Hash

by Clarkson, Wensley

  On the morning of the hen party’s departure back to Birmingham, Jane only just made it to the airport. ‘I’d stayed the night with this lad and then it had taken me so long to swallow all the pellets that I only just got to the airport about ten minutes before the flight took off. But the funny thing was that I wasn’t at all frightened. I’d done this before and there had been no problems, so I knew what to expect.’

  ‘What to expect’ involved swallowing fifty small hash eggs. Jane described it as being like swallowing sandpaper. ‘At first you have to suppress your gag reflex. But I soon remembered how to do that and they all went down surprisingly easily.

  ‘During that cab ride to the airport it didn’t feel all that weird, though. Just like I had a very full tummy after a big meal. I had drunk a lot of water though, so I kept wanting to go to the loo, which was a bit of a pain.’

  Settling down next to one of her girlfriends on the plane, Jane admits she then had a pang of guilt. ‘They just thought I’d had a good shag and nearly missed the plane because of it. I felt bad because the girl who’d been getting married had paid for all our air fares, so if I got caught with the hash pellets she could be in trouble.’

  But the flight went off without incident and Jane, in her own words, ‘waltzed through customs in the UK as if I didn’t have a care in the world’.

  She then went to a hotel room, which had been pre-booked for her in the centre of Birmingham and waited for a couple of hours for the pellets to pass. ‘I used a plastic bag as a glove to pull them out of the toilet bowl and throw them in the bathtub. I washed them and counted them. They were all there. And none of them had ripped.

  ‘That’s when it really hit me that what I had done was enormously risky. I handed over the bag filled with pellets to this fella, who insisted he really was a cousin of the lad I’d slept with back in Casablanca. He gave me an envelope with £3,000 cash in it and mentioned that he’d scribbled his mobile number on it as well and that I was to call him next time I wanted to do another run.

  ‘More importantly, he said that my lad in Casablanca was desperate to see me. My heart melted. I was hooked in. I didn’t really care if it was all a con to keep me onside. Just having those memories of what had just happened would keep me going for the moment. But I wanted more of him and more of that cash, so I could keep my family afloat.’

  Jane has since been back twice to see her young lover and done a mule run each time. But she said that for the first time she was starting to have serious doubts about whether to return to Morocco ever again. She sensed her ‘lad’ was cooling on her. She explains: ‘Last time I went over to do a mule run, he seemed much more cool and businesslike with me and it felt like he was just going through the motions when we slept together. Maybe that was a good thing because I knew that in reality I could never abandon my husband and kids for a Moroccan gigolo.’

  But, Jane admits, giving up being a mule may not be as easy as she hopes. ‘I’ve had daily calls from the lad in Morocco and his cousin here in Birmingham also won’t stop phoning me. The lad says he loves me and wants me to visit him but he probably doesn’t mean it. His cousin sounds much more threatening about everything and keeps saying, “You must go and see him and bring me back more hash.” I don’t like the tone of his voice but what can I do? I am a little afraid this man might tell my husband what has been happening and it will break his heart. I couldn’t do that to him and the kids. They don’t deserve any of this.’

  But Jane is equally pragmatic about what might well happen if she succumbs to the pressure and does another hash run. ‘I’m a realist and I feel that eventually one of those bags will burst inside me, or someone in the Moroccan gang will inform on me to customs. I know they often do that with mules just to make the customs people stay off their backs the rest of the time.

  ‘If a bag bursts inside me it might kill me. If I get arrested I’ll end up in prison. So either way, I will lose my family and destroy them in the process. I know that the best thing to do is refuse to go on any more runs.’ She hesitates for a moment. ‘But then I think about him. His smile. His body. It’s hard to resist when you have bugger all else to look forward to in your life.’

