DRUG BARON'S FALL TO A LONELY BEDSIT

Clifford Norris has never spoken publicly about the case in which his
son was a prime suspect - the Stephen Lawrence murder. Now he breaks
his silence on allegations of police corruption and tells of his own
rapid descent from the gangland elite to jail and a life on benefits

Mark Townsend, crime correspondent The Observer

No one stopped to stare at the diminutive figure shuffling along Upper
Denmark Road last week. Clifford Norris, one of the most notorious
gangsters in Britain, now lives in a pokey bedsit in one of the
rougher parts of Ashford, Kent, and no longer warrants a second look.

A slim, almost fragile man of no more than 5ft 7in, it is hard to
believe this was the ruthless criminal that masterminded a
multimillion-pound drugs empire of such corruptive influence that it
was said he could bend the very tenets of justice itself.

The reputation of Norris remains undimmed by time: a man of intrigue
mythologised for an unerring knack of disappearing into thin air
whenever the heat was on. Until now, he has never spoken to the media.

Last week, however, the 47-year-old gave The Observer a first account
of his rapid rise and even steeper fall from drugs baron to a member
of the unemployed. He also answered fresh allegations that he
corrupted the investigation into Britain's most notorious racist
murder, that of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

'There was a time when I had it all - the flash house, the cars, the
business,' he said. 'Things grew pretty quickly, but they went quickly
too.'

At the age of 30 Norris controlled much of south London's drugs trade,
lording it over rivals with a mock-Tudor home and fast cars as he
presided over scores of criminal associates. Little remains of his
materialistic, moneyed past. Norris now lives in a mud-coloured hostel
on a jobseeker's allowance of UKP56.20 a week. Housing benefit pays for
a single room above a DIY store.

Norris has nothing. There is no woman in his life and visits from
friends and family are notable only for their rarity. The ambling
figure in Upper Denmark Street is proof, perhaps, that crime does not
pay. Norris admits he made mistakes, that his drugs empire was 'out of
control'. Crucially, too, he also reveals that police corruption did
exist in south London during the period Stephen was murdered,
allegedly with the involvement of his eldest son, David, who remains a
prime suspect in the case.

Norris will spend today drinking tea and watching television alone in
his small room. As he does every day. At some point he may choose to
break the routine by popping out to the Wheatsheaf off-licence - six
cans of Stella Artois for UKP6.49 - and sipping them on the bench
opposite Ashford's branch of the UK Independence Party. Luxury for
Norris these days extends to a game of pool inside The Locomotive pub.
Tomorrow he'll contemplate the same routine. Just as he did yesterday.
Those that know him suggest his behaviour betrays a man who remains
'institutionalised' from a seven-year stretch in jail.

Most people had forgotten about Norris when he was finally released
from Maidstone prison in January 2001 after serving his sentence for
intent to supply drugs and possessing a submachine-gun. Norris
gravitated to nearby Ashford and effectively disappeared. Rumours
gradually surfaced that the former criminal had reunited with his
former associates; somewhere, somehow, Norris was back pulling the
strings.

The truth turns out to be more prosaic. Clifford attempted to
integrate himself into society, securing work as the supervisor of an
Ashford cleaning firm until he was made redundant earlier this year.
'I'm still finding my feet. Little by little I'm getting there, and
right now I'm looking for work, but it can be difficult because of who
I am.'

Norris will spend this week waiting for the results of two job
applications; both menial part-time positions. Anything will do, he
says. 'It's tough starting out again. To some people you'll always be
the lowest of the low.'

There was a time when people did whatever he asked. Towards the end of
the Eighties, Norris presided over a nexus of south-east London
criminals, a number of whom were connected to the 1983 Brinks Mat gold
bullion robbery. Some, like Kenneth Noye, now in prison for a
road-rage murder, were regarded as having links with corrupt police
officers, allegations that would prompt the current head of Scotland
Yard, Sir Ian Blair, to launch one of the force's largest corruption
inquiries shortly after Stephen's death.

How deep the tentacles of Norris and his associates stretched into the
ranks of the Metropolitan Police remains unclear, but almost overnight
the mastermind would find his power base crumbling. By the time of his
release, he had been abandoned by even his most trusted
lieutenants.

