Even easygoing Max admits that Benalmadena doesn’t exactly give out a glamorous impression: ‘All the lowlifes from back home seem to have been dumped on Benalmadena’s doorstep. Everywhere you look are these single-mother types with their tearaway kids. They come over here because it seems cheaper to live, but it’s getting dearer by the day. I just wish a lot of them would go home and leave us all alone.’
Running a business like Max’s on the Costa del Sol is not easy. ‘There are so many dodgy characters out here that you’ve really got to watch your back. I get fellows coming into my office offering me all sorts of things – pirate videos, stolen furniture from the Far East, even lighters that don’t have a flame. Luckily, I’ve developed a sixth sense from dealing with that sort of person and I can spot them a mile away. But you constantly have to watch your back because some of these people are police informants, and if you buy anything from them the law turns up at your doorstep the next day.’
Max rarely has time to unwind at his rented three-bedroom house up in the hills overlooking Benalmadena. ‘I start work early and finish late. Most people here have a siesta between two and five in the afternoon, but because I’m dealing with internet customers over in the UK there’s no time for even a brief lunch break. By the time I finish up in the evening it’s at least nine and I often go straight out for a bite to eat followed by a few drinks and maybe a visit to a local club to meet a girl, depending on my mood.’
But Max prides himself on keeping away from some of the heavier British criminal elements who are constantly trying to poke their noses into many of Benalmadena’s business enterprises. ‘It’s a mess down here. There are a lot of British scumbags who come down and try to reinvent themselves as big-time villains. We’ve got one character out here who thinks he’s Al Capone. He’s knocking off rival villains at a rate of three or four a month and he seems to be completely out of his mind on charley the whole time. The guy’s a tinderbox. We’re just hoping the law catches up with him before he does some real damage to innocent people.’
Max’s own modus operandi is ‘to keep a low profile, earn an honest crust and stay out of the way of all the troublemakers. I’ve tried my hand at most things, and the biggest problem out here is to get people to take you seriously. The Costa del Sol is my life and I genuinely believe that there are many amazing opportunities here, but you’ve got to fight your way through all the bullshit first to find the light at the end of the tunnel.’
CHAPTER FIVE
DARREN THE DRUG DEALER
‘Darren’
DARREN THE DRUG DEALER
The sinister, shadowy figures who run the Costa del Sol’s illicit drugs trade tend to remain well out of the limelight. But the so-called ‘soldiers’ who deliver their goods to the population have no choice but to expose themselves to all and sundry.
Take Darren, originally from Southend in Essex. He’s been on the coastline flogging charley – that’s cocaine to you and me – since fleeing the UK after, he claims, three of his mates were ‘taken off the scene’ by drug lords who control the supplies of ecstasy and cocaine throughout Essex.
Darren works all the popular hotspots between Torremolinos and Fuengirola, and his job has brought him into contact with a weird and not-so-wonderful collection of reprobates. His current customers include one of Britain’s most famous TV entertainers, a homicidal gangster who takes coke virtually 24 hours a day and some of the most chilling villains you’re ever likely to encounter. This is a world where you can walk into a certain beach bar and get offered a false passport within minutes, and Darren’s patch includes some gruesome bars and clubs frequented almost exclusively by the trashiest Brits on the Costa del Sol.
He knows he’s lucky to have survived thus far. ‘It’s a dodgy old game, there’s no denying it, but it’s what I pay the bills with.’ Darren swears blind he never takes the produce himself. ‘It’s much better that way, because when the punters start moaning about the poor quality, I’ve got the perfect reply: “Sorry, mate. Never take the stuff myself.” It soon stops them complaining.’
When Darren packed his bags and fled Essex back in 1996, he admits he didn’t have a clue where he was heading. ‘To tell you the truth, I thought about Thailand at first because it’s so far away. Then I remembered a few fellas I knew down on the Costa del Sol, so I headed down here. It’s all right, really. Sometimes I miss home, but there’s so many familiar faces down here it’s not that different from Essex, is it?’
