Howard Marks' Book of Dope Stories (63 page)

She had to ditch the passport, go to the Spanish embassy – she still travelled under a Spanish passport – and get a temporary replacement. She flew back to San Francisco empty-handed, and they laid the Magic Eraser move to rest.

The Fruit Palace
, 1985

Matthew Arnold

I
QUICKLY LEARNT
a lot about drug smuggling: who was doing what, what the risks were, how packages were wrapped and prepared for shipment to the UK and all the rumours about who had been busted. I noticed that the professional smugglers had commercial vacuum-packing machines and used vast quantities of heavy food-grade plastic bags of varying sizes, of the type in which frozen meat joints are packed in supermarkets. These were the smugglers’ main weapon against the sniffer dogs.

First, two cannabis soaps are wrapped together in several layers of cling film. Then other layers are added, one of black pepper and another of coffee grains. After a final wrap of cling film the whole soap is placed in a plastic bag and sealed in a vacuum machine. The air is sucked out, and the bag shrink-wrapped around the contents in that familiar squashed-up look. The sealed bag is then cut to size and the open edge heat-sealed by the wrapping machine. The entire process takes about two or three minutes per soap for the experienced wrapper.

A consignment of a hundred kilos of cannabis contains on average four hundred soaps, and the whole lot will be wrapped and stored within a full day. Cannabis resin is a dense product and doesn’t take up much room: 50kg can easily be hidden in an average family saloon such as a Ford Sierra.

The packers and wrappers are masters of misdirection and deceit. The wrapped cannabis is secreted under the back seat and in the door panels, not too much there though as the windows need room in the well of the door frame to retract when wound open.

More product is hidden within the spare wheel itself and sometimes under the front bulkhead up in the heater area. The heaters are removed, the pipes sealed off and the hot-air blower motors are taken out. At a casual glance the bulkhead looks identical to any other car, but it is only a metal and plastic shell covering. Cannabis replaces the guts of the heating system.

I have even seen cannabis placed in windscreen-washer bottles and air-filter boxes. Storing it in the engine compartment is tricky, though, because if the car breaks down then the drug could well be unearthed by a mechanic. There are the tales, jokingly passed around, of smugglers whose car engines have overheated and ignited the slow-burning resin. The resultant clouds of blue smoke have passed through the ventilation ducts and into the passenger compartment, affecting everyone in the car. Pleasantly stoned, presumably no one cared about being arrested until the next day’s sober realisation of their predicament.

There are specialists who live on the Costas who professionally fix up cars just for the smugglers. The way in which they work is to obtain a vehicle, usually one on UK plates that hasn’t been stolen, and doctor it. They remove the rear seats and sometimes the front ones too, the cloth facings and the padding, and fit in as much cannabis as possible into the seat frames. The padding is cut down and refitted, and then the facing material is also refitted and stitched back in place. It is a professional job, and it is hard to distinguish a cannabis-laden seat from one that has not been tampered with. If the model of car has a steel partition between the boot and the rear-seat back then that steelwork is carefully cut away. This reveals an open space, which is filled with cannabis. Later the steel is welded back into place and then resprayed in a colour match. Finally the joints are sealed with mastic that exactly replicates the manufacturer’s so as to end up with a perfect-looking concealment job. Sometimes a fire extinguisher or first-aid kit is screwed on to the steelwork to add a touch of authenticity.

These cars are driven back to the UK by experienced operators who charge anything up to £10,000 per trip. The drivers apply for new papers for the car from DVLA in Swansea, take out motor insurance and buy a green card for European travel. Their documents are complete and accurate in every detail and will stand up to any check. Then they recruit passengers for the journey. There are husband-and-wife teams who, along with their children, regularly do the run between the Spanish Costas and the Channel ports.

