Mr Nice

An Autobiography

Howard Marks

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780857862693
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

This candid crime memoir by Britain's most famous drug baron is "frequently hilarious, occasionally sad, and often surreal" ( GQ ). During the mid-1980s Howard Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, and owned 25 companies throughout the world. From local bars to recording studios to offshore banks—all of his "businesses" were in fact money laundering vehicles serving his one true business: dope dealing. Marks began dealing small amounts of hashish while doing a postgraduate philosophy course at Oxford, but soon he was moving much larger quantities. At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to fifty tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada and had contact with organizations as diverse as MI6, the CIA, the IRA, and the Mafia. This is his extraordinary story. "A folk legend."— Daily Mail, UK "A racy yarn with plenty of globe-trotting color."— The Independent, UK

Six

ALBI

In April 1974, almost six months later, I was sitting in a flat near the top of a high-rise building in the Isle of Dogs, overlooking the River Thames and Greenwich naval station. I was skipping bail. Over my Amsterdam lawyer’s protests, the Dutch police had put me aboard a BEA flight to Heathrow. Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise Officers came on the plane at Heathrow and took me to Snowhill Police Station, where I was charged under the hitherto unenforced Section 20 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971, with assisting in the United Kingdom in the commission of a United States drug offence. Californian James Gater, who had been arrested at Heathrow airport a couple of days before my arrest, and a few of James Morris’s workers were my co-defendants. After three uneventful weeks in Her Majesty’s Prison, Brixton, I was granted bail for sureties totalling £50,000. On bail, I lived with Rosie and the children at 46, Leckford Road, Oxford, premises formerly rented and occupied by William Jefferson Clinton, who was to become the President of the United States. The evidence against me was strong, partly because I had been daft enough to admit to Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise my documented illegal activities in Holland in the hope that my offence would be treated as a Dutch rather than a British one. That strategy had backfired, and my solicitor, Bernard Simons, was certain I would get convicted and was not too optimistic of my getting less than three years in prison.

The East End flat belonged to Dai, my old school-teaching companion. Thames Valley Police must obviously have made some enquiries into my whereabouts, but no one seemed to be getting very excited. I had written a note to Bernard Simons so that everyone could know that nothing untoward had happened. I had just skipped bail. The trial had started without me the previous day, May 1st, 1974. My co-defendants pleaded guilty and got sentences ranging from six months to four years. Ernie had promised to pay off any sureties demanded by the judge as the result of my skipping bail. He felt indebted to me because at the time of my arrest in Amsterdam I was the only person in the world who knew his whereabouts, and I had not disclosed them to the authorities. I was biding my time.

Dai had woken me up early before going to school.

‘Howard, you’ve been on the news.’

‘What! What did it say?’

‘Well, there were only three headlines: one about Prime Minister Harold Wilson, one about President Nixon, and one about you. I couldn’t take it all in. Something about MI6 and the IRA. I’ll go out and get the newspapers.’

The Daily Mirror’s entire front page was devoted to a story about me headlined WHERE IS MR MARKS?, describing how I was an MI6 agent, with arrest warrants out for me in seven countries, who had been kidnapped, beaten up, told to keep my mouth shut, and persuaded to become an IRA sympathiser. There was no clue as to how the Daily Mirror had got hold of the information that I had worked for MI6. There were general statements claiming that I had told some friends I was a spy. In fact I had told only Rosie, my parents, and McCann. Rosie, when interviewed by the press, categorically stated there was no connection between me and the IRA or the security services. Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise had been made aware of my MI6 involvement: Mac’s telephone number had appeared in the telephone records of an Amsterdam hotel, and I had successfully used my promise of not mentioning MI6 in court as a lever to secure bail. HM Customs would have been unlikely to spill all to a Daily Mirror reporter. The Daily Mail’s front-page headline was YARD FEAR NEW IRA ABDUCTION, and the text claimed that I had last been seen in the company of two Customs Officers and that police were now investigating the possibility that I had been executed by the IRA. Later the same day, Thames Valley Police vehemently denied that I had been an MI6 agent spying on the IRA, and Bernard Simons kept saying he’d heard from me, and that I was not being held against my will. But the media took no notice. That was too boring. In fairness, the Daily Mirror felt obliged at least to present an alternative theory: the next day’s front page was headlined THE INFORMER, and the report stated that I had been kidnapped by Mafia drug smugglers to prevent me from appearing at the Old Bailey and grassing them up. Other reports suggested I had staged my own kidnap. The public, though, preferred the spy/IRA theory, and that’s what the television and radio news stations gave them. Who were my enemies? – the police because they were being forced to look for me everywhere, the IRA because I’d smuggled dope, the Mafia because they thought I was going to talk about them, Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise because I didn’t turn up to get my conviction, Her Majesty’s Secret Service for my switching of loyalties, or the media for reasons I didn’t understand? Did it matter? All I had intended to do was change my appearance and carry on scamming. I already had a bit of a moustache. All this off-the-wall publicity would just make me more careful. Still, it all felt rather unreal and occasionally scary.

