Читать книгу Gang Wars on the Costa - The True Story of the Bloody Conflict Raging in Paradise - Wensley Clarkson - Страница 11

OBVIOUSLY NOT ALL the gangs on the Costa del Sol are run on such rigid rules. Down the coast from seedy Fuengirola lies Puerto Banus, a ‘blingy’ offshoot to Marbella and home to more gold-encrusted villains than probably anywhere else on earth. It has a marina with dozens of ten-million-pound-plus yachts tied up, and more Ferraris than anywhere outside Italy.

Overlooking the water’s edge are dozens of bars and restaurants, including a select few where most of Britain’s old-style gangsters still hang out to this day. Bernie is one of the most familiar old ‘faces’ on the Costa del Sol and he told me that today’s up-and-coming young hoods are in danger of turning this infamous strip of coastline into an underworld no-go area.

‘It’s all got completely fuckin’ out of hand in recent years,’ explained Bernie, sucking on a king-size cigar and a vodka and tonic. ‘The youngsters who are coming through the ranks now are complete and utter psychos. It’s bedlam out there and a lot of innocent people are being knocked off for no good reason.’

Bernie, now in his late sixties, is still looked on by the younger British criminals as one of the few ‘real’ British villains in southern Spain. ‘I get a lot of respect out here because I’ve got form,’ explained Bernie. And by ‘form’ he means he’s been in prison for killing a criminal rival and also took part in one of London’s most notorious bank robberies more than a quarter of a century ago.

Bernie admits that he still ‘works’ from time to time and boasts that he’s free to move around the coast without fear of retribution from rival gangsters. ‘In fact some of the so-called new boys come to me for advice,’ said Bernie between puffs on his fat cigar.

‘I’ve been here for more than 20 years and when I saw some of these foreign crims turning up here a few years back, I told my mates in the ‘business’ to watch out because some of these characters are fuckin’ nutters.’ Bernie claims he’s even carefully nurtured some of the biggest new names on the Costa del Sol.

‘I went in to see them all and told them what I liked to do out here and how I didn’t expect any of them to interfere with my operations. It’s funny because all the other Brits out here said I was barking mad but I reckon it’s paid off handsomely. I really do.’

When I met Bernie at his favourite watering hole overlooking the yachts and sports cars in the marina at Puerto Banus, he claimed he’d just come from a meeting with a man who represented one of the richest oligarchs in Russia. ‘He’s on the make like all the rest of them,’ explained Bernie, who was wearing the obligatory white trousers and white shoes that were all the rage back in the opulent eighties. Bernie had met the Russian billionaire at the swish Marbella Club, just up the road from Puerto Banus and a renowned location for passing rock stars and royalty.

Besides the thick-set gold necklace around his neck, Bernie also had a Bobby Charlton-style sweep of the remainder of his suspiciously chestnut-tinted hair across his bald pate. In some ways he looked like an extra from the hit TV show Life On Mars. The bar we were talking in was decked out in garish swirled wallpaper and looked as if it hadn’t had a lick of paint since Bernie had bought himself those flashy white winkle-pickers during the reign of Margaret Thatcher.

As we were talking, a beautiful brunette Latino woman in tight jeans glanced across at Bernie and smiled. He winked back and then continued with his overview of the gang wars raging on the Costa del Sol. ‘It’s changing out here all the time. A lot of the older Brits have moved to Thailand and Costa Rica and places like that because it’s too fuckin’ crowded here these days.’

But how come, if that was the case, Bernie hung on here? ‘I’m above all these shoot-ups and shit like that. I’ve been bedded down here for so long I wouldn’t know how to survive anywhere else.’ And survival is the key word here. For Bernie seemed to have an ability to duck and dive his way out of trouble.

He recalled: ‘About a year ago this bunch of Poles turned up in the port (Puerto Banus) and started giving it large in all directions. They bought themselves a flash yacht, a couple of Mercedes and a load of hookers and gave the impression they were made men. Well, if there’s one thing the Russians don’t like it’s a Pole. When they heard about this gang they made it their business to run them out of town. It was a right bloody massacre in the end. The Russians employ these fruitcake Latvian ex-paratroopers as bodyguards and for general security and they abseiled on to the yacht one night, sprayed it with bullets and then left a couple of firebombs behind for good measure. The Poles got the message and were never seen again.’

Bernie makes light of it all but there is a serious point to what he is saying. ‘I take the attitude that I can sit back and let them all wipe each other out. Then once the dust has settled I’ll stroll back into the limelight.’ Bernie says his main priority is to make sure his face doesn’t end up looking like he’s been through a car crash.

Saturday night in Puerto Banus still brings out all the remaining British gangsters. Many of them watch the footie on the telly in a couple of select bars. Then, as evening draws in, they pull out their sachets of cocaine and start getting hyped up. As darkness falls and the chemicals kick in, many of the gang bosses flex their muscles a bit and look around to see who’s watching them. The atmosphere is akin to a scene from Goodfellas, with coked-up little characters who look a bit like Joe Pesci marching up and down to the gents to replenish their hits of white powder.

