The difference between them and many criminals today is that despite their prolific offending they never bore any animosity towards the police and never complained about their comeuppance. And, being businessmen, they had other people and schemes in place to ensure that the money kept rolling in.
Twenty-five years on, Dave Swainston and I spent a very pleasant morning with Henty reminiscing over the old days, swapping war stories and musing about some of the ‘what-ifs’ of those days when we were on opposite sides of the law.
He and Wake knew that all businesses have their ups and downs, and our ups were their downs. They never failed to make a buck even if sometimes they paid the price with their liberty. That was the life they had chosen and custody provided a time of reflection to brainstorm the next scam to help them up the social ladder.
Henty proudly explained to Peter James and me on another visit that he now produces paintings openly branded as fakes and makes a pretty penny bringing masterpieces to the masses. His new wife is insistent that his life must now be on the straight and narrow and, so far, he has not let her down.
Wake, when we spoke with him, was looking forward to his release from prison. When I asked him what he planned to do he was quick to remind me, ‘Graham, you know me, I’m never going to be poor now, am I?’
I chose not to ask any more. Nowadays, ignorance can be bliss.
6: Horror Amongst Thieves
Everyone needs friends. People who stick by you through thick and thin. Grace and Branson have just that in each other: a lifelong bond, underpinned by trust, tolerance and forgiveness. Sometimes it’s only when these are tested to the limit that you can really be certain whether those around you are the real deal.
One middle-ranking villain made some huge assumptions about the bona fides of his mates. His wake-up call came in the most eye-wateringly brutal manner imaginable.
DC Andy Mays is a great friend of mine. We first worked together playing undercover cops in the banally labelled Plain Clothes Unit at Gatwick Airport in the late 1980s and his first wife worked with Julie. We socialized together often and Andy arranged my stag night before Julie and I jetted off to get married on a beautiful Seychelles island in 1992.
His career eventually moved into a world too secret for these pages but no less exciting for it. We are friends to this day.
We shared a good number of years too as DCs on Brighton CID and, during that time, Andy developed a phenomenal talent for getting villains to talk to him — not just because, being a lookalike of Phil Mitchell from EastEnders, he resembled most of them.
Policing is often very reactive. We think that we have our fingers on the pulse and that intelligence-led proactivity is how we get our best results. We flatter ourselves. Like the consequences of the crash that killed Tony Revere in Dead Man’s Grip, the most serious jobs are the ones we often fail to see coming.
There does seem to be something about Sundays that causes them to generate the most intricate and intriguing policing challenges. The late shift on this particular winter’s day in 1992 was no exception.
Andy was clearing an outrageous backlog of reports that his sergeant had been badgering him over, while willing the clock to tick round to 9 p.m. when, as was the custom, he could go to the pub. The phones rarely rang on a Sunday so when his did, he sensed his evening was about to be disrupted. With a sigh he reluctantly lifted the grey receiver.
‘CID. DC Mays.’
‘Oh, hi. It’s the control room here. Response are at a job in the Rose Hill area where a chap has fallen out of an upper-floor window. The sergeant is saying he doesn’t think the bloke is going to survive. He’s in a really bad way. They’ve taken him to the hospital and they are asking for CID to meet them there.’
‘Why do they want us? Do they suspect foul play?’
‘They’re not sure; there’s just something they aren’t happy about.’
‘Jeez, they give these sergeants stripes for a reason,’ Andy muttered. ‘Why can’t they make a bloody decision? Yes, OK on my way,’ he continued, this time intending to be heard.
The cars we were forced to drive rudely quashed any credibility Brighton’s finest detectives tried to purvey. As they were no doubt procured solely on the basis of price and economy, we never quite felt like the slick crimebusters we aspired to be as we rocked up in one of these rusting, pastel-coloured Mini Metros. Distinguished only by their whining engines and the fact they looked ridiculous with two hulking great detectives wedged into their tiny front seats, they were more suitable for a circus than the UK’s second-busiest police station. Grace’s sidekick, Branson, with his somewhat frighteningly advanced driving skills, wouldn’t have been seen dead in one of these tin cans. Still, that was all we had so, having grabbed a set of keys, off Andy went.
The gridlock that irritates Mafia hit man Tooth after he has abducted Tyler Chase in Dead Man’s Grip is omnipresent in Brighton. Sundays are no exception. If it isn’t caused by the hordes of day-trippers clogging up the streets, it is the fanatics who insist on crawling from London to Brighton by various modes of transport ranging from veteran cars to historic lorries and good old-fashioned bicycles. Every weekend there are always people trying to make the fifty-five miles from capital to coast by one means or another, and they all seem to come to a standstill just by the police station.
Andy used his encyclopaedic knowledge of the city to snake through the backstreets, engine shrieking, to the Royal Sussex County Hospital.
On arrival he abandoned the car in a bay marked ‘Taxis’, slipped his Sussex Police log book — which serves as a ‘park anywhere’ permit — behind the windscreen and marched into the Accident and Emergency Department.
Among the teams of doctors, nurses and paramedics, he located the sergeant who seemed unable to make a decision.
‘Right, Sarge. What have we got, then?’
‘Well. It’s hard to say. It seems this chap has taken a tumble out of a small casement window. It’s quite high up and we can’t really work out how he’s done it.’
‘Are you saying he might have been pushed?’ asked Andy, coaxing his senior colleague to express a view.
‘That’s the point,’ said the sergeant. ‘We’ve been up to the flat and it’s a lounge window but a bit of a squeeze. Oh, and there seems to have been a bit of a disturbance in there.’
‘Oh, right. And what’s the deal with matey, then? I take it he’s in resus? Who is he? What are his injuries?’
‘Don’t know who he is but some of the neighbours say he’s only been living there for the last couple of weeks. He’s unconscious, which is definitely a bonus for him given the mess he’s in. He seems to have fallen smack bang onto some spiked railings. One has impaled him, then his weight must have pulled him back as he has fallen off them, ripping his innards in the process.’
‘Jesus,’ winced Andy.
‘What’s more, his leg is in a right state. Looks like he’s somehow got a horrendous break resulting in, well, put it this way, his knee is now fully double-jointed.’
‘How’s that happened if he’s fallen out belly first, landed on the spikes then fallen off? How’s he done his leg?’
‘That, DC Mays, is why we called you all-seeing detectives,’ the sarcastic sergeant replied, implying that Andy’s muttered dissent earlier had not been as hushed as he intended and that his sentiments had been passed up the chain of command.
The problem with being a detective is that once you show a hint of interest in an incident, it’s yours to keep. It’s like a one-way game of Pass the Parcel — you never get to give it back.
Like so many of the calls Grace picks up, be it the disappearance of Michael Harrison in Dead Simple or the dredging of the first body in Dead Tomorrow, the full story is seldom evident straightaway; indeed some such incidents can be dismissed by indolent, less gifted cops, thereby denying justice to victims.