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BANGED UP ABROAD: HELLHOLE

I looked over at Paul. I could tell he was buying it. Luke was still going on: ‘It’s a pretty rich country, but most live like it’s a third-world country. If you’ve got money, you can control everything out there. You can live like a king, mate! It’s as good as Ibiza, with twenty-four-hour parties, but it’s a fraction of the cost.’

I’ll admit, I was impressed. Luke had painted a pretty convincing picture, and it all sounded so exotic and faraway.

‘How did you afford to get out there, to do all this?’ I asked.

‘I’ve been helping a Russian bloke, a business associate of mine, smuggle drugs,’ he said. ‘I’ve been smuggling cocaine.’

He came out with it just like that. Of course, we’d heard of cocaine. Oasis took it. To us, cocaine was all Miami, the high life, what famous people did. We knew you snorted it up your nose. But we’d never set eyes on the stuff.

Luke continued. ‘Nobody ever gets caught, because everybody’s paid off to let you through at the airport. It’s all set up so it can’t go wrong. I send people over there, so it’s all OK-ed in advance.’ He swigged his beer. ‘It’s an organisation, where everything’s sorted, everything’s protected down to the finest detail. We’ve got special gateways at the airport so everybody gets through without getting checked.’ He grinned. ‘The airport officials are all in on it, too. They’ve got our