In 1994 I heard about an English man and woman in their late fifties who were stopped and searched by French customs officers on the Hash Highway in the South of France. They had their two young grandchildren in the back of the car who were found to be sitting on forty kilos of high-quality cannabis resin. The grandparents were arrested, and the children taken into state care, until their parents travelled down from England to collect them. The grandparents are still in prison, serving a six-year sentence in addition to a massive customs fine or the option of another two years inside. I do not feel sorry for such people. They are not just naive old grannies caught up in a web of deceit but professional and experienced smugglers who carefully weigh up the risks before getting involved. They don’t just walk into a bar in Spain and say, ‘Hi, does anybody want me to smuggle some cannabis back to England for them?’ That’s an unlikely scenario. No, these people make a career of it and have probably already successfully netted thousands of pounds from previous trips.

For the experienced packer other great concealment opportunities are offered by camper vans and towed caravans. Cassette toilets are emptied, and the heavy plastic waste receptacles cut in half. They are filled with cannabis and sealed with plastic welding machines. This effectively forms a tank within a tank, after which the chemical toilet fluids are poured into the top tank. The cannabis-charged cassette unit is refitted into the caravan, and hey presto! there is both a usable toilet and a cache of hidden drugs. It’s a brave customs officer who rakes around in the shit tank just for a quick look-see. The only way to be sure whether or not there are concealed drugs is to weigh the empty cassette unit and measure the depth of the cassette from the exterior as opposed to the interior. This is a nasty, smelly job that, for obvious reasons, will not be undertaken unless the authorities have a very strong suspicion that there are drugs on board the caravan.

Calor gas and propane gas bottles are also used for concealment purposes. A bottle is completely emptied of gas and carefully cut around the middle seam weld into its two component halves. The bottom half of the bottle is filled with 10kg of cannabis and then a sheet of light-gauge tin is welded over the top. Finally the two halves of the tank are welded together again and spray-painted before the gas bottle is refilled.

The usable and partly filled bottle is placed in the caravan stowage compartment and connected up to the gas supply. The bottle now functions correctly, and if a customs officer were to light the gas stove it would work. Alternatively, if the official were to disconnect the gas bottle from the small regulator and open the handwheel valve, he would get a blast of high-pressure butane gas in his face, another classic trick that is frequently used.

In touring caravans the whole of an interior wall may well be stripped out and the interior foam and polystyrene-type insulation removed. Packets of wrapped cannabis are carefully packed inside the outer skin and secured by tapes stapled to the wooden strengthening supports. The inner wood-grain or pastel-shade veneers are refitted very carefully, and all the accessories wired back into place. Both sides of a caravan receive the same treatment so that it sits levelly on the suspension. If experienced interior fitters are used it is impossible to tell that the walls have been disturbed in any way, although there can easily be 100kg of cannabis, worth £300,000, concealed within an average family-size caravan.

Professionals don’t stash cannabis in cupboards or on shelves under clothes or in biscuit tins or coffee or sugar jars. They hide the gear in such a way that no casual check could ever uncover it. These packers secrete the gear in such a fashion that damage must be done to the fabric of the storage vehicle, be it car, van or caravan, before the cannabis is revealed.

Bear in mind that the gear is wrapped so carefully no sniffer dog would discover the cache and lead his handler to a location. It is a brave customs officer, therefore, who would systematically remove the wall from a caravan or cut open a toilet cassette or remove the welded plastic fascia of a caravan fridge or the plastic panelling in a shower enclosure just on suspicion that there may be drugs stored on board. Normal border or port inspection consists of a sniffer-dog inspection of the interior while a couple of customs men open drawers and check shelves and cupboards.

A classic piece of misdirection is to secrete ten or so cartons of cigarettes in a remote, inaccessible cupboard which are invariably found during an inspection. The surprised smugglers then offer to pay duty on their uncovered tax-free haul of tobacco, while the customs men are satisfied that they have found a family bringing back some extra duty-free goods. The offenders either pay the extra duty or escape with a stern lecture about the correct use of green and red customs zones before shamefacedly driving through the inspection sheds and out to deliver the caravan full of cannabis a couple of days later to their colleagues in crime.

