At least Antonio had kept to his word then. It still didn't make up for the fact that he had used me as his cover though. He obviously hadn't given a second thought to what might happen to me if he got nicked at customs.
'The strange thing is that the court dismissed the file that he gave them as evidence,' Pedro went on. 'He clearly named one of the ringleaders as a man called Ernesto but the written record of the trial says that the police can't investigate his claims because he only gave the man's nickname. Ernesto doesn't sound like a nickname to me; it sounds like the man's first name.'
This wasn't the only suspicious thing about the case. Apparently the cocaine was only fifty per cent pure and there was 3.7 kilos of it. Antonio had told me that there should have been 4 kilos, which meant that 300 grams were missing. Also why would it have been so impure if it had come directly from Colombia? Somebody had clearly helped themselves to some of the seizure and cut the remaining coke to cover up the fact that a load had gone walkabout. It was looking likely that the police had set Antonio up so that they could get a free drug run. They had put part of the hoard through as evidence and kept the rest to sell.
The fact that the drugs were all packed in the same side of the suitcase also seemed dodgy. It was as if the person who had handed it over to Antonio wanted him to get caught, 3.7 kilos is quite a weight and the difference between the two sides would have been immediately obvious. To this day I still find myself wondering why on earth he chose to trust the Guardia Civil. According to Pedro, he had already been nicked twice for smuggling, which meant he should have learnt his lesson and called it quits rather than allowing himself to get caught in such an obvious trap.
'It's bad news for him but good news for you,' Pedro told me. 'He's pleaded guilty so he's definitely going down but you're still likely to get found innocent. They are charging you with possession and importation, which will never stick. You had no drugs on you and there's no evidence to show that you knew your co-accused had any in his bag.'
How they could even consider charging me with importation when I hadn't been caught with any drugs was beyond me. Clearly logic didn't even enter into the equation. Still, it was a good thing in a way because there was no way they could pin the crime on me unless they somehow proved that I knew what was going on. Pedro had put my mind at rest again. When the plane touched down in Tenerife, I thanked him for his help and told him I would keep my fingers crossed until the verdict was delivered.
'There's no need to do that,' he assured me. 'You will definitely be found innocent.'
The sad thing was that I actually genuinely believed him. The minute he had gone, I raced over to a public telephone to ring my mum and update her.
'It looks like nothing's going to happen,' I said. 'I have to wait to find out for sure but my solicitor says I'm likely to get off.'
Mum was relieved to hear my voice. She had been worrying in case they revoked my bail and I was sent to prison.
'That's brilliant,' she told me. 'You'll be home before you know it. As soon as you get your result, it'll all be over for good.'
I hadn't got a clue how long they were going to take to tell me if I was getting sent down or not. For all I knew it could be anything from a day to a year.
I spent the whole of the next day trying to get my head around what had happened at the hearing. Although I was ninety-nine per cent sure that I would be found innocent, there was still a tiny element of doubt in my mind. I didn't even know how long a sentence I was facing. It was a hell of a lot of coke so I figured it could land me with a fair whack behind bars.
The following morning, I was woken up by a frantic knocking at the door. I prised myself out of bed to answer it and was greeted by my boss's anxious face.
'You'd better come and use our phone,' he told me. 'Your mum's rung up with some bad news. She's very upset and needs to talk to you.'
It didn't take a genius to work out what her call was about. The court had been in touch about my verdict. Mobiles phones weren't about yet at this stage so I had given my solicitor her number because I didn't have a landline. As I walked the short distance to the bar, my legs felt weak and my heart beat ninety to the dozen. I was finally about to find out my fate and it didn't sound to me as if it was likely to be too positive.
The minute I heard Mum's voice, I could tell that I was in for some horrendous news.
'I'm so sorry Terry,' she sobbed into the phone. 'You've been found guilty. This is the worst day of my life.'
'How long have I got?' I asked her, still holding onto a glimmer of hope that they had given me a short sentence.
'Ten years.'
Her words felt like somebody kicking me in the face. The thought of spending a full decade in jail made me feel physically sick. My life was now officially over. I was the property of the Spanish prison system.
'We're going to launch an appeal,' Mum attempted to comfort me. 'We're going to fight this to the end. I won't let them take you.'
In Spain, they don't send you to prison until after the appeal process has finished, which meant that I still had a small slice of freedom left. I had no bail conditions either but the court still had my passport so I was unable to leave the country.
'I really hope you're right,' I said. 'Ten years is a lifetime. I don't know what I'd do if I got sent down for that long.'
'You need to keep thinking positive, as hard as that might be,' Mum told me. 'Just keep trooping on and we'll get there in the end.'
