A teddy bear, a baby seat, cocaine. The combination sounds like a film script, but it is a police report from the village of Brest near Skopje, where yesterday officers raided a house and its outbuildings and walked out with a larger quantity of cocaine.

S.B., 23, has been detained. He was taken to the Gazi Baba police station and will be charged under Article 215 of the Criminal Code - unauthorised production and trafficking of narcotics. The operation was carried out by officers from the Illicit Trafficking Unit with support from the rapid response police of the Skopje Interior Ministry department.

Cocaine is not a drug of street poverty. It is expensive, it is sold by the gram, and it assumes a clientele with money to spend. When something like that turns up in a suburban village, the question is not only who was hiding it, but who he was selling it to and how long that ran before anyone reacted.

The official statement says neither how much was actually found nor whether anyone else is involved. The phrase „a larger quantity” has been recycled in these announcements for years and means nothing - it could be fifty grams, it could be five kilos. The number is what shows whether they caught a corner dealer or a piece of a network.

One 23-year-old and one criminal complaint. That is the story we have seen dozens of times. The difference between a successful raid and an actual investigation will show up in a few months - when, and if, somebody asks what happened to the case and where the chain above S.B. leads.