Essex Boy (23 page)

Boshell told his handler at their next meeting that he had spoken to Alvin and he had been asked to steal a car. Alvin said that he needed a vehicle for use in the robbery and was prepared to pay Boshell between £150 and £300 for stealing one. Boshell claimed that Alvin, Percival and I would be the three carrying out the job and we would be armed with two handguns. The reason that we were going to be armed, according to Boshell, was that our intended target received regular visits from ‘trigger-happy niggers’.

I must admit I did laugh when I learned of Boshell’s treachery and the lies he told about us all several years later. ‘Trigger-happy niggers’ sounded like a line out of one of the gangster rap songs he was always trying to sing. I have lived in and around the Southend area all of my life and although I admit it can get lively at times, I haven’t encountered the ‘trigger-happy’ set just yet. Boshell told the police that Alvin and Percival trusted each other ‘110 per cent’, but neither completely trusted me. According to Boshell, this was because they knew that I was ‘capable of anything after shooting Pat Tate’. Boshell had recently been disqualified from driving, and so was told by his handler that if Alvin asked him to drive, he was to give an excuse for not being able to do so. However, after a risk assessment of the planned crime, of those allegedly involved and Boshell’s driving ban, Boshell’s handler was instructed by a senior officer to provide him with a vehicle for use in the robbery.

Boshell was offered an estate car, which he refused, but he did accept a Mondeo after explaining when he did steal cars they were usually Fords. The police plan was that when the would-be robbers had reached the busy A127 arterial road, which runs between Southend and Basildon, an armed response unit would stop the car on the pretence of searching for drugs and the occupants would be arrested. Over the next few days, Boshell was constantly on the phone to his handler giving excuse after excuse about why the robbery hadn’t yet taken place. He said that he had visited Alvin’s home and saw that Alvin’s car had broken down. Alvin had mentioned repairing it later that day, but he had failed to mention the robbery. On another day, Boshell claimed that Alvin’s partner had decided against going out and so Alvin had remained at home with her. Running out of excuses, Boshell eventually said that he had waited all evening for a call about the robbery from Alvin, but he had heard nothing. If Boshell was being honest with the police, the possibility of the robbery ever taking place appeared to hinge on the availability of Alvin, rather than me or Percival. For reasons never explained by Boshell, the so-called robbery did not take place. When Alvin was asked about this robbery many years later, he of course blamed me and Percival for being the driving force behind the conspiracy.

He told police, ‘The reason we focused on robbing drug dealers was because they were easy targets. They had what we wanted; money and drugs. We also knew that they wouldn’t squeal to the police. Who in their right mind would report the theft of their drugs? I think the first one we planned to do was a mixed-race guy in his 30s. He was quite flash and wore expensive clothes. He mainly dealt in heroin and crack cocaine. He lived in Basildon on one of the council estates. I had met him once in the Woodcutters Arms pub some time before we ever discussed robbing him. I was aware that Nipper Ellis or Percival knew one of his runners and he had agreed to give us access to the guy’s premises so that we could rob him. Various tactics were discussed regarding the robbery and it was eventually decided that the runner would also have to get a slap, so there was no suspicion raised concerning his involvement. One night, myself, Percival and Nipper went round to the man’s address to do a reconnaissance of the area. While I was in the car, Nipper produced a handgun; it was like an old revolver. I don’t know why he was carrying it that night but it might have been for his own protection as a price had been put on his head for shooting Pat Tate. We looked around the area where the drug dealer lived. It was near a pub called the Watermill. We left shortly after arriving; Nipper still had the gun on him.

‘For some reason, the robbery never did take place, I don’t know why. It could have been because we had found another drug dealer who had more money and more drugs than the mixed-race guy. This dealer lived off Pound Lane in Pitsea; we referred to him as J.H. Again, this robbery was organised by Nipper. I had never heard of J.H. but I knew he was an old-time villain in his 50s. There was talk that there would be in the region of £100,000 in his home. We decided that we would watch him and his house for a couple of days so we would get to know his movements. We did this by using different cars and communicating by walkie-talkies.

