Cocaine Confidential (18 page)

Patrick then reels off the going rates for different quality cocaine like a second-hand car salesman boasting about the prices of a whole range of vehicle models.

‘Top quality 99 per cent. Two hundred euros a gram … Medium. One twenty … Shit. Sixty …'

Then Patrick interrupts himself. ‘If they want bigger amounts I charge less.'

Patrick claims he rarely has problems with the local police. ‘They know the score. I drop them a few grams of coke or a
few euros and they're happy just so long as I don't work the streets. It's the same with the girls.'

Some of Patrick's best customers are British criminals who own houses on the Costa del Sol. ‘I know some very heavy dudes from the UK who like the top quality stuff. Sometimes they hire one or two of the girls, too.'

One notorious UK criminal recently contacted Patrick to ask him to provide a couple of girls to sleep with him and his wife plus an ounce of cocaine.

‘That dude was wild, man. He snorted all the coke and had sex with his wife and my girls all night long. Wow, he is somethin' else!'

Patrick prides himself on being a survivor and insists he has a long-term plan to ease himself out of both businesses ‘when the time is right'. He explains: ‘I like it down here, but I know it won't last for ever. Other cats will come in and start takin' my bitches and undercutting the price of my coke. That's the way it goes.'

Patrick never actually uses the word ‘pimp' during our conversations but it is girls like Beatrice who make it crystal clear where the line is drawn. She asks Patrick: ‘Can I go out to do some shopping later?'

Patrick takes a deep, slightly impatient breath. ‘Not today, bitch. I got some work for ya.'

Not all the characters operating on the shores of the Med are as hard-nosed as Patrick …

On the infamous party island of Ibiza – regarded by many as the clubbing capital of the world – British cocaine gangsters have created their own mini-underworld, driven mainly by a huge demand for drugs from UK visitors during the busy summer months.

Coke dealer Tiggy hails from Harlesden, north-west London, but every summer for virtually the past ten years he has taken up residence in Ibiza. ‘I love Ibiza. But it's had its bad moments. There was a period when it was right dodgy,' says Tiggy. In the summer of 2006, Tiggy was held up three times at gunpoint by rival British drug gangsters trying to stop him selling his ‘product' on what they see as ‘their' territory.

Tiggy says ‘things really kicked off' on Ibiza after a British man was shot and seriously injured during a gunfight between UK cocaine gangs on the island a few days before he was
held up. ‘It was heavy stuff and a definite sign of things to come,' says Tiggy. Police later said the man had been the target of an attempted hit by a rival gang, which was supplying clubbers with cocaine and ecstasy. The victim himself was later acquitted of attempted murder by a court on the neighbouring island of Majorca.

Two innocent teenage bystanders from Northern Ireland were hit by the hail of bullets during the same incident. Police later seized a rifle, bullets, machetes, knives and balaclavas at various addresses on Ibiza. Thirteen people in all – twelve Brits and a Moroccan – were arrested.

Tiggy says he pulled back from Ibiza following the shootings, but returned two years later after being told by other coke dealers that ‘things had calmed down'. He explains: ‘The last thing we need is violence on the streets, man. Ibiza is supposed to be a chilled out, peace-loving place. That's why so many Brits go there and that's why I know I can make 75 per cent of my annual earnings by spending six-to-eight weeks there every summer.'

Tiggy reckons the Ibiza police are well aware of the British coke dealers, who swoop onto the island during the peak travel months. ‘But they don't mind us being there as long as we don't go out on the streets. I have a hard core of about forty customers who travel to the island every summer and they all like to have some coke, so I don't need to sell to strangers, which suits me fine 'cos it's less risky.

‘The trouble with shootings like that earlier incident is that it puts the cops under pressure to round us all up when
most of us are getting on with our business very low-key, like. I actually feel sorry for the cops when that sort of thing happens. They just want an easy life and then some trigger-happy dude goes and signposts what he is doing by spraying his Uzi in all directions. It's out of order.'

