By
Paul Bracchi for the Daily Mail
Roger and Susan Clarke had been well-known among the many expat neighborhood on Spain’s Costa Blanca.
The couple, of their 70s, lived in a whitewashed villa — full with a roof terrace and turret — within the resort of Guardamar del Segura, south of Alicante.
Outside their dwelling was a tongue-in-cheek nod to their Britishness: the statue of a backyard gnome, gifted to Roger by associates on his seventieth birthday.
Since arriving within the city, which is fashionable with retired Britons, Roger and Sue had absolutely embraced their new life.
He was a member of a golf society at a British-run bistro bar. She attended yoga and spinning courses. The two of them belonged to a wine membership and had been acquainted faces at eating places in Guardamar. They had been typical expats, in different phrases. Or, so it appeared. However, anybody invited again to their dwelling was shocked to seek out it was nonetheless virtually empty.
‘They didn’t have any private belongings in any respect, other than their garments,’ mentioned one fellow expat. ‘It was very strange. They kept it as if it were a house they might want to leave in a hurry.’
Might there be greater than a bit of reality in that commentary? It’s onerous to not come to that conclusion given the dramatic occasions that unfolded on a £3,000-a-head cruise the Clarkes had been having fun with.
Their ship, the Marco Polo — en route from the Bahamas to Tilbury, Essex — had simply docked in Lisbon when plain-clothes officers from the Policia Judiciaria (Portugal’s critical crimes investigation company) boarded the boat.
Pictured: The cruise ship Marco Polo, on which the couple had been arrested
The Portuguese authorities had been appearing on data from Britain’s National Crime Agency working together with Spanish regulation enforcement.
The topic of the ‘tip off’ was none apart from Roger Clarke and his grey-haired, bespectacled spouse Sue; ‘meek and mild mannered’ is how somebody described her in Guardamar.
Concealed of their cabin on the Marco Polo had been 4 suitcases with false bottoms containing 9kg (20lb) of cocaine with a road worth of £2 million.
In August 2018, a five-strong gang in Leeds had been jailed for a complete of 61 years after being caught with much less cocaine — 7.6kg — which quite places the stash police say was discovered within the possession of the pensioners into perspective.
Appearances will be misleading however absolutely by no means extra so than within the case of the Clarkes, who had been dwelling in sheltered lodging in Kent shortly earlier than transferring to Spain.
In reality, nearly the whole lot about them was a lie, it appears.
Roger Clarke informed everybody in Guardamar del Segura he was a chef, amongst different issues, in a Michelin-starred restaurant and owned two eateries in Benidorm.
He was truly a truck driver from London. It is way from sure Roger and Susan Clarke are even married. Our analysis has been unable to seek out any hint of a wedding certificates on this nation.
Nor, extra intriguingly, has their detention in Lisbon come as an excellent shock to those that knew them within the UK.
‘When we heard that a British couple from Spain had been held for drug smuggling Roger’s and Susan’s names instantly got here to thoughts,’ mentioned a former buddy. ‘We just thought, they are up to their old tricks again.’
That is as a result of the pair have each been jailed on the continent earlier than.
Pictured: Roger and Susan’s home within the resort of Guardamar del Segura, south of Alicante
They had been apprehended in Norway a decade in the past after being discovered with medicine, the buddy informed us. On that event, the pair managed to flee — however had been later extradited again to the Scandinavian nation, the place they had been placed on trial.
Roger Clarke obtained 5 years whereas his ‘wife’ was given 4 years; she served the ultimate 12 months in Holloway jail in north London.
How might anybody in Guardamar del Segura probably have guessed that the aged couple with a gnome exterior their entrance door had been convicted worldwide drug sellers who had been about to be arrested once more?
Even on the Costa, which has at all times attracted folks with a previous to cover, the story of Roger and Susan Clarke stands out.
One British couple who knew them in Guardamar claimed ‘Roger and Sue’ had supplied them a free vacation within the Caribbean in return for carrying some baggage, however they turned down the ‘dodgy’ supply.
Indeed, the extra we discover out concerning the septuagenarians, the extra the plot begins to resemble the script of a TV drama.
