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  About the author

  Gary Mulgrew was born in Glasgow in 1962 and lived there until he graduated from the University of Strathclyde. He joined NatWest Bank in 1983 and worked for them in Manchester, London, Tokyo and New York before joining the Royal Bank of Canada in 2000. His banking career ended in June 2002 when he was indicted by the US authorities for allegedly defrauding NatWest. After years of court battles and a high profile public campaign, he and two other members of the 'NatWest Three' were eventually extradited to America. Two years of detention in Houston, Texas were followed by two years in seven different prisons in the United States and England until his full release in early 2010. He now runs a number of successful businesses in the south of England, supported by his bankers, NatWest.

  GANG OF ONE

  Gary Mulgrew

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Gary Mulgrew 2012

  The right of Gary Mulgrew to be identified as the Author of the Work

  has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Photograph of Cara Katrina © Gary Mulgrew

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British

  Library

  ISBN 9781444737912

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  To Calum and Cara

  This is a true story. However, some of the events and/or timing of events, together with the names of the individuals or gangs, have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  1. Welcome to America

  2. The Promise

  3. If the Soap Drops . . .

  4. Big Spring, Texas

  5. Into the Light

  6. Scotland, South Dakota

  7. Pollok, Scotland

  8. Choker

  9. Toilet Cleaning

  10. The Rat & The Coward

  11. Pleading

  12. Don’t Panic

  13. The Library Gang

  14. Biggles

  15. Stamps

  16. Miss Matthews

  17. Calling the Shots

  18. Tank

  19. Rain

  20. One Small Step

  Postscript

  PROLOGUE

  Texas, April 2008

  I DON’T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN why I, your father, am sitting here in a dark cupboard, aged forty-six, alone. I don’t know how to explain that it’s my choice to do this, to prepare for what lies ahead. I don’t know how, but I must. I must find a way.

  It’s 637 days since I last saw you, and tomorrow I start a three-year term in a Texas jail. That will make it even harder to find you, although none of it has been exactly easy since they extradited us here twenty-two months ago. It will also be so tough on your big brother Calum; he has endured so much already. He is twelve now and he still talks about you constantly. He misses you and he misses his mother, and he doesn’t understand why she doesn’t contact him – none of us do. No birthday cards, no Christmas cards, no phone calls, no letters; nothing. Julie is taking care of him now, giving him as much love as she can, but I wonder how he can cope with losing contact with his sister and his mother, and now having to watch his father go away.

  Before I can get back to him, though, I have to get through this time in prison and hope that the American Government honours its promise to me; honours the shabby deal I made to get home; honours the deal I made so I could be with Calum again and find you before it’s all too late.

  But to survive this prison I have to conquer so many fears. And the first, the oldest and the biggest one is this fear of darkness. Will they lock me up in the dark? What happens when the lights go out? I can’t bear darkness; it is my enemy and my tormentor. People keep telling me that I am so strong and so brave, but they don’t know that I am frightened. I am frightened of the dark. I have been since I was four years old. Who wouldn’t have been in that place?

  I remember it as pitch-black, save for a small sliver of light from a narrow window at the top. Sometimes, when the moon wasn’t out, it seemed to me to be total darkness. Nothing. I would sit on an old chest, one of the few pieces of furniture in that dismal place, a garage at the back of a children’s home just outside Glasgow. It was full of old clothes that the Cottage Mother would get me and the other children to dress up in, to play our ‘pretend family’ games in. That’s what you do in those places – you play the pretend family you don’t have.

  My bare feet would dangle from the chest, away from the concrete floor, so that the cold wouldn’t start creeping up my legs and aching in my calves. But the real reason I sat there was to try to keep that chest closed. I worried about what might come out as I peered towards the window, hoping for light, for the reassurance that nothing was there. Darkness then and darkness now.

  I can’t count how many times the Cottage Mother stuck me in there to learn the error of my ways, how much time I spent sitting in terror in that garage. But I was in the Home for over two years, and by the time I was almost seven and returned to your grandmother (along with your uncles, Mark and Michael) my fear of the dark came with me. It has stayed with me, from then until now, and I’m once again sitting here in complete silence, in complete darkness. This time, the door is right beside me, I need only reach for the knob and turn it, but that would be failing you. That would make it less likely that I will see you again. I have to overcome this fear for your sake – and for mine.

  We thought you might be in here in the US, in Ohio, and then perhaps in Paris, and now it seems like it might be Tunisia, with the man your mum married; a man we know only as Abdul. I hope he’s kind to you. The Foreign Office call what’s happened to you a ‘parental abduction’; in fact there is a whole department dedicated to working on cases such as yours, but they say if you are in Tunisia it will be very hard for us to find you and bring you back into our lives. Very hard. But I will. I’ll find you. Just as soon as I can get home.

