Police

This blog was posted on my Facebook blog page but I had forgotten about this story, or that I had the Facebook page .

I have resurrected it for the interest of anybody interetsed, in the unlikely event that anyone is.

I have a lot of history with the police. No, not like that. My first run in was when I was driving a Yak. Not one of these, I’m a wimp and they are rarely seen around Merseyside.

One of these.

To be fair, mine didn’t have sophistications like a roof, or doors or a fence around the back. My father had a couple of 3 foot plywood cubes he had made to carry picnics and more elaborate outdoor eating things like washing up bowls and calor gas stoves and associated pans. I wanted to take my pals around the local town (and to the pub, obviously) so I put these on the floor pan behind the seats and there were two of us in the front on car seats of some description and the other two were perching on the boxes. As we stopped at the traffic lights, our constant adversary Sergeant Berry emerged from one of the shops and instructed me to stop. He observed that having 2 lads perched on boxes was contrary to the Road Safety Act 1966 (and probably the one of 1906, but he didn’t mention that) and he urged me to cease and desist. Since my father was rather famous at the time as a road safety guru, and it was actually his ‘car’ I decided to comply. 2 lads had to walk to the pub and our fun was abolished.

That must have been 1969 or 1970 when I had passed my driving test and sometimes lived at home. I don’t think I had any further intercourse with the police until about 1984 (good year for it) and it was a different matter altogether was involved, though it did involve wood, albeit peripherally.

By that time I was working for Honeywell in Brentford, and was at the time in charge of all the buildings Honeywell used around the UK and Ireland. Brentford was the head office. The very lovely directors hid on the 9th floor with their secretaries. I have no evidence they lived with their secretaries in the sense you probably think I mean. Their very plush offices were on the 9th floor. Each director had a plush office with a cadenza like this.

Well it wasn’t quite like that one but you get the idea. In researching a picture I find it is correctly named a credenza. But we always called them Cadenzas. Or perhaps Cadenzae, I don’t know. and I’m not going to give in to fashion.

The carpet was thicker, perhaps to absorb the screams and each director had 300 Sq Feet. Secretaries had 200 Sq Feet each and mostly the directors and secretaries shared a 200 sq ft conference room between 2 of them. Or 4, if you include the secretaries. It was a hallowed place and all this is pretty irrelevant to the story that will follow shortly. But I thought you should be told.

On each of the 11 floors – ground to 10 – we had a matched pair of toilet rooms. One was for those of the female persuasion and one of the male persuasion. They contained a couple of stalls with doors (3 I think for the ladies) and a couple of urinals (not for the ladies) and a couple of washbasins in each. Roller towels from Initial (remember them?) All mod cons.

One day the CEO decided that the toilets should be improved and sent a messenger with a cleft stick containing instructions: New Bogs For All. Very democratic when you think about it. This was not a small matter because (as you will no doubt have calculated) this was 22 toilet rooms, with I reckon 55 doors plus lots of other stuff unmentionable. And too boring to set out.

We had building experts in my team and naturally we went out to invite proposals. This went through the process and at the end of that we decided to engage a gentleman called David Grace and his no doubt talented team. The property manager in my team was particularly finicky, and frequently demanded work to be redone, but on this case there were few complaints about quality.

There was a bizarre event though: the rather mild security guard who did the weekend shift gave me a call. He thought I was kind hearted (he was right) and on a previous occasion he had called me to say he had locked himself out of the building. A bit of a bad mark for the bloke who is looking after security but I told him he had to go to his boss and fess up. But the second time he called me at a weekend was more of a challenge. He told me one of the subcontractors who provided the toilet doors had come in and begun to take them away. The prospect of toilets without doors was a touch alarming for me so some frantic calls ensued. In the end the doors reappeared. I imagine money changed hands but I don’t know for sure. No modesty was threatened on Monday and all was well in the world.

The project was finished on time and to our exacting standards, so we went out one evening to celebrate a tricky project well completed.

