Bonded by Blood (12 page)

Considering the amount of drugs detected in his body, it was obvious to the detectives that Kevin could not have made his own way to the secluded spot where his body was found. He could not drive and it was extremely unlikely he would have been able to walk anywhere.

A few days later, Craig Rolfe was arrested and taken to Basildon police station, where he made the following statement: ‘I met Whitaker at a friend’s flat five years ago. Over the years, I have got to know Kevin fairly well. Having said that, we were not particularly close, although I have done him a few favours in the past. We have only gone out socially together on one occasion and on average I would see him two or three times a month. The last time was on Tuesday, 15 November around mid-afternoon when I saw him standing in a telephone kiosk in Rectory Road, Pitsea, making a telephone call. I stopped the car I was driving and had a conversation for approximately ten to fifteen minutes. I then drove off and left him to walk to Simon Smith’s house. The last time I spoke to him was between three and four on Thursday the 17th, when I phoned him from my home address to his father’s address. The conversation lasted five minutes and I can recall that he said he had been to see his little boy that morning. At no time did he mention that he was worried about anything or that he had any problems other than the fact that he was a bit down having split up with his girlfriend. That evening, I went out to a friend’s. I received a call on Saturday saying that Kevin was dead.’

Rolfe’s girlfriend, Diane, who told police that she was with him at the time Kevin had died, supported his story. Diane said they had stayed in together watching a video. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened; it was just a quiet evening in.

The police investigation soon ground to an unsatisfactory halt. It was frustrating for Kevin’s parents because they were sure Kevin had been murdered, but the police drew a totally different conclusion. They said the most likely explanation for Kevin’s death was that he had accidentally overdosed at a friend’s house. The friend, terrified of being implicated, would have put Kevin’s body in a car and dumped it where it was later discovered. Joan and Albert could not accept this. A few years earlier, they said, Kevin had been bitten by a dog and they had tried to take him to hospital to have a tetanus injection. Kevin refused point-blank because he said he was terrified of needles. Despite his parents’ protests, he never did go. Then there was the fact that the puncture marks were on his right arm and elbow – Kevin was right-handed. For him to inject himself in such a spot would have been extremely difficult if not impossible.

‘There is no way my son died by accident. It was murder,’ Albert told reporters at the time.

In January 1995, an inquest was held at Chelmsford Coroners’ Court. Detective Inspector Peter Hamilton told the court that the police had investigated the possibility that Kevin had been murdered because of a drug deal that had gone wrong, but there had been no hard evidence to support this. The file, he said, had now been closed. The court also heard evidence from Craig Rolfe, who turned up for the hearing with Tucker in tow. Rolfe repeated what he had said in his statement. The coroner, Dr Malcolm Weir, had no choice but to accept what the police had to say about Kevin’s death: depressed after the split with his girlfriend and the loss of his job, Kevin had started to inject hard drugs and had accidentally overdosed. An open verdict was recorded. Kevin’s parents want to authorities to recognise the fact that their son was murdered. Having him labelled as a depressed junkie who overdosed is deeply upsetting.

Only one person can end Mr and Mrs Whitaker’s torment. Everybody else who could assist the police is dead. I hope that person will look at their own child, understand what the Whitakers are going through and come forward. Only then can the Whitakers have closure.

Chapter 7

Tate had lost a lot of flesh from his upper arm after being shot by
Nipper, but he remained in good spirits as he lay in his hospital bed. The firm made sure of that. Each evening, they would gather around him, listening to blaring house music, taking drugs and generally having a party. The other patients complained bitterly about the noise and bad language, and so Tate was soon moved to a private room.

When Sarah, Tate’s long-suffering partner, would take their son, Jordan, to visit him, the nurses used to say to her, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing with someone like that? As soon as you walk out with your little boy he has girls sitting on his bed.’ Embarrassed, Saunders made her excuses to Tate and stopped visiting him.

A cocktail of prescribed and non-prescription drugs had made Tate paranoid. He would ramble incoherently about setting up Nipper so that he could kill him. It was obvious to everybody present that Tate was troubled and embarrassed by the fact that Nipper had not only stood up to him but also fought back. In his paranoid and confused state, Tate would think that Nipper was coming to the hospital to finish him off and so he asked Tucker to give him a firearm to keep in his bed. He was supplied with a handgun, which he hid under his pillow.

