Costa Del Crime by Wensley Clarkson

Author:Wensley Clarkson [Wensley Clarkson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782195337
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2013-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

UNDERCOVER COP

Melting into anonymity – ‘Micky’ keeps it undercover

UNDERCOVER COP

The Costa del Crime is, as you’ve no doubt already worked out, a hotbed of lawbreakers and vice. For the past 20 years, the Spanish police have allowed teams of British detectives to operate in the area. In January 2004, Detective Sergeant Paul Finnigan, 41, was knifed outside a restaurant in Fuengirola after he had been transferred by Northamptonshire police to the National Crime Squad to investigate a drugs ring based in the area.

Spanish police say they are happy to allow the British cops to operate on their territory because it can be a useful deterrent to these UK criminals. As one Spanish detective told me recently, ‘We know very little about these people when they show up from Britain, so we need the British police to help us arrest them. Also, many of their criminal enterprises are linked between Spain and the UK, so offences have been committed in both countries.’

Micky from east London is a classic example of the type of hardened police detective who works on the Costa del Crime. He had one major world player in the cocaine business under observation for many months. Micky explains, ‘It’s a much riskier business being out here watching villains because there’s none of the backup we get back home. If any of these characters suss out they’re being watched, they can become very dangerous. Two of my colleagues were beaten to a pulp by one drug baron’s henchmen when he found out we were spying on him. Back in the UK he would never have dared attack the police in that way, but out here anything goes.’

Micky is hardly what you might call a traditional-looking Scotland Yard copper. He’s got shoulder-length hair, a muscular, stocky body and a Santa Claus-style beard that makes him look a lot older than his 39 years. ‘My job was to infiltrate a gang of drugs smugglers who were importing cocaine from South America and paying runners to drive the drugs through Europe back to Britain. It was a very sophisticated operation, very slick and well organised. The guy who was running it was a hardened, old-school gangster and I had to work my way in.’

Micky – who’s done a spot of bare-knuckle fighting in his time – managed to get himself work as an enforcer, or debt collector, for the gang. ‘Luckily, I had the contacts back in the East End who vouched for me so I was able to get into the gang quite easily.’ Proving what they were up to was a different kettle of fish. ‘This lot were mega-careful,’ recalls Micky. ‘Even their drug runners were followed by other members of the gang to make sure they weren’t police grasses. No one was trusted apart from the men right at the very top. I was taken on two or three debt-collecting operations and had to actually threaten a couple of fellows who hadn’t paid their drug debts, but this was

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.