I explained that I had made arrangements with someone in Colombia to package the drugs and then have the tent delivered to me in Quito. From there, I said, I intended to transport it back to mainland Europe rather than Britain. I said this in an attempt to throw into doubt the case in England, which alleged I was transporting drugs to Britain. I stated, which was the truth, that Nicky had no idea what was happening and that she was an innocent bystander with a young daughter who was now without her mother. I reiterated that she had only been in Ecuador for a few hours, during which time she hadn’t met anybody apart from me. She hadn’t been anywhere apart from the hotel and restaurant so how could she be guilty?
Eva reassured me that would be sufficient to clear Nicky, along with about $20,000 plus $5,000 for Eva’s own work. I agreed to the figure and said I would make arrangements to get the money transferred over as soon as possible. We parted company and I was taken back to the prison. I was led up to the main entrance, where I paused for my last breath of fresh air for a while.
It took a couple more months of negotiations and organising money transfers for everything to be set. Eva promised us that she had made all the arrangements for Nicky’s release. We were awaiting a date for the hearing at which the fiscal would present his evidence and say who was to be charged and who not. At this point, Nicky would be released and all charges against her dismissed.
Nicky was now much more relaxed. She could see the end in sight. We started looking at flights and informed the embassy that she would be released soon. I had paid a fee to the airline on a couple of occasions to change the return date on Nicky’s original booking so that it would not be wasted, as it had cost nearly £2,000. I asked Eva to try to find her a nice apartment in the old part of Quito, where she could stay following her release until all her papers were sorted out. She would need a new passport and various other documents before she would be able to leave Ecuador.
At last a date was set for the first hearing. Some four months had now passed and we were almost in a new year. The anticipation was building and I was feeling nervous and stressed. Nicky was insisting on going back to England.
‘I have to go back, Pete,’ she said. ‘Emily is alone there staying with my parents. She needs her mum and I’m desperate to see her. I can’t handle this much longer.’ Nicky was almost in tears, the strain showing on her face.
‘I’m really worried that if you return to England the police are going to arrest you and try to convict you,’ I said.
‘But I’m bloody innocent!’ she cried out. ‘It wasn’t fucking me who was smuggling kilos and bloody kilos of that shit was it? It was you! I don’t have anything to do with this apart from being your bloody girlfriend.’
I looked into her eyes and could see the anger and distress swirling round in them.
‘Nicky, the police in England will arrest you exactly because you are my girlfriend. They know you are innocent but they don’t care. They will have a go at you just to hurt me because they can’t get to me here.’
I was extremely worried about what was going to happen upon Nicky’s arrival back in the UK. A couple of officers from SOCA – the Serious Organised Crime Agency – had travelled out to Ecuador to collect evidence and take DNA samples from me. They told me that it didn’t matter where she went – Spain or France or wherever – they would pursue and arrest her and make her stand trial in England. It was clear they were gunning for her and fully intended to arrest and prosecute her upon her return.
Nicky wouldn’t believe me and kept saying, ‘I’m innocent, I haven’t done anything and I’m a mother with a young daughter. They won’t arrest me.’
‘The police don’t care about that,’ I said. ‘They would arrest you just to get at me out of spite and to bolster their statistics.’
I pleaded with her to fly instead to Barcelona, where a good friend of mine had agreed to her using his beachfront apartment. I said I would have Emily flown over to Spain and they could wait and see exactly what happened with the case in Britain before deciding whether or not she should return. At least if she was in Spain and the British police came looking for her they would first have to find her before attempting to extradite her. But she was insistent on going back to Britain and just couldn’t believe the police were interested in her.
On the day of the first hearing, I was collected by a guard early in the morning and taken to a holding cell while they gathered up all the people to be transported to the courts on that day. At this hearing there were three judges, similar to a magistrate’s court in England. Nicky was already there with Eva and Martha the interpreter. It was very emotional, seeing Nicky for the first time in several months. She hadn’t changed a great deal apart from having a tan and even fairer hair where the sun had bleached it blonde. We got to give each other a long-awaited hug, then had to sit apart while the hearing got under way. Nicky looked drawn with anxiety. God, I hoped nothing would go wrong at the last moment; she would be devastated, as would I.
The fiscal ran through the evidence and, as agreed, announced that they were not going to prosecute Nicky due to a lack of evidence. She didn’t understand what had happened at first, but I explained it to her, as she was sat at the table next to mine, and she broke down in tears. She was asking if she was going to be released that very same day as one would be in an English court. Unfortunately not here; you had to go back to the prison until the paperwork was completed and an order of release document called a boleta de libertad was sent out to the prison. This was supposed to take no more than 48 hours by law, but often took longer. Eva said she would do her utmost to ensure it took no more than a day for Nicky to be released. I thanked her profusely for her efforts and got to give Nicky one last hug before we all left the courtroom. I was so relieved that she was going free and would be reunited with Emily very soon. I was however still very worried by her decision to fly straight back to Britain without even consulting a solicitor.
Eva was as good as her word and a day later Nicky walked free from the women’s prison.