At first, insists Darren, he ran a little ‘puff’ (cannabis) for a well-known British gangster who was on the run at the time but was trying to earn a crust by financing cannabis deals out of Morocco. ‘It was a piece of cake back then,’ explains Darren. ‘The Spanish Old Bill never came near us because they were more concerned with the heavy stuff like coke and E, so we was left to our own devices.’
But then Darren’s boss was tracked down by British police and deported back to the UK. ‘That was a real blow,’ says Darren. ‘No one wanted to touch anyone connected to this bloke because the law were crawling all over him and his fellas. I not only found myself out of a job, but no one would touch me with a bargepole.’
Darren eventually got himself a straight job working in a bar in Torremolinos, but the money was poor and soon those familiar old temptations started nagging at him. ‘I started flogging charley to a few select customers without the bar owner knowing. It was always going to end in tears, but the money was fucking good.’ Eventually he was shopped by the bar owner to the police and slung in jail. ‘It was a fucking nightmare. Spanish prisons are not nearly as nice as the ones in the UK. Creepy crawlies, filthy bogs. It was a hellhole.’
Then Darren had a stroke of luck. ‘The bar owner keeled over and died from a heart attack. The police dropped the case against me because they couldn’t trace any of my so-called customers. I was a free man, but back to square one. And everyone knew what I’d been banged up for so it was impossible to get another straight job.’
So he decided to set himself up as a full-time cocaine dealer. It was 1999 and he soon found that demand for charley had gone up even in the short time since he’d been in jail. ‘It was an epidemic – and it still is. Everyone wants charley these days. It’s not about rich people any more. Down here, everyone from the waiters in the restaurants to royalty want coke.’ Within a year, he was selling more than a hundred grams of cocaine every week, representing a profit of at least £5,000. And he now admits, ‘In truth, I cut my cocaine with other stuff like milk powder and that stretched it out so I could almost double my profits. I’d never been richer in my life.’
These days, Darren subcontracts out to runners – small-time dealers who deliver by car within a ten-mile radius of Fuengirola and nearby coastal resorts. ‘I don’t need to bother with all that small-time stuff, so I sell on the produce to the runners and keep a load back for my really big customers.’
And by ‘big customers’, Darren is referring to royalty, multi-millionaire local businessmen and major-league gangsters. ‘These people want twenty to fifty grams a time. That’s the sort of decent money I’m interested in.’ He undoubtedly gets a kick from being welcomed into the homes of the rich and famous to see how the other half lives. ‘It’s funny really, because these people have to be nice to me otherwise they’d be fucked. I love it when they offer me a drink, and sometimes I even meet their families. Makes me feel important. I like that. I like that very much.’
But Darren is realistic enough to know that the longer he works as a drug dealer, the more likely it is he’ll get caught out one day. ‘No one gets nicked in this game because of bad luck. It’s always because some bastard’s grassed them up. That’s the only way the Old Bill stand a chance. They nick the weak link and put him – or her – under the thumbscrews until they crack. That’s when I’ll get problems.’
In the summer of 2003, Darren had a close shave for a different reason when the teenage son of one major villain tried to score cocaine from him. ‘That
was right dodgy, because I knew that if his old man knew I was supplying his kid, I’d be for the chop, so to speak. And this kid was a right mean ’un, just like his dad, and put me under a load of pressure to supply him. In the end I fobbed him off with one of my runners and just about managed to distance myself from the whole thing, but that crim would have topped me if he’d known I was involved. There are certain lines you must not cross in this game.’
Now Darren lives in a swish penthouse flat, runs six different mobile phones and drives a top-of-the-range British-registered BMW 7 Series. ‘It’s better to keep British plates – then you never get parking tickets,’ he reckons. Darren says he uses so many different phones because ‘the law can’t be bothered to monitor them all’.
