Free The Devil by Graham Johnson Page A

proved to be the equivalent of Archduke Franz Ferdinand before the First World War – he was the trigger. Gilday was a fearsome heroin and cocaine importer who could punch like a mule. One night, Gilday came to The Grafton to reclaim the door. Andrew John fought violently with him. Just as Andrew was starting to overpower his opponent, Aldous interfered. He was afraid that Gilday’s defeat would bring about serious, serious reprisals. I knocked out one of Gilday’s gang in the same go-around, and Gilday was ushered off the premises, promising, ‘I’ll be back, don’t worry.’
    As a direct consequence, the top four crime syndicates in the city ordered a mob of three hundred men to lynch the six of us. I posted lookouts outside of the nearby Grosvenor Casino and at a club at the corner – I paid little kids on bikes a fiver each.
    At 10.30 p.m., the lookouts came bombing over to me. ‘There’s vans and vans and vans of them armed with machetes, baseball bats, hammers, knives, the pure works.’ I paid them and told them to get off. Apparently, a crime family connected to the IRA had been on their way to a completely separate incident when they had bumped into Gilday’s chilling cortège by complete coincidence. ‘Come with us,’ he’d told them. ‘We’re going to sort out the niggers in The Grafton.’ Filled with Nazi bloodlust, they had thrown in their lot with Gilday. Now the enlarged mob was throwing bins and bricks at the door, screaming like savages. I told my men, ‘Steady yourselves. Wait until you can see the whites of their eyes.’
    I had chained the front doors up to prevent them from being booted in. The mob, who were all wearing balaclavas, started rattling the chains. It was quite an ominous sound, like the French CRS riot police banging their shields together before an attack.
    Suddenly, half a face came jutting through one of the gaps. ‘Here’s Tommy,’ said Gilday, grinning maniacally, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. ‘I’m back. I told you I was going to have yous.’ Meanwhile, the machetes were coming through the three-feet high, two-inch wide vertical slits in the door.
    â€˜Stand to,’ I said to my lads, ‘we’re going to fight this battle to the death.’ The punters were all screaming, and the assistant manager was beginning to panic. I could see Aldous Pellow also starting to fade quickly. Nonetheless, I turned to Andrew John, who stared into my eyes, giving me ‘the look’. Then the doors caved in.
    Now, the Frenchman, like all good field marshals, always has a secret weapon in reserve. To be fair, I had foreseen what was going to happen, so I had taken the precaution of concealing a 1940 German Luger in a Yankee shoulder strap over my left breast. So, as the ranks charged towards me, I took up my fighting stance, drew the weapon and let go a round over the oncoming stampede. Pow! Bang! Crack! I called my Luger ‘the equaliser’, because all 300 men about-turned and ran for their lives. Well, nobody wants to get shot, do they? This was before guns became standard, so it came as a bit of a shock to the gang and snapped many of them out of their lynch-mob lust.
    All six of us chased the three hundred men up the street, shouting at them, ‘You’re a sad crew. There’s only six of us. Come back!’
    Within minutes, the police arrived on the scene. Cunningly, I reversed the story completely and said that Gilday’s crew had shot at us. These were the days before they could dust you off for forensics. However, while I was blagging the bizzy, I noticed that other members of my team were not doing quite so well under the pressure of questioning. I could see that Aldous was faltering under his interrogation and was going to fold at any moment. I was afraid he would tell them that I had fired the gun. Aldous was frightened of authority, after being in the