Micky says cocaine trafficking accounts for 90 per cent of all the criminal enterprises investigated by the units of UK cops sent undercover in southern Spain. Micky, from east London, is a classic example of the type of hardened police detective, who is an expert at infiltrating the coastline between Málaga and Estepona. He recently completed his last ‘tour of duty’ in Spain during which he spent months on a surveillance operation, which targeted a ‘major world player in the cocaine game’. Micky explained: ‘It’s much riskier being out there watching villains in Spain because there’s none of the back-up we’re used to here at home. If any of these characters suss out they’re being watched, they can become very dangerous. They believe they can get away with violent stuff here that they would never try back in Britain.’
Micky says that there was another incident – which was kept out of the press – back in 2010. ‘Two of my colleagues were beaten to a pulp by a couple of weightlifters working as henchmen for one British drug baron after he found out he was being watched a couple of years back. As I say, out here anything goes.’
Micky is hardly what you might call a traditional looking British Bobby; he’s got long, shoulder length hair, a muscly, stocky body and a grey Robinson Crusoe beard that makes him look a lot older than his forty-two years. He explained: ‘My last job in Spain was to integrate myself into a gang of British criminals who were importing cocaine from South America and then paying runners to drive the drugs through Europe back to Britain. It was a very sophisticated operation, very slick and well organised. The guy who was running it was a hardened old-school gangster and I had to work my way into being trusted by them.’
Micky – who’s done a spot of boxing in his time – managed to get himself work as an enforcer for the gang. ‘Luckily I had the contacts back in the East End who vouched for me, so I was able to get into the gang with relative ease.’
But proving what the gang were up to was a different matter altogether. Micky explained: ‘This lot were mega-careful. Even their drug runners were followed by other members of the gang to make sure they weren’t police grasses. No one was trusted apart from the men right at the very top. I was taken on two or three debt collecting operations and had to actually threaten a couple of guys who hadn’t paid their drug debts. But this was chicken feed for our investigation because it didn’t prove anything against the coke baron running the operation, so I had to be patient and wait for the right type of evidence to materialise, which we could then use in a court of law.’
For the following six months, Micky ate, slept and drank with the drug gang and never once called his wife and three kids back in the East End, just in case his phone was being monitored by the gang, which would have put them at risk. ‘That was bloody hard on me and my family, but we simply couldn’t afford to risk my family being connected to me. These fellas were so careful I wouldn’t have been surprised if they were checking who I was calling. Some nights I’d collapse exhausted into the bed at my tiny apartment and wonder what the hell I was doing there. All I wanted was to be at home with my wife and kids back in the real world.’
But Micky kept going for a very good reason. He explained: ‘A nephew of mine died from a drugs overdose and it was so fuckin’ sad to see what that did to his family. These evil bastards who sell drugs have no idea what misery they’re causing to normal, law-abiding families. Every time I got close to quitting that job in Spain I thought of my nephew and realised I had to keep going.’
Micky was so careful about communicating with his police bosses back in London that he only used internet cafes to contact them. ‘And then I used a pen-name in case anyone back in London grassed me up to the villains I was working for in Spain. In this game, you can’t trust anyone, not even the detectives you work with day in, day out.’
Fully integrated into the drugs gang, Micky – based in Torremolinos – was told by the ‘boss’ that he had to travel to South America to provide protection for the gang while they met cocaine barons in Cali, Colombia. Micky explained: ‘It was the last thing I wanted because there was no way I could travel to another country with them as I couldn’t risk a problem with a false passport. But I didn’t want to duck out of the job either, because it would have been a goldmine of information and almost certainly would provide evidence to ensure they’d all go down for a very long time.’
In the end, Micky had no choice but to pretend he was seriously ill and cry off the Colombia trip. ‘They were right pissed off with me and started lookin’ at me like I wasn’t to be trusted. That’s a bad moment in any undercover copper’s life because it means people start asking questions and there’s a risk they might find out the truth.’