Like so many characters on the Costa del Sol, Darren insists he’s saving all his hard-earned loot and will one day ‘split for good’. ‘It’s all right here. But to be honest about it, I need to get away before the law nabs me. I’ve had a couple of close shaves and I know they’re keeping an eye on me. I’ve got to be careful.’
Underneath his brash exterior, Darren has the same aims as all the rest of us, but he has learned that the only thing money cannot buy is true love. He says he’s been through dozens of girlfriends. ‘They’ve all been English, but the trouble is most of them were more interested in me buying them a pair of the latest Gucci boots than settling down. I want a wife and kids. I don’t want to be in this game for the rest of my life. I’d like to buy a small hotel up in the mountains behind Malaga, live a nice, simple life and forget about all this shit. But I’m caught in a trap. Lots of money, good lifestyle. It’s going to be difficult to give up.’
For a short while last year, Darren thought he might have found the love of his life when he began dating a minor British soap actress he met when she was on holiday near Fuengirola. ‘She was a good kid. I told her I was an estate agent and she believed it for a while. Then one of her mates heard on the grapevine that I was flogging gear. Next thing I know, she’s dropped me like a stone. Pity. I really liked her.’
Some of Darren’s friends have urged him to quit the drugs trade before it’s too late. He takes a philosophical view. ‘I’ll know when it’s actually time to quit. I’ve thought about it enough. It’s just a matter of timing. When you start thinking about quitting every moment of the day, that’s when you’ve got to get out because you’re vulnerable and liable to get nicked.’
He paused for a moment to take a long sip of his vodka and Coke. ‘But for the moment, I think luck’s on my side. I’m going to keep saving all this loot for a rainy day. I’ll be all right. I think.’
CHAPTER SIX
HOLIDAY HORROR
The area where the O’Malleys were kidnapped
HOLIDAY HORROR
Tens of thousands of Brits flood to the Spanish coast every year looking for their dream place in the sunshine. They look on it as the perfect destination: safe, warm, friendly and not too far from home. Typical of these tourists were Anthony and Linda O’Malley, a car dealer and shop manager, respectively, who had long dreamed of owning a place in the sun. The O’Malley case deserves to be recounted here as a warning to those looking for sunshine homes anywhere in Spain.
‘They’d been talking about and planning a move for ages,’ Anthony’s brother Bernard explained. ‘They were always looking in estate agents’ windows when they went out to Spain. They had their hearts set on a nice villa, away from the hustle and bustle of the tourist resorts. They wanted to get in touch with the real Spain in a rural village where they could settle down and enjoy a long retirement.’
When the O’Malleys set out for yet another visit to Spain in September 2002, their sole intention was to find that dream house. Halfway through the trip Linda, 55, phoned her daughter Jenny to remind her to post a birthday card to her brother-in-law. ‘She sounded in good spirits and said that they were very hopeful they’d find the perfect villa,’ Bernard O’Malley later recalled.
Anthony and Linda eventually spotted an isolated property overlooked by a vast mountain range, which seemed the perfect place to retire one day; perhaps they could set up a business and live happily ever after. The casa was located in the picturesque village of Alcoy, 12 miles inland from Benidorm. The O’Malleys had seen the property through an advertisement in an English-language newspaper, the Costa Blanca News, which referred to the villa being in a ‘peaceful and very discreet area’. Tony and Linda immediately and enthusiastically responded to the advert. After the O’Malleys’ first visit to the house, they were hooked. ‘They must have been so excited. Suddenly their dream was about to come true,’ Linda’s daughter Jenny later explained.
But that dream home turned into the ultimate nightmare within a week of Linda’s last phone call home. The couple disappeared into thin air, and then thousands of pounds were withdrawn from their joint bank account, followed by an extravagant spending spree on their credit cards. Back in Britain, relatives waited in vain for them to return to Manchester Airport; their hire car was never returned at Malaga.
For six months, the mystery of what happened to the O’Malleys remained unsolved. Had one partner murdered the other and then run away? Or had they just done a ‘Shirley Valentine’ and disappeared into the Spanish wilderness?