The media circus stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The Old Bailey trial judge deferred any decision regarding the estreatment of the bail sureties. I might have been abducted, he said, and therefore could not be termed an absconder. My main duty was to ensure that my family knew for certain that I was unharmed. Dai was not keen on my using his telephone for any purpose, and I assumed that most of my family’s telephones were tapped as a result of the nation-wide search for me. Through circuitous and complex manoeuvres involving conversations with my sister in Wales, I was able to have clandestine meetings with Rosie, Myfanwy, and my parents while I continued perfecting my disguise. After about two months, I looked very different and felt no fear walking the streets. Each morning, I would buy a few newspapers and have a coffee at a dock-workers’ café. One hot early July morning, I was at the newsagent’s and saw a Daily Mirror front-page headline, THE LONG SILENCE OF MR MYSTERY. Underneath was a photograph of me. I bought a copy. The report stated that Thames Valley Police had called off the search for me and that my disappearance had been the subject of discussion in the Houses of Parliament. Another blaze of publicity followed in the Daily Mirror’s wake.

‘You need another name and more disguise,’ said Dai. ‘Everyone’s talking about you on the Tube. I’m not calling you Howard any more. And I’m not calling you Mr Mystery either.’

‘Call me Albi,’ I said, partly in deference to my old friend Albert Hancock and partly because it was an anagram of bail.

‘All right,’ said Dai. ‘Why don’t you get yourself a pair of glasses?’

‘From whom?’

‘I think they’re called opticians, Albi.’

‘But there’s nothing wrong with my eyes, Dai. They won’t give me a pair.’

‘You walk into a dentist; he’ll say you’ve got bad teeth. You walk into an optician, and he’ll say you need glasses. That’s the way they make money. Anyway, I read the other day that the stuff you keep smoking causes long sight. Why don’t you smoke a load and go to an optician?’

Dai had probably read one of those absurd scare stories of marijuana causing just about everything from sterility to nymphomania. But there might be something to it. I knew marijuana had some effect on intraocular pressure. I smoked several joints and had my eyes tested. I needed glasses, and a special pair was made. They dramatically changed my appearance, but made things rather blurry, except when I was stoned.

Intermittent press speculation on my whereabouts continued for over a month. The FBI feared for my life. A West Country man, of whom I’d never heard, confessed to murdering me and burying me beneath a motorway bridge near Bristol.

‘You’ll have to go, Albi. This is driving me, Jane, and Sian nuts.’

‘Okay, Dai. I’m sorry. I never thought I’d be staying here this long, and I never thought all this madness would happen.’

‘Why don’t you leave the country?’

‘I haven’t got a passport, Dai. I don’t know where to start.’

‘Take mine.’

Normally, Dai and I looked a bit like each other. We were tall, dark, blue-eyed, clean-shaven, and heavily featured. Now, with my moustache and stoned glasses, we didn’t, but the photograph could easily be changed; the Foreign and Commonwealth Office embossed stamp covered just a minute part of the corner. Its absence on the replacement photograph would not be noticed. Dai gave me his driving licence as well. He was anxious that nothing hold me up.

