Wensley Clarkson - Cocaine Confidential

WENSLEY CLARKSON is one of Britains most knowledgeable writers when it comes to the criminal underworld. His books published in more than thirty countries have sold in excess of one and a half million copies. He has also written movie screenplays and made numerous TV documentaries in the UK, US and Spain.

www.wensleyclarkson.com

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

Quercus Editions Ltd
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Copyright 2014 Wensley Clarkson

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

TPB ISBN 978 1 84866 327 5
EBOOK ISBN 978 1 84866 328 2

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Two thousand escudos of silver

They will give for his head alone

Many would win the prize

But nobody can succeed

Only a comrade could.

Old South American proverb

To Tommy, who spent a lifetime in the business

Cocaine: A colorless or white crystalline alkaloid, C17H21NO4, extracted from coca leaves, sometimes used in medicine as a local anesthetic especially for the eyes, nose, or throat and widely used as an illicit drug for its euphoric and stimulating effects.

Dictionary definition

He pulled the matt black Glock automatic out of the glove compartment of the rental car, pointed it straight at my head and then a broad smile came over his horribly scarred face. This is my favourite toy. With this baby, no one fucks with me. I am the king. Jimmys grin exposed two gold front teeth and his piercing blue eyes glistened in the Marbella sunshine. The most frightening thing about having a gun shoved in your face, even jokingly, is looking at the shooters finger stroking the trigger.

But I could hardly complain; Liverpool gangster Jimmy had taken time out to talk to me about the activities of his cocaine gang and the bloody clashes with his rivals on Spains notorious Costa del Crime. The British Boys had been given a right hammering by the Eastern Europeans in recent weeks.

As I have discovered on numerous occasions while travelling the world to research this book, coke gangs murder their rivals because its part of their business. A well-publicised killing sends out a message to rivals not to overstep the mark. In a sense, its highly effective PR. And right in the middle of all this murder and mayhem are deadly, cold-blooded villains like Jimmy.

Jimmys chilling attitude and the way hes thrived in the all-year-round heat of southern Spain is indicative of the way cocaine gangsters have flourished over the past thirty-five years.

Despite the introduction of an extradition treaty with the UK more than twenty years ago, British criminals still make southern Spain their base because it is easier to operate with impunity here than anywhere else in Europe. It also happens to be the gateway from Africa and South America, sources for 90 per cent of all the most in-demand drugs that flood into Europe every day.

Jimmy operates on the twenty-five-mile strip of coastline between the seaside communities of Fuengirola and Marbella. Cocaine provides the majority of his income but then thats hardly surprising since it is a multi-billion-dollar industry in Spain. However, these days there are vicious turf wars continually flaring up between coke criminals from the UK, South America, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. It all began back in the Good Old Days of the 1970s and early 1980s when British villains fled to Spain to avoid extradition and discovered an underworld fuelled by the white powder.

Muscular and physically extremely fit, Jimmy has the name of his Scottish former girlfriend tattooed on his left arm. His dark mop of hair contrasts alarmingly with the heavy lines on his 49-year-old face. And despite waving that gun at me earlier, he seemed to have an easygoing manner. Jimmy was equally comfortable speaking English and Spanish, yet he also talked about murdering people as if it was as normal as eating scrambled eggs for breakfast. If he hadnt become a criminal, he told me, hed probably have been an accountant. His own brother was one. Another brother back in Toxteth was a hitman, who occasionally flew over to Spain to carry out jobs for Jimmys gang.

Jimmy lived in a penthouse apartment overlooking the picturesque, narrow cobbled streets of Marbellas whitewashed old town. Even during Spains current property price meltdown, his flat had to be worth half a million pounds. Jimmy had at least one hundred grands worth of gold jewellery on his fingers, wrist and around his neck. He drove a succession of rented BMWs because, he explained, he liked to change cars every couple of weeks for security reasons. Jimmy claimed hed been stabbed five times, which was why he often carried a gun. He had one six-inch scar running from just below his eye to his chin. It contorted whenever he tried to make a point while talking.

Jimmy had spent, he said, ten years of his life in prison and he insisted hed rather commit suicide than ever go back to jail. He made a point of drawing the tip of his forefinger across his neck to emphasise his feelings. Then he lifted up his Ralph Lauren shirt to show me four scars across his stomach. One time, he explained to me in a very cool fashion, he lost four pints of blood and almost had his liver punctured. They wanted me dead, he said. Who? I asked calmly. The fuckin Russians, he spat. Theyre evil. They never smile and everything is about business, business, business. Coming from a man so clearly dancing with the devil himself, it sounded a little hollow.

Jimmy remained totally focused throughout our meeting. As we walked along the promenade near his home, his eyes darted about examining every single face going past us. Even as he chatted to me, he seemed to be constantly on the lookout, just in case anyone tries to have a pop at me.

Back up at his penthouse a few minutes later, Jimmys new Romanian girlfriend Sasha turned up. She seemed flustered and worried about Jimmy and kept fussing around him. I could see he was getting irritable with her. Then suddenly he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her off to an adjoining room. Less than two minutes later, I heard her scream and then start sobbing. Jimmy reappeared rubbing his hands together almost gleefully. That bitch was out all last night. If I find out who she is fuckin Ill slit his throat. Moments later, he pulled out a clear plastic bag the size of a crisp packet filled with cocaine, which must have been worth 10,000 on the open market.

This stuff is the cause of everything, mate. Trouble is, Im fuckin hooked on it, said Jimmy, as he roughly sprinkled out a fat, cigar-sized line of cocaine on the glass coffee table in front of him. Then he produced a pink see-through straw and noisily snorted the line up his nose in a split second.