag had been left at Alex’s new address. He knew the identity of the courier, but when he asked what was inside he was told, ‘Nothing of concern.’ When the visitor left, his curiosity won the day. Alex was shocked to see at least two loaded handguns, around fourteen kilos of heroin, approximately 20,000 temazepam tablets and £20,000 in cash. The contents were worth a small fortune – and a very lengthy prison sentence if the bag was discovered. What particularly worried him was that police were still sporadically visiting and searching the homes of known associates of Lobban, and sometimes these searches included the use of sniffer dogs.
He made a telephone call asking for the bag to be taken away but was told this could not be done for some time as those responsible for it feared they were under police surveillance. He was determined the bag and its contents would not remain in the house, a feeling made all the stronger when he told an enquiring Angie what was inside. She had threatened to leave him if anything like that happened again. One day two-year-old Danielle wandered into the living room carrying one of the loaded guns, causing her parents to instinctively dive for cover. Alex swore not just to move the bag right away, but to never again allow weapons or drugs in his home.
Remembering his army training, the patrols in Northern Ireland and the Winthrop Theory, which used features such as lamp posts and hedges to identify hiding places, that night he bought short sections of drainage pipe and, with Angie pushing Danielle in her pram, set off to the banks of the River Kelvin. While in Ulster, he had seen army colleagues dig up similar pipes from the ground and was told this was a favoured IRA method of safely storing weapons and ammunition. Now, while Angie kept watch, he dug holes and the following night went back, this time with the guns, drugs and money in the pram. He firmly taped the ends of the pipes to ensure they were waterproof and buried them four feet down. Having used the Winthrop Theory to mark their position, he looked down and realised no one would spot where he had dug. His pipe hides were secure.
Alex knew his actions sounded selfish. He could have argued he was anxious to protect Angie and the children, but in reality he wanted the highly incriminating materials out of the family home, while at the same time wanted to make sure they were securely hidden. Loyal as ever, Angie had helped sneak guns out of the house to the hiding place. She felt she had to support her husband through her love for him and because of his love for his brothers Pawny and Tam. Had she believed any of this was to help Lobban, she would have had second thoughts. She didn’t like Lobban, hated it when he visited their home, despised his links to crime and criminals and thought there was something odd about his behaviour. Angie was sure Alex had severed his connection to Lobban and was happy with that thought. But she was also angry at what she saw as Alex taking advantage of her wifely duties. And she felt guilty at using her daughter, by secreting weapons in the pram with the child, confident that should they be stopped by police no one would think of lifting the blankets to search.
Alex by his own admission was now running freely with gangsters. He knew things were beginning to get out of hand, a fact brought home to him by Pawny’s close shave during a visit to a friend of the family who lived in Possil. As the two sat chatting, suddenly her front door was booted in and eight members of the Springburn crew piled in, among them two men still active in the Glasgow crime scene and a third, then a leading light in the underworld but now keeping his head down following a murder attempt some years ago. Pawny knew there was only one way out – through the living-room window. The fact it was closed made no difference. He ran, took a dive, staggered to his feet and fled to safety. It was only the sheer number of his attackers that made it difficult for them to get out into the street after him. Alex knew that had Pawny been caught, he would have been killed. In reprisal, the Shannons made another bid to murder Duncan McIntyre.
* * *
We were constantly trying to get to each other and on at least two occasions in Balgrayhill, Duncan was involved in a hit and run. Witnesses told the police they had seen the car drive into him, then reverse over his body as he lay on the ground. He survived.
One night after leaving the Tower Bar in Possil, Tam and I were crossing a footbridge over Galloway Street when we suddenly realised we were about to be cornered by all the main players in the Springburn Mob. Jamie Stevenson and Tony McGovern were among them. Some of them pulled out handguns. We ran in separate directions, hoping to split them up, and Tam got away, but for some reason I got the impression they had all followed me. I jumped into one of the drying areas and fortunately it was pitch black. Even so, Jamie stuck his head in, looked about and thankfully shouted back, ‘There’s nobody here.’ To this day, I am convinced he must have seen me.
