Gordon Brown - 59 Minutes

I knew where he lived and, leaving my crew to clean up, we put metal to metal and screamed through a fog bound London.

Stern lived in a mews in the west end and by the time we got there the fog was taking on the grey of dawn. We stopped at the end of his road and I saw Stern’s car, engine running and door open, sitting at the far end.

He emerged with a briefcase in one hand, a screaming woman dragging her heels in the other. She was dressed for bed and it was clear that the current Mrs Stern wasn’t a happy bunny. I signalled for the others to follow me in.

I didn’t care if he got in the car as there was only one way out and we had enough firepower to bring down a Panzer tank.

He saw us when we were two doors from his house, leapt into the car and gunned the engine. Without closing the car door he slammed the car into reverse, and aimed for the middle of the road.

Spencer pulled out his gun and let loose. The rear window shattered, the car slewed to one side and smashed into the front door of the house nearest to us. We waited for Stern to emerge but, apart from the engine racing in neutral, and exhaust pouring into the night there was no other action.

Spencer walked up to the car door with his gun beaded on where Stern would exit. He reached the car and looked in. He turned round to look at me and drew his hand across his throat. It was all I needed to know and we left as Mrs Stern bore down on the car in hysterics.

The next morning I received a call from Giles. He was verging on apoplectic as he screamed down the phone. I let him rant and then hung up. Ten minutes later the boss phoned and asked what the hell was going on. I told him what had happened and why. He asked me to wait by the phone.

Half an hour later a car turned up outside the office and one of the boss’s bears hustled me into the back seat. We headed north to a small hotel in the village of Pangbourne on Thames. I was shown to a room at the back of the hotel and told to wait.

Ten minutes rolled by before the boss walked in.

With two bears in tow, he walked up to me and, knuckleduster in hand, cracked open my chin. I went down like a lump of clay and the bears played football with me for five minutes.

‘Stop,’ came the boss’s voice.

The football stopped and I was dragged back onto a chair.

‘Giles is out. You are in. The whole of London is yours but pull another trick like that without my permission and you’ll join Karl Marx up at Highgate Cemetery.’

With this he left and, with three busted ribs, a snapped wrist and a busted jaw I took a taxi back to London — stopping off at Gerry the Fix’s gaff for some emergency medical repairs.

How’s the clock? Eleven thirty nine and four seconds.

So there I was kingpin in London. Top of the tree and not yet thirty. I took to the new job with a ruthless streak that earned me the nickname ‘the bastard’. Unoriginal but accurate.

I was now earning more in a week than some of my old school friends would earn in a year. I kept Spencer as my number two, split London into five areas — north, south, east, west and the city — and put a body in place for each. I drove the organisation hard and turned it from an opportunistic, street-fighting mob into a sophisticated business. We embraced technology and the financial markets and turned from petty loan sharking to money, drugs and sex.

I lost four of my best men in early 1991 to a hit and run by a gang who came up from the south west with ambitions to knock me over. We repaid the favour by wiping out the entire gang. Most people will have heard of it. We crashed a turboprop with thirty people on board as it took off from Bristol airport. Sabotage was suspected but never proven.

In the summer of 1993 a money laundering scheme that had doubled our income in the previous six months went tits up in a bad way. The financial authorities sent in the heavy mob and they were the Andrews Liver Salts to our digestion. I lost six of my best men to Wormwood Scrubs for sentences ranging from three to eight years. I escaped by the skin of my teeth but my card was marked.

By now the police were wise to us in a big way but I was careful to give them little reason to talk to me. London was now over three quarters of the total income of the group and I was pushing to take control of the rest of England. I reckoned we could triple our income if I had the steering wheel.

Of course you can see what’s coming. Sadly so could the boss. I was no longer a valued asset. I was becoming a serious risk to his command.

One sunny Tuesday a blue Ford Escort parked outside my townhouse in Chelsea at five in the morning and, as I left the front door two hours later, it exploded — taking out half a block of London ’s most expensive real estate.

I should have died but, as I left the house, I bent down to tie a shoe lace. The initial blast wave caught me in the backside and threw me into the basement well that sat beneath my front door. Out of the way of the main explosion I survived but was rendered deaf in one ear and suffered second degree burns to a fifth of my body. I had more cuts and bruises than could be counted and my Rolex was branded into my wrist. To this day I still carry the imprint of a watch on my skin.

I spent three months in hospital, all the time fearing that the boss would finish the job. But he had gotten sloppy in his old age and word was everywhere that he was behind the failed attempt on my life. He went to ground. I might have been known as ‘the bastard’ but at least I was a fair bastard and rule number one in our game is don’t shit on your own doorstep.

Two days before I left hospital a young man called Greg McAllister took a walk in Hyde Park with his pet Labrador. It was a routine he had been repeating for a fortnight and, as he had done for the previous fourteen mornings, he uttered a polite good morning to an old man in a jogging suit flanked by two human four by twos. Only this time he took a small pistol from his coat and emptied the gun into the old man before running off.

I was now in charge of the UK and had no intention of stopping there.

Sometime after I left hospital I was given a copy of Little Caesar starring Edward G Robinson to watch while I was laid up. Robinson plays Riko, probably one of the best known gangsters in movie history. I loved the movie. No — I adored the movie. Robinson became a bit of a role model. He took no shit.

There is a scene where he suspects that one of his gang is feeling guilty and about to go to confess all to the priest. Riko’s solution was to gun the gang member down on the steps of the church. I must have watched that movie a hundred times and I made it clear that I no longer wanted to be known as the bastard or Jock — and soon I was the new Riko.

People thought I was off my head but I loved it.

I had just entered my fourth decade and was one of the main players in my game. Life was sweet and I set about making myself comfortable. I called Martin down from Glasgow and put him and Spencer on the day to day stuff.

I thought Martin might object. After all he had happily grown roots in Glasgow and, apart from the odd phone call, he had been a stranger. He surprised me by jumping on a train and joining me.

I muscled up with bodyguards that were smart enough to know how to defend me and thick enough to do it regardless of the danger to themselves. I bought a pile in the country and adopted the landed gentry motif with consummate ease. Shotguns, wellies, hounds and a Land Rover Defender — I was lord of the manor — in true Only Fools and Horses style. I probably looked like a tit but I didn’t care — the money was rolling in and I was well smart enough to keep things on an even keel. At least I thought I was.