Hash by Wensley Clarkson Read Free Book Online Page B

not to fuck us around and now the silly bastards have got off their heads.’
    ‘But Leff is your contact,’ I asked. ‘I don’t want to upset him for that reason.’
    ‘Bollocks,’ says Si. ‘I haven’t done business with those two clowns in years. Let’s just fuck off.’
    So we opt for the Straits of Gibraltar and head off at high speed in the Land Cruiser for the port of Tangier, three hours west of Ketama. Within an hour of setting off, a call from Leff comes through on my mobile. I look at the screen and listen to it ringing but decide not to answer.
    Si laughs alongside me as we pick up speed on the first stretch of dual carriageway we have seen for more than a hundred miles. ‘Typical, greedy bastards,’ he says. ‘Serves ’em right. You know what they say? Don’t get high on your own supply.’
    I listen to the message from Leff on my phone.
    ‘
You motherfucker English asshole. We want money and if we don’t get it we will shoot your fuckin’ balls off. D’you understand? I will come and find you in London and rape your wife and kidnap your children if you do not pay us. I will call back in ten minutes. If you do not pick up the phone you are a dead man
.’
    The phone rings exactly ten minutes later. This time I pick it up and then switch it off immediately. I know full well we are probably two hours ahead of this hapless pair of Tangier dopehead gangsters.
    Then Si announces: ‘They know we’re catching a ferry.’
    ‘Good point.’
    ‘Hope it leaves on time.’
    The next time I switch on the phone again is when the ferry is pulling away from the port-side of Tangier’s newly built passenger terminal, as it sets sail for Algeciras. There are twenty-three messages from Leff awaiting my attention. Most of them feature threats to kill my wife, children, mother,father and promising to ‘hunt’ me down in London and throw my body in the River Thames. Sitting in the ship’s restaurant, Si listens to the messages with a broad grin on his face.
    ‘They fucked up. Not us. Leff will calm down. I’ll talk to him in a few days.’
    Just then I look out of the porthole and notice a familiar looking flatbed truck travelling at high speed across the deserted car park in front of the ferry disembarkation spot. It screeches to a halt. I can just make out Leff and Fara jumping out and running to the water’s edge as the ferry steams slowly between the gap in the harbour wall while making its way out into the Strait of Gibraltar.
    ‘Stupid little bastards,’ says Si, drily. ‘They’ll calm down eventually. The one thing I learned about Moroccans when I was in jail was that they don’t hold grudges. In the end they’ll respect us for doing a runner. They’ve only got themselves to blame, haven’t they?’
    I was tempted to ask Si whether he thought their threats to visit London and my family were serious but decided not to tempt fate.
    As the ferry made its way slowly across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, I flipped open my research notebook and began reading up on my next interviewee – a shadowy character called Zaid.

PART TWO
SPAIN – THE HASH FRONTIER
    The market for hash continues to grow in Europe, where it’s reckoned that one in five adults have used marijuana or hashish. The European Union’s drug agency produced a 700-page report on the use and abuse of cannabis and established that more than 13 million hash smokers use the drug every month in Europe.

    *
    Just across a 7.7 nautical mile stretch of water from Morocco lies Spain, which has a hash consumption epidemic on its hands. The Spanish make more seizures of the drug than all other European countries put together but nothing, it seems, can stem the tide of hash flowing across the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco.
    Vast shipments arrive from North Africa virtually every day and the traffickers are always coming up with new methods of smuggling. One of the latest techniques is for gangs to drop loads of hash fitted