The customs drugs units work mainly from information from registered informants or tip-offs from the public. They can’t start dismantling every vehicle going through the various Channel entry ports into the UK. Abroad in France and Spain there are temporary roadblocks set up along the Hash Highway. These often discover the cannabis hidden by amateurs in the obvious hidey-holes, but they are not equipped to start taking vehicles apart. Any contraband that will pass the sniffer dogs and is well secreted will get past them, assuming of course that the roadblocks actually stop the smugglers in the first place. Most consignments travelling up the Hash Highway are minded by babysitters at the front, who are in constant contact with the loaded vehicle. Sometimes there is another vehicle behind providing a rear security screen and acting as overwatch for the main men back in Spain. Every effort is made to ensure that nobody has any clever ideas about taking a wrong turn and making off with maybe half a million pounds’ worth of easily saleable merchandise.

In 1994 and 1995 there was a growing trend to use motorbikes to carry cannabis. The ever vigilant smugglers had discovered that they were rarely stopped at border-crossing points or by roadblocks. By their very nature there cannot be any large quantities of drugs concealed on a bike, unless the gear is stowed in the side panniers or back box, but either way it would be uncovered very quickly. The smugglers quickly exploited this apparently laissez-faire policy towards motorcycles and put their carriers on to cruising bikes, thereby sending hundreds of kilos of cannabis over to the UK during the following two summers. The sight of half a dozen bikers, not long-haired yobbos but more mature, respectable citizens riding quality motorcyles such as BMWs, Yamahas, Hondas and the like, does not attract a lot of attention from police or customs officers. Furthermore, at the British entry ports bikers are the first group of travellers to be disembarked from the ferries, quickly let through immigration and customs with no more than a cursory glance at the driver’s passport. There are more and more lone operators who regularly smuggle small amounts of gear for themselves. These guys and girls are usually successful because nobody is going to tip off the authorities about them. They keep their departure dates and itineraries to themselves and travel by constantly varying the routes and modes of transport. If they are caught it is usually by chance. Sniffer dogs may catch them because they don’t have access to the vacuum-packing machines that are the foolproof method used by the professional gangs.

The Spanish Connection
, 1992

Carlos Lehder

T
HE INDUSTRY-STANDARD
wrap for bales of marijuana is threefold. The bales are first wrapped in brown paper, which is sealed with masking tape. The layer of paper is necessary because the merchandise sweats. Much like a haystack gets moist and hot in the middle, this too is organic material. And even well cured, the product needs to hold moisture if it is to maintain any level of quality. If it were wrapped in plastic alone, it would decompose as its natural juice heated up and tried to evaporate. It is wrapped in paper to absorb the moisture, then wrapped in plastic to make the bale waterproof, to protect it not only from rain and sea water, but from contamination by crude oil and bilge. The plastic is taped, and then the bale is wrapped in a burlap bag that is sewn up on the open end, making the bale easy to handle – smugglers can grab the burlap by the corners and throw the bale around.

Smokescreen
by Robert Sabbag, first published in Great Britain by Canongate Books, February 2002

T
HAT’S
WHERE
I think my own operation is a step ahead. I’m not a drug dealer as such. What I’m offering is in the grand tradition of Liverpool brokers. I’m really just a frontiersman, setting a tariff, bringing goods in through the port and effecting a distribution network. My role is simple. I’m a consolidator, that’s all – a consolidator. I’m at the high-risk, high-profit, zero-labour end of the market. I bring the shire in. Almost immediately, I move it on to the boys that make the real money. But I’m happy with the ratio of risk-to-gain that I deal with. I’m somewhere near the high-to-middle end of this particular chain. I deal via Bernie and mainly through Ireland. Almost all of my trade comes via the Bhoys, the Dubliners, the Irish connection. Now, these lads are fucking tasty, they are. If it weren’t for the nod from Bernie I’d half have the horrors of having to deal with the cunts. Nobody’s ever come out and said it’s the Provos or whatever, and I’m certainly not asking no questions but let me just say they’re not like most of the lads you deal with. Don’t dress up. Don’t make a fuss of you. Only have a laugh and joke over something horrible, and even then they only have a laugh with one another. You never really feel like you’re their mate, which you’re not in fairness, even though you do get them no end of tickets for the match. That’s their one indulgence, the Bhoys – they love the match.