The very next visit day at Garcia Moreno, Nicky arrived and we were reunited properly for the first time in nearly six months. It was very emotional, with both of us in tears while hugging each other. I had rented out a cell on the top floor for the day; it belonged to Jean’s Serbian friend Dragan. It was great to be able to shut the door on the prison and spend a few hours in Nicky’s company, making love, talking and just relaxing. Now I knew that Nicky was free, all the tension that had built up in me over the previous months seemed to dissipate and for that day I felt at peace.
That peace was shattered at around 4.30pm when the bell downstairs rang to signal that the visit was drawing to a close. All visitors had to have left the prison by 5pm. If not, the police would sometimes cause problems and impose fines on those who were late leaving. If you didn’t pay the fine you too could find yourself locked up for the night in the police cells. The police would also sometimes mount a surprise inspection of passports and IDs used to get into the prison, to try to catch people with fake documents or without a visa.
Over the next few weeks, Nicky came in to see me nearly every visit day. Every other Saturday she was able to stay with me overnight in the cell, which was something we both looked forward to very much. She would come in early in the morning, bringing a couple of bags of food shopping. We would then spend until 5pm on Sunday chatting, making love, eating, drinking, watching films and generally having an indulgent time together.
Then Nicky’s documents were sorted and she found a flight home, via Holland. I knew that things between me and Nicky had changed as a result of our experiences, and I knew the consequences for both her and her daughter’s futures. She had had enough and I couldn’t blame her. She hadn’t ever become particularly angry with me. She could see I had done everything possible to make sure she went free. I spent a large sum of money to guarantee she was released and had also taken full responsibility for the drugs. She knew I was going to be locked up for many years
to come. I was in Ecuador, 5,000 miles from Britain, which meant there would be no contact in the form of visits – or anything much else for that matter. I knew that when she left that was going to be the end of our relationship. I was sad but I had to face the reality of my situation and hers.
We said our farewells the last time she visited. She was ecstatic to be leaving the country where she had been imprisoned for over six months of her life. She had only spent a handful of hours as a free person prior to her arrest on 16 August 2005, a day none of us will ever be able to forget, and finally left just prior to my birthday towards the end of February 2006. But she was also leaving me. I walked her down to the gate at the entrance of the wing, gave her one last hug and watched as she disappeared round the corner. I struggled to hold back my tears until I reached my room, where I sat and wept, engulfed by the sadness and loneliness. My partner, friend and lover was gone.
A week or so after Nicky’s departure from Ecuador I received an urgent message from María, who’d shared a cell with Nicky and was still locked up in the women’s prison.
‘Interpol have been to the prison looking for Nicky. They have been questioning some of her friends in the prison asking if they know her whereabouts. There is an international arrest warrant for her and they are trying to locate her urgently. Apparently she should never have been released. Please warn her and wish her luck.’
This was bad; this was really, really bad.
I picked the phone up and dialled Nicky’s new English mobile number and she answered: ‘Hi there, how are you?’
‘I’m OK but I think you are about to have a problem there. I knew it was a bad idea you going back to England. Interpol have been to the women’s prison here looking for you with an international arrest warrant.’
‘Fuck, oh no! Shit, what am I going to do? They can’t arrest me! I’m innocent, it was you who was being a prick drug smuggling. Fuck. I can’t go to prison – what about Emily?’ She was starting to panic. ‘Surely they would have arrested me as soon as I arrived in the country?’
‘I don’t know Nicky. Look, the offer of going to Spain is still there. Pack some bags quickly and leave the country with Emily. Drive to Barcelona and my friends will take care of you there. If you’re lucky they won’t stop you.’
‘I can’t just go like that,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they will arrest me. I’m a mum with a young daughter and, anyway, I’ve just spent nearly six months in prison there – surely they aren’t going to lock me up again here.’
‘Please be careful Nicky. I just managed to get you out of prison here, I won’t be able to do the same there. Think about what you are doing. If you need any help call me. I have a very good lawyer in London who can represent you if needs be. Just make sure you call me.’
‘OK I will do if I need to but I don’t think I will. Speak to you soon. Bye.’
With that she was gone. She never did call me and shortly afterwards the British police came knocking and arrested her. She was charged along with a couple of other people with conspiracy to import over 80kg of cocaine over a two-year period from 2003 to 2005. The police alleged that I was the mastermind behind the whole plot. Nicky was released on bail to await trial at a later date. It was quite some time before the trial took place in Britain so I had to wait and wonder what was going to happen.
CHAPTER TEN
SENTENCIA
SHORTLY AFTER THE first audiencia, where Nicky was found to be innocent of all charges after having spent six months in prison, a flustered Eva contacted me. She had received a document with the date of my second hearing, which in effect was to be my trial. It was only two weeks away. Now that I had entered a guilty plea and taken full responsibility for the 7.8kg of cocaine (which was actually only 2kg), this was to be a sentencing hearing. Eva explained that in her entire career she had never seen a sentencing hearing take place so quickly. She had gone to the court to find out what was going on and had been told that the British authorities had contacted the Ecuadorian government and put pressure on them to sentence me quickly so that I didn’t have time to organise any proper defence or mitigation.