  Meanwhile, Jane’s husband has dipped into clinical depression so severely that when we next met she revealed that he had had to be coaxed down from the roof of a local shopping centre car park after threatening to jump. Jane seemed to have hardened to everything since our first meeting: ‘He knows there is someone else in my life and it’s literally killing him. I don’t know what to do. I can’t tell him the truth but I know I should split from him in the best way possible for the kids. However, neither of us can afford to be apart because of the expense of having separate homes. It’s a horrible situation and it is entirely my fault.’

  Jane admits that she often feels tempted to call her lover in Casablanca or his cousin. ‘I know I’m only looking for an escape route from my responsibilities. I know I’m being a coward but worst of all, I know in my heart of hearts that I’d probably end up dead or in prison if I agree to another mule run.’

  With that, Jane looks at her watch. ‘Shit. I’m going to be late picking up the kids from school. Back to reality, eh?’

  CHAPTER 13

  MICKY

  East Londoner Micky, 29, used to deal cocaine, but he ended up snorting more than he was selling, breaking the golden drug-dealing rule – don’t get high on your own supply. He deals hash these days because the money is good and the risk of a long prison term is not as great.

  He explains: ‘I had to stop dealing coke because I was getting seriously hooked. It’s fine having the occasional joint but that white stuff does yer head in after a while. I was making stupid moves and taking big risks. I knew it was time to move to the softer stuff. Thank fuckin’ God I did it before it was too late.’

  Micky operates out of a swish apartment in a block close to Canary Wharf, in London’s bustling Docklands area where the majority of the capital’s bankers work and play. ‘It’s the perfect spot for this game. Most of these people do very stressful jobs and they like to unwind after a hard day at work and that’s where I come in. It’s always better to deal with rich bastards than poor, desperate types. The people round here treat me with respect and always show good manners. Some of them even buy me the occasional drink because they like to think I am their friend but first and foremost I am their dealer and I don’t really want them to forget it.’

  Micky has been introduced to me by a old-time villain I know called Teddy, who despite being almost eighty years of age, still enjoys the occasional puff on a joint as well as dipping into all the other traditional recreational drugs, such as cocaine and MDMA or ecstasy. When he first told me about Micky, Teddy was full of praise. ‘He’s a good lad. Never pushes his luck and he’s not afraid to talk to someone like you.’ Teddy tended to judge such characters on their ability to be a ‘true professional’ and he undoubtedly placed Micky in that category.

  Micky himself comes from a long line of east London villains. His father was a chauffeur for the infamous 1960s London criminals, the Kray Twins. His uncle spent ten years in the slammer for armed robbery. But Micky is an altogether more reluctant villain, as he explains.

  ‘I was brought up in the underworld but I always promised my mum I would avoid being a villain and do something useful with my life. She hated it all and was always trying to get my dad to get a so-called “proper job” but it never happened.’

  Micky’s first job after leaving school was as a clerk in a law firm in the City. He had high hopes that he’d end up being a trainee solicitor but things didn’t quite turn out like that. ‘I was a sharp kid and the lawyer I worked for knew that only too well. But I made a fatal error by pulling one of the clients, a savvy Essex bird who was up for fraud. She got off the charges eventually but I was given the axe for knocking her off. It was all most unfortunate.’

  Micky says he then drifted into the cocaine business through a cousin. ‘My dad wou
ld have killed me if he knew what I was up to because he was well aware that my mum would blame him for any criminality I was involved in. So I didn’t tell anyone in my immediate family what I was up to.’

  But after a number of near-death experiences and a lot of ‘heavy pressure’ from a gang of south London drug barons, Micky stepped back from the coke game for ever.

  However, the switch to dealing in hash brought an altogether different list of complications. Micky explains: ‘Hash is harder to smuggle because it is obviously bigger in size and it smells a hell of lot. When I first started dealing in it, I kept it stored in my flat but it stunk the place out and I had to find a lock-up with plenty of ventilation. In any case, it’s madness to keep a lot of it in your own home.’

