‘The tsunami just keeps coming’: Europe’s growing cocaine market

Of the record 27 tonnes of cocaine seized in France last year, more than a third was intercepted in the Normandy port of Le Havre. Photograph: Danita Delimont/Alamy

Squeezed between the two channels of France’s biggest container port is a warren of narrow alleyways, blowsy 1950s bungalows and – along a windblown high road – a disheartening parade of shuttered shops.

Les Neiges is Le Havre’s dockers’ district. At the end of each side street stands a 3-metre, steel-and-concrete fence topped with razor wire; beyond that, dipping and swivelling, the cranes and gantries that process more than 3m containers a year.