The phone call left me feeling numb from head to toe. My brain didn't even know what emotions to produce. I felt relieved that I wasn't being sent to prison straightaway. Every time my incarceration was put off, it gave me hope that I would somehow wriggle off the hook. I was running out of lifelines though. The next time the Spanish authorities got in touch it would be to order me to hand myself in. The final countdown had begun and once the timer had run out, there would be no chance of redemption. The three scruffy, sweet-chewing judges had made their decision. I just hoped that somebody with a little bit more sense would overturn it.
Chapter 8
THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
The minute I got off the phone to Mum, I headed off to see Pedro. Why had I been found guilty if there was supposedly such a miniscule chance of the verdict going against me? He had a lot of explaining to do.
Pedro was very blasé about the whole situation.
'I told you from the start that I wasn't a criminal lawyer,' he shrugged. 'The appeal is going to the High Court in Madrid so you're going to have to hire somebody else. I'm not qualified to pursue the matter any further. Good luck with your case.'
'Can I have your notes then?' I asked him.
We had spent hours going through the details of the case so the least that he could do was pass the paperwork on to me.
'You can,' he smiled. 'But it's going to cost you another 600,000 pesetas.'
This was the equivalent of three grand. I felt like punching him in the face. My poor old mum was going to have her savings eaten into even more by this human parasite. There are procedures in place to prevent dodgy solicitors from scamming you in England, but in Spain, anything seemed to go. Pedro had screwed me out of as much money as possible and now he was effectively holding my documents to ransom.
After a lot of cursing, I eventually agreed to pay for the paperwork and was shocked to see that Pedro's name wasn't on a single sheet. He had put down the names of the court usher and a solicitor who I had never met, as being my legal representatives. This was clearly to prevent people getting onto the fact that he wasn't qualified to deal with my case. It just goes to show the level of corruption there was. Part of the reason that I was found guilty I realised, was because I had a lawyer who was so bent that he didn't even want his name associated with the hearing.
I was determined to avoid being taken in by another conman so I picked my representative for the appeal from a list of British Consulate-approved solicitors. I went for a bloke called Fernando Gernstein and arranged
for my documents to be sent over to Madrid, where he was based. Appeals are carried out in the defendant's absence in Spain, which is a little bit bizarre. I didn't even get to meet Fernando so for all I know, he might not have even been a real person.
The crazy thing was that nobody said anything about the fact that I was working illegally at a bar without an identification number or passport whilst awaiting the result of the case. If I was such a dangerous criminal, why was no one keeping tabs on me? I somehow doubt they would have allowed Reggie Kray to serve tourists with drinks down at the local boozer whilst he was waiting to be sent to jail.
Shortly after I hired Fernando and got the cogs in motion for my appeal, a reporter for The Telegraph rang to ask if she could interview me for an article that she was writing about foreign convicts in Spain.
'I'd love to do it,' I told her. 'When can we meet up?'
I felt as if I was finally being given a platform to let the world know how I was being treated.
The reporter, who was called Elisabeth, ended up staying on the island for four days and asked me all sorts of questions about what it was like to be arrested in the land of bullfights and paella. Drug mules had been in the news a lot in the UK and the public were interested in what happened to these people when they were caught in Spain. This woman seemed like somebody I could trust. I sensed that she was interested in getting to the truth rather than twisting my words around, which allowed me to build-up a good rapport with her. She came across as your average, down-to-earth, middle-aged woman, not one of the bloodthirsty media types that people always talk about.
Elisabeth wanted to know what the British Consulate had done to help me, which was an easy question to answer. The only assistance that they had offered since my initial arrest was the list of solicitors that I could use. Other than that, they had done nothing whatsoever.
'I'm a convicted drug smuggler so they want as little to do with me as possible,' I explained. 'They don't seem to care at all.'
'Would you be willing to travel to their office in Santa Cruz with me so that I can see the response they give you when you ask for help?' Elisabeth asked.
'Yeah, why not?' I told her. 'Then you'll be able to see what they're like for yourself.'
The staff at the Consulate were just as I expected them to be. Not only were they about as much use as a chocolate teapot, but they were also very rude and made it clear that they classed me as the lowest of the low. As far as they were concerned, I had been found guilty, so they wanted nothing more to do with me.
'Thanks anyway,' Elisabeth told them as we wrapped up the meeting.
Little did I know that as I was leaving the building, shaking my head at how pathetic the Consulate were, one of their employees was phoning up the Guardia Civil to tell them that I was trying to procure emergency documents in an attempt to leave the country. I returned home to a phone call from my mum warning me that the court was thinking of revoking my bail.
It was a good thing I had Elisabeth with me or I could have been hauled off back to Salto del Negro. As it was, I had a witness to the fact that I only went to find out what help I could receive. The British Consulate are meant to be on the side of British citizens, so why they were so intent on having me locked up, I will never know. They did a lot more harm than good and destroyed what little trust I had left in the establishment.
