Amy, My Daughter

cars drawing up outside the flat with the paps not far behind. A few seconds later, the police were hammering on the door and I let in eight plain-clothed officers. Blake was cautioned and arrested, though not for anything related to drugs. I’d been wrong about that. They had no interest in Amy. Blake’s charge was on suspicion of perverting the course of justice, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

‘Baby, I love you. I’ll be fine,’ Amy called to Blake, as they led him away in handcuffs. She wanted to go with him but the police wouldn’t let her. I held on to her as she sobbed, but as the door closed, she pulled away from me and ran out of the flat. From the window, I saw Blake being put into one of the police cars. Amy rushed over to it and hammered on the window, shouting, ‘I’ll be fine, I love you.’

Shortly afterwards Tyler arrived and the three of us sat down to make sense of what was going on. At this point the details were sketchy because Blake had kept from Amy what he had been doing, but apparently he’d been worried that he would be found guilty of GBH so he had tried to bribe King into not testifying and withdrawing his complaint.

Unfortunately the confusion didn’t end there. At about nine thirty that evening Georgette, who had been told about Blake’s arrest, arrived with Giles and one of Blake’s brothers. As I opened the front door, she barged past me, screaming, ‘You grassed Blake!’

I didn’t know what to say. Giles joined in, and they accused me of setting up Blake by concocting the bribery story. Within seconds everyone was shouting at once and I felt the room close in.

‘Oi, leave my dad alone,’ Amy said, defending me.

‘Shut up, bitch,’ Giles yelled.

That was it. I lost it and hit him. Suddenly we were all fighting, and Georgette and Giles were both landing punches. Then Blake’s brother hit me and I fell to the floor. I was being attacked by all three of them.

In the middle of everything Amy was screaming, ‘No, no, no, don’t hurt my dad!’

Somehow or other I ended up pinning the Civils to the floor. I was shaking as I said to them, ‘If you don’t stop this, somebody is going to get hurt here tonight and it isn’t going to be me.’

While I was trying to keep them on the floor I ended up with my trousers round my ankles. Any minute now, I thought, the paps are going to burst in and photograph me with my trousers down.

After things had calmed down, Georgette continued to accuse me of setting Blake up. It wasn’t until the next day that we learned what had really happened. Even then Georgette never apologized to me. The Daily Mirror explained that it had informed detectives about Blake’s attempt to bribe King. He and Brown had enlisted the help of two friends, Anthony Kelly and James Kennedy, to act as middlemen and pay James King ?200,000 to ensure he did not testify. As part of the Daily Mirror’s investigation, King was filmed withdrawing his allegations about the assault. He was to have been flown out of the country before the hearing in the hope that the case against Blake and Brown would be dropped. Matters were then complicated by Kelly and Kennedy attempting to sell footage of the pay-off to a newspaper reporter. It was one big mess of duplicity.

As the facts rolled out, it didn’t take long for press attention to turn to Amy. The Daily Mirror said that there was no evidence to suggest she had been involved in the alleged plot, but where would Blake and Brown get such a large sum of money? The speculation was that it could only have come from Amy. I was confident she’d had nothing to do with it because it was impossible for her to get her hands on that kind of money without my knowing, but the general public weren’t aware of that and the rumours began to circulate. That Amy and Blake had such a public romance and Amy was so devoted to him added fuel to the flames.

Later that day, Raye and I stopped by the flat at Jeffrey’s Place to see the extent of the damage the police had caused during the raid. It had been torn apart. We went on to see Amy at the flat in Bow. She was asleep when we got there and woke up in a foul mood. There was no talking to her and she ended up turning a table over and storming back to her bedroom. Her frustration at the extraordinary events of the last twenty-four hours had boiled over. Raye and I left Tyler to look after her.

That Saturday, Amy and I went to Blake’s bail hearing at Thames Magistrates’ Court. Before the hearing we spoke to Blake’s solicitor, who said it was likely that the GBH case would be dropped as James King was now a co-defendant in the bribery case. The police believed that King had been prepared to accept the bribe not to testify.

As expected, Blake was denied bail and sent to Pentonville Prison, north London, on remand. Our solicitor told us that the police would probably want to interview Amy, and his advice was that we should think about going to see them voluntarily.

When we left the court, Amy and I were mobbed by paps. Amy was a bit tearful but, considering what had happened, she handled it well. I felt desperately sorry for her – I hated to see her so unhappy – but I was secretly delighted that Blake was nowhere near her. His absence meant there was at least a chance Amy could get clean.

That afternoon and evening, Georgette and Giles phoned me a number of times. Suddenly they were my new pals, but all they wanted to talk about was their ‘poor’ son and what I could do to help him. I think that what they really wanted was for me to persuade Amy to pay for a top barrister, but they didn’t say that.

The next day, Sunday, Raye and I took Amy to see Blake’s solicitor, who introduced us to another solicitor, Brian Spiro. Brian laid out a case that he thought the police might have against Amy. We agreed that we wanted to avoid a high-profile arrest so we left it to Brian to approach the police and suggest that Amy might be willing to talk to them. That was what we had been told the previous day, but hearing it again made me feel that this was more serious than I had previously thought.

The prospect of speaking to the police worried Amy. Blake’s solicitor said the case against Blake looked weak and naturally this cheered her up, but the dark cloud of having to talk to the police still hung over her. She was unresponsive throughout the meeting and looked dreadfully tired. I took her for lunch at the Diner in Curtain Road, east London, and she seemed to buck up for a while, but then she went to the bathroom and threw up.

‘What’s going on, darling?’ I asked. ‘Are you all right?’

‘It’s this drug I’m on, Dad,’ she replied. ‘No – not that,’ as she saw my reaction. She’d seen a doctor who’d prescribed Subutex, a drug-replacement treatment designed to wean the user off heroin. It had made her throw up. I was so relieved and told her how proud I was of her for taking control.

After lunch I took Amy back to my house and spent the afternoon with her and Jane. I didn’t wake her the next morning, which I spent researching Subutex and its side-effects.

When she did surface, Amy wanted to go and see Blake in Pentonville Prison. Visits had to be booked in advance and a visiting order (VO) had to be issued. Amy rang the prison and was told that Georgette had booked all of the visits for that week, which made her very, very angry. Eventually Georgette gave her a VO for that Wednesday.

On the Wednesday I picked Amy up and took her to the prison where she was allowed to see Blake. While I was waiting, I went to the appointments office and managed to book a visit for the following Wednesday. I saw that Geoff had booked himself a slot, and it occurred to me that it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that he would smuggle drugs in for Blake. I didn’t tell Amy my thoughts, but wrote in my diary that night: ‘Seeing Amy so sad is horrible. But maybe this is the only way she can get clean. Being apart from Blake, and hearing about her taking Subutex, gives me real hope for her future.’

11 BIRMINGHAM 2007

Although Amy and I were very similar, we were quite different in one respect: I’ve always believed that the show must go on but Amy cancelled several. One show that went ahead when I wish it hadn’t was at the Birmingham NIA (National Indoor Arena) on Thursday, 16 November 2007, the first gig of her UK tour.

After seeing Blake in prison the previous day, Amy was in a bit of a state: she had slept badly and looked as if she’d been crying. But she pulled herself together and insisted that she was going to do the tour. I thought long and hard when Raye asked me to go with her to the Birmingham gig. I had a feeling it was going to be bad, and I didn’t want to see it – I knew it would upset me. In the end I put my feelings to one side and agreed to go.