Costa Del Crime

by Wensley Clarkson

  After Michael’s arrest by Customs officers in 1998, he had named Green a Mr Big of the drugs world. At Michael’s eventual trial at the Old Bailey in 2001, prosecutor Nicholas Loraine-Smith said that Mickey Green was a major drug baron. He said, ‘He was and continues to be involved in importing large amounts of drugs into this country.’ It was said after Michael’s trial that Green had recruited Michael to head the UK end of his huge cocaine and cannabis smuggling racket, and that they both made millions in the process.

  Following his arrest and subsequent court case, Michael had good reason to fear the wrath of Mickey Green. It was said in court that Green had organised the murders of two other criminals. First to die was hardman Gilbert Wynter, who disappeared from his north-London home in 1998. His body was rumoured to be in a car crusher or in the foundations of the Millennium Dome. Then a notorious finance chief for a London criminal family was shot dead outside his home. Michael told Customs investigators that they were both killed after double-crossing Green in a half-million-pound cannabis deal.

  In the same Old Bailey court case, one of Michael’s cash couriers, a woman called Janice Marlborough, said in court that Green was ‘head of the tree’. Even today, Green is described in Interpol intelligence reports as a highly dangerous criminal mastermind. Police sources say that Green has surrounded himself with an army of bodyguards and heavies. As one Scotland Yard detective explained, ‘If you were ducking and diving for more than forty years as one of the heaviest gangsters in the world, you’d be more than likely to have stepped on a few toes, and Mickey Green is no exception to that rule. If we don’t get him, no doubt someone else will.’

  These days Green spends much of his time on the Costa del Crime, although sources in Spain say that he is planning to spend increasing amounts of time in Costa Rica where he owns another luxury home. It is also rumoured that he is planning a property purchase in Thailand. As one of those involved in his Barcelona arrest says, ‘Mickey’s a survivor, but you can be sure he’s watching his back very carefully.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EL GUMSHOE

  ‘Pete’ the private eye operates out of Marbella

  EL GUMSHOE

  There’s a lot of business out there for a good private eye on the Costa del Crime. ‘Pete’ hails from Cheshire originally, but we cannot use his real name here because only Spanish nationals are allowed to get licences to work as private investigators.

  ‘It’s bloody daft, really,’ says Pete. ‘I can’t be legal here, so I have to run everything out of a mailbox address back in the UK so that I’m not breaking any laws in Spain.’ Pete is a former police detective who fell in love with Spain when he spent two weeks on the coast investigating a gang of Merseyside-based drugs smugglers. ‘Back then I was a bit of a green young copper and some of the things I stumbled upon in Spain came as quite a culture shock. But I loved the Spanish attitude towards enjoying life to the full. They’re much more relaxed than the British and I found that very appealing.’

  Four years ago, bachelor Pete quit the police and headed down to the Costa del Crime. ‘I knew a few people on both sides of the law down here, and they kept saying there was plenty of work for a good private eye because a lot of the Brits don’t trust the Spanish investigators. This is very unfair on the Spaniards, but it’s the way it is with many of the Brits here, and I could see where the opportunities would come from.’

  Pete discreetly placed adverts in local English-speaking publications along the coast, emphasising that he was based in Britain but able to carry out inquiries all along the southern Spanish coast. ‘That way I knew that the Spanish couldn’t try and shut me down because I didn’t have a licence to operate here,’ he explained. ‘I was soon flooded with work. Much of it is for divorce cases because so many men fall for the sex and drugs lifestyle out here that their marriages soon go belly-up.’

  Pete is based in a rented apartment just behind Marbella old town. It’s a modest place, but it serves the purpose. ‘I have to keep a low profile, and it has to look as if I am only a visitor because of the licence problems. But I’ve never been one for possessions and owning property. It suits me down to the ground.’

  Recently, Pete was hired by a ‘very wealthy’ woman to spy on the husband she suspected of having an affair. ‘This woman just called me up out of the blue after seeing one of my adverts. She said she’d pay a very generous daily rate if I would just shadow her old man for a few weeks to see what he was up to.

