The Devil Read Online Free

caught up with Liam, who asked me for his share. I looked him square in the eyes. ‘Sorry, mate, you haven’t earned it,’ I said, refusing point-blank to hand over any of my hard-gotten booty. For the second time that night, I took up my fighting stance, daring him to challenge my decree. He was a martial artist like me, and deep down I knew I was pushing the boat out by not handing over any cash. But he hadn’t acted honourably during the robbery, so I didn’t feel he deserved a share of the stolen cash. Anyway, he didn’t challenge me or look me straight in the eye. I knew I had won a silent battle. He accepted his defeat and moved on, and we are still friends to this day.
    Again, I had learned an important lesson that I would later put to good use: never to think that fellow warriors were of the same calibre as me. If they were not of my ilk, they shouldn’t be rewarded. If they had been soldiers in arms and had left their posts in the heat of battle, they would have been branded deserters.
    When I began to run nightclub doors later in life, certain individuals – who shall remain nameless – deserted their posts during engagements. Come pay time at the end of the night, I adopted exactly the same method I had used with Liam all those years before. I would look the culprit right in the eyes and say, ‘There’s no money here for you tonight. Instead, those who have earned with honour are going to share your pay.’ I would take up my fighting stance in my office in the bowels of the nightclub, ready to defend my position. No one ever tried to fight me, and I went on to be a multimillionaire.
    Despite committing over 200 street muggings, I was still battling with my conscience. It’s hard to believe, but I didn’t really know that any of this amounted to serious crime, not even the burglaries. To me and my friends, this was just the norm. Therefore, I was still unsure whether I was really cut out for a life of hard-core crime. In a last-ditch attempt to save my soul, I signed up for the Job Creation Programme as an apprentice painter and decorator, along with my oppo Liam. However, it wasn’t long before the temptation of easy money lured us back to our urchin ways. We started robbing the council houses we were supposed to be decorating.
    After I qualified, I decided to get away from Liverpool and all its scallywag temptations. In 1978, I got a job as a live-in painter with Grand Metropolitan Hotels in London. It was a good screw, well paid and there were lots of opportunities for skiving. I’d simply find an empty room in the hotel – preferably the penthouse – and pretend it needed a new roll of wallpaper or a lick of paint. Then I’d lock myself in and watch telly all day. In the evenings, I worked a second job as a cleaner in a Blackfriars office block, mopping 13 floors one after the other. My plan was to get enough money to start a new life back in Liverpool – maybe start a decorating business or open a shop. My dream was to move out of the ghetto.
    Two months later, I returned to Liverpool with £1,000 in my pocket, the equivalent of about £2,500 today. Sixteen hours after jumping off the rattler at Lime Street Station, my ambitions to start over were in the dust. I was penniless, having blown everything that I made playing 79 kalookie in an illegal gambling den. I’d gone in there wearing rows of gold sovereigns on my hands and come out in my slippers. They had even taken my brand-new adidas trainers. Years later, I found out that the old card sharks – with names such as ‘Leadbelly’ – had cheated the naive young mark who had wandered into their lair. Once again, all of my hopes had come to fuck all – and this time it was mainly down to me. I was angry and bitter. In the maelstrom of confusion, I decided that going straight simply didn’t pay. I could feel the beast reawakening inside me.
    Gutted with