All the top builders who I did business with were Freemasons, and they used to get the gossip about me from the top bizzies. The talk at the top table was, ‘We’ve got to bring that black cunt down. He’s just getting too big for his own britches.’ It was sour grapes. The police hated me doing well, because it looked like I had beaten the system, and I made more in a month than a lot of them made in a year.

But, to be totally honest, I hadn’t actually cut all my ties with the underworld. I still knew all the major firms, and if there were problems between them, I would often help bring them together and arbitrate a solution without any bloodletting – a kind of underworld counselling service. RELATE for gangsters who’d fallen out of love.

For instance, one day, two of the most feared crime families in the country had a tiff. One was a huge multimillion-pound nightclub-owning dynasty, and the other family were prolific importers – both spearheaded by ultra-violent men. They were on the brink of nuclear war. Then I stepped in, told them to call off their submarines and brought them around to my attempt at the Oslo Peace Accords. After that, my stock went up, and I began to get a reputation for arbitration.

No one wants war – war is bad for business. War costs. A lot of the big firms had studied the gun war that had followed the death of David Ungi. Although David was just a businessman, gangsters had taken it upon themselves to start killing each other, and the police had flooded the streets with armed response vehicles. I’m not suggesting that the Ungi family were involved in drugs in any way, but David’s death led to unrelated gangs killing each other. And who could move heroin around the city when there were bizzies everywhere? War interfered with trade. The cheaper alternative was me. I could counsel for both sides and strike a deal that would keep everybody happy – if they adhered to the terms. Everybody could then move on.

I actually liked that role. I was still a face, without being an active one. There was also another key factor: power, the ancient and irresistible addiction. Power, however petty and insignificant, is a turn on. When you walk into a nightclub for free with eight or nine big men in tow while every other cunt is shuffling about in the queue with a long face wondering if he’s going to get in, that’s power. It’s not power on the same level as Tony Blair, who could send all those troops to Iraq to kill women and children. His power was on a macro scale, mine was on a micro scale. It was personal power. The power to say you can do this or you can’t do that in my own little world. Whatever the practical differences, you bet your bottom dollar that the feeling was the same.

However, not all of the arbitrations went smoothly. For example, C.J. went off and formed his own security firm with another mate of mine called Kieran Packet, but they soon fell out. C.J. was scared to roll around with Kieran, but Kieran was equally frightened. A powder keg of a situation developed, so I agreed to arbitrate. A meeting was set up in a disused warehouse down the dock road. However, relations deteriorated from the outset. Suddenly, C.J. put a gun to Kieran’s head and in his cockney accent said, ‘You facking cant.’

To be fair, Kieran didn’t flinch and said, ‘What are you going to do with that? Are you going to fucking shoot me?’

It was a red rag to a bull. As if in slow motion, C.J. started to squeeze the trigger. ‘No!’ I cried and jumped up from my chair, whacking his hand down towards the floor. There was a massive bang. The gun had fired, but the bullet had miraculously missed Kieran’s head. Instead, it had lodged in his hip.

Kieran was badly injured, so he had to go to the ozzie – there was no two ways about it. This meant the bizzies getting involved, which was just what the top brass had been waiting for – me to fuck up. Irrespective of whether I had been there to referee or not, it would look like I had gone there to help C.J. shoot Kieran. The bizzies must have been rubbing their hands with glee, saying, ‘I knew if we gave him enough rope, he would hang himself one day. It’s just one more nigger for the jail house.’

However, as always, I didn’t wait for events to catch up with me. I hit on a genius idea and surrendered myself to the police. I circumvented the whole car crash by telling them the truth: that I had been there to keep the peace; that I hadn’t known C.J. had a gun; and that by whacking his hand, I had actually saved Kieran’s life. I even made myself out to be a hero. Talk about turning a negative into a positive. The bizzies at the station were fucking flummoxed. I was released without charge, and C.J. went on the run. Kieran made a statement against C.J. and stuck with it. C.J. eventually got caught and was sentenced to eight years.

When we built our office, I insisted that a back door be put in behind my desk. Chris asked me, ‘What do we need a back door for?’ But I insisted, even though I could see he still didn’t really understand my reasons.

Not long afterwards, we started getting hassle from a gangster called the Psycho from over the water. He didn’t know I was involved in the business, and he started smashing up our sites and asking for protection money. One day, the Psycho came into the office, slammed his two hands on Chris’s desk and said, ‘Are you Stephen French?’

The blood drained from Chris’s face. I knew straight away that the Psycho had won that fight. I stood up from behind my desk and said, ‘I’m Frenchie. I want everybody fucking out the office except him.’

Psycho walked over towards me. It was obvious to me that he wasn’t a trained fighter, because the first thing he did was launch a haymaker from South America. I intercepted him with a swift right hook and smashed him on the mouth, splattering his teeth and blood across the wall. Suddenly, he didn’t want to know any more. I kicked him up the hallway and said, ‘Get this piece of shit out of my place.’ Chris didn’t know that any of this was going on.

However, he made one more pathetic stab at revenge before he left the premises. He keyed my Lexus 300 Sport down to the metal and then went to the police station to report me for GBH. By the time the police arrived to see the blood-smeared walls, I had flown out the back door, over the back wall and disappeared. That was the reason I needed a back door – in my line of work it was essential. It was a Friday evening, and I knew it was a bad time to get arrested, because I’d be locked up until Monday morning. So, I phoned up CID officers and asked them not to put a warrant out for me, saying that I’d come in on the Monday to sort things out.

The officer gave me attitude and said, ‘Don’t tell me what to do. If I want to put a warrant out for you, I will.’

I said, ‘I’ve got the resources to disappear if you put out a warrant. You’ll never be able to catch me, so it’s best if we cooperate. I’ll see you on Monday.’ That gave me two days to remedy the situation. I had to find the Psycho to force him to withdraw his statement. I soon found out that he was drinking in a pub with a couple of his friends. So Aldous Pellow, a mate of mine called the Pig and I set off to find our man. We were all big lads, and when we walked into the pub it went silent. I walked over to the Psycho, dropped one of his teeth into his lager and said, ‘You know what to do, and you know when to do it.’

The next day, he withdrew his statement. Deep down, something was telling me that bit by bit I was getting dragged back in.