  ‘I thought it was a bit odd when she insisted on meeting me in the car park of a McDonald’s in San Pedro before starting the case. When I asked her why, she said she was scared that her husband might find out what she was up to. Well, as soon as I met her, I was convinced she had to be married to a gangster. She turned up in a new Mercedes sports car, dripping in gold, heavily tanned with a peroxide rinse, and she wasn’t able to tell me specifically what her husband did for a job. She just said in a very strong east London accent that her old man was a property speculator. I didn’t believe a word of it.

  ‘I had a bit of a bad feeling about it, and started to hesitate about taking the job. Then she offered me a thousand euros a day so I went for it. Money speaks louder than words, and I’ve been around for long enough to know how to follow someone without them knowing it, so I reckoned the risk was minimal. The only thing that really bothered me was that all this money she was paying me probably came from drugs, but it wasn’t really my problem.’

  For the following few weeks, Pete shadowed his target using all his police experience. ‘Instead of going behind his car, I went in front. It’s very effective because no one studies the vehicles ahead of them. I soon discovered that the wife was perfectly right to be suspicious of her husband. This guy didn’t just have a mistress, he had an insatiable appetite for sex. He was using some of the Costa del Sol’s most notorious brothels virtually every day and he had three regular girls set up in separate apartments along the coast. The guy was addicted to screwing.’

  But when Pete reported back to the man’s wife what he’d seen, there was an awkward response. ‘She went all quiet after I sat her down and told her. Instead of bursting into tears, she just kept nodding her head slowly and saying, “Right.” I then asked her what she was going to do with the information I had given her, and she snapped back at me that it was none of my business. I started to get a bit worried then, because in my game the last thing you want is a bitter wife exposing your identity to a cheating husband, especially if he is a major criminal. I tried to explain nicely to her that she could not reveal my identity to anyone, let alone her hubby. But she then coolly turned to me and said, “I’m afraid he already knows all about you.”

  ‘“What?” I said to her.

  ‘“He was having me watched by one of his mates and they saw us in the car park when we first met,” she told me. “He thought you and I were having a fling, so I had to come clean and tell him the truth.”

  ‘Well, my heart sank when I heard her. It was a disaster. The husband might come after me, especially if he got paranoid that I’d seen any of his criminal activities, which I hadn’t. I then asked her if she had told her hubby precisely what I’d seen him get up to. She even let it drop that he was very angry I’d been spying on him.

  ‘“I had to tell him,” she told me. “Now he’s promised to drop all the women in the flats and not go to brothels any more.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that he’d never change his ways because men just don’t do that on the whole, especially big-time villains. Now my main priority was to ease out of this job without being physically harmed by this woman’s husband.’

  Pete then decided, in his words, ‘to enter the lion’s den. I reckoned it was safer to meet this character than try and run away from him. It was a gamble, but it had to be done so I phoned him up and arranged to meet him in a very public place so that he couldn’t let his heavies loose on me.’ It turned out to be a clever move. ‘He was very upset at first and called me a piece of s
cum – which seemed a bit rich coming from him. But then he said he was impressed I’d had the courage to meet him and we actually got on quite well. He even told me his missus had hired two other Spanish private investigators before me who had both fleeced her of money and done nothing. He seemed to find that quite funny. And when I asked him how he’d found out she had hired those two earlier investigators, he replied, “Silly bitch paid those two muppets on her credit card. I couldn’t miss it.”

  ‘I also recognised that this villain had so many contacts along the coast that could become an invaluable source for me. We’ve stayed in touch ever since.’

  On another occasion late in 2003, Pete was hired by the private secretary of a mega-wealthy prince from a foreign royal family living in Marbella, who suspected one of his most senior advisors of dealing in massive quantities of cocaine bought from a Russian drug gang. ‘They thought this bloke was dealing drugs big time, and were very worried that if he was arrested by the police it would embarrass this royal family,’ remembered Pete. ‘Basically they wanted me to get the evidence so they could confront him and then quietly fire him before a scandal erupted.’

