Cocaine

by Jack Hillgate

  ‘Cost?’

  ‘Ten pounds.’

  This would give a cut value of somewhere over a hundred. It made sense already, and that was without any sort of economy of scale.

  ‘I could streamline the procedure’, he said. ‘We could knock out ten kilos a day.’

  I looked up at him in amazement. Ten kilos was like twenty, cut. We could sell one hundred thousand pounds worth of product every day. I just needed to find a buyer or buyers. Without further ado, I stuck the pipe up my nose, bent over and took a line quickly in each nostril.

  I knew instantly that I wasn’t going to die. I knew it because I felt so bloody good, so powerful, so happy. I hadn’t done this for three years at least, so perhaps my body was simply welcoming back an old friend and enveloping her – because I always thought of cocaine as a feminine, feline creature - in the warmth of relief, her absence having made my heart grow fonder of her powers once I tasted them once more. I wasn’t an addict, at least not in the usual sense. I didn’t need cocaine. But when I took it, I wanted more. So I wasn’t an addict.

  ‘What’s it like?’ he asked, peering at my eyeballs. ‘Your pupils are as large as saucers my dear chap.’

  ‘It’s good’, I replied. ‘It’s better than good. It’s brilliant. Try some.’

  Jeavons turned as white as his coat.

  ‘Do we both have to try it? When I cook, I don’t like eating.’

  ‘Try it.’

  I watched him hold the metal tube gingerly between thumb and forefinger. He approached the white line like a big-game hunter stalking a tiger. He snorted half the line, then coughed and sneezed.

  ‘Come on, Jeavons!’

  ‘Alright, alright, don’t rush me.’

  He wiped his nose and took the other half into his other nostril.

  ‘Sniff it up’, I told him, ‘and tell me what you’re feeling.’

  He blinked back tears and then swallowed a few times.

  ‘Tastes sweet.’

  ‘What do you feel like doing?’

  He licked his lips and dabbed his forefinger into another line, rubbing the crystals onto his gums. Then he started to laugh.

  ‘You can show this to Warmington’, he said. ‘Here’s your bloody anesthetic!’

  He was cackling like an old woman.

  ‘Tell me what you feel like doing right now’, I repeated.

  ‘You know what? I feel like doing another line. And then…and then I feel like dancing.’

  We finished the remaining lines between us, locked up and headed off down Regent Street, looking for somewhere for Jeavons to dance.

  ***

  December 1990

  Juan Andres was running as fast as he could. ‘Run’, Suares had said, ‘run like a panther, keep low, breathe regularly. Don’t stop until you have lost your pursuers.’ It was a very small island and if he ran as fast as he could he would soon find himself swimming in the Caribbean. He had run with a backpack before, through jungle much thicker than the leafy vegetation of St Peter, but now he was running with a single suitcase, the one he’d manage to salvage when they started shooting, its weight throwing his stride slightly off-centre.

  He came to a clearing inland, not far from the Holders Estate. There was a group of chattel houses laid out in a U-shape, and, as it was about four in the afternoon, he could see two or three skinny black women taking in the washing whilst their children played on the brownish grass in the hot sun. He felt the pain but he used it to his own advantage, to keep the adrenaline coursing through his veins and to keep him running. He looked up again at the sun to get his bearings. One of the skinny women saw him and shouted something to her children. They ran inside one of the houses and the other two women followed them. They might call the police, but then again they might not. He had to double back and find Mama Garcia, he had to tell her he had nearly one million dollars and that it was time to leave Barbados. It would be enough money, as long as they could live in order to be able to enjoy it.

