Читать книгу Gang Wars on the Costa - The True Story of the Bloody Conflict Raging in Paradise - Wensley Clarkson - Страница 7

HE PULLED THE matt-black Glock automatic out of the glove compartment of the rental BMW and pointed it straight at me, and then a broad smile came over his horribly scarred face. ‘This is my favourite toy. With this no one fucks with me. I am the king.’ Jimmy’s 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 shooter’s finger on the trigger, and Jimmy was literally stroking it as he held it up in my direction.

But I could hardly complain. Liverpool gangster Jimmy had taken time out to talk me about the activities of his gang and many of his rivals on the Costa del Sol. The British boys had been given a right hammering by the eastern Europeans on the Costa del Crime in recent weeks. Waving that Glock in my face was part of Jimmy’s chilling ‘performance’ as a criminal face. But it’s that very ‘performance’ by so many criminals now based in Spain that is costing hundreds of people their lives every year. As I discovered travelling the length and breadth of this beautiful country, these gangs murder their rivals because it’s part of their business. A well-publicised killing sends out a message to competitors not to overstep the mark. In a sense, it’s highly effective PR. And right in the middle of all this murder and mayhem are a lot of Brits like Jimmy.

It was while making a TV documentary with Jimmy about crime in Spain that I came up with the idea for this book. His cold-blooded attitude and the way he has thrived in the all-year-round heat of southern Spain seemed indicative of the way that criminals have flourished in the country for the past 30 years. It’s as if it’s still the same safe haven it once was. Yet extradition is an everyday occurrence in Spain today, although criminals from all over the world still make it their base because it’s easier to operate with impunity in Spain than anywhere else in Europe. It also happens to be the gateway to Africa and South America, sources for 90 per cent of all the drugs that flood Europe every day.

Jimmy operates on the 20-mile strip of coastline between Fuengirola and Marbella. Drugs and prostitution are his main source of income. Narcotics alone are a massive billion-dollar industry in this area. There is a vicious turf war going on between gangs of criminals from the UK, South America, eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. It’s a war that began back in the so-called ‘good old days’ of the seventies and early eighties, when British villains fled to Spain to avoid extradition.

Muscular and physically extremely fit, Jimmy had the name of a girlfriend tattooed on his left hand. His dark mop of hair and young-looking face belied his 39 years. And despite waving that gun at me earlier, he seemed to have an easy-going manner. He spoke English and Spanish but talked about murdering people as if it was as normal as eating scrambled eggs for breakfast. If he hadn’t become a criminal, he told me, he’d probably have been an accountant. His own brother was one. Although he did later let slip that another brother back in Toxteth was a hitman, who occasionally flew over to Spain to carry out jobs for his gang.

Jimmy lived in a penthouse apartment close to the centre of Marbella, overlooking the stunning promenade. Even during the current property price meltdown, it had to be worth half a million pounds. Jimmy had at least a hundred grand’s worth of gold jewellery on his fingers and around his neck. He drove rented BMWs, he explained, because he liked to change cars every couple of weeks for ‘security reasons’. Jimmy claimed he’d been stabbed five times, which was why he always carried a gun. He had a four-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 insisted he’d rather commit suicide than ever go back to jail. He made a point of sliding the tip of his own forefinger across his neck to emphasise the point. Then he lifted up the Polo shirt he wore to show me four scars across his stomach. On one occasion, he explained to me in a very cool fashion, he’d lost four pints of blood and almost had his liver punctured. ‘They wanted me dead,’ he explained. ‘Who?’ I asked calmly. ‘The fuckin’ Russians,’ he spat. ‘I hate them more than other race in the world. They are evil.’ Coming from this man it sounded almost incredulous that he could consider other people to be even more evil than himself.

Jimmy was without doubt one of the coldest people I have ever met. But then his coldness probably helped get him through the riskier aspects of his dangerous ‘profession’. He never seemed fazed by anything and remained totally focused throughout our meeting. But as we walked along the promenade near his home, his eyes darted up to examine every single face going past us. He never seemed to lose concentration. Even as he talked to me he was actively looking in all directions, just in case anyone tried to have a pop at him.

While I was interviewing Jimmy, his Romanian girlfriend Sasha turned up at the penthouse. She seemed flustered and worried about Jimmy and kept fussing around him. I could see he was getting irritated 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,’ he said. ‘If I find out who she’s fuckin’, I’ll slit his throat.’ Moments later, he returned to his favourite subject – himself.

Jimmy was just one of many criminals I encountered while writing this book but he is undoubtedly a classic example of the crime outbreak that is sweeping the coastlines of Spain. As a veteran true-crime writer, I have come across many notorious gangsters in the past, but what makes Jimmy so important is that he represents a complete sea change in the way villains operate in Spain. These evil, cold-blooded characters take no prisoners. They shoot to kill in a way that has even terrified some of the most infamous British villains of the past. Those old boys of crime say the rules have changed. Women, children and so-called ‘civilians’ are no longer off-limits to these ruthless characters.

I was deeply perturbed by what I witnessed in Spain during my research into this book. But in order to unravel the truth about this disturbing crime wave, I have had to delve deep into the underworld at considerable personal risk. I am fascinated by how the criminals seem to thrive right under the noses of the police. I’ve even been inside some of Spain’s prisons, where conditions are appalling even when compared to the oldest British jails. I’ve spent countless hours with killers, drug barons, pimps, child prostitution dealers, counterfeiters, con men and bank robbers. At times I have been threatened, and what I’ve witnessed has deeply disturbed me, but sometimes I have found myself sharing a beer and a joke with people like the hitman responsible for the deaths of dozens of people who admitted he didn’t sleep well at night. This book doesn’t set out to answer any questions. It simply lays out the facts and asks you, the reader, to take a journey inside this frightening world. Crime gangs are not a new problem, but their membership does seem to be on the increase, especially in Spain.

I have travelled to all the coastlines, and the holiday islands, of this complex nation and discovered types of criminals I never thought existed. I hope that this book will at least provide you with an insight into a criminal phenomenon that seems to thrive right in the heart of a country visited by more Brits than any other nation on earth and lived in by more than half a million other former-UK residents.