  Wherever you are, and whomever you are with, I hope they remember to cuddle you every day. I hope they know how to brush the curls out of your hair without hurting you, where exactly to put your hairclips and how to wrap you in your favourite bath towel, so you’re snuggled up and warm. I hope they carry you to your bed wrapped in your favourite blanket, and sing to you every night and tell you stories of princesses and kings and ponies. And I hope somewhere deep inside you know that we never forget you or stop loving you and missing you, and that the road I am on will lead me back to you.

  1

  WELCOME TO AMERICA

  I TOOK THE TOWEL FROM THE foot of the cupboard as the light and sounds of another day in Houston started to drift in. Tomorrow I would surrender myself to Big Spring prison, just four hours from the Mexican border, in the middle of the Texan desert, and all this waiting and preparation would be over.

  I looked at my grey suit hanging beside me in the cupboard. I
fingered the material, as if the touch might soothe me in some way. There was a time when I had an array of suits to choose from. Now I had just the one – my court suit. The suit I’d worn when we lost the extradition hearings in England, the suit I wore when I changed my plea to guilty in America years later. It was a suit of setbacks and shame; a suit I wondered if I’d ever wear again.

  Those last few days in England after the announcement of our imminent extradition had been chaos. The work of our friend Melanie Riley and her company Bell Yard had got us a level of publicity we probably didn’t deserve or anticipate: front-page coverage in nearly every newspaper; Prime Minister’s Questions, with Tony Blair under enormous pressure to postpone or cancel our extradition; a special debate in the House of Commons, with the result an overwhelming vote against the extradition, and then the unprecedented suspension of parliamentary business for the rest of the day. Then the suicide of Neil Coulbeck – a key witness against us – who rumours suggested had been so pressurised and hunted by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) that he’d taken his own life just two days before we were due to leave. Had he really been subjected to such pressures? Could we ever be that important to the Americans that a friend and colleague had to lose his life? It added a tangible sadness to what had until then had a surreal feel to it all.

  Up until Neil’s death, I hadn’t paid much attention to the debates or looked at the newspapers and I had barely listened to whatever assurances Tony Blair was giving about how we would be treated. I’d lost hope some time before, and besides, I had more important things to do. I was by now a single father, living alone with Calum, and I had to tell my ten-year-old son that I was leaving him.

  I had to tell him that I had got it wrong, that I had failed him in the worst way possible; that two years after having to endure the split from my ex-wife, his life was in complete turmoil again. Tell him that the promises that they wouldn’t ‘get me’ and that I would never, ever leave or abandon him, had all been empty and false. That I had failed at being his father.

  How do you explain all of that to a ten-year-old boy? Where was the Oprah show that covers a single parent’s extradition? What words do you use when your son begins to cry uncontrollably as the realisation of what he’s being told begins to sink in? Who can prepare you for the rawness of how a ten-year-old can cry? No in-hibitions, no misgivings, just a pure unfettered pain. How the tremors and convulsions of his little body reverberated through me as I tried desperately to hold him, more painful than any physical blows could ever be. How he shook and whimpered as he began to calm down, the enormity of my words finally sinking in – the destruction of his last bit of security.

  Would I ever be coming back to him? Our English QC, Alun Jones, had painted a pretty grim picture of the US Judicial System and our chances within it, but that, I’d told myself, was just posturing for the extradition hearings, right? Surely the success rate of the Department of Justice couldn’t actually be as high as 98% – with 95% of those indicted pleading guilty for a softer sentence? Even Soviet Russia wasn’t that successful; and this was America – land of the free, and home of Law and Order. I’d been raised to know that the Yanks were the good guys, who would go out of their way to do the right thing with dashing, good-looking actors, high-tech equipment and an even higher set of morals. That’s what I’d believed; at least I had until they came to extradite me.

  Then the day of the extradition itself: media in helicopters, motorbikes and cars following us as we made our way to hand ourselves over to the Transport Police at Heathrow Airport. All that noise and chaos seemed to be happening around me, but not to me. By 7 a.m. I stood in a small waiting room with Giles and David – the other two members of the NatWest Three – and a plain-clothes policeman bemused by all the fuss. I was watching the live pictures on Sky News of our plane, sitting motionless on the tarmac, soon to be bound for America. I looked impassively at Giles, grim faced and stern, arms folded, listening to some ‘expert’ in the studio saying how if we lost we faced up to thirty-five years in prison, but most likely would only do about twenty. What a relief that was. David stood transfixed and smiling, correcting every factual error made, hanging on every word. Even now he was focused and working. I felt detached from them both, cut off from all of it. The commentator kept saying Enron. Over and over again it was Enron. We were heading to Texas because of Enron. We’d be going to trial because of Enron. We had defrauded Enron. Still that same basic mistake trotted out by supposed experts. We had sat through years of court sessions, of appeals, of judicial reviews, in which it was clearly NatWest I was supposed to have defrauded, not Enron. I had committed this act of fraud by breaching my employment contract, which was news to me and seemingly news to the newsmen – because still they went on about our role in the greatest corporate collapse in US history. By now it was a byword for greed and corruption – and that word was ‘Enron’.

