Читать книгу Gang Wars of the North - The Inside Story of the Deadly Battle Between Viv Graham and Lee Duffy - Stephen Richards - Страница 9

You don’t really know someone until you see him unwind, and here we need an insider’s perspective to help us understand a bit more about Viv Graham. Sharon Tate, the sister of Viv’s fiancée, Anna Connelly, gives an insight into the man’s domestic life. She also lets us into Viv’s working life – a brutal world, just like Lee Duffy’s. Yet it would be wrong to assume that those closest to Viv, like Sharon, would reveal any skeletons hidden in his cupboard.

‘I knew of Viv,’ Sharon recalls, ‘when he was a doorman at the bottom of Shields Road. There was trouble there at that time and he just seemed to come on the scene from nowhere. At that time he wasn’t very well known and the people knew he wasn’t from this area. I think because of that he wasn’t liked; he was from out the area … Rowlands Gill. People were saying things like, “Who’s this?” and, “Who does he think he is coming across here telling us what to do? He’s not from this place.” So they didn’t like him!

‘He wasn’t from the town, he was from the countryside, he just came in and started telling people they couldn’t get in the bar because they were “worky tickets” [troublemakers] and they weren’t getting in to cause trouble … the town changed for the better when he was around.

‘I knew him before Anna was seeing him in 1986. We would be having a drink in the bar and things like that, when he would come up and buy us drinks, so I got to know him a little bit. As time got on, Anna started seeing him and that was it.

‘When it came to spotting trouble, Viv could definitely see where the trouble was and if he was there that was the end of it. One word from him and that was it!

‘He wasn’t a townie, but you wouldn’t say he was a fish out of water, although I would … because I knew deep down that he was green as grass through the way he would treat people and the kind of person that he was.

‘He was really soft; he really wasn’t what they were making him out to be. But he ended up exactly what they made him. But I don’t think he was the kind of person that everybody thought he was.

‘They built him up, they came and said, “You can do it.” He could use his fists and he could do it, but that wasn’t what he was there for. He was only there doing a job and just maybe seeing that they would drink up. “Drink your drink up, lads, howway!” There’s loads of people who do that sort of job, and then he just seemed to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

‘Obviously, if something did start and he had to fettle them, they could see what he was capable of and how quick he moved. He could handle ten people at once if need be, if it come that way. There’s not a doorman in the town that could do that. He could do that because he was a boxer and was like a proper fighting man with his hands in that kind of a way.

‘Whatever Viv’s dad said, he did. If his dad said, “Don’t go there, son. They’re just enticing you there as their backup” or “They want to use your name”, then Viv would take it all in. This would be voiced over many a thing.

‘People wanted Viv to go to Spain as their backup in timeshare scams. His father, Jack, would say, “Don’t you get involved, son. You keep away from that.”

‘Viv would go there for his breakfast and he would talk to his father while his mother made the breakfast and they’d ask what had been happening and they’d [Viv and maybe a friend] just have the normal crack. There was never fighting talk; his father would never encourage him by saying, “Go on, you do this.”

‘He would just say, “Keep away, son, nowt to do with you, they’re just using you.”

‘Viv would listen and say, “Aye, Father, you’re right.”

‘And he would come back and say, “My father’s told me to keep away.”

‘He was quite green, if you would say that was green. I liked what he did because you respected the way he did it. He never, never took liberties with people. I’ve seen doormen do things and I’ve looked and thought, Because there’s two or three, look how they treat people.

‘You never got that from him because he would come and he would say, “Howway, lads, howway!” and do it in a nice way or whatever. Even if he was approaching them, if there was trouble he would say, “Howway, lads, there’s no need for this,” and do it in a nice way. He wouldn’t run in knowing what he could do with them in two seconds. He wouldn’t run in and do it; he’d give them the benefit of the doubt. I liked the way he did it. He impressed me because I thought he was a gentleman and in the job he was in he did it in a nice way.

‘From when I first met Viv up until his death, I saw changes in him. In the end, he would hardly ever go out. He would watch videos and ring us up and say, “Anna’s making something, do you fancy coming across at teatime?”

‘They always had their tea on time because Viv trained twice a day. His last training would be around about, maybe, seven, so Anna would have the tea on for him coming back. They would maybe ring here and say, there’s chicken or whatever – do you fancy coming across, we’ve got a good video.

‘We would join them for a meal, and then the next minute the video would be on, we’d be in the middle of our tea and then the phone would start.

‘Viv would say, “Anna, what am I going to do?”

‘He didn’t want to pick it up because he didn’t want to ruin the night, but he knew in the back of his mind he had to pick the phone up because he had to make sure people were all right wherever they were ringing from.

‘He’d say, “Two minutes, two minutes. I’ll be back in two minutes!”

‘He’d run and jump into the car and he would be quick. Maybe he’d be 10 minutes or maybe 15 minutes and he’d be back and sit down and say, “Right, sorted, let’s …” and then we’d start watching the film again and the phone would ring again and this is how the night constantly went on.

‘As for getting videos and sitting in with Anna, that was all he really wanted at that time. I’m talking about two years before his death, but prior to that they had their good nights out. Being out late, maybe clubbing, and that sort of thing, but the last two years he didn’t even want to go out. He was happy with his videos.

‘I think that Anna did him a lot of good because he must have felt happy. His relationship was steady and he was happy with everything that was there. Probably the pressure was a little bit too much at the time and he was glad to just stay in and not be anywhere where things were happening.

‘There was still the likes of Rob Armstrong and all of them still placed in all the clubs wherever Viv would work. Even then, he didn’t really work in them, but he knew that if anything was ever said it was always said in his name: “It’s Viv Graham you’ve got to face.”

