Cocaine Confidential (14 page)

Luis believes he knows exactly what the future holds for him. ‘I'm planning to retire soon. Buy myself a nice little villa in northern Spain and start relaxing and enjoying my life.' He pauses and nods his head slowly. ‘If I live that long …'

Back in the middle of the Costa del Sol, cocaine attracts other far less professional characters than Luis. Their connection to cocaine can be surprising, to say the least.

When divorced grandmothers Denise and Jane decided to go on an adventure to the Costa del Sol they had no idea they'd end up selling cocaine on Spain's most notorious coastline. ‘I didn't even know what cocaine looked like until I got here,' says Denise.

The two middle-aged housewives quit their safe, comfortable lives in the UK to set up home by the Mediterranean after both their marriages crumbled.

‘I'd had enough of Britain and decided to start afresh in Spain,' explained Denise, 59, from the West Midlands. ‘I s'pose I was running away in a sense.'

But within months of arriving in southern Spain, Denise was ripped off by an unscrupulous estate agent and lost tens of thousands in a property deal. ‘I was left virtually penniless and about to be kicked out of my flat for not paying the rent.
My life in a sunshine paradise had turned into a nightmare,' she explained.

Then she met German-born Jane, 52, who'd just fled from a neglecting husband back in commuter-belt Dorking, Surrey. Explained Jane: ‘My husband and I found we had nothing in common after our children left home and one day I decided I couldn't take any more of the boredom, so I wrote him a goodbye note and left the house with just a couple of suitcases.'

The two women first met in a bar near their homes on the coastal resort of Fuengirola and soon discovered that besides being stony broke, they also had five grandchildren between them. ‘We liked each other immediately so became instant friends,' explained Jane. ‘We'd both suffered a lot of ups and down in our lives but agreed that we were determined to survive without the help of our husbands. And we also both agreed, there was no way we would ever go back to the UK.'

Added Denise: ‘We'd both tried “straight” jobs such as working in bars and stuff like that but the pay was dreadful and the hours appalling. I even tried telephone sales but it was commission only and some weeks I earned less than I was spending on petrol to drive to the office.'

Denise went on: ‘Jane suggested we should set up a cocaine business. I was shocked at first because I knew nothing about drugs. In fact I don't think I'd ever done anything illegal in my entire life. Jane was the same but she'd had a brief fling with a drug dealer before we met and she knew how it all
worked. She even knew how we'd get hold of the cocaine and the sort of money that could be made from it.'

Jane explained: ‘Most people wouldn't have done what I was proposing. But we were both desperate and you have to understand that cocaine is as normal as a cup of tea out here. People take it openly and the Spanish themselves treat it as if it is no worse than alcohol.'

So the two grandmothers put together their own very unique ‘business plan'. Jane continued: ‘Obviously the two most important aspects are getting the product and having enough people to sell it to. I'd met a guy through my previous boyfriend who was a supplier, so we both took him out for a drink and picked his brains. He was astonished at first but then came round to the idea of supplying us because we were such unlikely drug dealers. He couldn't believe we would ever be any threat to his business.'

And there lies the key to Jane and Denise's coke business. Denise went on: ‘This guy Jane knew said he was sick of supplying cocaine to stupid, flash kids flagging up their activities to the police by being so obvious about what they did.'

A deal was hammered out between the women and their supplier in which he provided not only the cocaine but also a list of big-usage customers on the Costa del Sol. ‘It made sense for all of us. He couldn't be bothered to go out and deliver the coke so we agreed a 50 per cent cut of the profit from every gram we sold. His customers were buying huge quantities virtually every week and they all liked the fact we were not a couple of fast-talking kids driving flashy cars.'

That was a year earlier. By the time I caught up with Jane and Denise they'd ‘bedded in' so well in their new careers that their supplier even allowed them to develop some of their own smaller customers. ‘This game is all about word of mouth. Someone likes the quality of your product and they recommend you to others and it soon escalates, just so long as you supply decent cocaine,' said Jane, in a very businesslike manner.