  The chattel houses were on the top of a gentle hill, and he made for the other side. He stopped and listened. They weren’t following him, but nine hundred thousand dollars – only one of the two suitcases totalling one point eight million – was enough money for them to keep chasing him. He should have known the other suitcase would be filled with magazines and stationery. He only handed over the coke after he’d opened the first. They only ever had nine hundred thousand. It had been a mistake to try and do it alone. But then, he had the money, and it would be just enough. Mama would understand. It was not difficult to understand, after all, the fact that men with guns were used to taking what they wanted without paying for it. These were men from Miami. He was feeling an even more intense hatred for Los Estado Unidos than before, equivalent to that harboured by Mama Garcia herself. Canada or Britain had been their original goal, with four million. Nine hundred thousand in Canada would not last for ever. In Britain it would vanish within fifteen years. They would need to find somewhere else, he thought as he cut through the back of someone’s garden, they would need to re-evaluate and think again.

  At least he was free, unlike the Englishman and the Canadian. They would be in jail in Cartagena. They might die. It would not be a pleasant death, either. He did not want to be in the cocaine business any more. This would be the last time. If he could find his mother, get on a boat and slip to another island, maybe, just maybe they could find the island paradise they both sought and leave behind the guns, the knives and the white crystalline powder that seemed to follow them everywhere like a vulture waiting to feast on their flesh.

  27

  ‘I could be bounded in a nut-shell,

  and count myself a king of infinite space,

  were it not that I have bad dreams.’

  Hamlet, William Shakespeare

  February 1994

  It was a recurring nightmare of mine, one that afflicted me like the foot infection I picked up in prison. However much I gouged out, there was always more. Even the liquid nitrogen they applied had no effect other than making the sole of my right foot burn like a phosphorous flare. The nightmare was the same, something that refused to leave me alone. The nightmare, which I must recount as part of this cathartic purge, was that I was in prison and that I would always be in prison. I wouldn’t die, or be subjected to torture by one or more of the others incarcerated with me, but I would be captive forever, my life reduced to that of a last-stage Alzheimer’s, my sense of time and space lost.

  I was not even thirty and I was contemplating killing myself, in my dream, rather than endure the nothingness of prison. What was happening to me? I was falling, falling through the centre of the earth like twenty tons of lead, scything through the molten lava and into a white-out of cocaine, huge powdered off-piste skiing hurtling me downwards, pursued by a crushing avalanche that enveloped and suffocated me.

  In my dream I decided to kill myself on Thursday, my birthday.

  We had been producing pure synthetic cocaine for two weeks and we had nearly seventy kilos of the stuff. It was very easy to hide, which we did, in vacuum-packed storage bags in one of the huge refrigerators to which it appeared Jeavons had the only key. If I were gone, I wouldn’t have to deal with the insurmountable problem of how to get rid of the stuff. Every time Jeavons discussed this with me I smoothed over the edges, making it seem as though this was well within my capabilities and was actually something that I had underway. The reverse was true. I was avoiding the issue, watching the bags mount up in cold storage, calculating the potential value of each, a value I was at present at a loss as to how to unlock without encountering some of the most undesirable people in England.

  I was pitiful. Even in Colombia I’d never bought the stuff, never dealt with the dealers. That had been left to Kieran and Juan Andres. Even Mama Garcia had more experience in acquisitions and disposals than I had. I was caught in the middle: I had the desire, but not the guts to carry it out. My way of dealing with it was to commit suicide, or to dream abo
ut it at any rate. The embarrassment of being stranded with millions of dollars worth of a product that I was too scared to do anything with. I was impotent, a twentieth century eunuch, a fraud. I wanted to run back to my parents’ house and never leave, subject myself to years of watery cabbage and turkey curries. I would never have to think again. Never need to begin a plan and not be able to follow it through.

  ‘You alright, Jacobs?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘You’ll be the first to know.’

  And so it continued, yadda yadda yadda yah. In my dream I would prepare a solution in the laboratory which I was going to self-administer on the moment of my birthday, twenty-eight years before, at two o’clock in the morning. It would be quick, painless and almost untraceable. The solution would be easy to make up in the miniscule quantity that I would need. I had no possessions to leave anyone. I would feel sorry for my parents, but I suspected that my father would not be surprised. As for my mother, she would simply treble her dose of anti-depressants.

  ‘What’s the matter, old bean? You look ill.’

  ‘I think I’m coming down with something.’