  I watched on, a live broadcast of the worst day of my life on national TV. ‘That’ll be something to tell the grandchildren,’ I thought, musing that they would be in university by the time I got the chance – if we lost. They replayed the tapes of me leaving my house over and over again, getting into the car with Julie, and my friends Vincent, Jane and Joe, heading towards Heathrow. It was about four o’clock in the morning and I had just briefly woken Calum to say goodbye. He’d said he wouldn’t sleep unless I promised to do that. Thankfully he was drowsy and didn’t start to cry again. He just held me tightly and I promised over and over again that I would see him soon, and that I would be back, even though I didn’t know if that was true. I’ve never hoped for something so much in my whole life and I felt such affection, such a powerful bond, as I cradled him in my arms. Had I ever felt such pain as when I had to let him go, stroking his head and kissing him gently for one last time?

  The TV switched back to the helicopter view of the plane. They were focusing in on the food carts being loaded up and speculating on whether we’d be handcuffed on board and discussing how the US Marshals weren’t allowed to carry their guns with them. A brief thought of me escaping at 20,000 feet passed through my mind – replaced with the urge to scream at the TV, the anger, the frustration, the despair suddenly all welling up.

  ‘Has the whole FUCKING world gone mad?’ I shouted, much louder than I’d intended.

  Giles looked at me and shook his head. ‘I know, mate, I know,’ he said, placing his hand on my shoulder.

  David glanced sympathetically at me, then pulled up a chair and moved closer to the TV.

  ‘Right lads, time to go,’ the plain-clothes officer said. ‘We need to hand you over to the Yanks, I’m afraid.’

  Two US Marshals were assigned to each of us. They didn’t introduce themselves or offer their names, as we were ‘handed over’ by the British Transport Police at the doorway to the plane. No fanfare, no speeches, just some paperwork and a few brief words, none of which I could hear.

  As we boarded, the beefier of my two escorts took my elbow. ‘You have to turn right here. You won’t be used to that,’ he chuckled as we headed to the ‘cheap seats’ at the back of the plane. Apparently banker baiting was all the rage.

  I was too depressed to make any reply. I sat at the bulkhead, the last seat on the plane, upright, impassive, and trying to be determined, while sandwiched between one middle-aged US Marshal and one young beefcake, chiselled type. In front of me was David, occupying a central seat with Giles in front of him, both trussed up between two marshals. David was talkative, confident and assured, and I took some comfort from that. The plane was full of journalists and some made open attempts to film us or to ask us questions, only to be brusquely moved away by the marshals. They wanted to know if we were handcuffed (we weren’t) and if we had any final comments to make. They made it sound like a one-way flight to the gallows.

  The plane seemed to taxi for an age and then sat motionless on the runway for another thirty or forty minutes. A last-minute reprieve, perhaps? Tony Blair saves the day? Foolishly, I let s
uch tempting thoughts creep into my mind. Hope can be a dangerous thing, but it was soon extinguished. The rumble of the engines gathered pace and we began to edge forward and then to pick up speed. I was off. Gone. Finished. The bastards had done it. There was nothing except my own thoughts to mark that moment of betrayal, when my own country handed me over to another and we became a minor footnote in Tony Blair’s sycophantic love affair with the US. I felt an acute sense of loss and momentary helplessness, as if a key plank of my life had been stripped from under me and being British meant nothing. I wondered if it would ever mean anything to me again. I wondered if I’d ever come home.

  Other than an uncomfortable trip to the bathroom, when the beefcake marshal wouldn’t let me close the door (what did he think I was going to do?), I sat perfectly upright for the full ten hours and said and did nothing. My mind was still full of my goodbyes. Had I handled it properly with Calum? Could my daughter Cara, at five years old, understand? How would my girlfriend, Julie, be able to cope with Calum now along with her own children, Jamie and Issi, and then Cara if and when she visited? What were they doing now? I hoped they would be kept away from the TV; I didn’t want them to see me taken from them like this. And the worst thought of all – when would I see them again?

  The beefcake made a point of openly reading The Smartest Guys in the Room, a story about the collapse of Enron, replete with references to the ‘NatWest Three’. He overtly earmarked certain pages – I guessed they must have referred to us, as he kept taking surreptitious glances while he folded the pages over. I think he felt good about doing his duty for America, bringing these bad guys back to face justice. Thankfully, he wouldn’t be on our jury, although the book and the man’s attitude confirmed to me the uphill struggle we were going to face in the States. We were going for trial when the history had already been written, the books published and the movies made. I should have seen the signs long before I got on that plane. Enron, a word synonymous with greed, was etched into the minds of all Texans. But I held onto the thought that I’d be alright if I told the truth.