Within days, Micky’s police bosses pulled him out of Spain. ‘I was willing to carry on, but they said it was too risky. I was very disappointed because I genuinely wanted to nick this lot big-time. They were a bunch of evil bastards, who didn’t give a flyin’ fuck about anyone.’
Micky added: ‘What bugs me now is that no one will be able to infiltrate that gang again, which means they’ll carry on drug dealing and ruining people’s lives. This can be one hell of frustrating job at times. I just hope we get ’em one day.’
Shortly after arriving back from his final tour in Spain, Micky quit the police and set himself up as a freelance security consultant. He explained: ‘I truly loved the job but after what happened in Spain everything seemed a bit mundane. I couldn’t face going back to a 9-to-5 office dealing with domestic crimes and burglaries after what I’d been through.
‘In the end, I knew I had to make a fresh start away from the force. Some of my best mates are still in the job but it’s not for me any more. Maybe if I’d never gone to Spain in the first place then I’d still be happy aiming for thirty years’ service and a nice fat pension, but that’s just not the way it turned out.’
However, there are regular occasions when his previous career overlaps alarmingly with his new job. ‘The other day I was asked to quote on a really big surveillance job in Spain and I had to turn it down because if I bumped into any members of that coke gang I infiltrated I’d be in real trouble. I was also a bit worried it might be a trap set by that gang who might have found out what I had been up to. You can never be too careful.’
These days, Micky specialises in due diligence work mainly for corporate legal firms. ‘It’s a lot safer than being a copper in Spain and I get to go home most evenings and see my wife and kids.’
Meanwhile back in Spain, Micky says there are professional hitmen regularly working for the cocaine gangs. They are, it seems, permanently ‘on call’ to deal with any criminals who cross the drug barons.
CHAPTER 15
LUIS
There are dozens of ‘rub-outs’ on the Costa del Sol every year directly linked to the cocaine trade, so there’s plenty of work for a good hitman. Twenty years ago if you wanted someone bumped off there were only a handful of highly professional killers-for-hire available. Today, the number of shootings on the streets of southern Spain has reached almost epidemic proportions. Many blame it on the country’s crippling recession. ‘People need to earn money whatever it takes and there are hitmen out there underpricing cold-blooded murders just to get a “job”,’ one old British villain told me.
Many of these professional hits get little or no newspaper coverage. As one British journalist based in Spain explained, ‘One coke baron knocking off another doesn’t have the same news appeal as a beautiful brunette blasting her cheating husband to death.’
Even the Spanish police admit the situation has now got completely out of control. One detective based in Marbella told me: ‘Drugs – and especially cocaine – have brought with them many professional assassinations. Criminals often commission a contract killer for the smallest of reasons. It’s a very dangerous situation.’
Take hitman Luis. He’s half Spanish, half English and has been in ‘the business’ for twelve years and lives in a big modern house in the hills behind Málaga. No one other th
an his dear old mum and his wife and kids even know his real name – and that’s the way he intends to keep it. ‘I do the job clean and simple with no fuss,’ explains Luis in an impeccable English accent occasionally punctuated with the odd Spanish word. ‘That’s why people come to me when they have a problem.’
Setting up a meeting with Luis was not easy. Three times an arrangement was made though a ‘middleman’ for a rendezvous and on each occasion Luis failed to appear. Then one day, I got a call from a blocked number on my mobile. ‘Hi, I’m just driving past your place,’ a voice said. ‘Can I come in for a chat?’
I make it a rule never to invite criminals to my holiday home in Spain, for obvious reasons, but Luis had given me little choice. Knowing how unique his job within the cocaine business was, I gave him directions to my house and then met him at the top of the steps that lead down to my home on the outskirts of a small fishing village, 120 miles west of Málaga.
Luis turned out to be pretty unusual in many other ways, too. He could switch his English public school accent to perfect Spanish with chilling ease in what seemed like a nanosecond. He was also film-star handsome, dressed in designer shirt, jeans and shoes and exuded the confidence and magnetism of a movie star.