‘So, although Viv was sitting in the house, this news always reached him.

‘Maybe Viv would get a phone call the next morning saying that two kids were in the previous night acting themselves and stirring up trouble, saying they were going to do this and so on. Viv would know it would be put down to him, type of thing. Even though Viv wasn’t personally in attendance he still had his finger on the pulse.

‘Viv used to get splitting bad heads; he suffered them on a near-permanent basis in the end. Viv and I used to laugh because we were like two hypochondriacs, both suffering headaches and thinking the worst.

‘He used to take me training with him and his headache would come back and we used to say, “Here we go.” We did suffer the same things. I had an abscess and had to have it cut out, then he had an abscess and had to have it cut out.

‘I used to complain and say, “I’m sure I’ve got a tumour!”

‘Viv would reply, “So have I.”

‘He was always complaining about bad heads. When you get an abscess you’re run down – it’s one of the signs of being run down – so it was getting to him, but you would only know it by him saying he had a bad head.

‘Near the end, he was getting phone calls saying they were going to take his life, but he just used to laugh because he had heard it that many times before. Maybe the first four or five times he’d maybe have been frightened, but after a while he’d heard all what they were going to do to him.

‘Viv didn’t care about his money. Whatever money he had he spent! David, my husband, would try to get Viv to do something with it. He’d say, “Howway, Viv, do something with it because at the end of the day you’re going to get older and somebody’s going to come along and knock you out.”

‘We used to laugh about it.

‘He wasn’t cared because he lived for the day and he’d say, “I’m not bothered.”

‘David would say, “I’m going to get you a lovely diamond ring because you should be wearing a nice ring. You should have a nice watch and a nice house because your job isn’t easy, so you should have something that you can say is yours because of what you’re doing!”

‘David went and got him a nice ring and he loved it. Viv was over the moon. He didn’t ever get himself a watch, but at the time Viv had said he wanted somewhere nice for Anna to live because Daisy Hill [in Wallsend] was a bit rough. They loved it there, the people loved them and they loved the people, but David wanted him to do something because he knew Viv was a waster with his money.

‘He said to Viv, “You’ve got to get something under your hat because you’re getting on.”

‘This is when they started looking around at little places. David was behind him, pushing him into things like that. Nobody else really thought about these things, everybody was only seeing the other side of him. Having a drink, having a bet, doing this, just squandering. David wanted him to make something to put behind, but Viv always said, “I’ll never see 40, man. Live for the day. I’ll never see 40.”

‘And now, when he hasn’t reached 40, you wonder what was going on in his mind. He said to us all the time, “I’ll be finished, me. I’ll have my leg blown off; something’ll happen to me before I’m 40. I’ll not see 40.”

‘So obviously something was ticking around in his head telling him that.

‘He used to talk about what he should have and what he’d got and I’d say, “Look at the life you’ve got to live, what have you got for it?”

‘He didn’t confide in us about any trouble. You would never hear him. He knew he could handle it, but it was only his bad heads that he would complain about.

‘It used to gut me. I felt like seething because people didn’t even know him. Rumours about Viv would get out of hand. It would go from one week into the other and the next minute he’d done this and done that, and it used to hurt me because I used to think, if they only knew him, if they knew the type of lad he was, they would think the world of him, they would have loved him. Because he was genuine and he was a gentleman in every way, even in the way he sorted his trouble. I respected him for the job that he was in because it wasn’t an easy job. The way he did it, he made it look easy.

‘I remember we were in a nightclub, it was pitch black and we were right at the back. Anna and me were there and Viv was leaning on the bar talking to us, then he just shot from out of our sight. Then I just saw him: he had this man held right up in the air by his neck.

‘I was saying, “Eeeeh! He’s taking liberties, look at the size of that little man.” I said to Anna, “What’s he doing that to him for? He’s never done a thing. I’m going to tell him.”

‘I went across towards where Viv had this man. I saw this lass screaming; Anna was saying to the lass, “What’s happened, what’s happened?”

‘One minute Viv’s leaning on the bar talking to us and then the next minute he’s got this lad up by the neck. Anna thought the lass was screaming because Viv had her lad up by the throat. It turned out that the lad had a knife up to the lass’s throat. Viv had seen it from where he was in the pitch black!

‘That’s how unbelievably quick he was. He grabbed the lad and took him to the door, where the doorman was, and he says, “Look at this? He was in here and he’s had that knife. He got past you with this.”

‘He took the knife off the lad and kicked him up the arse, kicked the lad out and said to the doormen, “I’m warning you that you’d better make sure that people are searched properly!”

‘Some time before this, when Viv was approaching the end of his three-year sentence for an attack on fellow club doorman Stuart Watson, an incident happened in a nightclub. A sex pest in the Studio nightclub glassed a young woman after she had slapped him. The young lady died from the result of being glassed in the throat. Viv had this on his mind when he spotted the same potential fatality that could have happened here, the same nightclub where the glassing incident had taken place. Doormen were supposed to be searching people for weapons and had obviously slipped up. Viv was none too pleased with them.

‘The lass said to Anna that the lad had a knife held to her throat. The lad was her boyfriend, but she’d chased him off and he wanted her back, so he was threatening her. The lass was in the toilet with Anna and had been telling her that the lad had been threatening her and he would do this, that and the other to her and she didn’t think he would be in the nightclub that night, but he was. The lass was very thankful for the way Viv had reacted.

‘Viv had an uncanny knack to spot trouble and get people out of tight spots. It was as if Viv could read what people were saying by just looking at them. I used to flinch when I could see that Viv had spotted trouble. But you could look and see nothing happening, and then you would see him stepping back and making his way to wherever. The next minute a fist would be thrown. He knew what was going to happen before it actually happened.’