Mr Nice: an autobiography by Howard Marks Page B

routinely grilled and treated as the prime suspect. The police finally let him go, and he threw his LSD manufacturing plant into the Thames. I had no idea he was Graham’s main wholesaler.
    ‘Jarvis once came out to Beirut to see me,’ said Sam, ‘but I have no idea where to get hold of him. Neither does Mandy. I don’t think he was at Oxford University, but Graham sells to him.’
    I had met Jarvis a few times with Graham. He was a state-of-the-art London Sixties dealer: shaded glasses, pop-singer clothes, model girlfriends, and lots of new vocabulary. He hailed from Birmingham but spoke Chelsea.
    ‘No, he wasn’t at Oxford, but I could probably track him down.’
    ‘Good,’ said Durrani. ‘We look forward to good business. I will ask Mandy to call you when we are ready.’
    The German and Mayfair experiences filled me with a new kind of energy and excitement. So much of me longed for more of this adventure. I thought of things I could buy with a lot of money.
    Back in Brighton, I saw lots more of Rosie and little of anyone else. I told her about my recent adventures and the proposition I’d been made.
    ‘That’s wonderful, Howard,’ said Rosie. ‘That’s obviously what you should do. Get out there and be somebody in your one and only life. I think selling Durrani’s hashish in London is a brilliant idea. It’s what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?’
    ‘I don’t know. I just don’t have any money to set myself up. I’d need a flat in London, a car other than my beaten-up Hillman, operating expenses, all kinds of things, let alone money to live on.’
    ‘Howard, I don’t know about you and Ilze. But Richard and I are not going to carry on pretending to be living withand loving each other. We’re separating. My family has money. His family has a lot more, and they will certainly make sure that Emily, their granddaughter, will be properly provided for. I’m going to move to London. My parents will rent me a flat and buy me a car. You can stay there anytime you want, use the car, and if you need to borrow a couple of hundred pounds to set up a business, I couldn’t think of a better investment for me to make.’
    In a whirlwind of love, romance, and unlimited possibility, Rosie, her baby daughter Emily and I moved to a maisonette in Hillsleigh Road in the expensive part of Notting Hill. Richard would visit and play Go. We have remained very good friends. Ilze would also visit, and although we both felt somewhat betrayed by each other’s infidelity, we remained on the very best terms.
    During my postgraduate year at Oxford, I had met and liked a friend of Graham’s called Charlie Radcliffe. He was from an aristocratic background, had an enormous collection of blues records, chain-smoked marijuana, belonged to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and had been busted for forging a staggering quantity of first-class counterfeit United States $100 bills with the words ‘In God We Trust’ replaced by an anti-Vietnam war slogan. He worked then for Robert Maxwell’s publishing company, Pergamon Press, in Headington, just outside Oxford. Now Charlie, too, was living in London, and when he heard of Graham’s bust, he tracked me down to get what news he could. I told him what I knew and mentioned the possibility of my being asked to sell Graham’s hashish in his absence. I asked if he could help me out by either selling some or getting hold of Jarvis, whom Charlie knew quite well. Charlie was eager to make some money but explained that he had a partner, Charlie Weatherley, who would have to be involved. I had met Charlie Weatherley a few times when he was an undergraduate at Christ Church. He was now a heavy hashish-consuming biker and, when not pushing hisNorton Commando to the limit, listened continually with amusement to the Grateful Dead. He was a joy to be around. Charlie Radcliffe and I decided that the simplest and fairest arrangement for all concerned was that Jarvis, the two Charlies, and I