Let’s begin with ‘mild-mannered’ Sue Clarke. She has three youngsters from her first marriage. Susan and her former husband, an actor, had been collectively for about 25 years once they break up up.
She stayed within the marital dwelling in Cheadle, Cheshire, to take care of the kids who had been then of their late teenagers. Up till that time, she had been a ‘normal, loving mother’ to them, in response to those that knew the household within the late Nineties.
Then she met Roger Clarke and he or she merely ‘abandoned’ them, it’s claimed. ‘She just left the children with her husband and walked out on them,’ remembers a colleague on the now defunct vacation airline Air 2000 in Manchester, the place Susan labored as a secretary. ‘She had to make a choice and she chose to start a new life with Roger and that did not include the children.
‘The children were in their teens and you can imagine they were very upset. They have had little to do with their mother ever since.
‘From what I have been told there has never been any attempt at a reconciliation on her part. She has remained very distant.’
The colleague mentioned Roger Clarke was a ‘brash cockney’ who was ‘very cocksure’ of himself, and Susan was ‘smitten’ with him.
But was his title actually Roger Clarke? Those launched to him knew him as Roger Button and he’s actually listed below that title on the one-bedroom flat he and Susan first moved into in Whitefield, Manchester.
Given what we now know, you possibly can perceive why ‘Roger Button’, who was travelling throughout Europe as a truck driver, might need needed to reinvent himself as Roger Clarke. He and Susan ultimately moved South and lived for numerous years in Dorking, Surrey, and Betchworth, not removed from Reigate, the place they loved a cushty way of life which included, then as now, frequent Caribbean cruises.
Where they obtained their cash, although, was at all times a thriller.
Until, that’s, information filtered via to Britain from Norway about that first arrest and subsequent imprisonment.
The authorities knowledgeable Susan’s closest kinfolk, in fact. So her youngsters would have recognized that the mom who had turned her again on them was languishing in a overseas jail.
On their launch from jail, the couple went to stay in a ‘retirement’ complicated in Orpington, Kent, the place they remained from round 2013 and 2016.
Shortly afterwards, they surfaced on the Costa Blanca.
They had been fashionable sufficient to start out with however Roger Clarke’s brashness — and rudeness — started to grate. ‘He’s ordered drinks with out saying “hello”, even when the workers tried to get him to be extra well mannered by educating him how you can say it in Spanish,’ mentioned an area. ‘He certainly liked a drink. I’ve appear him have a brandy and beer for breakfast.’
He additionally acquired a nickname: ‘Mr Bull**** er’ as a result of, relying on who he was speaking to, he had been high chef or a paramedic or a member of the SAS.
But one story by no means modified: he mentioned he nonetheless ran a enterprise importing pineapples from the Caribbean to the UK, therefore their frequent cruises there.
Plumber Paul Craven and his spouse Pauline knew the Clarkes in addition to anybody in Guardamar del Segura.
‘I started a job cleaning their villa near where we live part-time and they very quickly befriended us,’ mentioned Pauline, 60, from Bolton, Lancashire. ‘We were flattered when they offered to treat us to a cruise. It was the dream of a lifetime.
‘Roger told me about his business importing pineapples and wanted me on the ship to keep his wife company. They offered to pay for everything.
‘Then they said we should buy some designer suitcases in the Caribbean because we could pick them up cheap and sell them for two or three times the price in Harrods once we got to the UK.
‘I didn’t assume something of it initially, however then they mentioned we must put our garments contained in the suitcases.’ When Pauline found they didn’t even inventory the suitcases in query in Harrods, she and her husband smelt a rat and politely turned down the free cruise.
‘I got asked to stop cleaning their home after that,’ Pauline added.
What a fortuitous resolution that turned out to be.
Needless to say, Roger Clarke attracted consideration on the cruise he and Susan launched into with their associates.
Fellow passengers couldn’t assist noticing Roger’s behavior of pulling out wads of money from his pockets and the way he and Susan had been reluctant to pose for vacation pictures. When they sailed into St Lucia Roger Clarke went ashore to purchase the suitcases which Paul and Pauline Craven would have bought had they been on the journey.
The similar suitcases through which officers from the Policia Judiciaria discovered the high-grade cocaine.