Both women talked about their success as coke dealers as if it were a perfectly normal business. ‘We now have a reputation for supplying good quality product. That counts for a lot out here because so many people take it that they tend to know when they are being conned into buying rubbish,' explained Denise.

Jane went on: ‘No doubt our housewifely friends back home in suburbia would be horrified at what we're doing but actually dealing in cocaine in the right circles can be quite civilised, if you stick to certain rules. We always travel together to a deal or a sale and we never give credit.'

‘Look, we're just a couple of old girls trying to make a living,' Denise pointed out. ‘We don't rip people off and we don't water down the cocaine like so many other dealers do round here. That makes us trustworthy in the eyes of the customers.'

And in recent months, Denise and Jane have noticed a number of new women customers dialling up their ‘services'. Jane explains: ‘It's not that surprising because a lot of women don't feel safe dealing with flashy little wideboys flogging
them coke in a clandestine meeting in a car park or a petrol station forecourt. They feel a lot safer buying their coke off other women. They trust us more. They don't think they'll be ripped off and, even more importantly, they know they're safe with us.'

The two women currently have a client base of around fifty regulars: ‘These customers usually buy our coke at least once a week. One client is a 93-year-old man, who is a real gentleman. He says that snorting the occasional line makes him feel young again. If it makes him feel good about himself, what's the harm in that?'

Jane and Denise also admit they quite enjoy the ‘naughtiness' of drug dealing. ‘We both led rather straight, dull lives up until now and are no doubt considered a pair of rather ordinary middle-aged women, but why shouldn't we do this if we want to?' says Denise. ‘Besides that, neither of our [former] husbands is supporting us with any money, so we had little choice in the matter really.'

Denise and Jane say they try to avoid selling cocaine to criminals. ‘It's better to stick to “normal” people as they're known in the trade. Selling to crooks is a mug's game because it often leads to a gang trying to take over your business.'

Denise says that besides travelling together for safety, they also stick to certain other ‘house rules'. She says: ‘We vary the drop-off points all the time. But the main thing is not to let customers visit us at our home. That would be asking for trouble.'

Instead they meet in local cafes, on beaches or in their car
if it is after dark. ‘It's always got to be a clean job. In and out. The customer doesn't really want to hang about for a chat, so we keep it moving pretty fast.'

As a result, the two women believe they have earned themselves a ‘decent reputation'. Jane explained: ‘We just seem to be trusted more than most dealers. I think it also helps that we don't use coke ourselves. It has no appeal to us whatsoever and I love being able to tell the customers we don't do it whenever they complain about the quality or quantity we have sold them.

‘In any case, it's best to be sober and straight when out dealing, as you never know what lies around the corner. You have to be alert at all times.'

With her clipped accent and penchant for elegant clothing, it's hard to imagine Denise's life could have turned upside down so dramatically. ‘I thought I had it all when I was married but I've learned you should never count your cookies, eh? If my parents were still alive God knows what they'd think of my life now. My dad was a teacher and my mum never travelled outside the small town where she was born.'

Denise and Jane's story is typical of how cocaine can affect people's lives in places like the Costa del Sol. ‘Surviving out here is a nightmare,' Denise asserted. ‘There are virtually no jobs. Spain is in the middle of a deep recession. Many expats want to sell their homes and move back to the UK but they can't. No wonder people like us get sucked into a criminal life, eh?'

Jane added: ‘People are really desperate down here. They
seem prepared to do anything to earn some money and it will only get worse before it gets better.'

Meanwhile Jane and Denise hesitantly accept that they are now, in effect, criminals and if they're caught by police, they will almost certainly end up serving prison sentences.

