Cocaine
Copyright Don Phillips 2005
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Foreword
During this novel I have taken several liberties regarding the way the Customs & Excise and the Guardia Civil are organised and operate. I apologise for this, but stress that this is a work of fiction, just as much as any other thriller or film. I take this opportunity to express my support and admiration for all the men and women who stand and work on the side of law and order in all such commendable organisations. They are not allowed to break the rules in the manner my characters have, but must do things the hard way. Yet they are truly our only protection against the evil that is out there. The violence and the attitude of the people on the “other side” I do not believe I have exaggerated at all.
This novel is set throughout the nineteen nineties when the general public were far more innocent about the way drugs were made and distributed. Many still are. Hopefully this book will destroy the illusion that taking any form of so-called recreational narcotic is justified in any way. There really are no such things as truly recreational drugs. It doesn’t matter if you are a user, distributor or a policeman, wherever Cocaine is involved it will ultimately become a matter of life or death.
Prologue
Quebec, Canada, February 1991
He watched the big man in the uniform topcoat trying to tip a spade full of earth into the open grave. Even though the rain was running down his face from his bare head you could see from his expression, and the way that the shovel trembled in his hands, that he was weeping. The earth was sodden and reluctant to leave the spade. Just as well it was, thought Ropell or from the way the man's hands trembled it would have been empty before he got it over the grave.
How could someone who wore the uniform of a Captain of Police let things come to this, he thought for the thousandth time in the last three days? How could someone, who had a bit of a reputation amongst his colleagues and his men for being a hard bastard, be so bloody weak and pathetic in his home life? How could a six feet two inch professional detective allow himself to be dominated and given the run around by two women who barely came up to his shoulder? One woman now he reminded himself, as the earth fell into the grave. How could it happen? The grief and anger surged within him.
The big man stepped back from the graveside and held the spade out, like a child who had got so far in a given task, but didn't know what to do next. It wavered about in the air while his other hand struggled to enter the wet material of the pocket of his uniform overcoat.
Feeling for his bloody handkerchief again, thought Ropell. Then pity took over and he stepped forward and took the spade from his father's hand, watching as the big man turned and buried his face in the shoulder of the slim, middle-aged woman who stood next to them.
Marie Colette Ropell never moved as her husband sobbed into her already soaking shoulder. No hand lifted from her side to comfort him or touch him in any way, a sign of the contempt in which she held him. She stood five feet seven inches in height, was slim to the point of thinness and dressed in a dark blue suite and gabardine topcoat, as if ready for a business conference in one of Quebec's corporate offices. Her eyes, blue and bright, stared directly down into her daughter's grave from a face that was as expressionless as stone. Only the small muscle moving on the side of her jaw showed that she was under any tension at all. The teeming rain literally bounced from her shoulders and the black silk scarf covering the blonde hair, her only concession to protection from the elements. Only her eyes moved as she watched Jack Ropell throw his spade full of earth onto the coffin.
When he was done he turned and held out the spade to his Mother. She released herself from the grip of her still weeping husband and with a strength surprising in one so slender, she scooped up a full load of the sodden earth and dropped it down onto the coffin of her only daughter. Then she let the spade fall to the earth and studiously avoiding the eyes of both men, walked away to the waiting car in which she had arrived and out of their lives, leaving the rest of them to finish the service without her.
The original fucking ice maiden, thought Ropell. His mind wandered back over his memories of his Mother, trying to find an instance when that steely control had given way to something more natural. He failed. He wondered how his father had managed to make her pregnant twice as he found great difficulty in imagining her in the throes of passion. The only natural emotion he could ever remember her showing was the odd flash of anger at something or other his father had done or forgotten to do. The rest of the time there was just the iron control that she exercised over every aspect of her life.
His father watched her go with the mournful eyes of a puppy that has been beaten. They had not lived together since the day of his daughter’s death. She had been packed and gone when he returned from the morgue. He visibly pulled himself together and spent a few moments exchanging courtesies with the half a dozen other mourners, all of who were colleagues or neighbours, before they all squelched their way back to the waiting limousines. Behind them two workmen cursed the teeming heavens of the approaching Canadian winter as they prepared to fill in the grave.
The journey back from the cemetery was as Ropell had expected. His father wept silently for about ten minutes, then suddenly empty of tears, pulled him self together and brought up the subject Jack had been hoping to avoid.
He turned to his son, the puppy look back in place.
"Jack?
The question mark in the voice told him what was coming. He rubbed at the condensation that had instantly clouded all the windows in the big Lincoln Town Car the moment they had entered in their wet clothes. Peering out of the window at the passing countryside he pretended he had not heard. It did not save him.
"Do you really have to do this? Do you really have to go some thousands of miles away to get a job you like?"
Jack Ropell did not answer at once. He knew what he had to say would hurt his father and tried to sort out in his mind how to put across his message firmly, but without doing any more damage than necessary. It was not easy. He resisted the sudden urge to put a comforting hand on the other's arm and prepared to say the words that had been burning at him since he had received the phone call that informed him of Marie Louis' death. Was it only twelve hours ago that he had arrived from Heathrow?
"Jack?"