  ‘We’ve nearly filled the whole fridge, Jacobs. I’ll have to start on another. When that’s full, we’ll have to stop and you’ll have to start pretending you’re a proper scientist.’

  ‘How many kilos have we made?’

  ‘Over a hundred.’

  ‘Let’s stop now, Jeavons.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How many bags in total?’

  ‘A hundred or so. I’m using two pound bags. Like sugar.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  Where did one start when one wanted to find a dealer? They didn’t exactly advertise in Yellow Pages. Who could I ask? I didn’t know anyone who would know. I needed a go-between, an agent of some description. Someone who would take their ten or twenty per cent and leave me and Jeavons with the balance. With the quantities we were producing, we would all make enough not to need to be greedy.

  I sat in Jeavons’ room with the door locked. The only person other than us who had a key was Professor Warmington and Warmington had no interest in poking around unless and until we told him we had something to show him. I took my battered notebook out of the desk-drawer, the one whose code Jeavons had cracked but which had eluded the Narcotrafficos. The pages were thin and faded and some were torn. I couldn’t remember where I wrote it down, but it must have been there, somewhere in the book, also in code. I found it on the inside of the last page.

  In alpha-numeric code, which differed from my shorthand cipher, I had written out one word and a set of twelve numbers, jumbled and mirrored. I took a clean sheet of foolscap and transposed the message onto a clean sheet of paper. I read it over slowly once I’d written it out. It looked right. I pulled the telephone towards me, smoothed the hair back from my left ear and dialed a number in Canada.

  ‘Hello Kieran’, I said when I heard him pick up. ‘Remember me?’

  We spoke for only five minutes. Kieran was amazed that I was still alive. He was even more amazed – which I could hear in his voice – when I told him why I wanted him to meet me the next day in the Copper Kettle on King’s Parade at four o’clock for afternoon tea. As all international calls are recorded and can be set for word triggers I was careful not to mention the ‘c’ word or the amount of money involved. I used simple code, referring to what had been arranged before with Mama and Juan Andres and asking him to think in multiples of that. I managed to impart enough for him to take the next plane from Vancouver to London via New York, the train from King’s Cross to Cambridge Railway Station and then a taxi to the Copper Kettle where I was already waiting for him at a table in the furthest corner from the door.

  He walked in carrying a smart black leather traveller’s bag with expandable sides, the yellow airline check-in tag still attached to the handles. He moved over to my table and I rose, draining my cup quickly. I took out a pound coin and left it on the table.

  ‘Let’s go’, I said. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

  ***

  July 2007

  Portia was pleased with me. The frequency of her runs between Cannes Californie and Grasse kept her motor running sweetly, her flat six cylinder engine gurgling behind my head as I shuttled the last of the tropinone into the first floor laboratories, locked and alarmed them. I had told Louveau my plan to make a rejuvenating ointment for rich women which we would scent and create from alkaloids intended to stimulate, and he had constructed the laboratories accordingly. Stephanie was looking forward to her role as chief parfumiere whereas I was looking forward to distributing the specialist product that we would soon we packaging up and selling in little pale-green jars, the colour chosen so as to accentuate the organic, carbon-neutral nature of our operation. To cap it all off, the sun was shining, marking yet another beautiful day in the South of France.

  I first noticed that something was wrong when I left the factory with Stephanie sitting next to me, smoking out of the window and singing along to whatever was playing that evening on Riviera Radio. The traffic out of Grasse was normally heavy and consisted principally of white van drivers, small French hatchbacks with broken tail-lights and lorries delivering marble or slate or perfume or televisions. My car was conspicuous, that of an eccentric, the white 911 with the black whale-tail and black wheels. But, perversely, I felt that that made me inconspicuous, a character, a lovable Englishman enjoying his new business next to the glittering Mediterranean. There were many of us about, some in their Astons and some in their Ferraris. Portia was gentler, more classy, I thought. A sturdy classic, just like its owner.

