His son Pat is an altogether more tense, introverted character. Pat says he sometimes shares a spliff with his father but on the whole he tries to keep away from hash, except when he’s handling it for ‘work purposes’.
Jeff has worked for RP for ten years and he speaks fluent Spanish and French, which is unusual for Brit gangsters on the Costa del Crime. Father and son have had their own feuds down the years but at the moment they are working in harmony, which clearly pleases Jeff. He says: ‘I’m proud of Pat and the way he’s kept his family separate from all this shit. I wish I’d managed it.’
Jeff has been married four times (his first wife was Pat’s mum) and he is currently living with a Thai woman he met on the internet. ‘Pat’s seen all my fuck-ups and he’s determined not to repeat history. I respect him for it. I’ve screwed up good and proper down the years and I’m pretty lucky to have this little number with RP. He’s been good and loyal to me because I’ve covered his back on a few occasions.
‘I even tipped him off one time when some psycho Spanish villain threatened to go round to his place with a piece and a stupid plan to shoot RP. We calmed this fellow down eventually and everyone got home in one piece but it was a close shave for RP and he’s always going on about how he owes me for that.’
Jeff’s son Pat has a completely different take on the hash underworld. ‘I’ve seen hash screw my old man up and he’s bloody lucky even to have this job, considering all the shit he’s caused in the past. I’m determined not to go down the same path. I’ve been very careful to keep my family completely separate from all this. I want my kids to grow up as normal, responsible people and have proper jobs and start families of their own in the real world, not this madhouse.’
Pat is built like the proverbial brick shithouse yet he talks with a gentle, almost feminine voice and seems to be constantly trying to hide his sensitive side from his outgoing father. ‘I just want to get my work done peacefully and without incident,’ he explains. ‘It’s not easy doing all this ducking and diving. You have to watch yer back every minute of the day and night. You never know who is on yer tail. It could be a rival firm or the cops. The main thing is to keep an eye open at all times and be one step ahead of your enemies.’
Jeff is far more cavalier about the risks they take, nearly all in the name of hash. ‘This is the easier end of the drugs business. More often than not the Guardia Civil officers we come across are very sympathetic to hash smoking and tend to look the other way, as long as we grease their palms. I worked in the coke business in the 1990s and it was fierce. There was probably a killing every week of someone involved in coke out here in Spain. The money was huge but a lot of gangs would shoot someone just to make sure that others realised they meant business. It’s no big surprise that a lot of them ended up being rounded up by the long arm of the law. This part of Spain needed to calm down and it’s meant that the hash business has thrived.’
Jeff and Pat are responsible for organising all the beach drop-offs of hash for RP. He provides the cash they use to rent short-term houses near the beach with garages, so that the hash can be stored for a couple of days while it is broken down for distribution.
Pat admits there have been a few close shaves along the way: ‘One time we organised a beach landing and were waiting for the boat to turn up with the hash when two Guardia Civil officers started sweeping the beach near us with their spotlights. We tried to phone the guys on the vessel to tell them not to land but there was no mobile service! We knew it was only a matter of minutes before the police spotted us, so I took a huge gamble and walked right up to them on the beach and engaged them in a conversation.
‘They were totally thrown and didn’t even get around to asking why we were on the beach in the early hours. Then I took an even bigger gamble and offered them 2,000 euros to walk away on the spot because I had some hash coming in from Morocco. They looked at each other, smiled and accepted the cash and drove off. I remain convinced to this day that they only did that because it was hash. If it had been coke, they would have felt obliged to nick us on the spot.’
Jeff the father lives in a three-bedroom villa on a half-deserted modern housing estate between the seaside resorts of Estepona and San Pedro. It’s an eerie place that has been abandoned by most of the residents. ‘There are thirty houses here and only three of them are occupied,’ explains Jeff. ‘The rest of them were either never sold or the owners gave them back to the bank because they couldn’t afford the mortgage repayments. Spain is in the shit.’
Relaxing in the sunshine at Jeff’s home, next to his pool, Jeff reminisces about the good old days when he used to transport huge amounts of hash all over Europe. Back then, Jeff made regular hash-smuggling trips to and from Morocco on superfast inflatables with massive outboard engines. They’d meet a ship, load the consignment into the boat, then take it to a waiting yacht, which would then sail to the UK, usually via Holland.
Jeff explained: ‘Back then it was easy to sail nonstop to the UK without being stopped by local customs boats but these days a single yacht out in these waters will be stopped an average of about five or six times on a similar trip because the authorities are way more aware of the movement of shipping these days and they can monitor your movements by radar.’
Pat rolls his eyes as he hears his father look back so fondly on those ‘good old days’. He says it’s just a job to him. Nothing more. Nothing less. ‘I know my dad likes looking back at those days as if they were more fun but they were also a lot more dangerous. These days we work out everything carefully in advance to make sure we don’t get nicked. There is no point in being casual about it because then you most probably will end up in prison or dead.’
Pat adds guardedly: ‘What Dad never seems to accept about this business is the biggest risks come from within. By that I mean that it is double-dealing villains grassing us up to the police who are the biggest threat to our freedom. The coppers themselves are pretty useless unless they happen to luck out and stumble upon us on a beach or get a whisper about a gang renting one of the villas near the beaches here in order to bring a load onshore and then store it in a garage for a while.’