I decided to go to Italy. There were two main reasons. A large Winnebago motorised caravan lay in a camping site in Genova. I had bought it a year previously for Eric to use, had he landed the Lebanese in Italy rather than made it available to Greek sponge fishermen. Living in it appealed to me. Also, my sister was about to start a teaching course in Padova, so I had an easy way of keeping in touch with the family. Apart from the Winnebago, my assets were about £5,000 cash. Everything else had gone. While I was on bail, Ernie had sent someone to Amsterdam to try to get the $100,000 and the Peter Hughes passport from the safe-deposit box in Algemene Bank Nederland, but the cupboard was bare. The authorities had got there first. The guy Ernie had sent, Burton Moldese, apparently had some Los Angeles Mafia connections, and I’m sure that this is what gave rise to the Daily Mirror’s Mafia theory. Ernie would lend me some money, I was sure, particularly if, as seemed increasingly likely, there would be no estreatment of bail sureties. I had a mailing address for Ernie, but was unsure how he would have reacted to all the weird publicity. I’d contact him when everything was settled.

Remembering McCann’s advice, I didn’t fly directly to Italy. I took a ferry to Denmark and caught a flight from Copenhagen to Genova. The passport stood up. The Winnebago started first time, and I cruised around the camping sites of the Italian Riviera. I stopped wearing my glasses and began a period of debauched promiscuity, driving up and down Italian roads picking up female hitch-hikers. The Winnebago had a kitchen, sitting room, shower, loud stereo, and comfortably slept six. I would usually pick up just one hitch-hiker, but occasionally as many as fifteen or sixteen. From Como to Napoli, the autostradas became my home. I had to pay for petrol, but dope, sex, food, and drink seemed to be free.

Rosie brought out Myfanwy to see me for a couple of weeks. They had now sold the Yarnton cottage and, together with Julian Peto and his family, had bought a large house at Northleigh, outside Oxford. I kept in touch with Rosie through Fanny Hill. In September, I called Rosie at Fanny’s and mentioned that my parents were hoping to come out to see me. It later emerged that this conversation had been overheard on another extension by Raymond Carr, Master of St Anthony’s College, who was still having an affair with Fanny. It is not certain that Raymond Carr passed on this information to the authorities, but it is likely. My parents did come out and shared with my sister and me a two-week holiday touring Northern Italy in the Winnebago.

After they left, I hung around at a camp site in Padova. My sister came to see me in a panic. The Daily Mirror were trying to interview her. They knew I was in Italy and knew my parents had been to see me. I had to assume the authorities also knew. Where could I go now? I had almost no money. The police would not be looking for me in England. That would be the last place they’d expect to find me, and there I could find at least a floor to sleep on.

On October 28th, 1974, I drove the Winnebago to the Genova campsite I had collected it from three months earlier. I put yet another photograph in Dai’s passport and booked a seat on a British Caledonian flight to Gatwick.

On arrival at Genova airport, I had several glasses of grappa before passing uneventfully through the passport check, and settled down to some serious drinking in the departure lounge. At the duty-free shop, I bought some cigarettes and a few bottles of sambuca negra. During the flight I ordered several more drinks and even began drinking from the sambuca negra bottles. Newspapers were distributed, and I took a copy of the Daily Mirror. On the front page was a photograph of me under a blazing headline HE’S ALIVE. The article was several pages long and stated that Mr Mystery was living as a guest of the Mafia in Padova. Mr Mystery’s hideout was known only to the Mafia and my sister. Mr Mystery was living undercover as a student, shielded and protected by Mafia gangsters. The aeroplane was full of people reading this exclusive. Ably assisted by the sambuca negra, I was again losing touch with reality. By the time we disembarked, I was giggling uncontrollably and cannot even remember any confrontation with Immigration or Customs. I followed the passengers through to Gatwick railway station and got on a train to Victoria. I was still drinking sambuca negra when the train arrived. I took a Tube to Paddington and, following my drunken homing instinct, took a train to Oxford, arriving about 9 p.m. I walked from Oxford railway station to the police station in St Aldate’s. When I got there I was extremely confused. I could not bring myself to believe that the last six months had actually happened. I wanted to rewind my life back to when I was signing on for bail in Oxford. I had understood everything until then. A policeman walked out of the station. I asked him how I could get a bus to Northleigh. He said it was too late. I would have to take a taxi. I went into a telephone box to call Rosie at Northleigh. No reply. I walked to Leckford Road, where I had last been seen by the sane world. The pub around the corner, the Victoria Arms, one that I and friends of mine had often frequented, was still there...