  The car three cars behind us had joined the road only a few hundred yards from Daillion. It was a black Mercedes M class with blacked-out windows. There was nothing unusual in that, but it just didn’t feel right. When we reached Le Plan de Grasse and the first big roundabout with sign-posts for Cannes next to a semi-industrial area littered with big metal sheds, I turned off the main road quite sharply, and headed down a well-kept road that led, according to the sign, to an industrial estate. The Mercedes followed us. I could see the car about three hundred yards behind us, hiding unsuccessfully behind a white Twingo.

  ‘Where are we going, George?’

  ‘A storage facility for us to look at.’

  ‘Here? They will have gone home. Is past seven. This is France, remember.’

  ‘It won’t take a minute.’

  I kept my eyes glued to the rear-view mirror and slowed, as if I was looking for somewhere. We were near the turn-off to a carpet wholesalers and I lingered just enough for the Mercedes to catch up with us.

  ‘No’, I said suddenly, slamming Portia into reverse with the handbrake on and then burning up the road in the opposite direction, leaving the Mercedes stranded behind the Twingo.

  ‘What is wrong with you, George? This is crazy. You make me drop my cigarette.’

  ‘I’ll buy you another one.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Can we go home now?’

  ‘Yes. But we’ll stop off for cigarettes.’

  I was driving in the bus lane, weaving quickly in and out of the traffic. At one point I shot through a red light – everyone did it in France anyway – and then found a clear stretch where Portia hit ninety and I knew we’d lost them.

  The Eagles were singing ‘Hotel California’ on Riviera Radio and I listened to Stephanie join in with the chorus, her Gallic vowels making the song sound much sexier than the original. She looked so happy, my little coked-up madamoiselle with her chemistry degree and toned calves. I didn’t want to spoil her mood by telling her that things might change soon. I didn’t want to tell her that Carlos might already have arrived.

  We would sleep in her apartment tonight, not mine. She would hold me and protect me. And if that didn’t work, then I still had the Taser and the Glock.

  28

  March 1994

  Tower Records on Piccadil
ly Circus was one of the biggest music stores in Europe. Kieran and I were standing next to the ‘B’ section: The Beatles, Bowie, Bananarama and Captain Beefheart. We were both dressed in black cargo pants and sweaters with black training shoes. Kieran wore blue-tinted sunglasses and he was carrying two small bags of the cocaine that Jeavons had manufactured for us.

  ‘Kieran?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s him.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Over there. By the videos. Wizard of Oz.’

  We skirted casually through the ‘C’ section, then ‘D’ and ‘E’, pretending to browse but looking to see if the man we were looking at was the man we were meant to meet. A medium height man in jeans and a checked shirt with a brown leather jacket and glasses walked up to us. Kieran and I were both holding a copy of the ‘Sergeant Pepper’ album, as instructed. He was holding a copy of the VHS cassette of ‘The Wizard of Oz.’

  ‘Morning chaps’, he said. ‘Big Beatles fans?’

  ‘Yes.’ I paused, trying to remember the exact words. ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is my favourite track on the whole album.’

  ‘I am the Eggman’, he replied. 'We’ll go to the check-out now and then I’ll take you to see the Wizard.’

  ‘Fine.’

  We queued with our items and paid in cash, as did the Eggman. We walked out of the store, the three of us holding our Tower Records plastic bags.

  ‘This way’, he said, crossing the road and heading in the direction of Hyde Park Corner. We passed the Ritz, Green Park tube station and the Saab garage on our right. We had the park to our left, Spencer House and, through the trees, I could see the western flank of Buckingham Palace. If the Queen were in residence she could have spied us through a pair of binoculars, two men taking a jaunt along the northern edge of Green Park, following in the trail of the Eggman.

  The Eggman walked quickly ahead of us, his Tower Records bag dangling by his side. He didn’t look round to see if we were following him. He didn’t need to. No doubt someone else was following us. I didn’t look round either because there wasn’t much either I or Kieran could do about it. Kieran was humming I am the Walrus under his breath, something he only did when he was nervous, and I joined in. We turned to each other and grinned. This was the real thing. We were in it for big money and so were the people we would be dealing with. This time, no fuck ups.