  In a dark area at the back of that very same lock-up, Micky cuts up a ‘9 bar’ (a slang term for a 9oz block of hash). He smokes a large joint as he works, carefully cutting down the large block into smaller deals, which he weighs on a set of small digital scales and then wraps in cellophane.

  ‘I sell 10s and 20s – which is basically a sixteenth or an eighth of an ounce. I have my customers and I deliver to them so no one knows where I live. You got to be careful and not be stupid.’

  Micky travels carefully through the London streets and he always sticks to the speed limit. As he drives his mobile rings; it’s another customer. He answers on the hands free so he doesn’t get pulled over by the police. ‘That’s the other problem with hash. The coppers can smell it a mile away, so I only ever keep small quantities in the car and it’s always very tightly wrapped in clingfilm.’

  We cross the Thames to head through the mean streets of south-east London. It’s not an area Micky normally frequents. ‘This customer of mine has just moved to Blackheath and he likes big blocks of the stuff, so I make him my only across-the-river delivery. It’s dangerous being out here. If you deal on other people’s turf they come down on you like a ton of bricks. Lots of cowboys and quite a few Indians and I don’t want to meet any of them.’

  Micky eventually steers his Audi estate into the short driveway of a big, detached house just off the main A2 road down to the Channel ports. It’s got to be worth £2 million in London’s grossly over-inflated property market.

  ‘Stay put,’ says Micky, opening the lid of the armrest between us and removing a tightly wrapped ounce brick of hash. ‘Won’t be long.’

  Micky then hops out of his car and shuts the door quietly, all in one neat movement. I watch as he climbs the steps to the dark-grey recently painted double front door.

  A man opens it and greets Micky with a bear hug. Micky then walks inside the hallway and the front door closes behind him. Just then I notice through a big bay window a group of people sitting at a table; obviously the host is holding a dinner party.

  Suddenly I spot the door to the dining room opening and a man leads Micky in. Then he is introduced to all of the guests. There must be at least a dozen people of all ages, sizes and shapes. Not one of them looks surprised to see him and then Micky plonks his tightly wrapped brick of hash on the table, smiles at everyone before turning casually towards the door and waving goodbye to the entire party.

  Less than a minute later he is firing up his Audi for the journey back to Docklands. ‘What a bunch of snotty-nosed prats. I hate it when a customer tries to show me off like that. The one good thing about coke was that when you dropped it off with a punter, they always tried to keep it hush-hush because, after all, it is an A-class narcotic. Bloody hash users think it’s as normal as having a cup of tea.’

  Micky reveals that his customers range from lawyers to film stars to builders. ‘That’s the thing about hash. It crosses the old class divide with a vengeance. Mind you, I wouldn’t supply any old riff-raff with it ’cos that’s asking for trouble.’

  He says he always checks out his potential customers very carefully after they have been recommended to him. ‘I leave nothing to chance. It only takes one punter to grass you up or to turn out to be an undercover cozzer [cop] and then you’re fucked.’

  And when it comes to his own supplies, Micky believes in the old saying ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships’ and refuses point blank to reveal any details about the gangsters who supply him with his hash, except to say: ‘They’d have me topped if I started blabbering about them to anyone. They are the real thing – a right heavy mob. We might be talking about hash here but that doesn’t stop the big names from wanting a chunk of the business.’

  Just then I remembered something that his old crim pal Teddy had said about Micky before I even met him. ‘Micky’s in with the big boys. He likes to play the small-time hood but he’s actually got his finger in a lot of pies.’

  That comment makes me wonder who the real Micky is. Maybe he’s fed me a lot of lies because, like many criminals, he fancies the fame but not if it costs him his business. But, as if he is reading my mind, Micky then chips in: ‘What you see is what you get with me. I don’t play any games and I think that’s the key to my survival.’

  ‘But,’ I ask, ‘how come you seem so untouchable compared with many others in the same game?’

