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AT 6.30PM on Monday, February 27,2006, 59-year-old haulier Geoff Hyde received a call on his mobile phone.

That call set off a chain of events that would, nine months later, see him sentenced to 22 years in prison and landed with a £2million confiscation order for a crime he did not commit. For, unknown to Geoff, on that winter's evening a Spanish lorry with a consignment of lettuce was making its way to the yard in Chertsey, Surrey, from where he ran his transport company.

When it arrived it came into view of a police CCTV camera. Concealed in a secret compartment within the lorry trailer was 77kg of cocaine with a street value of almost £10million.

Within an hour the drugs had been unloaded, but before the van could make its getaway, police officers who had been watching the yard after receiving information, arrested the driver, who immediately admitted his part in the plot.

The Spanish lorry driver was also arrested.

Two-and-a-half hours earlier, Geoff had received the call on his mobile. The voice on the line was not familiar, but said he used to do some work for a company that used to work in the same Chertsey yard.

"I’ve got a foreign lorry near your yard," said the voice on the line. "It's got brake problems. Can it come in and fix up?"

What Geoff said next that would seal his fate.

"Let me ring you back. I'm at home at the moment but I'm on my way there. If there's space, no problem."

How could he know that, by agreeing to help out, nine months down the line he would be convicted of being part of a massive drugs conspiracy?

Why? Because when he got to court, the CPS told the jury that it was this and further calls - with what was referred to as the green phone – that proved he was in on it.

After the police made their arrests Geoff turned up at the yard having been told the police wanted access to the office. So, with the phone in his pocket ­ the phone that the police would use to link him to the conspiracy - Geoff went back to the yard, where he was arrested because, in the words of the arresting officer, he was the owner of the yard.

After a night in the cells, Geoff was quizzed by detectives from the Met's Specialist Crime Directorate. It lasted just 27 minutes - but that was enough for him to make two grave mistakes.

Firstly, he declined to have a solicitor present – he had done nothing wrong, so why would he need one? – and secondly, he didn't tell them about the mobile phone calls.

Cross-examined in the witness box at Inner London Crown Court nine months later, Geoff was asked why he had had not told them about the phone calls.

"I panicked. I didn't want to be con­nected to the green phone," he said. "I had been thinking all night long that I'd been set up. I thought that they would say 'You are connected because this bloke has phoned you'."

And for the jury that was enough. No evidence of police inquiries into his accounts, no evidence of any suspicious behaviour with anyone in Spain where the drugs came from, no transcripts or recordings of those calls with the green phone.

And so Geoffrey Hyde, with no previous criminal convictions to his name, languishes in prison. Away from his wife, his two daughters and son.

Away from his own 85-year-old father and three grandchildren.

An innocent man.

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