‘Through our surveillance activities we discovered that he drove a Mercedes and he had another property at Westcliff-on-Sea. During the planning stage, Nipper said that if we were going to go ahead with the job we would need to arm ourselves as he believed the guy had firearms in his house. The talk of firearms didn’t appeal to me; I thought it was a bit out of my league. I didn’t trust Nipper either. I thought he would probably put a bullet in both Percival’s and my head if we came out of there with a large amount of cash. I decided not to take part in the crime. I can’t recall how I got out of it but there was no further mention of it. It never did take place.’

The reason the robberies never did take place is because they were no more than Alvin’s drink-and drug-fuelled fantasies. Boasting to his entourage of impressionable young men such as Boshell, Alvin would regularly talk about ‘big-time villains’ who he knew or associated with. He was fascinated by the murders of Tate, Tucker and Rolfe and all the things they had done prior to their deaths. A well-thumbed copy of Bernard O’Mahoney’s
Essex Boys
was never far from Alvin’s grasp and he would constantly quiz me about my involvement with the trio. Alvin knew that burglary had become a crime of the past; safes were just too secure and alarms were becoming too sophisticated. He had noticed that Percival and I were making a good living out of selling drugs, so he decided that he would hang up his gloves, put away his crowbar and concentrate his efforts in and around the lucrative world of cannabis, Ecstasy and cocaine.

Dealing in drugs is an extremely risky business; if the police do not bring you down, rival dealers or informants most certainly will. Counter-surveillance techniques have to be employed when combating the police, and extreme violence has to be used to deter or destroy rival dealers and informants. Alvin thought that he was well equipped on all fronts to protect the drug-dealing empire that he was hoping to build. What he failed to appreciate is the fact that rival drug dealers will think twice about taking on a powerful man, but drug-dealing informants will have no hesitation whatsoever in passing on information to the police to bring down a man who threatens them.

Somebody else facing up to the problems that a lifestyle change brings was Boshell. The police were losing patience with him. The mountain of information that he had given them had not resulted in a single arrest. Boshell knew that he was going to have to come up with something more than idle gossip soon. He needed to be able to tell the police about a serious crime that he knew was going to be, or had already been, committed. Failure would result in him appearing in court with zero bargaining power. A lengthy prison sentence would undoubtedly be imposed and the future he craved with his girlfriend would slip from his grasp.

A man named Mark Bradford was on police bail in connection with the murder of a 24-year-old heroin addict named Danny Davies. Father-of-one Davies had died ten hours after being stabbed once in the buttock during a fight over a drug deal in Basildon. Mark Bradford was completely innocent of any involvement in this murder and did not face any charges in connection with it. However, Bradford’s bail conditions, while the murder was still being investigated, included signing on at a police station every day to ensure that he did not abscond. Waiting to be attended to at the police station reception desk one day, Bradford saw Boshell walk out of an office accompanied by a man dressed in a suit who he assumed was a detective.

Bradford said, ‘Boshell and I acknowledged one another before he walked out of the police station. A few days later, I met Alvin to buy some cocaine and I told him about Boshell being with the police. Initially, Alvin didn’t seem too concerned, but a few days later he rang me up asking what day and at what time I had seen Boshell, and was the man with Boshell in uniform or plain clothes? Alvin seemed really concerned about Boshell being at the police station. He told me that he had found out that he was a grass.’

When Alvin questioned Boshell about what Bradford had seen, Boshell told him that the police had been trying to obtain information from him. Alvin appeared to accept this and told Boshell that he would get in contact with the officer concerned and offer him money to pass on information about police matters that may be of use to him. It is not known if Alvin did actually contact or try to bribe a police officer. Regardless of what Alvin may say today, the seeds of doubt concerning Boshell’s loyalty to him must have been firmly planted by this incident. Seeds grow, so too does animosity, which can fester into feelings of extreme dislike or even hatred. Boshell was living dangerously. He knew what the punishment for being an informant was in the Essex underworld, but to save his dream of starting a family and escaping a lengthy term of imprisonment, he was prepared to take his chances.