Both men rate RP as a ‘superb operator’ whom they trust with their lives. Jeff explains: ‘He’s a fantastic boss who knows this business inside out. He would never expect us to take unnecessary risks and he plans every job meticulously. I’ve done this sort of work as a one-man operation and it’s a nightmare to organise. I feel much more secure having RP running things than if I was doing it myself.’
Jeff believes that hash will outlast many other recreational drugs because it’s not considered as harmful as coke and the other Class A’s. He explains: ‘The eastern European and Russian gangs are obsessed with running the coke trade out here and they are welcome to it. They’ve muscled in on our territory but what they don’t seem to realise is that the authorities are obsessed with breaking the coke supply routes, so they’ll be the first ones to get nicked. In a way the cops are doing us a favour because the foreign gangs are vicious. They’re obsessed with killing anyone who crosses them and they specialise in hits that take out entire families because they want all the other villains in southern Spain to be terrified of them.’
Only recently, a gang of Serbian cocaine barons ordered a hit on an entire Irish family near Marbella. ‘They sprayed a hairdressers’ with bullets from two automatics,’ explains Jeff. ‘It was outrageous. They didn’t care who got hit. They just wanted to increase the fear and terror so that no one else would dare cross them. That’s the way these bastards think.’
‘Yeah,’ interjects Pat. ‘But that didn’t stop you doing some work for them did it?’
Suddenly a black cloud between father and son looms over the proceedings. It seems that our conversation has touched a raw nerve between the pair. Jeff hesitates and gives his son a cold, hard stare. I sit in silence, waiting for them to either expand on the remark or drop the subject altogether.
‘Come on, Dad,’ says P
at, defiantly. ‘Tell him what happened when you got caught up with that bunch of nutter Serbians.’
Jeff shifts uncomfortably in his seat, takes a long puff on a joint he’s just rolled and knocks back a big mouthful of San Miguel beer. ‘He’s right, of course. Couple of years back I did some freelance work for these Serbians I met in a club in Puerto Banus one night. They seemed all right at first and I needed the extra cash because I was in the middle of a divorce at the time.’
Just then I notice Pat manically rocking back and forth on his chair. He has clearly heard this all before and knows precisely what is coming and just listening to his father talking seems to be disturbing him.
Jeff continues: ‘I was a complete mug really. I agreed to use my smuggling skills to bring in a couple of shipments of what they said was hash. They promised me big money and paid half upfront, so I had no reason not to believe them.’
‘Dad, they were fuckin’ Serbians!’ points out Pat, refusing his father’s offer of a toke on his joint.
‘Well, anyway. I rented a house near a beach in Estepona with a big garage and got everything else prepared for the first shipment, which was due in by inflatable. This vessel had been scheduled to pick up the hash in the middle of the Strait of Gibraltar from a yacht and bring it directly to the beach.
‘The pick-up went as smooth as butter. No problems. No cops anywhere to be seen. The three Serbs with me seemed all right kind of blokes and we got it safely into the garage attached to the rented house within thirty minutes of the drop-off. I was very proud in a sense because I felt that was a good job done.’
Once again Pat, whose face is getting redder with fury by the second, butts in: ‘Get on with it. Tell him what was really in those boxes then.’
For the first time, I can see how smoking hash keeps Jeff ‘chilled’ because I have no doubt he would have been throttling his son by now if it hadn’t been for the cannabis in his system.
‘For Christ’s sake, Pat. Stop needling me.’
Jeff takes another crackling suck on the joint and then continues: ‘The next day we all assembled in the garage to open and then repack the boxes of hash into smaller containers for the trip up through Spain and France to Amsterdam. I was just about to jemmy open the first big box of hash when this giant of a Serbian puts his hand on my shoulder and says “No”. At first, I didn’t know what the fuck he was on about. But then he kept his hand on my shoulder and gave me a big squeeze that really hurt!’
Jeff continues: ‘That’s when I knew there was something in those boxes they didn’t want me to see. I turned and looked up at this fucking giant and asked him outright what was in the boxes. Was it coke? He insisted it was not and I kind of believed him. But I had to know what was really in the boxes because I didn’t want to do the second shipment if it was something other than hash as that would make us a sitting target.
‘That’s when I noticed one of the other Serbs in the corner of the garage ripping open another much smaller box from the same shipment they were calling hash. The giant Serb tried to get me to leave the garage because he sensed I was not happy but as we walked towards the side door, I saw that the other Serb was gingerly emptying hand grenades into another smaller container.
‘I nearly shat my pants on the spot. I’d just helped smuggle in arms and God knows what else. I was furious but also fucking scared because I knew only too well that if the Serbs got wind of my disapproval they’d probably have me topped on the spot. So I kept calm and went into the kitchen of the rented house with the giant Serb, pulled out my own personal and rolled up a joint while I thought about what to do next.’
