On 2 February 1992, the Observer went on duty with a Customs & Excise team at Stansted: veteran officer Frank Weston, Barron the black labrador and Cedric (the Customs & Excise computer). Their work had proved its worth: 40% of seizures came from ‘cold pulls’ (speculative stops, with no prior intelligence).
Some seizures were eye-opening: the report of one man apprehended with 33,000 doses of LSD ‘taped to the soles of his feet and his nether regions’. Others – the ‘stuffers and swallowers’ – were eye-watering.
