There is little about Alderwood Avenue to suggest that a new battle to control Europe's cocaine trade began in this grim corner of the tough Liverpool suburb of Speke. Only the most inquisitive visitor might, among the boarded-up windows and steel-shuttered shops, pause to inspect the unprepossessing gymnasium where the local hard-nuts once met.

It was here that, just after 8pm on 13 November 2007, local father Colin Smith stepped outside and was executed with a pump-action shotgun. Smith, a balding 40-year-old who drove a Ford Galaxy and wore faded Lacoste shirts, was no ordinary resident of Speke. He was known as the "Cocaine King", the second biggest drug dealer Britain has produced, and an ally of Curtis Warren, the only trafficker to appear in the Sunday Times Rich List and currently behind bars in Jersey.

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