At the first hearing Eva and I had formulated a strategy to try to minimise the sentence, but it was reliant on me getting documents from England and having them notarised by the embassy in Quito. All this was going to take time. Luckily my friends were already dashing about getting statements and other papers prepared, and Eva had already negotiated with the judges how long my sentence would be and how much this would cost me. SOCA had sent a document to the Ecuadorian police and prosecutor’s office, which Eva had acquired a copy of, requesting that I be sentenced to the maximum under Ecuadorian law – 25 years.
The justification they gave for requesting such a lengthy prison term was the ongoing conspiracy case in Britain, plus my criminal record. The British police were accusing me of being the mastermind behind a smuggling operation bringing cocaine into Britain impregnated into the rubber groundsheets of camping equipment such as tents. They were alleging that over a two-year period I, along with several others, had brought over 80kg of cocaine into Britain in this form.
Following the Edinburgh raid, the police had uncovered a number of small laboratories in residential properties where they said we were extracting the cocaine from the rubber using various chemicals. Because I already had a criminal record for drugs, they wanted to give me an extremely high sentence of at least 20 years! Everyone I had asked about whether or not my criminal record would be taken into account here by the judges had said no; that was England and this was Ecuador. I had hoped to be treated as a firsttime offender in Ecuador as I had no history there. Alas, this hope was to be in vain.
When I was arrested in May 2000 in England and charged with possession with intent to supply 5,000 ecstasy pills, 2 kilos of base amphetamine, 5 kilos of hashish and 5 kilos of weed, plus a couple of ounces of coke and a sawn-off shotgun, I had got off lightly on account of it being a first offence, as well as my good background and references from some well-respected people in the community.
That doesn’t mean I was treated easy – I wasn’t. I spent nearly two years on remand awaiting sentence and the first year of that as the only category A prisoner in the whole of Gloucester Prison. They had me ‘on the book’, which means they note your whereabouts every 15–30 minutes, 24 hours a day. This means that all through the night they come and open the observation window in your door, and turn the bloody light on, to make sure you haven’t escaped. I would get strip-searched nearly every day, sometimes by female officers. My cell would be ripped to pieces nearly as frequently and all my calls were recorded. I wasn’t allowed phone cards, all my letters were opened, copied and sent to the police and some of them I never even received. My visits were behind a glass screen, and to begin with, always with a senior officer sitting next to me monitoring everything.
Having finally received my sentence of five years, where did I get sent but to Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight? At the time, it was one of Britain’s hardest and most secure prisons. They ghosted me there, which means they made a surprise transfer, on Valentine’s Day. They wouldn’t let me call anyone before I was moved, so Nicky, who was my girlfriend back then, arrived at Gloucester prison for a Valentine’s Day visit only to find I had been transferred that very morning to an island in the English Channel!
Back in Ecuador, the British police were doing everything they could to cause me problems. The way they had worded my criminal record, it came across as though I had been in prison 13 times because of there being 13 counts for drugs offences. It was presented in such a way as to make me look like Pablo Escobar.
Even though Eva had negotiated with the judges it made their job difficult as they would be hard pushed to justify a low sentence. I thought they were going to go back on their deal then and there. When I realised this I felt faint and nearly passed out. I turned pale and was shaking. There would be no parole or remission because in Ecuador all these laws were suspended indef
initely. They did give you one month off per year spent in prison, so I calculated that I would have to serve 23 years. Twenty-three years. Fuck! I would be 52 years old when I got released. I hadn’t even been 30 when I was arrested. There was no way I could allow this to happen.
In order for the judges to reduce this to 12 years I was going to have to make a hefty payment, but they also needed some sort of documentation from me to be able to justify it. On the other hand, I knew that if I was given a sentence of less than ten years then the British police would call for my extradition to Britain, where they intended to give me 20 years, if not more. So I had to ensure the judges didn’t give me less than ten; but also no more than 12 years. I actually had to say to them, ‘Please don’t give me less than ten years – if you do the British police are going to extradite me to be recharged and sentenced in Britain.’
I hoped that with enough money and the right contacts anything was possible. I certainly didn’t intend to serve the full 12-year sentence. The plan was to wait for attention on the case to die down post-sentencing, then, once a year or so had passed, appeal and pay to have it halved to six.
That’s where my friends came in. Luckily, being the great friends they are, they got the documents required by the judges to Eva in good time and she was able to take them to the British embassy, who I paid to countersign and notarise them so that it was all neat and official. Eva presented these to the court along with some witness statements and character references and we were set.
The judges had agreed to my and Eva’s plan to make an appeal – and pay them some more – to later bring my sentence down to six years. Although the British police were determined that if I served less than ten years in prison they would do all they could to re-sentence me in England, I wasn’t too bothered about this as they would have to get me there first, and, once released, I didn’t intend to hurry back.
El Infierno Page 7
