Essex Boy by Steve 'Nipper' Ellis; Bernard O'Mahoney Page A

with relief Rob’s brother-in-law walked out of the gym, leaving Tate and me collapsed in fits of laughter.

CHAPTER FOUR
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    One afternoon Tate, Tucker and I met up at Jim Oonnor’s gym, Progress House, in Hadleigh. Most of the doormen and bodybuilders around the Southend area used to train there. Tucker had been going to this gym for about ten years, long before he got involved in drugs and the nightclub security industry. He used to train with a guy named William Theobald who, ironically, owned the land where Tucker eventually met his death. William’s brother, Peter, discovered the bodies. William once considered Tucker to be his friend and would regularly pick him up from his home to take him training. However, their friendship ended when Tucker left his wife and ‘drifted away into other things’.
    I had been attending Progress House on and off since leaving prison. It was more than just a gym; the people were friendly there and it was extremely well run. As soon as we met Tate, he gave Tucker and me energy drinks and after we had finished them he fell about laughing saying that they had been spiked with large amounts of the mind-bending drug LSD. ‘Don’t worry, I’m loaded too,’ he said. I hadn’t planned to spend my day hallucinating and thinking I was living on fucking Mars, but as the drug took hold I began to see the funny side of Tate’s prank. Come to think of it, I began to see the funny side of everything because I was completely off my tits.
    I was driving my white BMW 5.35 Alpina, Tucker his black Porsche and Tate was behind the wheel of a brand-new Porsche 928 that he had acquired earlier that day. Tate was extremely proud of the car and the number plate that he had purchased for it: ANO 928 S. Macho banter about our vehicles turned into bravado and boasting and before long we were hurtling around the streets of Southend, racing one another. Driving on the wrong side of the road and jumping red lights at more than 100 mph while high on drugs. It’s surprising that nobody was killed.
    After defying death for nearly an hour, we screeched to a halt outside a 7/11 convenience store in Hamlet Court Road. We all went in the shop to purchase a drink and as we did so Tate threw a bread roll at me and so I returned fire with a ten-inch birthday cake. Within seconds we were all engaged in a full-scale food fight. The store manager shouted at us to stop and said that he was going to call the police. Tate snatched the phone from the manager’s hand, punched it until it smashed and advised the ashen-faced man never to mention the police again. Unbeknown to us the manager had already alerted the police using a panic button and, as Tate continued to lecture the man about the pitfalls of involving them, they burst through the door. As Tucker tried to walk out of the shop one of the officers blocked his path and gripped his arm.
    When I saw that the policeman had hold of Tucker, I walked over to him and said, ‘Leave it out. You’re not going to nick him.’
    ‘And who are you?’ the officer replied.
    ‘Never mind who I am. Just let go of him because we are leaving,’ I said.
    As I was talking to the officer his colleagues were talking to Tate, who offered to give the shopkeeper £100 to cover the cost of any damage. Just as it looked as if a solution to please all had been reached, the officer talking to me pulled out his handcuffs and informed me that I was under arrest. I didn’t resist until he tried to put me into his car. I have never assaulted a police officer and despite my long list of convictions I genuinely bear them no ill will. There are good and bad in all walks of life and the police are no different, but I had made my mind up that I wasn’t going to be put into the patrol car, even if it meant physically resisting. Nervously eyeing Tate and Tucker, the arresting officer’s colleagues realised that they may have a problem if the situation deteriorated and so they pleaded with him to