However with Henty’s artistic taste, which he would exploit later in his career as a successful art forger, he chose this delightful and grand period terraced house just yards from Brighton’s Clock Tower, adjacent to the 900-year-old mother church of the city, St Nicholas of Myra, and on the doorstep of the Western Road shopping centre. This was one of the best located and most well appointed homes in the county.
Like Steven Klinger in Dead Man’s Footsteps, Henty’s steady, suspicious accumulation of wealth had awarded him the police status of ‘person of interest’ some time ago.
I had joined CID from uniform about six months previously and was revelling in rising to the challenge my new Detective Inspector had set me when I joined.
DI Malcolm ‘Streaky’ Bacon was a dapper and immaculately groomed gent. His pencil-thin moustache and ramrod posture gave the false impression he’d been a Regimental Sergeant Major in a previous life. He could easily have been a batman to Brigadier Neville Andrew, the Bursar at the Cloisters school in You Are Dead.
‘We want young blood in the office, Graham, but you will work harder than you ever have before and you will be judged on results,’ was Streaky’s greeting to me on day one.
Julie and I had just bought our first house together and had become engaged to be married. She knew what CID would mean. Long hours of hard work. She was no stranger to that herself, however. She had become a check-in supervisor at Gatwick Airport. A sixteen-hour shift dealing with multiple flights, anxious passengers, long delays and stressed staff was a normal day at the office for her. On the plus side, it meant that short, last-minute holidays to anywhere in the world were there for the taking. She gave me so much support and encouragement while keeping me grounded at home. I landed one in a million with her.
Just as well. I was working like a trouper.
The networks and characters behind the crimes I was looking into were fascinating. While in uniform I’d had little insight into the machinations of the city’s underworld. The work there was very reactive. Here as a detective I was paid to get under the skin of every criminal and see what I could unearth.
I was surrounded and supported by colleagues who had for decades been trawling the gutters of the city’s criminal networks and I was absorbing everything I could from them. In the few snatched hours each day that Julie and I had together in our new two-up, two-down starter home, I would regale her with tales of derring-do, of how we had busted this scam or tracked down that villain. I was relishing this new life.
We had been paying more and more attention to Henty. So, when he bought his new pad we started to look even harder, just as he knew we would. Police scrutiny was expected in his world. It was always safer for him to assume that the police were watching and listening, rather than not. For his own sanity he had to balance this with not becoming paranoid. With this attitude, he was able to have some fun in his predicament.
David and Cliff used to meet in a lovely little cafe in Stanmer. This tiny, beautiful village comprises a farm, a dozen cottages, a church and a manor house in stunning parkland to the north east of the city.
Soon aware the police were observing them regularly and suspecting that surveillance officers were hiding up in a barn opposite their meeting place, they took to donning crash helmets as they arrived and then spending hours sipping coffee, soaking up the heat of the roaring fireplace that was the centrepiece of the coffee shop. They did not have that much to say to one another, but they delighted in the thought of the cops freezing their extremities off in the dung-infested cowshed over the road, while they nestled in the warmth.
One of their scams around this time was the forgery and distribution of MOT vehicle roadworthiness certificates and car tax discs. Through their network of printers and ‘fencers’ they had practically saturated the city with these fake documents. In the days before any databases or electronic detection devices, police officers had to rely on a keen eye and their own judgement when assessing the validity of any documents. Henty and Wake’s products were of fine quality and rarely, if ever, called into question.
Word got round that they had a talent for making very passable official papers and soon a prominent London-based gangland villain nicknamed Lenny the Shadow got to hear of them. He had earned this sobriquet due to his seemingly mystical ability to appear and disappear in the blink of an eye.
Like the evil Marlene Hartman, who sourced street children and sold them for the price of their organs in Dead Tomorrow, Lenny had a criminal network with tentacles that spread across the world. He dealt, not in thousands, but in millions of pounds.
Around this time the province of Hong Kong was just a few years away from being handed back to the Chinese. As the 1997 deadline drew closer, its citizens were starting to panic, many unwilling to surrender their Western lifestyle. Consequently the region was experiencing a feverish rush for British passports. Residents wanted to claim UK identity to preserve the freedoms they had become so accustomed to. As with any surge in demand, the opportunities to make a quick buck were tantalizing.
Lenny saw the gap in the market almost immediately and looked round for a reliable network of forgers who were up to the challenge of making 3,000 UK passports for onward sale in Hong Kong. They had to be available quickly and to a standard that would pass inspection by seasoned immigration officials. He estimated that he could market them for £1,000 each making this a £3-million operation. Half of that would be his, half the forgers’.
David and Cliff were immediately shortlisted for the job. They had proven their worth in all the selection criteria. Cliff was known for his work ethic. If he took on a job, he worked at it slavishly and expected all around him to do likewise. David knew this serious-minded approach would ensure the seemingly impossible timescales would be met. This was business and a lot of money and their reputations were at stake.
They worked out that to provide the passports to the desired quality and in time, they would need three others to assist them. Their cut of £1.5 million would still be very attractive at £300k each, and David was already spending his share in his head.
He had been offered the opportunity to buy a Scottish castle for £1 million with a down-payment of just £100k. The remainder of the money, financed through yet another dodgy mortgage, would be paid back by filling the place with fake antiques and selling them to unwitting rich American tourists. The passport income would solve his headache of coming up with the deposit.
He knew the stakes were high. No government warms to anyone who fakes their passports, especially as part of a get-rich-quick scheme. Both David and Cliff had young families and commitments that lengthy periods in prison would render them unable to meet. They had to consider carefully whether the risks were worth taking.
As any wise businessman would do when faced with such a decision, David sat down and talked it through with his wife. It would be her who bore the burden of supporting the family should it all go wrong. For his part, Cliff needed no second opinion. This was a golden opportunity and there was no way his wife, Jan, would be given the chance to persuade him otherwise.
Having carefully weighed it all up, both David and Cliff made the call to Lenny.
‘We’re in!’
There followed a frenzied period where the pair sought out the skills and materials to create 3,000 passports so perfect that, even under the closest scrutiny, they would be indistinguishable from the genuine article.
They needed the correct paper, identical rexine (the leather-like material used for the distinctive dark blue cover), the right inks and a high-quality gold foil for the coat of arms. Photos would be added later, but creating these little booklets would be no mean feat.