He didn’t drink alcohol or touch drugs, he said. Then he laughed because of course it is drugs, particularly cocaine, which provides him with most of his income. It soon emerged that Luis had an inside knowledge of many of the most deadly professional killings in southern Spain, although he refused to confirm which ones he had been personally involved in.
Luis talked in admiring terms about the hired gun who popped a French couple on a quiet street in Marbella some years previously. ‘That was probably one of the most perfect jobs,’ he explained. ‘They didn’t put a foot wrong.’ Luis recalled how the couple had turned police informants after a vicious turf war broke out between criminals running brothels and teams of coke dealers on the Costa del Sol. ‘I heard it cost twenty thousand euros for each person, which is a good deal for everyone concerned,’ he said calmly. The French couple were shot at point blank range outside their modern detached home only a few hundred yards from the local police station.
The victims had even earlier been telling people there was ‘a bullet out there with their names on it’ after they’d turned police informants. The cocaine ring they were connected to had connections to an American branch of the mafia in Detroit, as well as the Medellín cartel, in Colombia. So when the couple finally got rubbed out on their own doorstep at one in the morning, there wasn’t a lot of grieving.
‘That’s the thing about my business. The targets usually deserve to go,’ said Luis, as casually as if he was discussing the weather. ‘I try not to look on them as real people. It’s much easier that way.’
The Marbella police have never had anyone in the frame for the murder of the French couple. They even made it publicly clear they weren’t that bothered about the killing. ‘That’s typical of the police here,’ says Luis. ‘That’s why it’s so much easier to operate here than, say, in London or the States. The police are underpaid and overworked. One criminal wiping out another is of no real interest to them. They look more closely at domestic killings and stuff like that.’
He went on: ‘It turned out that couple had been double crossing their way up and down the Costa del Sol for months. They’d stolen coke from criminal associates, ripped-off call girls and even beat up one drug dealer. Some poor bastard had even bought a second-hand car off them only to have it confiscated by the police because it was stolen.’
Luis paused for a few moments.
‘You see? They were scum. They had it coming. Not that that is of any relevance when I am commissioned for a job.’
Luis doesn’t only ‘work’ in southern Spain. A lot of his jobs, he says, come from the US, UK and Germany. However, virtually all of them, he claims, are connected to cocaine. ‘Coke is where the really big money is. I always know, for example, that a target will have been properly researched by the Colombians. Nothing sloppy. The better the research the less likely there will be any problems. They go out of their way to ensure I know everything about a target. That way I don’t get any nasty surprises.’
Luis continued: ‘But the rules of the game are changing every day. These days my basic price is thirty thousand euros, unless I’m being asked to take out a big-time, high-profile character who’s got a lot of protection. Oh, and I always get paid in full, in advance, in cash. How else could I handle it, take a cheque?
‘There are other unwritten clauses that go into every contract. If I get arrested the person commissioning the hit takes care of all my legal costs plus my bail if I manage to get it. He’d also make sure I was comfortable in prison, that my wife and kids were looked after financially at home, as well as doing everything to try and get me out. Finally, when I finish my sentence, he would have a bundle of cash waiting for me. This is done to guarantee my silence. As long as all those obligations are taken care of, I’m not going to say a word to anyone. I’m certainly not going to land anyone in the shit. They’d soon finish me off.’
Luis says it’s not the risk of being caught for his crimes that bothers him, though. ‘There are other so-called pro’s out there killing people for five thousand euros each job. The trouble is you get what you pay for in this game and these cut-price operators all get caught in the end and then they start singing to the police. Let’s face it, a grandmother in Benalmádena who wants her husband killed after thirty years of abuse is going to end up hiring an amateur or an undercover cop. Then there are the numerous small-time hoods making out they can carry out hits for next to nothing. It all adds up to trouble.’
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.
CHAPTER 16
DENISE AND JANE
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 commis
sion 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.’
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