They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

55 26 September 2011

The ferry back to Jersey from Poole takes four hours. And four hours is a long time when you’ve got a kid sitting next to you who keeps wanting to play throaty lion roars at full volume on his games console.

I made the mistake of downloading the sounds for him. Angry lion roars, hungry lion roars, attacking lion roars. He thinks they are really funny and keeps giggling, but no one else sitting around us on this packed seating area at the front of the Condor Liberation is particularly amused. Each time he pulls his headphones plug out of the side of the player pretty much the whole ferry gets treated to the sounds.

But that’s the least of my problems at this moment. I have a much bigger one. Which is that it didn’t go too well at the casino three nights ago. Nor did it go too well two nights ago. Nor last night.

Not well at all.

In fact, that’s really a bit of an understatement.

It would have quite suited me not to return to Jersey at all — today, at least. Instead I would have preferred to stay on and try to recoup my losses, but Nicos needs me — and the money — back urgently. Today. Not tomorrow, today. Late tonight he has a rendezvous several miles out to sea with another boat for this big deal — his biggest deal ever — and the calm weather is about to change. Tonight is the window, the tide is right and the forecast is calm seas. Tomorrow night a force seven, gusting nine, is forecast. A heavy sea for two boats to meet alongside mid-ocean without real danger. It would have to be tonight.

Of course I don’t tell Nicos over the phone of the major problem I have. And I’m relying on the fact that I will delay our return by enough time that if Nicos starts checking the money, he’s going to be in a very big rush, too concerned with heading out to sea for his rendezvous to count every single banknote.

I’m really relying on that quite a lot. But I have some distraction ideas in case I need to use them.

I’m well aware of the calibre of people he is having his offshore rendezvous with. The reputation of the gang headed by Saul Brignell, which controls, if the press is to be relied on, up to a quarter of all heroin to the south-west region of the British Isles.

And Nicos is relying on me to have collected the £1.2 million they will be waiting for, forty-four nautical miles north-west of Jersey, at midnight. He has a cunning plan that he told me about before I left for England. The drugs will be wrapped in waterproof packaging. After he loads them onto his boat, he will only travel a couple of miles back towards Jersey, then he will drop them into the ocean, at five different points, each marked with a small red buoy — the same ones the local lobster fishermen use.

Then over the next week, he will accompany a bent local fisherman, called Adam le Seelleur, to haul up each package in turn and bring them back to shore along with the rest of his catch.

So smart, so cunning.

But my plan is even more cunning.