'All my businesses, all my contacts, all my business associates had
fallen flat. That was that, it was all gone.' Norris, whose silvery
hair and browning teeth suggest a man older than his years, learnt not
to mourn the passing of his criminal empire. 'It was not that
exciting, to be honest, having to look over your shoulder can wear you
down,' he said, before looking towards the outline of Ashford's
gleaming international rail station, the fast track to mainland Europe
where Norris once negotiated his huge cannabis deals. The other
direction would take Norris back to the streets of Deptford and then
Eltham in south-east London, where a plaque near a bus stop on Well
Hall Road marks the spot where Stephen was murdered one spring night
in 1993.

Norris, like his son, has struggled to distance himself from a case
that has become one of the defining incidents of Nineties Britain. Ten
days ago allegations emerged that the investigation into the
18-year-old A-level student's murder was deliberately botched because
an officer investigating the murder was on Norris's payroll. It was a
well-versed concern. The 'Norris factor' emerges at key points in Sir
William Macpherson's 1999 report into the murder of Lawrence.
Macpherson's report deemed Norris an 'evil influence' whose 'very
damaging' role prevented witnesses from coming forward.

Claims that he 'fixed' an earlier trial in which his son David was
acquitted of a stabbing are also noted in the report. His influence
may have extended further. The one key witness that did come forward,
Duwayne Brooks, was assigned a police escort during the private
prosecution of three Lawrence suspects at the Old Bailey in 1996. That
escort, Detective Sergeant David Coles, was well-known to Norris.
Surveillance officers recorded the detective meeting the criminal at
least three times at the Tiger's Head pub in Chislehurst, Kent.
Packages were recorded being exchanged. Coles has explained that he
was grooming Norris as an informant.

Recently a former corrupt policeman turned informant, Neil Putnam,
alleged that Det Sgt John Davidson, at the heart of the bungled
Scotland Yard investigation, deliberately sabotaged the murder hunt
after allegedly receiving money from Norris. Davidson denies the claims.

Norris claims he did not have a corrupt relationship with Coles, never
met Davidson, and that the first he knew of Putnam was when he heard
details of the latest allegations against him, broadcast in a BBC
documentary.

'I never became involved with underhand dealings or giving money to
coppers. Never did I give the police any money or a retainer to get
them on the payroll. I don't know any bent coppers.' Norris admits,
however, that he was aware of corruption between officers and other
criminals in the period around Stephen's murder, although he is not in
the business of naming names.

'I was not involved, but there was corruption going on with police and
other heavier gangs,' he said. By the time his son was implicated in
Stephen's murder, Norris's power base in south-east London was so
extensive that he felt he could operate almost with impunity. 'We were
doing so well,' he said, 'there was never any reason for me to give
money to the police.'

Born in 1958 in St Alfeges Hospital, Greenwich, and raised in nearby
Deptford, Norris had a reputation as a violent tearaway by the time he
was a teenager. Yet along with his elder brother, Alexander, Norris
seemed destined for little more than a career as a small-time crook.
The emergence of the drugs trade changed everything. Suddenly every
petty villain could enter the big time.

Norris first came to the attention of the police when he was 25, after
officers found a safety deposit box belonging to him stuffed with
UKP17,000. Norris denied all knowledge, but it was clear acquiring cash
was no problem. By the age of 27 the man from a south London
working-class family was practically a millionaire. In 1987 police
records named Norris as being involved in 'high-level drug activity'.
And in the following spring, he and his wife, Teresa 'Tracey' Norris,
procured a UKP600,000 mock-Tudor property at 7 Berryfield Close in
Chislehurst - a private cul-de-sac with electronic gates and
wrought-iron gates.

His rapid accumulation of wealth would not have gone unnoticed.
Several years earlier the couple had scrimped together to buy a modest
home for UKP43,000. Norris's thirst for fast cars blossomed in tandem
with his wealth. He remembers buying a Porsche 911 with white leather
trim from a Billingshurst dealer, using cash stuffed in a plastic
carrier bag. 'You could get this and that; cars, a decent house, the
lot. It was a good lifestyle,' he said.

