The Cartel The Inside Story of Britain's Biggest Drugs Gang by Graham Johnson

Author:Graham Johnson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
Published: 2012-09-19T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

ROUND TWO

1996

THE HANDS-OFF APPROACH was common among Cartel operators. Once they had established their reputation, they could sit back and let others do the legwork without fear of being double-crossed, robbed or grassed up.

Dylan said, ‘To do business that way, to have the confidence to delegate, you’ve either got to be physically tough, well liked or have an army behind you. I’m nothing special, but I’d like to think I was a combination of all three, in degrees at least. I’m not stupid and I am well known. I could have called on help quite easily, but I hated violence and I hated bullies. I’ve never been robbed, or bumped on a parcel, because I fly straight. And people saw goodness in me.

‘It sounds mad, to use words like “good” and “genuine” in the drugs trade, but it’s not all about being evil. People liked the fact that I was good, and they were attracted to it because there were bullies everywhere.’

But the virtues didn’t wash with Dylan’s wife. At night she used to say to him, ‘It’s dirty money: no good will come of it.’ She was looking after six kids and hated the fact that her husband was a drug dealer. But the motivation was money, because Dylan was skint and he was too lazy to get a proper job.

Dylan said, ‘You get used to a lazy man’s lifestyle – always ordering food from the chippy or going to restaurants. Now I love cooking. But when you’re a big drug dealer, nothing is a challenge. Book that holiday: three times a year, when you like. When my daughter was six months old, she had Moschino boots on, Moschino coats – and she couldn’t even walk. It was fake. I was being showy but not realising it.’

Dylan’s life was sedate, insulated from the outside world by a cushion of cash usually reserved for the highest-paid executives or top-performing professionals. Like a senior manager, he didn’t have to deal with strife or get his hands dirty. For the successful Cartel member, it was like living inside an empire where the fruits of labour were available to the few.

But on the streets, an unprecedented gun war had been raging for almost a year.

Since the murder of David Ungi, around 44 shooting incidents had happened on Merseyside. The shots had started even before the funeral had taken place. Outside the Black George’s pub in Toxteth, where the younger generation of the Ungis drank for two days after his death, a machine gun was fired into the building. It was an ominous portent of the bloody year to come.

In one incident, a hooded gunman had burst into a popular meeting place called Vic’s Gym in Kensington and opened fire, wounding a 25-year-old fitness fanatic called Ricardo Rowe. On another occasion, a 31-year-old was found lying in a pool of blood in a road in Netherley, suffering from gunshot wounds to the leg. Five days later, a man called Paul Foster was shot at his home in Toxteth.

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