Ecstasy and Leah Betts: the bouncer's tale

There is a new addition to the rapidly growing canon of books about ecstasy, one that is rather better written than many of the short stories in the recent anthology Disco Biscuits and rather grimmer than Irvine Welsh's latest. So This Is Ecstasy? comes from the (ghosted) pen of Bernard O'Mahoney, last seen on the witness stand at the trial of the teenager accused of buying the tablet that killed Leah Betts.

Bernie, who is more accustomed to standing in the dock, was the doorman at Raquels, a Basildon night-club, and, he says, a member of the Essex gang ("the firm") that supplied Leah's hit. His book has come under fire even before publication, for using on the cover an image that shocked the country: Leah Betts unconscious in intensive care after she collapsed at her 18th birthday party in November 1995.

This week Paul Betts, Leah's father, who owns the copyright to the photograph, complained to Mainstream Publishing. The company, which says its use of the picture was due to a misunderstanding, has postponed publication for 10 days in order to cover up the jacket. "The book is about Mr O'Mahoney's past history and gang warfare in Essex, I'm led to believe, so I did not see that Leah dying in hospital was appropriate," Mr Betts says.

So far, so predictable. But while Mr Betts does not want his daughter's memory used to market O'Mahoney's memoirs, he says he welcomes any book that promotes the debate about ecstasy, even one written by a man whose livelihood depended, to an extent, on sales of the drug.

O'Mahoney's memoirs can be read for all the usual reasons we read crime stories: vicarious thrills, horrifying detail, a brush with a criminal underclass that we hope never to meet in real life. But his story is also an antidote to the happy, smiley face of ecstasy. It opens with Leah Betts's death and ends with the triple murder in an Essex country lane of three fellow gang-members.

O'Mahoney has told parts of his tale before: at the trial of Steven Packman, the 18-year-old accused (and cleared) of buying the tablet that killed Leah, he testified that the drugs on sale at Raquels were controlled by a man called Mark Murray, alleged to be the club's main dealer, and by Tony Tucker, head of the "firm".

But in the book he adds a great deal of unpleasant detail. According to O'Mahoney, he and Tucker (subsequently murdered) "co-owned" the door at Raquels - they ran security for the club. O'Mahoney tells lurid tales of the violence on show at Raquels, where vicious fights were the norm and where the bouncers apparently had a tendency to strike first and hardest.

The most interesting part is his explanation of the drug-dealing system set up by "the firm" at Raquels and other clubs. According to O'Mahoney, he more or less licensed drug-dealers to work in the club; Mark Murray (who has since fled to Spain, allegedly) would supply his dealers, and they would sell ecstasy around the dance-floor.

There was even a method in place to detect rivals: a customer would be sent in to the club to buy drugs and would then describe the seller to the bouncers. They would grab the dealer, rob him of money and drugs, and pay the customer. That was the way, O'Mahoney says, "we would keep rogue drug dealers out of Raquels".

He tells this story, rather aggrieved, to undercut the claims of "a publicity- seeking idiot" who told The Mirror (in the wake of Leah's death) that he and others routinely sold poisoned pills in Raquels. O'Mahoney attacks this tabloid canard - "the pushers don't give a damn" - by pointing out that any dealer who did so "would get rid of one or two, cause one or two deaths, and they'd be out of business".

The dealers at Raquels were far better organised. O'Mahoney says that for each tablet of ecstasy sold in the club, the firm would get pounds 1 (plus free supplies of cocaine, ecstasy and speed), the junior dealer would get pounds 1, and Murray would take the rest. The author reckons that came to about pounds 3 a pill, and Murray "probably sold 400-plus per night".

That seems plausible, given that Raquels, a standard white-stiletto disco, had relaunched itself as a rave club playing house and garage music. And, as one of the more famous of recent statistics has it, around a million ecstasy pills are taken in Britain each weekend.

"When I was a police officer I was very ignorant as far as drugs went," Mr Betts says. "It's not until you have educated yourself in relation to the drug culture that you realise how integrated it is."

Most parents, he says, still see drug use as "a dirty syndrome", as something alien to their nice kids. "They are still a carbon copy of what I used to be like: 'it will not happen to me'."

But part of E's appeal is its wholesome, loving image among clubbers (and the fact that it is fun). Heroin may be newly fashionable in some quarters, but it is still perceived to be a loser's drug, while cocaine is simultaneously sleazy and yuppie and expensive. Ecstasy, which induces a sense of euphoria and well-being, is seen as the happy drug - which is why the O'Mahoney view may be disturbing to those users who don't want to think about the pillars upholding the culture: money, greed and violence.

According to O'Mahoney, Murray, the main Raquels dealer, owed money to his boss at the firm. Tony Tucker, in an attempt to recoup the cash, forced Murray to buy stronger, more expensive Es - the "Apples" (named after the motif stamped on the tablet) that Leah and her friends took to celebrate her birthday.

The night before Leah's party, O'Mahoney says he saw a teenage boy who had taken an Apple collapse at the club; he told the boy's friends to take him away, and when the police arrived later to ask about a 15-year- old admitted to hospital, the club denied all knowledge.

A week later, O'Mahoney was in big trouble himself with the firm, because the News of the World (with which the bouncer had dealings) had named Murray as a suspect in the ecstasy sale that killed Leah. Tucker, with his two friends Pat Tate and Craig Rolfe, was said to be furious and looking for O'Mahoney.

By this time, the author tells us, he was sick of his life of crime in Essex and wanted to move on and out. "I didn't want my children growing up surrounded by people like myself and my friends. I wanted them to have a future," he writes.

But quitting the firm was not so simple. "It's easy to understand why people turn to crime," he muses in the book. "The hours are good and the pay substantial. But there is a downside. Getting the bullet isn't a phrase used when your services are terminated. It is usually the method used to bring about that termination."

O'Mahoney was worried. But, as it turned out, the men gunning for him were taken out first. Three weeks after Leah Betts's death, Tucker, Tate and Rolfe were shot dead in an apparent execution as they sat in Tucker's blue Range Rover in a quiet lane in Rettendon, Essex.

Two men are due to stand trial at the Old Bailey for the triple murder, which means that the Essex police cannot discuss any of O'Mahoney's theories about the killings. As to why he should choose to write the book now, one answer is that with Tucker dead and Murray fleeing to Spain, the coast must seem a bit clearer for him. According to Bill Campbell, joint managing director of Mainstream, O'Mahoney spent some time under police protection, but has now come out of hiding.

O'Mahoney says his motive for testifying at the Packman trial, and, presumably, for repeating his story in print, is to "shed the criminal make-up I have worn for so long". Leah's death was the catalyst. "Blame lies with the firm," he writes. "Blame lies with the management [of Raquels]. Blame lies with the police, but nobody forced anyone into that club and nobody forced anyone to take drugs. The burden of blame and the burden of the drug culture lies with us all."

Some might argue that O'Mahoney bears a little more blame than some other citizens, but his words are echoed by Paul Betts. "When Leah died, as big as Bernie is, I would have physically torn him apart," he says. "I needed somebody to pin the blame on. But when you come to cold light of day - nobody forced Leah to take that pill, I was partly to blame because I knew nothing about drugs, and therefore couldn't talk to her."

Mr Betts criticises the author because "he knew who was supplying the drugs and he never stopped it", but, he says, when it comes to the book: "Anybody that can keep this debate going ... I'm perfectly happy with"n