  Micky takes his time answering and the silence that envelops the car feels a tad awkward. Then he takes a long, deep breath. ‘Listen. I like to think I am one of the clever ones. I know what side my bread is buttered on and I keep everyone happy, so that they never come down on me hard. If that makes me untouchable, so be it.’ Then he hesitated for another brief moment. ‘Let’s just say I have the backing of certain people who no one in this game would ever dare try to cross. Does that make sense?’

  I nod in tacit agreement, although if truth be known I was no nearer an answer to my question than five minutes earlier.

  CHAPTER 14

  PERRY AND DEV

  Away from the chaotic high-risk, low-reward world of so-called amateur mules such as Jane, there are a number of highly specialised UK-based ‘professionals’ who make a good living smuggling small quantities of high-quality hash to a tightly knit, select band of customers.

  I was introduced to Perry and Dev by one of Essex’s most notorious criminals, a character known as Geordie, even though he does not come from the north-east of England. Geordie calls Perry and Dev his ‘boys’, which seems to imply they work for him but at no point during our interview am I able to actually confirm if they even have a boss.

  Perry and Dev are what we used to call ‘a couple of likely lads from Essex’. They’re both in their late thirties and they seem like genuinely close friends, who are proud of the fact they watch each other’s backs. They even went to school together.

  But these two hash dealers are in a very different ‘game’ from the sort of characters I have so far encountered in the secret underworld of hash. They are what is known in the trade as ‘do-it-yourself-merchants’. They buy their hash in Spain from one specific supplier. Then Perry ‘mules’ it over to the UK and they distribute it to their specialised customers. This is very unusual in the hash game because these two partners in crime have a small but select client base and claim they guarantee the quality of the hash in a way few other dealers could.

  Perry comes from a broken home and a multi-racial background. He learned the tricks of the trade in approved school and reckons he hasn’t looked back since. He’s been involved in other forms of smuggling in the past but decided to set up this small high-grade hash smuggling operation because he was fed up with being ripped off by powerful villains in the criminal underworld of Essex.

  Both Perry and Dev have spent time in prison for drug offences and it was after a long spell inside that Perry decided it was time they started working as a self-contained unit. He explains: ‘I love hash myself and I like to think I am an expert at testing the stuff to make sure it is of the highest quality. That’s why I am the one who does the mule run every month.’

  Perry explains that he takes a budget airline flight into southern Spain – ‘I use different airports so that no one flags me up’ – once every calendar mont
h. ‘I try to turn it into a bit of mini-holiday. I mean, not many people can enjoy the sunshine and still earn a lot of dosh in the process, can they?’

  But it’s here that Perry’s version of ‘muling’ turns out to be very different from the desperadoes willing to swallow potentially deadly pellets and wait for them to come out the other ‘end’. Perry straps the tightly packed bricks of hash round his waist with extra strong tape. The hash itself is triple packed in cellophane so that it does not smell and then smothered in hair conditioner to put the sniffer dogs off the scent.

  ‘A lot of other villains I know think I am barmy. But I tell you what? I’ve been doing this for five years and I’ve never even come close to being pulled.’

  Perry believes it’s all about front – confidence. He exudes it in bucketloads, so it’s hard not to agree with him.

  ‘I’m as calm as the proverbial cucumber. I never even break out in a sweat. I’ve got this routine when I arrive at the airport with the hash already strapped around me. I check in, then grab myself a beer to calm my nerves, then I swan off to the toilet and double check that nothing is sticking out too much, so to speak. Then I head for customs and bingo, I’m through … they don’t even feel it if they pat me down after going through a scanner because I pack it extra tight and I always wear an extra sweatshirt under my T-shirt.’

  Then, Perry proudly lifted his shirt to reveal he was wearing exactly what he’d just described. ‘See? It works perfectly. I’ve never fancied swallowing the stuff and then shitting it out the other end. It’s too risky. I’d rather take my chances with this routine. In any case, I can carry much more product than if I swallowed it.’