Sergi is a Ukrainian ‘businessman’ who has lived on the Costa del Sol for three years. I was introduced to him by one of the British old-timers one Saturday night in a badly lit bar in Puerto Banus. ‘The trouble with you British is that you drink too much and you take too much cocaine,’ said Sergi. His British mate sitting next to him laughed so loudly it sounded completely false. ‘Where I come from we can hold our drink and we don’t take drugs because then we are not in control.’

I soon found out why Sergi was the only non-British man in the bar that night. It turned out that he employed more than 20 Brits for his ‘businesses.’ I was intrigued as to why he did that. ‘Oh I like the British way of life. The loyalty. The humour. I don’t trust my countrymen, especially when they are out here. They would kill you as soon as look at you if you had something they wanted.’

Sergi then went on to provide a fascinating insight into the criminal hierarchy on the Costa del Sol and why the gang wars could eventually implode this whole area. ‘It’s just too easy here to run businesses like mine.’ I stopped him there and asked what his ‘businesses’ were? Sergi smiled and looked me straight in the eye. ‘They are very profitable. That is all you need to know.’

He continued: ‘Sometimes I have to make an example of my enemies. I don’t like doing it but in the long term it helps stop a lot of what I will call “unfortunate incidents”.’ Sergi refused to be drawn on exactly what action he had taken but suffice to say it must have resulted in someone being physically harmed.

Surely, I asked, the police are a problem? ‘It’s like my country in that respect,’ said Sergi. ‘The police can be bought. They are badly paid and grateful for anything I can offer them.’ Sergi claims that one policeman even asked if he could work for him part-time while continuing to serve in Marbella’s Policía Nacional. ‘I wasn’t surprised. He’d just got divorced and needed to earn more money in order to pay off his ex-wife. We all have these problems.’

Sergi said the local police tolerate the activities of the gangs on the Costa del Sol because there is little else they can do. ‘They don’t have the manpower or the resources to investigate every single crime,’ explained Sergi. ‘It’s almost as if they are happy for us to continue bringing money into the economy because it means a better life for everyone down here. They need us here. It’s been like this for so long the whole place would collapse if criminals were not operating here.’ Sergi was very careful not to include himself when he used the word ‘criminals’.

Most gangs down here on the Costa del Sol are involved in drugs, prostitution, robbery and fraud. Yet Sergi had a fair point. The more successful the criminal and the more people he or she employed, the more money generated for the local economy. It’s the biggest irony of life in southern Spain.

As it became increasingly clear when I met these gangsters that I was trying to present a warts-and-all look at the underworld in Spain, I was granted an audience with one of the most feared British gangsters of all time, who had resided in the Costa del Sol for three years.

We’ll call him ‘Stan’ because even if I used only his real Christian name, every other criminal would know precisely who I was talking about. ‘Stan’ is a member of one of the UK’s most famous criminal families. He had heard about my efforts to write this book and wanted to ‘get a few things straight’.

Stan might have been in his mid-sixties but he stood ramrod straight and spoke with a soft voice that seemed to underline his hardness in a twisted way. He wasn’t massive by any means but he had the darkest eyes I have ever encountered. They were matt black cesspools with not a flicker of emotion in them.

Stan knew all the players on the Costa del Crime and I suspected he was still operating with impunity along the entire coastline. Yet he seemed very relaxed as we spoke in a Spanish restaurant situated far away from the usual criminal haunts. Earlier he’d rolled into the car park driving a brand new Spanish-registered Range Rover.

‘I don’t like those hooker joints full of coked-up villains,’ Stan told me. ‘I appreciate Spain for what it really is: a wonderful, diverse place full of easy-going pleasant people who enjoy a rich, good lifestyle compared to all the miserable sods back in Blighty.’

With Stan I felt I was in the company of someone very menacing, but he had this ability to make it all sound so normal. ‘Look. I ain’t no angel but I’ve run a very successful group of businesses down the years and a lot of people have got very rich off the back of me.’

Leaning forward, Stan clocked me long and hard for a few moments and then just like the managing director of crime that he was, he tried to put me at my ease. ‘Listen. I know where I come from. I know that certain things have had to be done to ensure my businesses are kept afloat but we are in troubled times now and we all need to be more sensible.’

It dawned on me that Stan was hoping to use me to send out a message to his criminal rivals to stay calm and avoid the very gang wars this book is highlighting. I couldn’t help feeling it was all a little bit late for that. Stan must have guessed my intentions because he went on, ‘I know you’re going to write about all the killings and the mischief and the drugs and all that stuff. There’s no denying this place is a cesspit in that respect but we have to survive don’t we?’

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that one. After all, what rights did a multimillionaire hood whose fortune was based on illegal drugs have to survive? But I didn’t take Stan up on that point. Instead I asked him about the current situation and who was likely to suffer the most.

‘It’s the Brits who are taking the most knocks. No doubt about it. A lot of these characters are getting on now and we all come from a time when business was business but you never overlapped into people’s normal lives. We considered ourselves soldiers.