Anyw
ay, it was a lucky escape for me. I would always be more careful from then on, but Tam was fearless. I would be with him when on the spur of the moment he would lead me straight to the Talisman to see who was there and who he could have it out with. There were never any takers. I believe that on the odd occasion this happened, the mob must have thought Pawny or a team backing us was waiting outside. In fact, it was just me and him, one knife between us.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I had become very friendly with George Redmond around this time. I had first met him when Pawny had taken me to a New Year party in 1990. He and George were in business together, moving drugs. People had gone from taking heroin to mainly Ecstasy, which could fetch up to £20 a tablet. The things were phenomenal, but, as youngsters like Leah Betts would later discover to their cost, could also be lethal. But that’s where the money was and George was making a lot of it. He and Pawny dealt in batches of 20,000 to 40,000. They would collect the drugs when they were sent up from the London money men and have them either delivered to a list of given addresses or collected. Alongside this business, George was also running another, making money from all the pubs in town by selling drugs. He knew a lot of my pals, but until then I hadn’t been introduced because I had been serving abroad with the army.
The amazing thing was that when I met him, George was on the run for murder. He had been accused of killing somebody at the Pinkston bar, yet there he was, living openly in Possil and walking about Glasgow as though he hadn’t a care in the world. The police knew he was somewhere in the city; they were forever kicking in doors looking for him, but never the right doors. So, while they looked, he went on making money.
All the time his brother was inside doing a life sentence for a murder he had not committed.
George was a brilliant guy. On the night of my birthday in February 1991, I went to the Savoy with him. This was a time when you never had to pay for drugs. If you went to a party or out for the night, there always seemed to be plenty and they were free. We met up with Pawny, Tam, a pal of theirs from London and a crowd from Milton who were carrying guns.
Later that evening, Tam, the London guy and I were invited back to a party in Milton; however, it proceeded to go pear-shaped because Tam had taken an E and was spewing into a sink. It was one of those parties where everybody had their best gear on, was wearing suits. We saw a few teams we knew as bank robbers, but then they began laughing at Tam for being sick, telling him to get a grip. Well, unfortunately for them they didn’t know who Tam was. When he cleaned himself up, he began asking who they thought they were talking to. Funnily enough, all of a sudden people were darting in and out of doors and coming back carrying bags. We knew there were guns inside and so Tam, me and the pal from London phoned Pawny to tell him to come down tooled up. He was outside waiting for us. Suddenly, it was stand-off time. It was crazy how these things happened.
There we were, tooled up, no fears, and them knowing we weren’t bank robbers and therefore were more than likely to go ahead. So, that was it. As far as they were concerned, we were businessmen and they didn’t want trouble. It was my first experience of the Milton crew. And the last. Next day Pawny had to intervene, make all the usual phone calls, get it all sorted and make sure there would be no comeback.
George was always there when we needed back-up and I knew we could rely on him. Similarly, if he needed help, we would do the same for him. I found George a really loyal and honest guy, always upfront, certainly never a liberty taker. For some reason, he took a shine to me, but there was often friction between his younger brother Sean and me, and George would often sort it out by grabbing him and telling him, ‘Pack it in. Stop it!’ Tam had a temper that went off like a grenade, whereas George never really showed that side of his personality, while I knew he was capable of that level of violence. There were lots of things happening at that time, but none of it really serious.
I remember going into Peggy Sue’s, the club on West George Street in the town centre, one night with the pair of them. We had literally just walked in the door; I had asked George what he wanted to drink and had gone up to the bar but hadn’t even been served when a guy came running out of the toilet, blood everywhere, with his jaw hanging off. I turned around and only then noticed George and Tam scuttling out of the door. The guy had a blade in his hand and was shouting and swearing at me: ‘You fucker! You were with them. What was that all about?’ And I was saying, ‘What are you talking about, mate?’ trying to calm him down and tell him I knew nothing about it. There was only one way in and one way out and he was blocking it. I managed to talk my way outside and left, but I never ever found out why they had taken his face off. Eventually, I met up with them again – I knew they would be at a big party in Hamilton Hill in Possil. There was loads of Red Stripe Jamaican beer and I was shouting, ‘You arseholes! You left me,’ but George was laughing and telling me not to worry. ‘If anything happened to you,’ he said, ‘we were coming down to sort it all out.’
