“These damned greenfly are back!” In front of me, Sir Alex Gilheath is inspecting a rosebush. He’s calling to his wife, Ann, who is twenty feet away, on the patio. “Ordinarily, she’d be taking care of the greenfly, but the grass is too damp.” He tells me about the car accident twenty years ago that confined her to a wheelchair, and left her prone to seizures.
Sir Alex peers back into the rosebush. Despite being 75, he still carries himself like an athlete. He tells me he walks five miles each day, to the village and back. On Tuesdays, he says that a girl comes in, so he will take the train up to London. He takes lunch at his old club, and comes home in time for supper.
I’ve travelled down to take a look at the man myself. For five years, I’ve interviewed drug dealers, warlords, and gang leaders. To interview these men (and one terrifying woman), I’ve had to wear masks, I’ve been bundled into the back of Land Cruisers. I’ve not yet inspected rosebushes in Surrey.
There are a couple of things in common with most drug dealers that I’ve spoken to - paranoia, ego, a need to justify what they do (you see this when they start funding community groups, and talking about the area they come from. They start wanting to believe that they are Robin Hood). You’ll see slimy charmers, hippies who got in over their heads, and sly thugs.
It’s not normal that they retire old - and when they do, they’re not ordinarily annoyed by greenfly in a nice, normal four-bed detached in Surrey.
I haven’t mentioned any of this to Sir Alex. I want to meet him. As I found out more about the history of heroin in the UK and Europe, during the 70s and 80s, I started to feel there was a huge black hole.
Drug numbers are always fudged - reported street values are always higher, Addict numbers are always lower, and the volume of heroin reported as coming into a country will either be higher or lower depending on the election cycle. Gangs were bringing in heroin from Afghanistan through Amsterdam, but the reported supplies didn’t even come close matching the reported demand.
When I arrived, Sir Alex walked me through the living room out to the garden. There are pictures of him, young and squinting in military uniform, in deserts, and later, as an officer in Northern Ireland. Then his wedding to Ann. There’s only one other picture, taken in Hong Kong, in what looks like the early 90s. He still has some colour in his hair, and he’s standing in front of a half-completed skyscraper, wearing a hard hat. He’s standing with two chinese men, and a man I later find out, through some tactical googling, to be David Wilson, the Governor of Hong Kong at the time.
The more I asked around about the supply of heroin in the 70s and 80s, the more cagey people became. Anyone who might have been able to tell me anything was either dead, or too paranoid to give any worthwhile information.
A few years ago, I ghost wrote a book - the autobiography of an East End hitman, just out of 25 years in jail. The book made him out to be an old school gangland enforcer, well dressed and vicious. He appeared on chat shows, opened nightclubs, and even starred in a rap video. In reality he was a broken man - when he was arrested at twenty three, he hadn’t known anything else, then he had spent his life in jail. Outside, and completely alone, he called me when he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. I ended up sitting with him during his chemo.
Work was slow during those months, and as we chatted, I told him I was working on a book, and i’d seen this gap in the figures during the 70s and 80s. He looked at me in suprise. He said the real problem was regulating supply. “We had so f’cking much of the stuff, we were hiding it in lockups all over the shop’.
He talked about the heroin arriving in packages covered in Chinese script. He said he once went out to Heathrow to pick up a load, and it was like signing for cargo “Might has well have been f’cking library books!”. He saw crates being loaded off a Cathay 707 and put onto lorries. Then he was handed the key. Security waved him out.
From this, I started to dig, and it all led to Sir Alex Gilheath. Sir Alex - former para, alleged MI6 during the early 70s. Sir Alex, who received his knighthood for services to the crown in Northern Ireland. Sir Alex, developer in Hong Kong. Sir Alex, global supplier of deniable Chinese heroin and Chinese Type 56 assault rifles.
Sir Alex, still talking about greenfly. We talk for another half hour. I’ve told him I’m a writer looking for stories about the Hong Kong handover. We chat about land prices, and the good and bad of Chinese rule. He hasn’t been back since ‘97. He makes the three of us some tea, Ann falls asleep, and he moves her out of the sun.
I never ask him anything about his life. I don’t know what I would ask. I say goodbye, and he warmly shakes my hand. He walks me to the door, and says to get in touch if I would like any more colour. He apologises that he’s lost touch with his old contacts in the administration.
When I was growing up in Hownslow in the ‘80s, we lived under the flightpath at Heathrow. I remember lying in bed, listening to the planes coming in. Big jets, thundering in on approach, bellies full of heroin for Brixton and Guilford, and rifles for loyalist Belfast estates.
No comments:
Post a Comment