When the article finally went to print, it was nice to see that Elisabeth had portrayed me as a human being rather than the druggie scum the Consulate thought I was. The piece not only highlighted the plight of foreign nationals dealing with the Spanish legal system, but also created much-needed publicity for my case. It would have been easy for me to pass unnoticed because I was one of many Brits who had got themselves in trouble on the island. There are probably more British criminals in Tenerife than there are in some parts of Britain. The only thing that separated me from the masses was my innocence, which was something that I still had to convince the public of. The more they knew about my case, the more likely they would be to offer their support.
The problem was that some people's methods of helping made my life a lot more difficult. My boss was adamant that I should flee back to England and fired me from my job to try and hammer the point across. His logic was that I would run out of money without a regular income and have to go back home to live with Mum again. He was being cruel to be kind but it sure didn't seem that way at the time. I cut off all contact with him and immediately set about finding work elsewhere.
A couple of days later, I managed to get a job at a Celtic Football Club bar called the Irish Fiddler. Celtic are a traditionally Catholic football team who are popular with Catholics from all over Scotland and Ireland. The Fiddler showed all of the team's big games and had live bands on at night-time playing Irish music. It was a lively place to work in and had a smashing atmosphere.
All of the other workers at the bar were either Scottish or Irish but the clientele were a wide variety of different nationalities. Everybody got on really well with one another and there was never any hint of trouble – even though a Northern Irish lad turned up one day, dressed in full Rangers' kit. For those of you who aren't familiar with Scottish football, the rivalry between Rangers and Celtic goes much deeper than football because while Celtic's following is predominantly Catholic, Rangers are traditionally Protestant and sectarianism is still a major issue north of the border. You don't walk into a Celtic bar wearing a Rangers top unless you're trying to get a reaction.
'You've got some balls coming in here in that,' I told him.
'Yeah, and what of it?' he grinned back at me.
He had quite a rural accent that sounded a lot softer than the Belfast dialects I had heard on telly.
'Nothing,' I shrugged. 'You can wear what you like. If you want to wind people up then that's up to you. What brings you to these parts anyway? You over on holiday?'
'Yeah,' the lad told me. 'I've been working hard defending the country so I needed a week off in the sun.'
Now it all fell into place. This fella couldn't have come across as more of a stereotypical squaddie if he'd tried. He had that rough edge to him that most army boys have got and there was an anger behind his eyes that suggested that he had probably seen some things he wished he hadn't. Physically speaking he was unremarkable. He was tubby with a receding hairline and a very Irish-looking face.
'My name's Jamie. It's good to meet you.'
'Likewise,' I told him. 'I'm Terry. Welcome to the bar, I'm sure you'll fit right in.'
This fiery-looking customer was certainly a character. I've always had a thing for Irish boys, possibly because my father's family are from there. Jamie didn't exactly fit the bill of my perfect man but I admired his confidence and self-assurance so I decided to stay and have a drink with him after work. He drank like only the Irish know how to and we were soon both paralytic. I got the impression that he probably had a drink problem. He put the pints away like there was no tomorrow and didn't show any signs of slowing down.
'You're a good-looking girl, you know that?' he slurred as we staggered down Veronicas together, almost bumping into drunken holidaymakers as we went.
'Thanks,' I told him. 'You aren't too bad yourself.'
Before I knew it, we were passionately kissing one another, breathing beery vapours into each other's faces. Looking back, I don't know what I saw in him. He definitely wasn't my usual type but there was something about him that I was attracted to. Maybe it was the fact that he was a fellow drinker. I didn't go out boozing half as much as I used to, but still loved to get drunk every now and again. An alcoholic's passion for getting uncontrollably blotto never truly goes away. The best that you can hope for is to keep it at bay.
'I'm going back to Northern Ireland soon,' Jamie told me. 'I've got another holiday planned for a few months down the line so maybe I can see you then?'
'Sure,' I said. 'Why not?'
This was to be the start of a very unconventional relationship. Whenever Jamie visited
the island, we would be like boyfriend and girlfriend, but then as soon as he went home, I lived the single life again. I was never faithful to him and I daresay he probably went with his fair share of women in Northern Ireland as well. When you're going out with somebody who lives hundreds of miles away, it's difficult to prevent your affections from wandering. It was a holiday romance that extended past its natural finish point and really should have ended when his flight left for Ireland.
Now that I had a man in my life I needed a place of my own so I moved into a posh new apartment in the Windsor Park complex. Windsor Park was at the opposite end of the spectrum to the Bungamar, filled with large, extravagant flats that you could really feel at home in. I had a spare bedroom and a balcony to sit out on when the heat got too much for me and I felt as if I was living in the lap of luxury. It was just a pity I would have to trade it all in for iron bars and bunk beds if I didn't win my case.
Passport To Hell: How I Survived Sadistic Prison Guards and Hardened Criminals in Spain's Toughest Prisons Page 9