Before Nipper had gone on the run, he had telephoned Tucker and left a message on his voicemail. ‘Hey you, you cunt,’ he said, ‘this is Steve Ellis. I’ve fucking just shot Pat Tate and you’re next. Now fucking leave my family alone, you fucking wanker.’

Tate advised Tucker to phone Nipper and say there was no need for any more violence. Tucker was to tell Nipper that Tate wanted him to visit him in hospital so that they could resolve their differences. Nipper was no fool, he sensed that he was being lured to his death and refused to go anywhere near Tate or Tucker. Tate’s intention had been to blast Nipper in the head when he walked up to his bed. The gun would then be taken away from the crime scene by another firm member and destroyed. Tate would then tell the police that a hit man had shot Nipper and fled.

It was while at Tate’s bedside that I first met Darren Nicholls, the man Tate had met in prison and who considered himself a bit of a face in the drugs world. Nicholls had been released from prison on 17 May 1994. Despite ringing all of his ‘friends’ to announce his release, not one of them took him up on his request to give ‘the big drug baron’ a lift back to his home in Braintree, Essex. Feeling humiliated and desperate, Nicholls telephoned Jack Whomes and pleaded with him to give him a lift. Never one to refuse anybody in need, Jack agreed. When Jack asked Nicholls why none of his friends and family had met him out of prison, Nicholls told him that he hadn’t informed them of his release because he wanted to surprise them.

In an effort to help Nicholls return to the straight and narrow, his mum had pestered his brother, Graham, to employ him as a labourer. Graham had a landscape gardening business and he agreed to let Darren join him. The venture was doomed from the start. The brothers argued constantly and they parted company after only two weeks. Nicholls then tried to set up his own business, but he could not attract any customers as nobody seemed to trust him. Another brother, Jonathan, offered him a job, but his wife and father-in-law objected to the proposed partnership because they did not want their family to have anything to do with him. After several heated arguments, Jonathan withdrew his offer.

Finally, Nicholls managed to secure employment as an electrician with a friend of his named Ricky Snell, who had his own electrical business. The hours were long and the pay was poor, so Nicholls began selling cannabis around Braintree to subsidise his income.

Since being released from prison, Steele and Jack Whomes had visited each other regularly. Jack would take a mechanical problem he had to Steele and Steele would do likewise. John Whomes remembers their conversations about mechanical matters as boring him ‘to the brink of suicide’.

One afternoon, Nicholls turned up at Whomes’s yard with his wife Sandra and their children. He told Jack he had ‘been passing’ and had decided to pop in to say hello. Jack and John were taking a speedboat they owned down to Felixstowe, so they invited Nicholls and his family to join them. Jack and John were keen sportsmen who enjoyed water skiing, parascending and diving. Nicholls said he would love to try it and they all spent the day together on the boat in which, John recalled, Nicholls appeared to take a great interest. ‘He kept asking Jack how it could be navigated at night and what speed it could do. Jack thought nothing of Nicholls’s questions and answered them the best he could.’

Around the same time, Nicholls heard on the grapevine that Tate had been shot and he thought it would be in his interest to contact him. In prison, Tate had been the man to arrange things. Nicholls was sure Tate would be able to help him expand his drug-dealing business by selling him cheaper stock and introducing him to more customers. Nicholls rang Mick Steele and asked him if he had a contact number for the man he had once described as a ‘great bloke’.

When Nicholls finally got through to Tate, he learned he was in Basildon hospital. Tate sounded pleased to hear from him, and so Nicholls arranged a visit the very next day. When he arrived at the hospital, he was carrying four bottles of lager, which he said were a ‘well done for not being dead’ present. Within a minute of being in Tate’s company, Nicholls realised the ‘great bloke’ he had met in prison was no more. An attractive teenager named Lisa was sitting on the bed and Tate asked Nicholls if he wanted her to perform oral sex for him.