‘The rumours were awful and very hurtful to the family, because they were both good people. We knew something dreadful must have happened,’ said Jenny.
The O’Malleys’ cash cards were used to buy a digital camera, a tape recorder, an infrared alarm, and clothes. The cards were only cancelled on 19 September, almost a week after they were supposed to have returned to the UK from Spain.
After that, the trail went completely cold. Spanish police even eventually scaled down the search for the missing couple amid speculation that they might have chosen to disappear. Bernard refused to believe the gossip and travelled to Spain three times to try and find the couple and bring them home. ‘I always believed that while there was no news there remained that small glimmer of hope,’ Bernard later recalled.
In March 2003, Spanish police working with officers in Wales struck lucky after discovering the couple’s rented Fiat Stilo at El Saler, six miles south of Valencia on the country’s eastern coastline. The number plate had been changed, but they tailed the driver back to a nearby apartment and kept him under surveillance for weeks before arresting him and his accomplice. Police then uncovered a string of documents linking the pair to the O’Malleys’ disappearance, including passports, bank cards and two replica guns. The man and his brother-in-law had rented the house the O’Malleys wanted to buy with their wives and three children.
Then one of the suspects made a startling confession: he and his accomplice had murdered the O’Malleys and buried their bodies in the cellar of the villa they had advertised for sale the previous summer. Two men, named only as Jorge RS, 53, and José Antonio UG, 38, both from Venezuela in South America, were arrested and charged with the O’Malleys’ murder. The suspects’ wives were initially arrested with them, but later released to look after their three children at a secret location.
Gradually, the story began to be pieced together. The O’Malleys had been kidnapped a few days before their scheduled return to Britain on 13 September 2002. Anthony was forced to withdraw money by his captors while his wife was kept locked in the cellar of the house. The £18,000 taken from their Spanish bank account had just been deposited by the couple, who planned to put it down on their dream house. Another £30,000 was stripped from the O’Malleys’ UK accounts before their bank put a block on all transactions. It was at this point, according to detectives, that the couple were brutally murdered in the 18 x 8-feet cellar of the house they had thought was going to become their dream holiday home. Their bodies were then buried in the earth that formed the floor of the cellar before a thick layer of concrete was poured over them and the floor painted red.
Detectives accompanied one suspect to the villa and the bodies were found after officers used pneumatic
drills and spades to dig through the concrete to the hole where the bodies of the O’Malleys lay. As local police chief José Abellan explained, ‘If we hadn’t been led to the spot, we would never have found them.’
Police believe the two suspects, who had both lived in Spain since 1974, showed the O’Malleys around the property with the original intention of simply robbing them. A local police spokesman explained, ‘After that, for reasons we are still investigating, they moved on to kidnap and then murder. We believe they may also have carried out numerous similar crimes.’
As Juan Cortino, government commissioner for the region, later explained, ‘It was the kind of place the O’Malleys had been looking for. We believe they visited it two or three times, and on their last visit they were kidnapped.’ At a press conference shortly after the arrest of the Venezuelans, police played a disturbing video recording of one of the suspects arriving at the villa in handcuffs and then leading detectives to the place where the O’Malleys were buried. Police then revealed that Anthony had been asphyxiated with a plastic bag; his wife had been strangled to death.
It even emerged that police had located CCTV footage, which showed Anthony being frogmarched to a cash machine by one of the Venezuelans. Local town hall official Juan Cortino said the whole community was shocked by the murders. ‘Not only do they kill them, but before they kill them they keep them hostage with extortion in mind.’
Evidence that the couple had been tortured emerged when police found a combined truncheon and electric cattle prod in the flat in Valencia.
Bernard knew it was going to be bad news when the local police in North Wales came knocking at his door. ‘We had been hoping against hope that they might be alive. It’s heartbreaking to think they were planning a new life and it ended up costing them their lives. It was sheer hell waiting to hear what had happened to them. And it is horrible to think how they were killed.’
Costa Del Crime Page 4