By this stage, though, his criminal network had almost assumed a life
of its own. Norris was losing control. 'You'd meet people who were
unemployed, people with criminal records, unethical people, and it
just grows from there. The illegal businesses just kept on getting
bigger and bigger.'

His network of contacts continued to widen, links were strengthened
with underworld figures such as Noye. 'I was never into that
[violence], there were much heavier people around than myself, much
more serious operators.'

Norris believes that the drug entrepreneurs of the Eighties were so
successful they created a demand that has not subsided since. 'Over
the years business just sort of blew up, but when it popped it never
really came down [to what it was before].'

Norris was among the first criminals to create a network of dealers
across Europe. Throughout 1987 and 1988 he was working extensively
with Dutch suppliers. Customs covertly photographed him in Geneva.
Flush with the riches he was making, Norris had got slack. On 21 June,
1988, customs officials intercepted a quarter of a tonne of cannabis
in Barking and arrested criminal associates of Norris. Less than 12
months later a 24-year-old man was shot in the chest outside a
Deptford pub. Norris's elder brother was arrested in connection with
the shooting and sentenced to nine years for cannabis smuggling.

Aware that the net was closing, Norris went on the run. Teresa would
unwittingly betray him in August 1994 when police followed her to a
holiday cottage in East Sussex. Inside, next to a set of golf clubs,
officers found a silenced Ingram submachine-gun. After five years in
hiding, they had found their man. Norris was sentenced to nine and a
half years for drugs and firearm offences.

'I got arrested over money, to be honest. It was fair game, there was
never any complaints from me. I just served my sentence.' Yet
questions soon arose. How did a professional gangster manage to evade
detection for so long? Speculation grew that Norris did, in fact, have
officers on the payroll. He will always deny it.

Memories of the six-bedroom Chislehurst home seem almost surreal these days.
Norris now inhabits a sparse single room, barely 10ft by 10ft. Those who
knew Norris in prison describe a contemplative character who completed
several NVQs while there but who has struggled to adjust to life outside.
One former inmate told The Observer: 'Cliff's room is tiny and laid out like
a prison cell. The toilet roll, bed and television are exactly where you'd
find it inside. He's proper institutionalised.'

It was during his seven years in jail that Norris lost everything.
Customs ordered him to hand over UKP386,000 in drugs profits and later
seized 7 Berryfield Close, claiming that the property was bought with
the proceeds of crime. Teresa also left him. They have not spoken
since he settled in Ashford. 'But it was amicable, we always got on. I
suppose we just drifted apart,' he said.

Rarely does he hear from his son David. 'He's always having to change
his mobile phone because of the stick he gets over the Lawrence case.
He dreamt of becoming a plumber, but he lost his apprenticeship and
then got sacked from two jobs over the case. It's been very difficult
for him to get employment.

'But I have always thought he was innocent, otherwise he would have
been convicted, wouldn't he?' Accusations that his family are racist
are rejected with a firm shake of the head. He has no explanation as
to why in 2002 David swerved a car at a black off-duty police officer
and called him 'nigger' close to where Stephen was murdered.

The police, meanwhile, are pursuing more than 60 potential new leads
following the BBC documentary, including, possibly, fresh witnesses to
the murder of Stephen that could yet implicate Norris's son. Norris,
though, claims he just longs for a quiet life and the hope that one of
Ashford's 4,550 employers grants him another chance. 'I just want to
get on, find a job and live normally. Everyone deserves a chance,
don't they?'

Career in Crime

1958: Born in Greenwich. 1976: Wife Teresa gives birth to David, one
of the Stephen Lawrence suspects. 1981: Norris and family move into
UKP43,000 home in New Cross, south-east London. 1988: Family move to
mansion in Chislehurst worth UKP600,000. 1993: David appears in court
over alleged knife attack. A month later he becomes suspect in murder
of Stephen Lawrence. 1994: Norris arrested over firearm and drugs
charges. Sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in jail. Serves seven
years. 1999: Sir William Macpherson names Norris as 'evil influence'
on Lawrence murder inquiry. 2002: Eldest son David jailed for racism
after swerving car at a black man. 2006: Norris accused of corrupting
officers in Lawrence murder inquiry.