Fogarty: A City of London Thriller (20 page)

The buzzer on the intercom rang. Ben was puzzled;
no one knew he was here except for the Hammonds and his agent. The buildings in Vine Street Crescent house a mix of businesses and individuals, all of whom value their privacy, and so anyone intending to visit the occupants will generally have to pass through a security screening. The Carters’ apartment was no exception. Ben picked up the handset.

“Mr Fogarty. Henderson here. I have a Max Richmond asking to see you. He says he has no appointment but it i
s urgent that he speak to you.”

“Listen, Henderson, I know Max vaguely but I’m busy. Can you put him on the l
ine? I’ll let him down gently.”

“Very good,
sir.” A moment passed, and he heard Max’s voice.

“Ben, how are you doing?
You’re a hard fellow to find.”

Impo
ssible, I’d hoped, thought Ben.

“Max! What would an esteemed member of the fourth estate be doing speaking to an old broken down rugby
player on a Saturday morning?”

“I need to speak to you urgently, Ben. I think you
are in danger, serious danger.”

“Max, I’m only talking to you now because of what you did for me last year. If I let you up here
and you’re just snooping, like your fellow tabloid reporters, our relationship is over, understand?”

“I understand, Ben. Believe me, this is as
much for your benefit as mine.”

Ben relented and asked Henderson to allow Max up to the apartment.

***

Max Richmond walked up the plush staircase to the third floor. The decoration was immaculate. Works by minor British artists adorned each landing and half landing. Max had been here before. He had interviewed the talented Mrs Carter, an equestrian fashion designer, about child labour being used on her equestrian fashion range. To her credit, she sacked her procurement director immediately and then made a significant amount of funding available to a micro bank which loaned money to women in poor areas of Africa so that they could establish ethical and principled businesses which did not use child labour. Max wrote a complimentary article the following weekend, and the Carter family sent him a thank you note.

Max had tried to meet up wit
h Ben earlier but his calls had been rebuffed by the press agent handling Ben’s calls, and so Max had to use surreptitious means to find where Ben was hiding. Having first tried Sotheby’s and Phillips auction houses, Max discovered that Bonhams were handling the sale of the Rectory artworks. Max recalled his trip to Bonhams, where he bought a catalogue for the sale, engaging George Plessey in conversation. During the conversation Max produced a picture of himself with Ben Fogarty. Looking for all the world like best pals, they were mugging for the camera. George Plessey relaxed when he realised he was dealing with a friend of his client.

“George, I appreciate that these items are listed for the sale but my real interest is in the Rupert Heywood abstract canvas that was hanging in the master bedr
oom. Are you selling that one?”

George Plessey seemed anxious, concerned that the catalogue was incomplete. He called down to his assistant, who knew nothing of the Rupert Heywood abstract. Max tried
to calm the man.

“Look, it may be that Ben is keeping that one in the family. It’s a stunning piece, but if it is for sale, I’d like to make a bid. Could you call Ben and ask him if it’s for sale? Naturally I’ll cover your commission. I would do it myself, but it may seem insensitive whils
t Ashley is still in hospital.”

“Indeed so,” the auctioneer agreed
sympathetically.

Max joined George Plessey in his office as he turned over an ancient Rolodex that had been updated with Ben’s new contact details. George then read from the card as he dialled the number. Max walked around the room admiring the artwork, before his eyes alighted on the Rolodex card which contained Ben’s address. Ben did not answer the phone, as Max had known he would not. He was
at the hospital with his sister, and so Max left his card with George Plessey so that he could be contacted if the fictitious Rupert Heywood abstract canvas was for sale. The name on the card was The Rt. Honourable Gerald Lovington, who would be very surprised to hear from an auctioneer he had never met. Max smiled as he left the auction house.

With his hair nearly shorn to the scalp to remove the snake eyes, but otherwise recognisable as himself, Max stood at the door and knocked.

***

Ben Fogarty opened the door and looked at the slightly sinister version of Max Richmond standing in front of him. Ben was somewhat puzzled, as he wasn’t to know that the thuggish look was a remnant of his earlier disguise.

“Max Richmond,” Ben said after a moment’s hesitation. “You wrote a piece on the Maori land grab case. It pro
ved to be quite helpful to me.”

“It did me some good, too, Ben. I won a press award for the best foreign investigative series in a national newspaper. I was with the News of the World then,” Max said mournf
ully.

“Yes, I heard about the paper closing down. It’s a pity. Who’s going
to expose the wrongdoers now?”

“Me!” Max said diffide
ntly. Ben smiled.

“What brings you here? I guess you want to talk privately, given the fact that you went to the trouble of tracking
me down and avoiding my agent.”

“You guess right. We need to talk about a long running investigation of mine which you seem to have walked right into the mid
dle of over the last few days.”

Ben looked intrigued. Max continued.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, I thought you had wrecked months of research and sunk my story, until Tuesday morning.”

“Why? What happened Tuesday morning that saved
your story?” Ben asked naively.

“The raid on the Trafalgar House flats, and the fact that you survived a mass shooting in Blackheath. But, if I can have exclusive rights to your story, I c
an tell you everything I know.”

“Why would I give you
exclusive rights to my story?”

“Because I might just be the only one who knows the full facts of the Grierson saga, including the details of your twin sister’s involvement and the parental claims of a
certain Hollywood movie star.”

Max ha
d just grabbed Ben’s attention.

***

Ben sat at one side of the low, limed oak coffee table, facing the freelance reporter, and listened intently as the tale unfolded. Max had accepted Ben’s promise that he would speak about this with Max and no one else, and then only on condition that this was a gentleman’s agreement sealed with a handshake. Ben had provided them both with a rich aromatic mug of coffee from a Keurig coffee machine. Max sipped the steaming brew before speaking.