  Pete spent two months shadowing the prince’s advisor, mainly around the wealthy resort of Puerto Banus. ‘The strange thing was that, for the first six weeks, he didn’t go near anyone who even vaguely looked like a drug supplier, let alone a Russian,’ says Pete. ‘I was about to recommend to the client that we end the surveillance operation when my man walked into a bar in Puerto Banus that was notorious for its criminal clientele. I was standing right by him when he met with a young-looking eastern-European type of man. He had quite gay mannerisms, and even though my target was married with two children I wondered if they were secret lovers.

  ‘Then I saw this other man handing my target a sachet of something when they shook hands goodbye. I followed my target outside to where he’d parked his car in a side street. The moment he got in that vehicle, I watched him open up the sachet and take a massive snort of what was obviously cocaine. He did exactly the same thing the following three nights and it became clear that, rather than being a drug dealer, this man was using cocaine for his own personal consumption. That’s a different matter altogether, and I told my client that instead of firing this man they should try and persuade him to get help in beating his addiction; I later heard that he got kicked out of his job, which seems a pity – but it’s not something I’ll lose any sleep over.’

  Pete reckons he earns upwards of €100,000 a year working as a private eye on the Costa del Crime, and he loves the lifestyle. ‘I know how you can get sucked into the drugs and sex stuff out here because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I lead a quiet, simple life when I’m not working. I have a very nice Spanish girlfriend, and love nothing more than a glass of Rioja and some tapas when I’m off duty. I leave all the other stuff to the sort of characters who end up coming to me for help.’

  But Pete is realistic about his future. ‘It’s getting more and more dangerous out here, with gangsters flooding the place from all over the world. That makes it more difficult for straight investigators like me to operate. I think a time will come when I’ll have to think about another career change, but for the moment I’m very happy with my life.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  WISE MAN TONY

  With clever money-making scheme, Tony’s even wiser than he looks

  WISE MAN TONY

  Tony Wiseman’s calling card is evidence that he’s locked into one of the smartest businesses on the Costa del Crime. Tony, who hails from the UK seaside resort of Brighton, Sussex, is one of a growing breed of unofficial bookies who are cleaning up among the Brits in southern Spain. ‘It’s fantastic out here. Loads of rich punters, lots of sunshine and nobody breathing down your neck. Who could ask for more?’ says Tony, 49, who has made and lost many fortunes over the years.

  Tony’s patch is three bars close to the waterfront in the Los Boliches area of Fuengirola, a district lived in by more Brits than Spaniards these days. His most important tool is the mobile phone and he – and others like him – are taking full advantage of the fact that bookmakers’ shops don’t exist in Spain. ‘There’s an insatiable demand for bookies out here,’ says Tony, who lives in a swish penthouse apartment overlooking the beach strip between Benalmadena and Fuengirola with his fiancée Sally. ‘When I first came over last year, I really cleaned up. Obviously, as time goes by, more and more fellas will start setting themselves up as bookies and the opportunities for someone like me will begin to fade, but for the moment things are very, very good.’

  During a good month, Tony can earn more than €20,000 by taking bets from his mainly British punters. ‘There are a lot of bored fellas round here who like a flutter. It’s the regulars who are important to me. My idea of a nightmare customer is some bloke on holiday who comes to me with a heavy bet, wins it and then never sets foot back here again. That’s a costly experience, I can tell you.’

  Tony reckons there are more than two dozen bars along the Costa del Crime where characters like him are taking more than €1,000 a day in bets. ‘I wander between the three bars that are on my patch, although many of my customers phone in their bets. I don’t like giving credit, but it’s better than not taking the bet in the first place.’

  If the bets are high, Tony often lays off a portion of the bet with other bookmakers, ‘just to water down the risks, if you know what I mean. If another bookie has taken €1,000 on a specific horse, they’ll try and lay off €700 of it on someone like me to reduce the risk. I often do the same.’

