Hash (16 page)

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.

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 month. ‘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.’

Perry then slowly and painstakingly unwraps the sticky tape wrapped around his waist and lower stomach. It sounds excruciating as the sticky side of the tape rips away at his body hair. ‘This is the only problem. It bleedin’ well hurts when you pull the tape off!’

Perry eventually lays out fifteen neatly packed bricks of hash on the table in front of him and I casually ask him the street value of what he has just smuggled through. ‘They’re worth two grand a brick so that makes thirty thousand, once we’ve sold it all to our customers.’

Then I dare to ask what Perry paid for the hash in Spain. ‘Hundred and fifty quid a block. Not a bad little earner, eh?’

His quieter partner Dev chips in: ‘Don’t be too flashy, son. We don’t want half the world thinking they can make good money out of hash.’ For a split second Dev looks straight at Perry, who realises there is a serious undertone to his friend’s voice.

‘Yeah, but not many people have got the bottle to bring it in the way I do,’ he adds proudly.

Dev looks happy. ‘We’re in this together and because we do everything ourselves the profits are healthy and everyone’s happy, eh?’

Perry’s not even listening because he’s making his own joint with a tiny shred of hash he’s peeled off the corner of a packet. ‘I tell you, the quality of this smoke is the key to our success. We only provide the best, top-grade hash. It’s vital because we’re charging four times more than you’d pay
in the local pub for some mucked about crap that’s probably no more than 40 per cent genuine hash.’

Perry’s sucking in a big mouthful of hash smoke as his partner Dev continues: ‘The great thing about selling top-quality hash in these parts is that only the rich punters can afford it and they are such keen aficionados that they are charming to deal with and treat us with the utmost respect. There is none of that diving in and out of shitty tower block apartments filled with scum merchants. No, the majority of our customers live in houses with long driveways. That’s the way we like to keep it, too.’

With that Perry and Dev finish off the bottles of beer they’ve been supping throughout the interview and announce plans to head off with their hash to do some ‘drop-offs’. They don’t invite me along but then, as Dev puts it: ‘There’s no way we’re going to upset our customers for you.’

Perry then chips in: ‘You could call us the Harrods of hash suppliers. And as long as we keep going this way, we should keep safe and very rich!’

With that, they gathered up their produce, dropped it carefully into a backpack and headed off to the Kawasaki motorbike they preferred to use when selling their hash in the badlands of Essex.

That’s when I recall how Perry said a few minutes earlier that Dev was the only person in the world he trusts and that I then caught a glimpse between them and realise their bond is the key to their survival.

There are still a few old-time ‘heads’ in the hash business – the self-confessed old hippies convinced that selling hash is no more illegal than running a wine bar and that their posh English accent virtually gives them the right to sing hash’s praises.

Ex-public schoolboy Tom, from Berkshire, in the south of England, is proud of his ‘expert’ knowledge of hash. He firmly believes that it has helped him hold onto a loyal set of customers, who only ever buy hash from him.

‘I don’t deal and have never dealt in anything other than hash. Coke and ecstasy is heavy stuff and I don’t want to be responsible for anything that might happen to the health of my customers,’ he says. ‘I’m a professional hash dealer full stop. I make a decent living out of it because I am trusted. I’m also a typical old hippy who believes that because hash comes from the ground it is healthy for people. There is
nothing chemical in the hash I sell and I think that puts me head and shoulders above everyone else in this game.’

Tom says hash has provided him with a healthy income for more than thirty years. He claims to have numerous celebrity clients whom he regularly visits in London and says he is often flown across continents with hash for tycoon customers who live outside the UK. ‘My business relies solely on word of mouth. The rich and sometimes famous people I supply put a good word in to their chums and that word gets around.’ He adds proudly: ‘D’you know? I’ve got at least ten customers whom I’ve supplied throughout the thirty years I’ve been in this business. I reckon that’s pretty unique.’

Two weeks before we met, Tom even flew out to Tibet to inspect a shipment of the finest Himalayan before it was smuggled into Europe. ‘I like to make these sorts of visits because it keeps my suppliers on their toes. I pride myself on this sort of personal service and I’d soon start losing my customers if I let the quality slide.’

The trip to Tibet was paid for by a rich client, who happens to be a member of one of the world’s most famous banking families. ‘He just called me up one day and said he wanted ten grand’s worth of Himalayan and he’d be happy to cover all my travel costs to go out there and make sure it was of the highest quality. I was happy to oblige.’

This is where Tom is different from most other members of the secret underworld of hash that I encountered while researching this book. He operates in broad daylight without any pretence about what he does. He firmly believes that by
being so open he, in effect, is protecting himself from any trouble. He explains: ‘I am who I am. I think by being open and letting my business speak for itself in an organic sense I am not perceived as a threat to anyone. By that I mean criminals and the police. They’re not interested in people like me. I’m just a hard-working businessman selling produce that any adult should have the right to consume. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want hash to be made legal because then the price would come down and I’d soon be out of business! No, I think the way it is now in the UK suits me fine. The police are more interested in catching the coke barons and I’m considered a bit of a harmless old eccentric providing a service to responsible adults. Simple as that.’