had arrived at the office, there was only one topic of conversation and a murder squad had already been set up. I expected the murder squad boys to be all over me like a nasty rash given the circumstances and my involvement with Norris over the years. After all, I’d spoken to him minutes before he’d been murdered, but to this very day nobody from that squad has ever asked me a single question, ever. Bill kept going to the murder squad almost on a daily basis like he’d lost a friend, giving them all sorts of theories. But I couldn’t give a fuck. Norris was dead, and I’d got other things to be doing. He’d given us some good information over the years, he’d introduced me to loads of criminal gangs so that I could infiltrate them posing as another crook, but he knew the risks.
Rumours had been rife a long time before his death that there was a contract out on him, with a £15,000 price tag to do it quick and keep it neat.
Months of intensive enquiries by the Yard uncovered the fact that the hit was carried out by a professional two-man team from the terrorist heartland of Belfast – Terry McCrory and John Green. London drug barons, possibly the ones he wasabout to grass up to me, paid the pair to travel over and carry out the execution. Norris was an easy target. He took no special precautions and seemed to think he was untouchable. The hit happened as he pulled up outside his home in Regency Square, Belvedere, in his flash four-wheel-drive jeep and stepped on to the pavement. The black-helmeted assassins zoomed up on their motorbike out of the dark. Norris started to run towards his front door. He knew the day had come. He was chased by one of the gunmen and was brought down with a single shot. His wife Debbie, who’d been inside with their three kids, ran out shouting, ‘Stop, please stop.’ The gunman took no heed and pumped several more shots into Norris. He died on a patch of grass beside the pavement, a huge pool of blood flooding out around him, with Debbie sobbing her heart out as he died. She was pregnant with twins at the time.
I don’t know whether she knew about Dave’s informing, his philandering, or where he’d got his money. She loved him anyway. But informing had become like a drug to him. He was absolutely hooked on it, a serial grass who couldn’t stop. He got a real buzz out of it, always wanting to be around the police, and know the outcome of his tip-offs. His murder, I’m afraid, was as certain as night follows day.
The two motorbike assassins and two accomplices are all serving life for Norris’s murder. Scotland Yard had at first denied that Norris was one of their paid informants, but several of the better-informed daily paper crime reporters knew it and used it in their headlines the day after the killing. The Yard were finally obliged to confirm it once the case came to trial.
Norris was the second informant of mine to be murdered. I’m surprised there haven’t been more. They play a dangerous game. A grass called Peter McNeil put up a large cocaine importation job to us in which we nicked two guys with known and confirmed links with the Mafia. Any kind of grassing is perilous in the extreme, but double-crossing the Mafia is suicidal. We knew there would be a contract out on McNeil but it wasn’t until years later that anyone finally got to him; whether it was the Mob or not, I don’t know. McNeil was another who was almost blatant about his informing. He had this sort of laissez faire attitude towards it all and was another for whom his past was always going to catch up with him one day. He was shot as well. I never got to know exactly who did it, but you could have lined up the usual suspects from London to Llandudno.
The fact that so few grasses end up dead is probably a tribute to the police witness protection schemes and the expertise they employ in putting would-be killers off the scent. A lot of time and thought is given to that. There was a time, while informants
Rumours had been rife a long time before his death that there was a contract out on him, with a £15,000 price tag to do it quick and keep it neat.
Months of intensive enquiries by the Yard uncovered the fact that the hit was carried out by a professional two-man team from the terrorist heartland of Belfast – Terry McCrory and John Green. London drug barons, possibly the ones he wasabout to grass up to me, paid the pair to travel over and carry out the execution. Norris was an easy target. He took no special precautions and seemed to think he was untouchable. The hit happened as he pulled up outside his home in Regency Square, Belvedere, in his flash four-wheel-drive jeep and stepped on to the pavement. The black-helmeted assassins zoomed up on their motorbike out of the dark. Norris started to run towards his front door. He knew the day had come. He was chased by one of the gunmen and was brought down with a single shot. His wife Debbie, who’d been inside with their three kids, ran out shouting, ‘Stop, please stop.’ The gunman took no heed and pumped several more shots into Norris. He died on a patch of grass beside the pavement, a huge pool of blood flooding out around him, with Debbie sobbing her heart out as he died. She was pregnant with twins at the time.
I don’t know whether she knew about Dave’s informing, his philandering, or where he’d got his money. She loved him anyway. But informing had become like a drug to him. He was absolutely hooked on it, a serial grass who couldn’t stop. He got a real buzz out of it, always wanting to be around the police, and know the outcome of his tip-offs. His murder, I’m afraid, was as certain as night follows day.
The two motorbike assassins and two accomplices are all serving life for Norris’s murder. Scotland Yard had at first denied that Norris was one of their paid informants, but several of the better-informed daily paper crime reporters knew it and used it in their headlines the day after the killing. The Yard were finally obliged to confirm it once the case came to trial.
Norris was the second informant of mine to be murdered. I’m surprised there haven’t been more. They play a dangerous game. A grass called Peter McNeil put up a large cocaine importation job to us in which we nicked two guys with known and confirmed links with the Mafia. Any kind of grassing is perilous in the extreme, but double-crossing the Mafia is suicidal. We knew there would be a contract out on McNeil but it wasn’t until years later that anyone finally got to him; whether it was the Mob or not, I don’t know. McNeil was another who was almost blatant about his informing. He had this sort of laissez faire attitude towards it all and was another for whom his past was always going to catch up with him one day. He was shot as well. I never got to know exactly who did it, but you could have lined up the usual suspects from London to Llandudno.
The fact that so few grasses end up dead is probably a tribute to the police witness protection schemes and the expertise they employ in putting would-be killers off the scent. A lot of time and thought is given to that. There was a time, while informants
Similar Books