All well for a while, but then I answered the phone one day. It was the director of a large building company. Very polite but he was asking me where his money was. From memory he was asking for something like £275K. I said I had never heard of him or his company so I would not be paying him. He got a bit more insistent and said he had purchase orders that had been delivered but not paid, even though they had chased. He had come to me because nobody else in the company was sorting him. I asked him therefore to send these purchase orders,

Our purchasing system had a thing called a purchase requisition. Rather army-like if I think of it, but the system in Honeywell was that any Tom or Delilah could raise a purchase req, but it meant nothing until it was authorised by someone senior, at which point we raised a formal legal purchase order. Well, David Grace and his chums had access to the toilets (obviously) and the building in general and at some point somebody had pinched a wad of purchase requisitions. They then filled them out with the names of some people that had picked up from the Telephone book, given them smart job titles and signed off the requisitions with forged signatures made by whom knows who. They then gave these to the big building company who ordered what was needed and everybody got on with the job. There was obviously a glitch in the payment for doors, but that happens in business sometimes, and it was quickly sorted.

So there I was, sitting with all this forged stuff. Not really a risk for Honeywell because he had no real orders but I of course went immediately to our security director, a retired colonel. He was a security man and immediately smelt a rat. He thought I had rodent-like features and the immediate suspicion was that I was in on the scam. I was hauled before my boss, the Finance Director, the HR director, the Legal director and the aforementioned colonel.

I was really aghast, but I obviously convinced them I knew nothing about it. Colonel had immediately called Sherlock and his oppo Inspector Lestrade. Here the two of them are seen outside Honeywell House with a couple of Peelers eager to clap me in irons.

I was delegated to deal with the cops and a few days later I got a call from DI Lestrade and DS Arnott (I have used false names to preserve their privacy). They said they wanted to come and see me and Oliver Twist who was my project manager. I said OK when. They said Thursday. I said what time? They said do you have a canteen? I said we did and he said they had to come round from Southgate and the traffic is bad in the morning so they would come for 12. I got Oliver to come down from his base in Hemel Hempstead and we awaited the coppers. They were on time and in need of a cup of tea, which I provided. They told Oliver to go away, they only wanted to talk to me. They then said they were hungry. I bought them lunch in our canteen. I knew very little about the work in any detail, or about ‘David Grace’ so would they like to interview Oliver, who had come down for the occasion. Oh, no, there won’t be any time for that, we have to get back to Southgate before the rush hour.

We arranged another day for them to meet Oliver, and a series of conversations with him continued, coincidentally happening at lunch time. After a few weeks of this they came back to talk to me. David Grace was not his real name. They couldn’t tell me his real name because of 1980 GDPR but they did tell me: a) the criminal had pinched the identity of a vicar from Kent who had recently gone to meet and no doubt impress his maker b) the fake Mr Grace had plenty of form for fraud c) they don’t know where he is but think he has fled to South America d) they have a whole room full of documents and evidence they will give to the Crown Prosecution Service and e) the CPS will do nothing with it because the evidence is not very good.

Had I known him then I would have involved Sir Keir but at that time he was a mere barrister and not even a Sir.

I never heard any more about David Grace. Perhaps he is in Brazil ripping them off or having a ripping time. I don’t really care much. I was off the hook and I didn’t worry about the building company that was the real victim. I was sympathetic but the old rule is caveat emptor and they didn’t. Grace was obviously good at his trade because he convinced our guys as well as the building co.

My next contact with the police was a few years after. I had been promoted to director and was able to choose a company car of my choice, within a limit. I chose a BMW 525i and loved it. I was off on a course in France when I got a call from my wife. Where’s your car? It’s outside our house with its CPZ ticket. She said it wasn’t. The council and police denied they had pinched it so we concluded it was a light fingered type. I missed the last day of my course (I was crying a lot over that) and came home. By then the wheels were turning (no pun intended) with the police. I notified the fleet manager. He told the leasing company. A few days later a constable (name lost – probably not a bad plan) rang me up and told me the car was in Slough and had been identified. Excellent – when do I pick it up? Ah, not as easy as that, it has been bought by someone innocently. Yes but you remember that ‘caveat emptor’ that’s his problem, not mine. PC disagreed. I was unhappy and tried to talk to him again but he never took my call. I couldn’t understand how a stolen car could be taxed and insured. But it can, and still is, 23 years later:

Vehicle Tax and MOT status results - Check if a vehicle is taxed and has an MOT - GOV.UK

https://vehicleenquiry.service.gov.uk/VehicleFound?locale=en 

I lost nothing, my company did but didn’t care, nor did the leasing company which actually owned it. Sometimes the world is full of mysteries.

I will come back to the matter of the police at some other time. I will be a lot more positive, really. But that will do for now