Jeff’s experience in the underworld then kicked into gear. ‘I decided not to say a word to the Serbs about what I had seen. Instead, I made out I was feeling really sick and went home. I called them later and said I’d been to the doctor and I had suspected cancer of the stomach. Even they didn’t know how to react to that! I offered to help them with the second shipment of “hash” but they said there was no point in case I got ill again.
‘I told them not to bother paying me up for the previous job as I felt bad about letting them down. Shit, I was lucky because they never came near me again and I avoided them like the bloody plague. I even deliberately stayed away from that club in Puerto Banus where I met them in the first place.’
Son Pat says he hopes his father learned a lesson from that close shave. ‘I told my dad to stick to RP and his operation. No one else in this game can be trusted. In any case, who in their right mind would get involved with a bunch of psycho Serbs? Sometimes,’ he said, looking across at his father, ‘sometimes, Dad, you need your fuckin’ head examining.’
To his credit, Jeff laughed at himself and admitted: ‘You can say that again!’
The strange thing about this father-and-son team is that they are both their own worst enemies and they leave one with the distinct impression that one day they’ll fall out big time with all guns blazing.
My next Brit hash man on the Costa del Sol could not have been more different …
CHAPTER 7
BARNY
Just a few streets away from where hundreds of thousands of UK and European tourists spend their summer holidays on the golden, sandy beaches of Spain’s Costa del Sol is a network of desperate young people scraping a living out of crime. Meet Barny, the street hash dealer. His story provides a disturbing flipside to the untold riches and luxuries of the hash barons and gangsters.
Barny and a number of his childhood friends were left behind in southern Spain when their British parents fled the Costa del Sol after the recession struck Spain in 2006/2007. Property prices crashed and many people, including Barny’s parents, abandoned their own over-mortgaged houses by the sea and headed back to the UK to live with relatives and friends. Barny – in his early 20s – was educated in a British-run public school located in the hills behind Marbella and his entire life has been spent in Spain, unlike his parents. Ironically, that same school was attended by the children of many British gangsters, some of whom have made their fortunes out of the hash business. ‘The criminals’ kids always seemed to have cash and they looked down on pupils like me, who came from so-called straight backgrounds,’ says Barny.
When Barny’s parents dropped the bombshell that they were returning to the UK, it left him feeling completely disenfranchised. As he explains: ‘There was no life for me in the UK. It’s a country that means very little to me. This is my home where I have spent my entire life. I don’t think my parents realised how difficult it would be for me to move. Most of my friends in a similar situation have also stayed behind, even though we are all struggling to survive.’
And that’s where the nightmare for Barny and his friends really begins. There are few work opportunities in southern Spain. Even jobs as a waiter are hard to come by. Restaurants are closing at the rate of twenty a month in the Marbella area alone. And, as Barny explains, ‘The ones that are still open tend to be owned and run by families, who only employ their own relatives and friends.’
So, in order to survive, Barny has been selling hash for the last ‘few years’. He says: ‘It’s a lot better than some of the things my other friends are having to do. Two girls I went to school with turned to prostitution to survive. They work in the brothels that are semi-legal out here. They hate it but they have no choice.’
The streets around the once opulent resort of Marbella and its glitzy neighbour Puerto Banus used to be crammed with expensive sports cars and designer-dressed men and women. Now there is an overwhelming feeling that the place has been deserted by the richerati and abandoned by many residents too poor to afford to live there any more.
‘I don’t think people back in the UK realise just how poor Spain has suddenly become. It’s almost as if it is sliding back into being a third world country after thirty years of success,’ says Barny.
Since the 1960s Spain’s economy has relied heavily on tourism and the construction industry which, to a certain extent, went hand
in hand. As Barny points out: ‘The biggest problem out here is that everything is expensive to buy but no one has the money to pay for it. My parents relied on cheap remortgaging to stay afloat and it worked brilliantly as long as our house kept increasing in value. But once the crash came many properties, including ours, went into negative equity and everyone fell into the same big black hole.’
Barny was first introduced to hash by one of his teachers at school who offered him a drag of his joint on a school trip when Barny was just fourteen years old. ‘I got hooked on it real quick. By the time I was fifteen I was smoking hash every day and stealing from my mum’s purse to pay for it. I never realised back then how it slows you down and makes you lethargic and apathetic. I fell into all the classic traps associated with hash.
‘My parents knew I was smoking it but because I stayed in my room virtually all day long they did little to try and stop it. I think they found it easier to handle me on hash because at least I wasn’t out causing trouble like some of my other friends.’
Then, shortly after he left school, aged eighteen, Barny’s parents’ money problems came crashing down on them – and that proved to be a big wake-up call for Barny. He explains: ‘I’d turned into a complete pothead and, quite frankly, I’d hardly noticed what was happening with my dad’s work. He was a property developer without any property to develop. But when he told me they were planning to return to the UK, I freaked out. I felt like they were abandoning me, although they wanted me to go with them. But I’d only been to the UK a few times in my entire life. Spain was my home.
‘My parents took off back to the UK pretty quickly after trying and failing to persuade me to join them. It was awful saying goodbye to them but I just couldn’t face a new country with new rules. But at least their decision to leave made me stop and think about my overuse of hash at the time and I actually gave it up and tried to start looking for a job.’
Hash Page 7