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Book: Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men) by Ranulph Fiennes
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Authors: Ranulph Fiennes
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two hours before Symins goes home at 8:30 p.m.,” said Jo. “He is as regular as the clockwork. He is due back at what he calls a justice session anytime now. Then home. I will take you to see what sort of bugger this man is even with his own men. Then I know you will not pussyfoot like English gentlemen later tonight.”
“Is he local?” Mason asked. “I mean, has he always been on the Bristol crime scene?” Spike’s file had been positively skeletal.
Jo shook his head and relit his pipe. “Not local, no,” he replied, “but in the two years he’s been here, he’s cut himself a strong corner of the local drug market.”
Darrell thought Jo was wasted as the owner of a transport café. He had an amazing knack of ferreting out details, an ability that had saved Darrell time and embarrassment on a number of occasions. Symins, Jo now told them, had spent much of his youth in Australia after his family emigrated from London in the mid-fifties. By the end of the sixties he was worth £300,000, having benefited from the burgeoning Sydney drug scene. When the Sydney police put on the pressure, Symins, and others like him, moved to Pakistan. He thrived until, in 1975, the Pakistan police found a ton of cannabis in a boat that he owned.
Symins returned home to Britain. His first attempt to set up shop in Isleworth, West London, met with a bloody nose from the entrenched dealers’ heavies. Cautiously he tested the water elsewhere, eventually deciding on Bristol, where his girlfriend, Diana, had close relatives already pushing drugs in St. Paul’s.
“Our Mr. Symins took things slow and easy at first,” Jo explained. “Didn’t make the mistake so many of them do: rushing into someone else’s kitchen. That’s the quickest route to concrete boots. He settled down with his black bitch and her cousins and sussed out the ground.”
Jo explained the territories. The Bristol criminal fraternity are far more provincial than their London counterparts, seldom operating beyond the clearly defined boundaries of their often long-established fiefdoms. To find an uncontested niche took Symins quite a while. The black district of St. Paul’s offered a network of dark streets where white prostitutes operated by black pimps serviced a nonstop fleet of curb crawlers. The police, in a vain attempt to control drug pushers and prostitutes,had turned many streets into cul-de-sacs. Black gangs had then lured police patrol cars into these traps and beaten up the officers. Touché. The result was no-go areas, the territory of black capos, and no place for the likes of Symins despite the drug opportunities offered at the nightly she-beens, illegal drink parties open to anybody with fifty pence to pay for a Guinness or Red Stripe.
Westbury on Trym was a respectable, middle-class area where few drug targets existed, but neighboring Southmead looked ripe. Built in the thirties to house folks from the inner-city slums, the place was all red brick and, to Symins, had the signs of good pickings. But he was several years too late: Southmead was in the grip of a local family, and Ronnie and his trio of hulking sons dealt summarily with would-be poachers.
“Ronnie is into the lot,” said Jo. “Drugs, protection and toms. Nothing moves in Southmead but he and his boys know it.”
“What’s toms?” Darrell asked.
“Prostitutes.”
“Not much left then for our Patrice?”
“Not in Southmead, no. But he had a go in Knowle West at the beginning of ’76. After a month he was rumbled by the West Coast Chapter of the Hells Angels, who run an HQ deep in nearby Knowle, a couple of houses knocked together by sledgehammer. They did that one day to fit in an extra-long billiard table. They hold cannabis and speed parties, immune to surprise drug raids thanks to steel doors and a video surveillance setup. A couple of Angels live in but thirty more arrive within minutes when summoned. They soon saw Symins off.”
“You’re making me sympathetic
“Is he local?” Mason asked. “I mean, has he always been on the Bristol crime scene?” Spike’s file had been positively skeletal.
Jo shook his head and relit his pipe. “Not local, no,” he replied, “but in the two years he’s been here, he’s cut himself a strong corner of the local drug market.”
Darrell thought Jo was wasted as the owner of a transport café. He had an amazing knack of ferreting out details, an ability that had saved Darrell time and embarrassment on a number of occasions. Symins, Jo now told them, had spent much of his youth in Australia after his family emigrated from London in the mid-fifties. By the end of the sixties he was worth £300,000, having benefited from the burgeoning Sydney drug scene. When the Sydney police put on the pressure, Symins, and others like him, moved to Pakistan. He thrived until, in 1975, the Pakistan police found a ton of cannabis in a boat that he owned.
Symins returned home to Britain. His first attempt to set up shop in Isleworth, West London, met with a bloody nose from the entrenched dealers’ heavies. Cautiously he tested the water elsewhere, eventually deciding on Bristol, where his girlfriend, Diana, had close relatives already pushing drugs in St. Paul’s.
“Our Mr. Symins took things slow and easy at first,” Jo explained. “Didn’t make the mistake so many of them do: rushing into someone else’s kitchen. That’s the quickest route to concrete boots. He settled down with his black bitch and her cousins and sussed out the ground.”
Jo explained the territories. The Bristol criminal fraternity are far more provincial than their London counterparts, seldom operating beyond the clearly defined boundaries of their often long-established fiefdoms. To find an uncontested niche took Symins quite a while. The black district of St. Paul’s offered a network of dark streets where white prostitutes operated by black pimps serviced a nonstop fleet of curb crawlers. The police, in a vain attempt to control drug pushers and prostitutes,had turned many streets into cul-de-sacs. Black gangs had then lured police patrol cars into these traps and beaten up the officers. Touché. The result was no-go areas, the territory of black capos, and no place for the likes of Symins despite the drug opportunities offered at the nightly she-beens, illegal drink parties open to anybody with fifty pence to pay for a Guinness or Red Stripe.
Westbury on Trym was a respectable, middle-class area where few drug targets existed, but neighboring Southmead looked ripe. Built in the thirties to house folks from the inner-city slums, the place was all red brick and, to Symins, had the signs of good pickings. But he was several years too late: Southmead was in the grip of a local family, and Ronnie and his trio of hulking sons dealt summarily with would-be poachers.
“Ronnie is into the lot,” said Jo. “Drugs, protection and toms. Nothing moves in Southmead but he and his boys know it.”
“What’s toms?” Darrell asked.
“Prostitutes.”
“Not much left then for our Patrice?”
“Not in Southmead, no. But he had a go in Knowle West at the beginning of ’76. After a month he was rumbled by the West Coast Chapter of the Hells Angels, who run an HQ deep in nearby Knowle, a couple of houses knocked together by sledgehammer. They did that one day to fit in an extra-long billiard table. They hold cannabis and speed parties, immune to surprise drug raids thanks to steel doors and a video surveillance setup. A couple of Angels live in but thirty more arrive within minutes when summoned. They soon saw Symins off.”
“You’re making me sympathetic
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