Jane shrugged her shoulders: ‘We're both trapped in the drugs world now as it's the easiest money either of us is ever likely to make. But that doesn't make it right. We watch all those “dream in the sun” type TV programmes and they never seem to mention the downside to living in places like this. It's tough. More often than not you have few friends and no relatives to turn to. That's when you get desperate and make the wrong sort of decisions.

‘A few weeks ago, one of our punters went all violent on us because he believed we'd sold him some rubbish coke. Then in the middle of shouting at us, he suddenly had some kind of fit, vomited and then collapsed on the floor. It was horrible. We didn't know if he was about to die on us and we were slipping all over his vomit.

‘The weird thing is there was a moment when we both looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders as if to say, “Let's just leave him there.” He'd been so rude and threatening to us, why should we care?'

Denise continued: ‘But underneath it we're not hardened criminals and we couldn't turn our backs on him. It would have been completely wrong. So we helped him to his feet and drove him to the local hospital, even though he'd been threatening to kill us a few minutes earlier. He was so
embarrassed when he later rang us up and thanked us for saving his life.

‘After it all happened, I turned to Jane and we both wondered if maybe our coke had done that to him. It wasn't a good feeling and, quite frankly, it also shows that we're not really emotionally equipped for this sort of enterprise in the long term.'

Both women say they're waiting for other work opportunities to come along and then they will quit the cocaine world and rebuild their lives. ‘We know in our heart of hearts that this isn't really “us” and unless we get out sooner rather than later something bad is sure to happen,' says Denise.

Jane added: ‘This might surprise you but we're both trying to save as much money as possible so we can get ourselves back home to England. We miss it terribly, despite all the domestic problems that brought us here in the first place. But for the moment, we have to continue being drug dealers, otherwise we will not even survive.'

She continued: ‘It's strange to think about it, but I'd imagine this is the sort of dilemma many criminals find themselves in. You know you're taking enormous risks and that one day everything will blow up in your face but the money is so good you can't just walk away from it. I guess the skill is in recognising when to get out and stick to it. Let's hope we make it, eh?'

Just down the road from where Jane and Denise sell their drugs is a place that sums up how cocaine has attracted so many opportunists to this stretch of Spain's southern coastline.

One of the most startling things about the cocaine trade on the Costa del Sol is the sheer number of people who set themselves up as coke dealers without any real knowledge of the terrain. It appears that dozens of hyped-up, overactive coke addicts take this ‘career route' in order to continue feeding their addiction. They scrape together a living in places like Fuengirola – a poor man's Marbella – sandwiched between the more ‘glamorous' parts of this coastline and Málaga airport.

At one large Fuengirola supermarket just off the main N340 coastal route – known to many as the ‘road of death' because of the large number of car crashes that occur on it – low-level British criminals sit and sip coffee and brandy in the cafe while negotiating the purchase of small loads of cocaine to sell in the surrounding streets. The first time I walked into this unlikely drug den, I noticed every single voice in the
canteen was English and male. Many were waiting for their girlfriends and wives to do the weekly shop, while they sat wheeler-dealing with other villains.

I was introduced to this – the most notorious gangland cafe on the entire coastline – by a London gangster called Mark. He'd promised me I could buy a ‘big lump of decent cocaine' through one of the dodgy looking Brits who've turned this place into a sunshine version of the fictional Winchester Club, from the hit TV show
Minder
.

When I met Mark beforehand in the supermarket car park, he warned me, ‘No one will deal with you as a first-time customer, but once you turn up a few times, they'll offer you some white stuff. I guarantee it.'

Mark was right. It took just two more visits to the cafe over the following couple of days before I hit the cocaine jackpot, thanks to a Scottish man in his fifties called Gerry. ‘I can get you a package. Not been bashed or watered down in any way,' he told me.

‘How quickly can I get it?'

‘A shipment like that takes a week to deliver.'

‘I only want the best quality, mate.'

‘One thousand euros. Seven-fifty up front. The rest on delivery,' replied Gerry, completely ignoring my last remark.