I didn’t really take any notice of her at the time, but a few days later she came to see me on a special legal visit. Breathless and excited, she exclaimed, ‘You know that African guy who brought the charges against you? Well, I’ve done a bit of homework on him, and I’ve got some news for you – he’s a well-known illegal-marriage fixer.’

I sprang out of my lethargic prison slump and said, ‘What?’

Sandy went on to reveal how one of her wealthy foreign clients had once been so desperate to stay in the UK that she’d undergone a bent marriage of convenience. You’ll never guess who the groom had been – the Chief. Sandy told me how he had caused all kinds of problems for her poor client – blackmailing her and the like – and she’d eventually hired Sandy to protect her assets and stop the extortion. What a stroke of luck! If it was true, the information was gold dust!

I got some phone cards together and called my people on the outside. Although most of the young lads in the ghetto weren’t formally educated, there were some who were bright, organised and good with paperwork – good enough to be put on the payroll. I told one of them to go to the main registry office in central London and pull out all the marriage certificates that had the Chief’s real name on them. They also started trawling the birth, death and marriage certificates at the main registry offices in Liverpool and Manchester, places where we knew the Chief had drug connections. You could bet your bottom dollar that if he had been selling drugs to little firms here and there, he’d also be involved in other dodgy dealings with them. If I could prove that he was a multiple marriage blagger, then I could use it against him.

While I was getting on with that, another stroke of good fortune came my way. There had been a recent explosion in the prison population, and Pentonville had suddenly filled up. One night, I was shipped out on STL11 remand – a special kind of custody – to a police station in Wimbledon in order to make some room for high-priority, non-remand prisoners. My solicitor decided to take advantage of the congested jail and punt for some bail, hoping that the desperate authorities would want to see the back of me for a while. Astonishingly, a judge in chambers agreed to hear the case, but he wanted a £100,000 surety to guarantee that I wouldn’t abscond. That was some fucking money, mate, but I had it – no sweat.

I phoned up my mate back home who was looking after my stash of dollars. I said, ‘Take a 100 quid [£100,000] out of my kitty and bring it down to London today.’ There was a long silence.

‘Oh, dear,’ I thought. ‘What the fuck has happened to my pound notes?’

‘Stephen, I’ve got some bad news,’ said the voice at the other end. ‘All of your dough has gone.’

I was silent for a moment and then said, ‘What? Can you tell me how and why please?’ Cue lots of swearing, threats, banging the phone down, etc.

After I had been nicked for threatening the Chief, I had entrusted my money to certain individuals in Liverpool to try and make a bit of profit for me while I was in jail – in order to take care of my family. However, for better or for worse, they had invested it in a big drugs consignment, and the parcel had gone down. I had fuck all left. Can you believe that shit? I had the taste of freedom within my sights. I could almost smell the freshly cut lawns and the strawberries of the All England Tennis Club nearby – and now the rug had been pulled from under my feet. Nevertheless, there was no use complaining. Whatever the reasons, I was still in a cell, and it looked like I was going nowhere fast.

I hit a new low. I was resigned to never getting out. How was I supposed to dig the dirt on the Chief from behind bars? I could only rely on my oppos to a degree – there’s no substitute for your good self, is there? Also, if I didn’t get the Chief off my case, I was going the same way as the ‘Creme Egg Killer’, for sure. I knew I wouldn’t get a second chance at bail; they’d soon clear the prison out and find a place for me again.

However, just when it was looking hopeless, a guardian angel came to my rescue. Eddie Amoo, my fiancee’s dad, was a wealthy guy. He had been a singer in a famous pop group called The Real Thing in the 1970s. They’d even had a number-one hit in 1976, with ‘You to Me are Everything’. You’ll definitely have heard it at a wedding, and you’ve probably danced to it. It’s a fucking good tune, I’ve got to admit it. Since then, Eddie had enjoyed a string of top-40 hits, and he’d built up a considerable business and property empire.