Seven days before Boshell was due to appear in court for sentencing, he contacted the police and told them that he would be willing to become a supergrass and turn Queen’s evidence against those responsible for the Locksley Close shootings and other matters. In return, he wanted the charges he faced to be dropped. Boshell was advised that the charges he faced could not be dropped, but if he was willing to testify against the gunmen ‘things could be done for him’. Undecided which way to fall, because either way, fall he must, Boshell went away to consider his options. Before he could reach a decision, fate struck Boshell a cruel blow. Drunk and behaving in a wholly inappropriate manner, Boshell got involved in an altercation with a police officer. During the struggle that ensued, Boshell damaged a police car and was arrested. Boshell was taken to court the following morning and remanded in custody to HMP Chelmsford.

When he appeared at Southend Crown Court, he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and, to add insult to injury, his long-suffering girlfriend ended their relationship. Not long after Boshell was sentenced, he was visited in prison by the police, who were hoping that he would continue to provide them with information about his criminal associates. Boshell told them that his ‘best friend’, Alvin, was importing large amounts of cannabis from Amsterdam and another guy named ‘Spanish Frank’ was smuggling an ounce of heroin into the prison every week.

It’s not known what prompted Boshell to do what he did next. Some say it was guilt, others believe that it was fear. As soon as the police officers had left the visiting room, Boshell rang Alvin and told him that he ought to be extra vigilant because the police had been to the prison and wanted to know all about his business. What Boshell failed to mention was the fact that he had supplied the officers with the information they had requested. Alvin told me that this apparent act of loyalty strengthened his trust in Boshell, because Boshell had warned him about the police making inquiries about him. ‘He’s a good geezer, Nipper, he looks out for his master,’ Alvin joked with me. After asking Boshell the names of the officers who had been to see him, Alvin had immediately telephoned them to ask what it was they wanted to know. He also advised the officers that if they wanted questions answered about his business in the future, they should ask him and not Boshell behind his back. Alvin says that he did not get any sort of satisfactory response from the police and he heard no more about it.

Because of the amount of cocaine that Alvin was abusing he had become increasingly paranoid. When Alvin had time to reflect upon the incident, he concluded that Boshell may have only told him about the visit because he could have been frightened that a fellow inmate might have seen the officers talking to him. This confirmed Alvin’s suspicion that Boshell was an informant. That particular meeting with the police certainly had an effect on Boshell, because he refused to talk to them ever again. Today, Alvin claims that, if he had known for sure that Boshell was an informant, he would have told his friends to have nothing more to do with him. Although he would have been angry, Alvin says that he considered Boshell to be ‘such a loser’ he wouldn’t have harmed him.

‘Boshell was simply not worth it,’ Alvin said. ‘None of what he told the police was true as far as I know. I think he lived in a fantasy world.’

Nineteen-year-old Kate Griffiths had been the former girlfriend of Daniel Langley, one of Damon Alvin’s closest friends. During their relationship the couple used to go to a local pub, the Woodcutters Arms, to socialise, and it was there that Kate was introduced to Malcolm Walsh’s younger brother Kevin. Following the break-up of her relationship with Langley, Kate began dating Kevin. Romance blossomed between the two and before long Kate was living between her mum’s house and Kevin’s flat in Shannon Close, Leigh-on-Sea.

Life for the couple revolved around regular mundane visits to the Woodcutters Arms and work. Kate managed a launderette that she and her father owned and Kevin was employed on a casual basis in the construction industry. That was, until Boshell washed up at the Woodcutters one night in the company of Alvin and his partner Clair Sanders. Boshell had just been released from prison and Alvin had somehow convinced Sanders to allow him to live at their home until he was able to secure an address of his own. Boshell had initially hoped that he could make up with his girlfriend but when he came out of prison he soon learned that his criminal behaviour had resulted in all bridges being burned. Homeless and unemployed, he had turned to his friend and mentor Alvin for help. Thinking that Alvin had resolved his accommodation problem, Boshell began to celebrate and it wasn’t long before he was staggering around the pub, drunk out of his mind. Sanders was outraged when she noticed the state that Boshell had got himself into. Pulling Alvin to one side she told him that under no circumstances was Boshell to go near their home.