It was the whine in the other's voice that finally brought the red mist of anger. He turned to the father, who he thought he had known well. The man he had thought of as strong and firm. The man he had admired and looked up to, but whom he suddenly saw was practically a stranger. He waited a few seconds more for the fierce glow of anger that had suddenly arisen within him, to die down and took a deep breath. It was only now that he realised just how much he had been waiting for this moment ever since the plane had landed.
"What is there here for me now?"
He held up a hand to prevent the other's answer. And carried on in a voice that was both bitter and sarcastic.
"My only sister, we have just buried. Dead from an overdose of the drugs that even her policeman father could not, or did not, prevent her from taking and becoming addicted to. My Mother feels stronger about her politics and her "Liberty for Quebec” movement than she feels for any of us and has just left you and the whole of her past behind her, so that she can dedicate her life to the cause. That
leaves just you and me."
He paused.
"I do not want to live with you, Dad. I do not even want to live in Canada. I do not want to become a Mountie just like my father and I never want to see my Mother and her cold political scheming again. Stop bloody crying for God's sake."
The last was almost shouted. He swallowed and lowered his voice and despite his resolution not to do so, reached out and placed his hand on the wet sleeve of his father's coat.
"You let us down Dad. You and Mom let both Marie Louis and I down. Her more than me."
Tears began to fall down his father's face again, but he hardened his heart.
"You were never there for us, Dad. You were always at work and Mom was always at some political meeting, scheming how to prise Quebec away from the rest of Canada."
He let his anger show.
"We are not even Canadians for God's sake. She is only Canadian on her Mother's side while her father is French from Paris and she was brought up there. You are three quarters English and a quarter Spanish and were born in Halifax, so what are we doing in Canada? Why did you let her take us away from Yorkshire, Dad? Why did you let her drag us halfway around the world to a place none of us had even seen before."
He looked down into his lap and his voice dropped a little.
"I hate her politics, you know. I hate the blind prejudice that makes her refuse to answer anyone who speaks to her in anything, but french. I hate the indoctrination she put us through when we first came here. Since I landed in Canada at eight years old I have heard nothing, but anti-British propaganda from her. I hate the fact that I lost a lot of friends because their political views were not correct enough for them to be welcome in my home. I hate the sickness that drives her on to try and destroy the country that welcomed her with open arms while she ignores her family, and I hate the continual daily arguments her sort bring about between people who should be fellow countrymen, but are divided by a mistaken political ideal."
He paused to regain control of his feelings and when he continued it was in a calmer voice.
"It has stopped me wanting to be Canadian. That's why I applied to go to University in Cambridge. I want to live in the country I was born in and now I have my degree, that is what I am going to do."
The older man moved his arm away from his son's grasp. He looked at the son he was so proud of. This son who at twenty-four years of age thought he knew what life was all about. At just a half inch over six feet in height with black wavy hair and deep blue eyes, he could have had Irish blood. Only the slightly softer planes of his face prevented the onlooker from jumping to the conclusion he was a Celt. That and the slightly darker, Mediterranean hue to the skin that tanned so readily.
The boy wore his clothes with the ease and confidence of an athlete, sure of his own abilities and future and he adored this son they had made, but knew he had lost him. He decided to try and warn him of the pitfalls that awaited that confidence before he walked out of his life. When he spoke the tears had stopped and the voice was steady.
"I remember when I was full of ideals like you are, Jack. I remember when I felt that I could achieve anything I wanted."
He shook his head.
"You speak a lot of truth about me and your Mother, Jack, but you see, we are like we are because we are people. You will find that out some day. The trouble is that you are usually deeply committed before you find out you have made a mistake."
The voice grew stronger.
"As you know I met your Mother when I worked in Paris for Interpol. She spoke little English, but my French was pretty good. We were married within three months and you were born less than a year later. We came back to Britain to live because that was where my work was, but she hated England and especially Yorkshire. A country within a country she said it was, but without the courage to break away. She has never understood how you can be one thing and yet still part of another."
He shook his head again.
"She could not understand the local accent and refused to learn what she referred to as Pidgin English. Then Marie Louis came along and she began to feel trapped. Two children to bring up in a country she hated. We were breaking apart at the seams.
I didn't want to see a divorce that destroyed the family and separated us all. I didn't want to be in the position to only be able to see my kids when I could raise the fare to Paris, so I applied to join the Canadian Royal mounted Police. It seemed like a reasonable compromise at the time. After all, I had been a policeman for fifteen years by then and had made Inspector. The Mountie's accepted me. The Canadian government approved our immigration request and we moved lock, stock and barrel. I thought it would be the answer but it wasn't." He looked up at his son. "Was it?"
He shrugged.
"So you see, Jack, the message is judge not unless you yourself be judged."
Ropell knew he could have brought up the fact that his parents had ignored the warning signs of their daughter's addiction. That any professional policeman should have spotted them, that both of them were too wrapped up in their own world to notice what was happening to their children, but he was suddenly tired of it all. His anger had burned Itself out and he knew that the man next to him would castigate himself more severely over the next few years than he could ever do.
The car had stopped and peering through the mist of condensation on the windows Ropell realised that they were at his hotel. He opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement. He leaned back into the car.
"Goodbye Father."
He would never see him alive again.
Cocaine Page 1