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Alberto swung from audacious nerves of steel to giddy paranoia. Most days life was infused with some paranoia, and using excessive cocaine exacerbated it, blurring his instincts. One hot morning, after partying for two days and nights, with friends coming and going, using cocaine in his room, he grew deeply paranoid. Sitting on his bed in the hotel room where he was living, he suddenly started believing the Indonesian people in the next room were cops, getting ready to bust him for the 250 grams of blow he was babysitting. He noticed them darting in and out of their room, peering suspiciously across his balcony.

'I started getting really paranoid. I had to move it that moment, right then and there.'

In blinding panic, he whispered to his friend, 'There's something wrong, man, they're here for me. I have to move the stuff now.'

'Okay let's do it,' his friend agreed. Alberto took the plastic bag of coke from the room, ran outside, foraged in the bushes for more bags hidden in the garden, and then put it all on top of his head, pulling on a cap to hide and secure it. 'It was like two or three cannellonis of 100 grams each.'

Then, in the midday heat, they jumped in the car and drove from the Kuta hotel to Legian beach. The sand was packed with families on holiday, happily enjoying their days in paradise, oblivious to the frenetic underworld all around them. Alberto found a vaguely secluded spot behind a bit of scrub on a small sand dune. He furtively dug a hole and buried the coke. His friend stood keeping watch, ready to whistle if anyone walked close. Alberto was also careful not to let his friend see exactly where he was planting it. At $100 a gram, it was worth at least $25,000, and he trusted few. Alberto then went back to his hotel and slept the rest of the day and night,

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