These days Tiggy is so relaxed about his stays on Ibiza that in the past two years he's even taken his wife and young child with him and rented a detached villa. But, I ask, how do you get your supply of coke?

‘That's the tricky bit. Obviously I can't just plonk it in my backpack and bring it over from London. There's a guy here who trafficks it from mainland Spain. He seems to be the main coke smuggler based on the island and I buy it direct from him.

‘It ends up costing me a little more than in the UK, but it's worth it 'cos this guy never has any problems on the island 'cos he's close to the cops. He said to me once that if I ever got arrested just call him and he would make sure I was freed within hours.

‘As long as I keep buying my coke from him then I am safe in the knowledge that he will provide the back-up if I have any aggro. I know that if I tried to buy my coke from a cheaper source on the island, this guy would cast me loose and I'd probably get nicked very quickly. It's much better to deal with the main men, even if you have to pay a bit more for the product.'

Tiggy charges 30 per cent more for his cocaine when he sells it to his customers on Ibiza rather than London. ‘I tell
them it is a handling charge and they seem to accept it. Stupid fuckers. I actually think some of them really do presume I bring the coke over in my backpack.'

Back in London, Tiggy says he has a hard core of a hundred regular customers who order an average of three grams of coke a week from him. He admits his mark-up is a minimum of £50 per gram, which means he's making £1,500 a week minimum. ‘It's good money but in Ibiza I am selling way more grams of coke a week for £130 a gram and making £80 profit per gram. You work that one out for yourself. When people get here they just want to unwind and get off their faces every day, which is very good for business.'

Now in his mid-thirties, Tiggy says he is carefully saving at least half of his earnings from the cocaine trade every week. ‘I've already saved up enough money to buy a second home in the south of France. I know I can't be in this business for the rest of my life but I reckon on another ten years and then I'll be able to retire and really enjoy my life.'

Tiggy says he never takes coke himself. ‘Best way. It means when the customers start complaining about the quality I simply tell them, “Sorry, I don't do it”, so they can't get on my case about it.'

Tiggy admits the purity of the coke he supplies ‘varies enormously'. He explains: ‘As far as I am concerned this is a business and I will do just about anything to ensure I make maximum profits. Sure, the stuff is heavily cut but it still has enough real coke in it to work, otherwise I'd soon run out of customers.'

But what does he mix with the cocaine to ‘stretch' it out? ‘I can't talk about that end of the business except to say that it is never anything dangerous. All coke is stepped on from the moment it leaves the jungle, man. By the time it gets over here, it's been handled by at least half a dozen professionals and they all want to stretch the product out to maximise profits.'

Tiggy claims one of his best clients in the UK and on Ibiza is a well-known member of the British aristocracy. ‘This guy is loaded. Some weeks he buys as much as 20 grams off me and last summer on Ibiza he put in orders for 50 grams a week. He always travels with at least three or four friends, so I guess they all get stuck in. But that dude had better watch out 'cos he's gonna end up dead from a heart attack sooner rather than later if he's not careful.'

Tiggy is reluctant to talk in any detail about the guys above him in London, who sell him his supplies of coke. ‘It's not like it is in Ibiza in that respect. I sometimes get it off different people, depending on what they have in stock. Most of these handlers like to get rid of the product very quickly after taking control of it. It's obvious really because if the law catches them with massive amounts, then they'd cop a long sentence in prison. In any case they also like to turn it round quick because then they get their money back sooner.'

But what sort of characters is he dealing with in London? ‘Oh, you'd be surprised by these suppliers. Often they're middle-class characters living in the suburbs. One of the main men I use also runs an antique shop in one of the most
expensive areas of London. It's a good front for him and it enables him to launder his money more easily I guess.

‘It's funny 'cos most normal people out there think that the coke game is full of nutters with shooters and South American accents. But in London that's just not the case. Here it is considered a business and it is, most of the time, run exactly like that.'