In those days, money was no object. We used to buy the dearest drinks, while the drugs were for everybody. And we never seemed to pay for it. It was a case of there you go, help yourself. I learned in that short period that in the drugs trade the higher up the chain you are, the less hands-on you need to be. The only time the men at the top use their hands is to make a phone call or two. Others do all the running around. George very rarely sold drugs himself. I’d be at his house and it would be a case of him making calls and telling someone to pick that up from there or take this there. But he never got the big money – that was for the men putting up the money. All he did was cream the profit. Still, any time I was in George’s house there were people turning up with bags of Es and there would be lots of cocaine. ‘Just dip your face in it,’ you’d be told. He reminded me of Al Pacino as the cocaine baron in Scarface sitting behind a mountain of the stuff.
All the time the war with the McIntyres was ongoing. Now and then Pawny or Gibby would turn up. They had maybe become involved in an argument at the dancing and would want to know where the guns were. I’d take them over the fence, then I’d climb down by the canal, dig them up, hand them over and say, ‘There you are, away you go.’ When they came back, I’d bury them again. Anything, as long as they weren’t in the house.
I knew Angie hated my lifestyle and I would have done anything to protect my relationship with her and my kids. Within weeks of leaving there had been talk as to whether I should go back into the army, but instead I tried to arrange my movements, especially my exploits with my brothers, as though it was a normal working day, leaving at breakfast and returning in time to play and chat with the children in the evening. I would not allow any of my family to come near my house after eight in the evening, unless it was an emergency.
I didn’t enjoy this lifestyle and hadn’t really wanted to get involved, but sadly I was weak and had allowed myself to be led into serious situations. I perhaps gave the appearance of not giving Angie and the kids a second thought, which wasn’t the case. I always tried to keep Angie away from it all and would often be evasive or even lie to her, but this was only to protect her, as I knew she would constantly worry about me. I’m not proud of the way I acted in those years. Hindsight is a great gift, but I wish maybe I had done and said certain things differently.
* * *
While Angie suspected her husband was taking chances, she could not be sure. But still she worried. And just as she hated Lobban’s unexpected arrivals, now she resented appearances at their door by Tam, who could be especially bad tempered. There was an incident when he turned up at the house covered in blood wanting a change of clothing. She told her husband to get him out of the house. After that, every time Tam came to the door it seemed it was because something was wrong.
Alex didn’t work, but money was never short – his brothers saw to that – so it meant Angie could give the kids what they had been used to when Alex was getting army pay, which was one benefit. But often when he was out at night Angie would worry there woul
d be trouble – and she was right to be concerned.
Alex, who had spent his adult life upholding rules and obeying orders, was rapidly developing into an outlaw; he was becoming as much a part of gangland as the brothers who had so long admired him for staying on the opposite side of the divide. A classic example of how ruthless he could be was about to be demonstrated.
Alex knew of one family member who had sadly fallen into the drugs pit. Addicted to heroin and at the mercy of anyone willing to supply her next tiny bag, she had a big family and, like so many young women caught in the poverty trap, was seemingly forever pregnant and surrounded by screaming children. She had despaired and found smack to be a way of floating, if briefly, into a trance of pleasure in which she could forget her cares. The trouble with heroin is that one session is never enough. As she deteriorated, she complained of being beaten up by a male friend. After one especially nasty beating, when she was viciously punched and kicked in the groin, she had taken an overdose. Alex was furious.
In hindsight, Alex would wonder whether these attacks, however unjustified, were simply caused by the frustration of a man trying to cope with life amid demanding children and their near junkie mother, but at the time, in his rage, he turned judge and jury and decided to mete out his own sentence of punishment.
* * *
I look back and think to myself, ‘God’s sake, was I doing that?’ I’m sure a lot of us feel that way, but one Sunday night at around ten o’clock I found myself at the back of the close where she stayed three floors up. Tam and Pawny were with me. We had parked our cars around the corner and I was now holding a machete. We weren’t going to use a gun or anything like that – there would have been no point. Guns were used when someone was to be executed, or at least shot up; here, I had decided on a different form, a reduced level of punishment. These were the days when slashing somebody was a lesser punishment than shooting them.