“Ben, you will know a lot of this already
, I’m sure, but here is what I have.” Max flipped open a notebook for reference, but he ad-libbed as he read.

“Dennis Grierson was a runner for an old time gangster called Morris Gibson. He had little education but a lot of nerve, and the old man liked him. Over the years he worked for Gibson, Dennis Grierson was arrested more than once for the sexual assault and rape of young girls who were generally only thirteen or fourteen. He escaped being convicted because Morris Gibson protected him, persuading the families that it wasn’t worth their while giving evidence. In 1981 he claimed parentage of you and your twin sister, although the lady assisting
May Fogarty in the delivery had been told by his wife that Dennis was all but impotent.”

Ben nodded, int
imating that this was old news.

“Rumours abounded that Brendan Grayson was the real father of the twins, and Grierson ensured that he was hounded o
ut of the flats by local thugs.

Nicknamed ‘Psycho’, Grierson graduated to petty crime and even armed robbery; some of that was proven and some wasn’t. He served some time but not as much as he deserved. By the time h
e took over the running of the Farm he was almost bulletproof. By then Morris Gibson was dead, and Dennis had inherited girls, drugs and two bent detectives, DC Gregory Cregg and DS Bob Radlett.”

Max looked
up from his notes momentarily.

“Remember those names. The
y become important later.”

Max returned to his notes, scanning the page to find his place
, and continued his narrative.

“Even his two bent copper friends couldn’t save him from conviction for a violent assault on a uniformed probationer during the 1981 Broadwater Farm riots. The young policeman wasn’t even wearing protective clothing. He was responding to a shoplifting incident, on foot in the days when the police still walked the streets, when he was set upon by Grierson and his mates. They left the poor bloke senseless, stealing his helmet and leaving him with a message for his superiors at
the Met; ‘Stay out of the Farm’.

Den served his time and struggled to take control again when he came out, but he had to agree to share control of the flats with the gang of teenagers who now handled the low level drugs distribution to school kids and young adults in the area. That little ‘gangsta’
pack later became the TH Crew.

Den Grierson knew that he appeared to be in a weakened position. He had lost his wife to a rival, his daughter and much of his control had gone, and so he needed to send a message that Psycho was back and in charge. He needed to instil fear into people again. That was when a nasty little creep sold Grierson a vital piece of information - your mother’s whereabouts! That man was
Trevor Pannell, another name you need to remember for later. When the news circulated of your mother’s murder, fear swept through the estate. Even the local gang members were afraid of Grierson and his team.

During the nineties, Grierson started importing girls direct from Eastern Europe and drugs from Belgium. It is estimated that he made several millions over that period
, and I’m told that not all of it was spent or wasted. In the early part of 2002, Grierson changed tack and it appeared that he had been persuaded to set up a number of ‘boiler rooms’ around the city.”

“Sorry, Max, but a boiler room obviously means something more than a room with a heating
equipment in it,” Ben interrupted.

“Yes it does. In this respect a ‘boiler room’ is an office set up to defraud greedy investors. Essentially, Grierson set up a number of low rent offices with a few young personable guys, a few telephones and a couple of computers. They would cold call potential investors, promising fantastic returns on shares and equities. To keep things simple they would start by insisting that the investor could only open an account with a maximum of five thousand pounds, because these high return opportunities had to be shared between all customers. Obviously they banked the cash and sent out
worthless share certificates.”

“Didn’t they
get caught?” Ben asked naively.

“Oh yes. The FSA were pretty good at spotting these ‘boiler rooms’ and they were usually rumbled within a month or so, but by then they had upped sticks and moved on. Most of the punters’ money was never recovered. I wrote an article about it in 2008, by which time the boom in boiler rooms was all but over. I have to say that the City of London Police did a great job in tracking down the boiler room con men in their jurisdiction, but the Met had less success in their areas and Den’s team were never caught. Hardly surprising, really, when you learn that detective Superintendent Bob
Radlett was running the show.”

“Look, Max, I’ve heard a lot of this before from my grandmother and Vastrick Security. I know you have some new information
, but how does it endanger me?”

“Because it explains why you were held in the basement of a rectory in Blackheath. Do you
want me to go on?” Ben nodded.

“OK. We are in 2008, property has crashed and Den has a load of money to launder, so how does he do it? The answer comes in the form of one
Trevor Pannell.” Ben instantly recognised the name of the man responsible for his mother’s death, and he bristled visibly. Max continued.

“
Trevor Pannell was property manager for Blackheath Voss Properties, a purpose made company part funded by a Dutch financier to develop the Rectory at Blackheath into apartments. The other major investor was Lawrence Garner.”

Ben drew in a deep breath. “I know. Ashley told me that’s how she came to be involved with Grierson again,”
he said, somewhat impatiently.

“Perhaps, but there’s more. The Dutch had bought the site and the Rectory for over a million pounds. Garner had spent almost all of his four hundred thousand pounds on renovations when a planning appeal that had been expected to go in their favour was dismissed. This happened despite the fact that, according to my sources, bribes had changed hands. The joint venture now only had permission for a single dwelling on the site. The scheme had to be reappraised
, and one of the bankers withdrew their funding when the surveyor valued the completed single dwelling rectory at less than a million pounds, in the new ‘post property crash’ market. From company records it seems that Grierson moved in and, using Ashley Garner as his stalking horse, bought the Dutch company’s shares in the joint venture at a huge discount. The two directors were now ostensibly Ashley and Lawrence Garner, but Garner owned a half finished rectory and had no money left. Terrified that his father would find out that he had failed in his first attempt to branch out on his own, Lawrence turned to Grierson again. Dennis Grierson funded the completion works, and would have taken control of the whole development company as MD except for the fact that he would never have been allowed to become a director with his criminal history.