‘She’s just here to give me a blowjob, so I don’t have to trouble Sarah when she comes to visit me,’ Tate said. ‘Lisa doesn’t mind, she does it for a living; she’s fucking good at it too,’ he laughed. To emphasise the power he had over this 17-year-old girl, Tate started ordering her about, telling her to sort his pillows out, sending her to fetch drinks and generally treating her like a servant. Nicholls was embarrassed and changed the subject by asking Tate if he could supply drugs to a friend of his. Tate, always one to relish the prospect of making money, began to reel off what and how much was available. ‘I can get fucking truckloads. I can get the lot: Ecstasy, speed, cocaine, cannabis. Tell him, no matter how much he needs I can get it. I’m the man.’ I could see Nicholls was regretting visiting Tate, who was making it clear he considered Nicholls ‘nothing more than small-time’.

‘What you after, then, Darren?’ Tate said laughing. ‘A joint? We tend to deal in lorry loads.’

Tate was enjoying every minute of ridiculing Nicholls. Though Nicholls was seething with anger, he knew he couldn’t say anything because he didn’t want to upset Tate or his friends, who were gathered around the bed. He left eventually, looking like a scolded child.

Within a couple of days, a nurse discovered Tate’s gun while making up his bed. She contacted the police and Tate was arrested. Because he was still out on licence for his robbery sentence, he was automatically returned to prison for being in possession of a firearm, as this broke his parole conditions.

Tate was not the only firm member with problems. Rolfe too was experiencing difficulties. His partner, Diane, had told him that she had had enough of his drug habit and drug deals, and she and their daughter moved out of their home. About three weeks later, Diane returned after Rolfe promised her he was going to make an effort to kick his drug habit. Diane believed him and the couple took their daughter away on holiday to the Norfolk Broads for a week. When they returned, Rolfe did have one lapse back into the use of cocaine, but generally he did try hard to stick to his promise. Rolfe went out most weekends and Diane guessed he took small amounts of cocaine and used Ecstasy but not on the scale that he had done. It seemed the couple had reached a happy medium.

With Tate in prison and Rolfe off drugs, normality began to return to life within the firm. Perhaps ‘normality’ is the wrong word to describe debt collection, punishment beatings, the supply of controlled drugs and robbery but that was ‘normality’ to its members. Conflict with other gangs or individuals was minimal and rarely descended to the use of firearms – when Tate had been out, every incident had been settled with the threat of guns or murder. This period of normality was not to last; in fact, it turned out to be the calm before the storm.

On 31 October 1995, Pat Tate was released from Whitemoor prison. In his absence trade had been very good at Raquels. Tucker’s drug dealers had capitalised on the trouble-free environment and he had done very well out of it. So much so, in fact, he had been able to purchase Brynmount Lodge, a luxury hacienda-style bungalow with stables on the outskirts of Basildon with stunning views of the countryside.

To celebrate the success of the club, the promoters held a party at the Cumberland Hotel in Southend and we were all invited. It was an excellent do. Tucker, Tate and Rolfe were there. From the excited look on Rolfe’s face it was clear that his promises to stop using or dealing drugs were about to come to an end. He idolised Tate and if his hero asked him to do something, I knew he would do it. The boys were back in town.

At the party, everybody was talking about an article that had appeared in the local papers. Half a million pounds’ worth of cannabis had been found in a farmer’s pond near a village called Rettendon. It was believed that the 336 lbs of cannabis wrapped in 53 different plastic parcels about the size of video tapes had been dropped from a low-flying aircraft. Instead of the drugs landing in the field, they had landed in a pond and the dealers had been unable to find them.

A farmer named Yan Haustrup found one parcel while cutting his hedges. He didn’t know what it was and threw it on a fire. He said he then found another one near the pond and contacted the police. Divers recovered the haul. Tucker and Tate were saying what an idiot the man was to throw it on the fire and then hand over £500,000 worth of gear to the police. Tate thought it was worth looking to see if any of the shipment had been missed. He asked me to get in the car with him and go straight to Rettendon, but I declined – I knew it was the drugs talking. Rettendon village consisted of a roundabout, a church, a post office and probably 50 or so houses. There wasn’t anything else there. We were hardly going to scour the fields after the police had crawled all over them.