I have a story sort of related to that. About 7 years ago, I was at my mothers, chatting to her friend about drugs as we were watching 'Nothing To Declare', a TV show she's rather fond of with its tales of nervous, twitchy people being sniffed at by dogs and ultimately being arrested for massive drug possession.
So I swore her to secrecy (fairly large mistake), and revealed my vaguely related story of buying Class A drugs amid hordes of policemen in broad daylight.
'Well you know about that, don't you?', she replied, pointing up at the ceiling in the kitchen. 'What?' I looked up. Still a ceiling. 'Oh my god, you don't know!' 'No. What are you talking about?' 'Well your mother obviously hasn't told you for a reason.' 'Told me What??' 'About 18 months ago,' she began, 'about a year or so after they'd moved in here, they had a guy in to look at the light fittings.'
This makes sense. Mum is in a wheelchair and my 70-year-old stepdad is a stranger to light fittings. 'Well, this guy is up a ladder,' she continues, 'when he sees this package hidden at the top of the cupboard.' 'A package?' 'So he brings it down and shows it to my Mum and Stepdad. "Is this yours?" he says. No-one knows what it is, so they open it.'
I grimace as I knew what's coming, mainly due to the fact that we'd been talking about drugs for the last half hour.
'So they open it up.' 'And?' 'White powder. Solid white powder. Cocaine.'
I frown. 'What? How big was it?' I whimper. My Mum's friend makes a 30cm gap with her hands. 'About so big, all wrapped up in cellophane.'
For a full year, while I helped my Mum move in - Jesus, even when I had crashed there for 3 months while I was between houses - a kilo of cocaine had been stashed in my mother's kitchen by the previous dodgy owners. Street value, I surmised, was about £50,000. Call it €67.000 if you will. Or if you prefer, $100,000. In fact, if I may, it was AUS $112,000, 708,000 South African Rand, and a very pleasant sounding 3 million Thai Baht.
That, I yelled on hearing the story, was a down payment on a house. And a really good party.
I could have sold it. Most of it. Call me a bastard if you will, but as God As My Witness, I would have sold that fucking cocaine - the majority of it - at a reduced rate to some scumbags I know, and kept a happily sizable chunk for myself and some close personal friends.
But my Stepdad apparently wasn't happy.
'I'm not having that in my house,' he said panicking, and flushed the lot - all 20th of a million pounds - down the toilet and into the drainage system of the home counties. And so scared were my folks of the whole incident that they told no-one and allowed a full year and a half to elapse before I got wind of this.
I spoke to my Mum who confirmed everything, then pissed on my 'I could've sold it for you' fire by declaring that lives would be ruined if I did. I grilled my Mum in earnest to discuss exactly what she saw. It was a large, tightly wrapped, well sealed package containing nought but a huge brick of solid white powder, vast and hidden from view, leading me to surmise that this could well have been a very large parcel of gak hidden in her kitchen.
I'd've nicked that.