Of course, Eddie didn’t have a clue what I did for a living. He never for one moment suspected that his future son-in-law worked for the unofficial Inland Revenue. All he knew was that I was devoted to his daughter – and he was prepared to give me a chance based on that. He stood bail for me. Can you believe that?

I phoned him from the court to say thank you. ‘Eddie,’ I said. ‘You know what? You to me are everything.’ We both laughed. ‘Seriously, I won’t let you down.’

If someone other than Eddie had bailed me out, I would have planned to abscond as soon as I was on the outside. Of course, I would have tried to discredit the Chief first, but that would have been a long shot, and I would have been straight on a plane to Holland or Spain or wherever if need be. But, of course, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t let Eddie down. I couldn’t even just disappear to some far-off place and secretly send him the £100,000 I owed him. I had to do the honourable thing: turn up for court and face the music.

When I hit the street in March 1991, there was no partying – it was straight down to business. Financially, I was down to my last 25 grand – my lowest net worth since 1980 when I had returned from London and lost all my dough to those card sharks. After Andrew had been killed, I’d bought his ride – a top of the range Saab – for sentimental reasons, but I had to sell it to get some money together.

When a professional criminal is facing a sure-fire spell in jail, he will do one thing: try and make as much money as he can to support his family in his absence. Up until that point in my life, I’d always considered myself to be on the periphery of the drug-dealing scene. OK, I’d imported and sold a lot of drugs, but I had never just been a professional dealer. I had always had other strings to my bow. The Hull connection had been so fucking simple, half the time I hadn’t even touched the gear. I had never immersed myself fully in the drugs culture. First and foremost, I was a taxman.

Now I had come out of jail, was on bail and only had around 25 grand left to my name. I had mortgages to pay, families to keep and the possibility of six years of bird ahead of me. Thus, I made the conscious decision to become a full-time drug dealer – to live, breathe and sleep narcotics. I would personally bring it in by the armfuls if necessary. I would become a one-man drug-dealing machine on an industrial scale. I would flood the streets with as much heroin, cocaine and cannabis – not forgetting our old staple Ecstasy – as was humanly possible. Get paid – end of story.

I had made my decision; I just had to find a way of executing it. I am always planning ahead, looking 16 to 18 months down the road. On that occasion, my timing couldn’t have been more perfect. My old friend and rival Curtis had gone from doing 50-kilogram to 1,000-kilogram shipments, making him the single biggest drug trafficker in Britain according to official documents which were later published. Warren had first been identified by the police as a rising star in the drugs game in 1991, according to their files, which later came out in the media. His name had come onto the radar during Operation Bruise, a crackdown on a Midlands-based smuggling ring. At that time, they had Warren pegged as a middle-ranking operator. Within months, he had shot up to become the wealthiest criminal in British history, worth an estimated £250 million.

As you may remember, I had started Warren off on his criminal career at the age of 11 when I’d recruited him into George Osu’s burglary gang. From then on, we’d both drifted in and out of each other’s lives whenever it suited us. Both of us were tough, bright lads, and neither of us wanted to play second fiddle to the other. So, for the most part, we ran in our own little separate outfits, bumping into each other from time to time around the barrio, doing business together when we had to. But there was always friction between us. Even so, deep down, I still wanted to be his partner.

According to the press and the police, Curtis Warren’s official criminal history reads as follows: at the age of twelve, he picked up a two-year supervision order from Liverpool Juvenile Court for joyriding. Collars for burglary, theft, stealing cars (four times), robbery, offensive behaviour and carrying weapons were the highlights over the next two years. At the age of 16, he made the papers by mugging a 78-year-old grandma on the steps of a cathedral and was sent to borstal for 11 months.

At 19, he went to an adult prison for the first time for blackmailing a street hooker and her punter in a crude back-street extortion racket. Curtis, being the kind of person he is, used jail to his advantage by networking with senior villains. These white, middle-aged godfathers would come to be labelled the ‘Liverpool Mafia’ by the media. They were the founding fathers of Britain’s drug explosion – men who would later go into business with Curtis and generate billions of pounds of drug money.