  Tony openly admits pandering to his regular customers, some of whom sound as if they are gambling addicts. ‘I’ve got this one regular who’s a doctor. He has lost more than £20,000 with me, and he owed it all because I gave him credit. Well, this bloke was ducking and diving for months. Trying to avoid my calls. Running out of bars when I walked in, all that kind of thing. I was getting right pissed off with him. I even went down to his surgery one day, but his receptionist said he wasn’t in. I’m sure she was lying.

  ‘Anyway, it got so bad with this geezer that I had to make it clear that something serious was going to happen to him unless he paid up his debts. He finally came around to my way of thinking – but people like him shouldn’t be gambling in the first place. They’re completely out of their depth.

  ‘I need regular customers who gamble a certain amount every day. They’re like gold-dust. They ring me up on the mobile and ask me what odds I’m offering on certain horses or sports events. I then take that bet. It’s entirely my decision what I do with the bet, but you can be sure of one thing – gambling does not pay for the punter. No way.

  ‘A few weeks ago a guy rang me up and said there was a horse running at Cheltenham the next day and he wanted to put a hefty bet on it, so I said fine. It was a big bet to take because I stood to lose three and a half grand if that horse won. You’d have a job putting a bet on like that in the UK, but I took the bet because that’s the way I am – I like to keep my regular customers happy.

  ‘Next morning I woke up in a cold sweat. This bet was really bothering me so I laid it off on another bookie who operates near me. Then I backed that same horse myself to cover my costs and to maybe have the chance of making a few quid myself. Then I found out there were four other horses being heavily betted on in the same race, and I started to get really worried. I thought it might all be some kind of scam. In the end the horse won at 14–1 and I ended up making a packet out of it. But I took the risk in the first place so I reckon I deserved it. That’s the name of this game – risk.

  ‘I’ve been a gambler all my life. Most people lose at the bookies. There’s a saying that it’s “money lent”. As I’ve said, my regular customers are my vital bread and butter because I know that over a two-year period I’ll end up with some, if not all, of their money – and we’re talking about many thousands of euros here.’

  Tony insists he is not bothered by some of the heavier criminal-type char
acters who turn to him for a bet. ‘Since when did any bookmaker turn away someone’s cash because they got it through dodgy activities? There’s a load of bored punters out here with plenty of spare cash. Some of them are no doubt genuine retired businessmen; others are villains – but that’s none of my business.’

  Tony says he is a small-time operator compared with a couple of other bookies who work further down the coast from him. ‘There’s one bloke here who’ll take a twenty-grand bet and he’ll lay it off. He’s a big risk-taker and sometimes makes a fortune, but he also sometimes loses bucket-loads of cash.’

  In recent years, says Tony, more and more of his income has come from what he calls sports betting – especially football, which is getting bigger and bigger – as opposed to horse racing, which is slowly falling away. ‘The odds on football are often much more realistic than racing, and it’s so incredibly popular at the moment that everyone wants a flutter on a match. There are times on Saturdays and Sundays when I’ve got the punters literally queuing up in one of my bars to place bets on football matches.’

  Tony has this good tip for anyone putting a bet on a football match. ‘If you put a bet on a football team scorer and he doesn’t end up in the side, you can get that money back from the bookies – although the betting shops don’t make much of an effort to let you know it.’ Tony reckons more than £20 million in unclaimed bets were kept by major bookies last year. ‘The big boys rake in tens of millions. Their profits are in the billions. Little old me isn’t doing anyone any harm compared with the big boys.

  ‘Let’s face it: Spain will eventually legalise these sort of gambling establishments because there will be so many Brits along the coast that they’ll realise they can make a fortune in tax and associated business that will build up once betting shops start opening. But for the moment, they’re just going to have to put up with characters like me because the trade is here for everyone, and I’d be a fool if I turned my back on such a brilliant opportunity.’