‘If one of us got killed because of a deal that went pear-shaped, then that was the way it was. It’s the risk we’ve all taken down the years. Sure it’s sad when anyone dies but if you are a soldier then you have to deal with that sort of stuff. But today it’s different – the up-and-coming youngsters are causing chaos and we’re all suffering as a result.’

Stan cited a classic example a couple of years ago when an Irish criminal and his family were targeted by a hit squad after a drugs deal went wrong. ‘That was fucking outrageous,’ said Stan. ‘I heard this bloke was in trouble with a mob of eastern Europeans and they went after him, but to target his wife and kids as well. That’s out of order. What is the world coming to when that sort of thing happens?’

Stan admitted that back in Britain, foreign gangs have not made such a terrifying impression on the home-grown criminals. ‘I hate to say it but the coppers are smarter back in the UK and that’s made it harder for these foreign bastards to get a toehold. The cops out here are fucking useless. It’s worked to our advantage for years but now we’re paying the price for it.’ And none of this was said with even a hint of irony.

Stan told me all about what he calls ‘the real fuckin’ underworld’ that exists on the Costa del Sol. ‘I came here a few years back because I knew I could run everything from here with a lot less hassle. At first it was fine. Some of the foreigners popped up now and again but I made sure they realised I was running my own outfit and by and large they left me alone.’

But, says Stan, a new desperation has crept into the criminal atmosphere these days. ‘The middle-of-the-road fellas are making fuck-all money now. Before, they could make a quick drugs deal, buy a house for cash and turn it around for a healthy profit and no one was the wiser. But the recession kicked off here way before it hit the UK and that’s changed all the rules.’

‘What do you mean by the rules?’ I asked.

Stan narrowed his eyes. ‘They’ve got too fuckin’ desperate and they’re running around in circles. That’s why there’s so much bloodshed out here these days. There’s no money for anything any more and no one wants to share the profits, either. Do you know, the other day one of my oldest mates out here was almost topped just because some Bulgarian fucker decided he wouldn’t share the profits from a deal even though they’d been doing that sort of business together for years.’

Stan continued: ‘It’s like a great big spider’s web out here and if you get caught up in it there is no escape. I’ve still got most people’s respect out here because my reputation is well known but I stay out of the web deliberately. That’s why I’m meeting you here in an ordinary Spanish restaurant off the beaten track. Those mugs down in the port are asking for trouble. They’re rubbing people’s noses in it and that’s when the trouble starts.’

‘But,’ I pressed, ‘who is running things out here these days?’ Stan took one of his customary deep breaths and continued: ‘You just wouldn’t believe some of the characters pulling strings out here these days. There are two fellas whose names appear in the papers all the time as billionaires and they’re probably cleaning up two thirds of all the “business” out here. It’s bloody outrageous but there’s no point taking them on because they are more powerful than anyone you’ve ever come across.’

Stan then proceeded to name these two ‘kingpins’ and I was stunned because they are both supposedly responsible law-abiding businessmen back in their home country. ‘These blokes have got whole governments in their pockets. When the Spanish elected a new left-wing government a couple of years back, I presumed these two characters would quieten down a bit. Far from it. They just chucked some huge bucks in the direction of a few officials in the new government and next thing you know they’re back to running things down here.’

Stan admits he keeps a low profile here on the Costa del Sol these days but that doesn’t mean he is no longer a very powerful force to be reckoned with. ‘They know who I am and I know who they are. Let’s just leave it at that shall we?’ I didn’t argue.

Speaking with the kind of chilling focus that could halt a Chieftain tank on a battlefield, Stan went on to tell me his fears for the future of the Costa del Sol. His face creased up with seriousness as he went on: ‘The bloodbath is going to get worse. These trigger-happy youngsters don’t seem to have a fear of death like we did. It’s all live for today because we might be gone by tomorrow stuff. But it’s stupid and short-sighted because the harder it is to operate, the less produce gets out there, which means demand falls and in the end it’ll all collapse.’

The scariest thing about Stan was not his menacing smile or his shark-dead eyes. No, it was the way he sounded so in control of his emotions. It was as if he was saying he had already stepped back from the bedlam and was going to watch all the rest of the underworld obliterate itself.

Meanwhile, on the Costa del Sol the restaurants and bars and clubs that used to be thriving are all empty most of the time or closed down permanently. I kept noticing how much deader the atmosphere was than even just a few years back when everyone seemed to be soaking up the sunshine of a never-ending economic boom.

Stan reckoned he had seen it all before and issued the following stark warning: ‘Crime thrives during recessions but the trouble is that there are all these desperate characters out there with no money and no idea how to work properly. They’re going to start nicking the ‘work’ off other smaller operators and then World War Three will break out. God help us.

‘They’re all living in these gated communities in order to stop others from robbing them but they’re the ones being robbed blind by the banks and mortgage brokers. The perfect life they thought they could find here no longer exists.’