Following his release from prison, Curtis turned to armed robbery in order to bankroll his pioneering investment in drugs. He held up a Securicor van with a pistol and a sawn-off shotgun, bashed the driver up and got away with £8,000. However, he was soon nicked and got five years for that one. When he got out again, he still didn’t have a kitty, so he went off to Switzerland to plunder sports shops for rare adidas trainers, Sergio Tacchini trackies and Ellesse tops. In 1987, he was caught robbing £1,250 worth of swag from a shop over there and was jailed for 30 days.

At that point, he made the switch from street punk to serious criminal. When he got back to Liverpool, he set himself up as a dealer. He befriended an older, white villain called Stan Carnall, and they started doing business in Amsterdam. Like all success stories, they had luck on their side. They were ticking along, doing one-off shipments of heroin, when they were approached by a newly formed cocaine cartel from South America that was looking for new outlets in Europe. The official story went that Curtis and Stan then linked up with the Cali Cartel’s main salesman on the Continent – a 22-year-old kid called Mario Halley.

Back in the UK, Curtis had started networking with the trafficking elite and was soon partners with Brian Charrington, a former second-hand-car dealer from the north-east. Between them, they started shipping in the first 1,000-kilogram loads into Britain. Warren later became a household name – an anti-hero for the ASBO generation. Within months, he was recognised by all the major firms in Manchester, Birmingham, London, Cardiff and Scotland, and was the number-one player in the cocaine game – bar none.

To be honest, I wasn’t too aware of the significance of all this at the time. Curtis was just one of a number of lads from around the barrio who was doing very well. However, my newly discovered partner Rodriguez was only too aware of Curtis’s fame.

I’d grown real close to my tax accountant Sandy. Her boyfriend Rodriguez, a Venezuelan, turned out to be a gangster in London, although he was very low-key. And, apparently, Curtis Warren’s reputation preceded him, even in the upper echelons of London’s criminal society.

Rodriguez and I quickly became friends and partners. One day, Rodriguez asked me if I knew Curtis. When I told him that we used to do burglaries together as kids, it was as though I’d told him I was a personal friend of Tony Blair. Totally awestruck, he said, ‘You personally know him? So you could ask him to do some work with you?’ Who was he talking about here – Bill Clinton? Curtis was a solid platinum underworld legend, and I didn’t even know it.

‘I wouldn’t like to, because it’s not that kind of friendship,’ I replied but Rodriguez forced, pressured and cajoled me into getting Curtis on board.

However, when I thought about it, I realised it could be the perfect scenario. If I could, I would score off Curtis and ship the drugs to Rodriguez to sell. I told Rodriguez that I would put up the money, but he would have to do all the work, for which he would get half the profits. It’s a business principle that’s worked for me ever since. Even today in my property empire, I will supply the cash to buy the land and the materials to build the houses, but my contractor partners have to supply the labour, and we split the profits between us.

As I thought this over, I realised that Curtis and I were very similar. Like me, he had a sixth sense. One time, he went to Burtonwood services to collect a £40 million consignment. On an itch of his nose, he allegedly turned his back on it because he had smelled a rat. Now, how much money do you have to have to be able to do that?

As it turned out, no one got nicked that day, and Curtis reportedly had to cover the £40 million loss himself. If you’re in the drugs game, there is something called a ‘yellow pedal’ that usually gets the dealer off the hook in the event of a bust. Say, for example, that the £40 million consignment had been discovered by the bizzies. This would certainly have made the papers. Curtis could then show his international suppliers a press clipping to prove that the goods had been seized through no fault of his own. This clipping was called a yellow pedal, because the suppliers would often be shown a yellow charge sheet to prove that someone had been nicked and that they weren’t getting ripped off. This meant that everything could be substantiated, and there was no bill to pay.

After the death of Andrew John – in a strange, grudging way – all our mutual friends were pushed closer together. Whatever the history had been between us, I knew approaching Curtis was worth a try. I had decided that Curtis Warren was to be my saviour.