Tiggy has ambitions like so many in the cocaine game to retire, kick back and enjoy his life but, he admits, for the moment he is on a roll. ‘I love my job. I know how far to push my luck and I've never had a problem with any of the heavyweights I deal with. If I quit now, what the hell else could I do? No, I'm gonna stick at this game for the time being. I'm putting away a lot of money so hopefully when the day does come for me to quit, I'll be able to enjoy a long, safe and happy retirement.'

If the attitude of the Spanish police is anything to go by then Tiggy might well last a lot longer on Ibiza than the streets of Harlesden. Underpaid and understaffed, they are facing a round-the-clock struggle against the cocaine barons …

In April 2013 Spanish authorities publicly announced they'd stepped up the fight against cocaine traffickers, who were shifting their tactics in order to retain their access to the lucrative European market. ‘We're winning battles but it will be difficult to win the war,' said Jose Antonio Rodriguez, head of the anti-cocaine squad of the narcotics unit of Spain's national police force. ‘Traffickers have money on their side, a lack of scruples and can develop their activities without limit.'

The Spanish government regularly vows their police will seize assets if they can prove ‘on the balance of probability' that cocaine gangsters are living off the proceeds of their crimes. The Spanish police even pushed for the power to confiscate dirty money from bank accounts of major criminals involved with drugs, prostitution, money laundering, counterfeiting, smuggling and computer fraud. But the
logistics of carrying out such preventative measures has so far proved beyond the Costa del Sol's over-stretched
Policía Nacional
urban force. As veteran Marbella Detective Inspector Juan Lorenzo admitted to me: ‘These criminals don't even hide their wealth, they flaunt it – especially the ladies of the family. Profit is the only thing that drives these people. And they are more than happy to have a few police officers in their pocket. Who knows when we'll arrest them in the end?'

But then it's hardly a surprise that the police on the ground in the Costa del Sol have a different attitude towards the cocaine underworld, which exists on their doorstep. Detective Lorenzo admitted to me he simply didn't have the manpower to investigate the cocaine gangsters properly. And as if to prove the point he pulled out the police file on one of the Costa del Sol's most notorious unsolved killings – the shooting dead by a hitman of ex-Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson, in 1990. Fifty-eight-year-old Wilson – who'd got involved with cocaine trafficking – was gunned down in the garden of his own home overlooked by the mountains behind Marbella. But that file contained just two pieces of paper, even though we were speaking more than twenty years after Wilson's murder. The detective explained: ‘We can't waste our time on this sort of thing. If gangsters want to shoot their rivals dead that's fine by us because it mean one less cocaine
jefe
[boss] out on the streets committing crimes.'

Detective Inspector Lorenzo – a neat, tidy, stocky man in his early fifties with greying hair – has the air of being a bit set in his ways and no doubt coasting towards retirement
when he reaches thirty hard years of being caught in the crossfire between cocaine gangsters.

In his tiny office at the recently constructed Marbella Police Station, just off the old N340 coast road, Lorenzo – despite his apparent indifference – happily discussed Charlie Wilson's cocaine-inspired killing.

He just shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘We see this sort of killing here all the time and it is virtually impossible to find the guilty men.'

‘But,' I asked, ‘d'you even ever have any suspects?'

‘In the case of Wilson I have some names but' – he shrugged again – ‘in most of the other murders we never even get as far as suspects. You see, the families of the victims nearly always know who is behind these killings but they know that if they ever talk then they might be murdered as well.'

Lorenzo said that ‘only luck' ever resulted in any arrests connected to such gun-for-hire cocaine gangster killings. ‘Sometimes a shooter will get a dose of guilt and make a confession but sometimes we don't even believe they're telling the truth. I know of cocaine cartels who force people to confess to crimes they didn't commit or face a gun to the head.'

He continued: ‘It's overwhelming for us. We have no chance to stop them because we don't even know who they are most of the time.' He paused. ‘There was a two-month period recently when I was called out to eight murders and I believe that seven of them were connected to the cocaine business. It is an epidemic. A lot of people here in Spain take
coca
and that provides the money that fuels these feuds and murders. Unless people stop taking it, things will get worse and worse.'