Dead at First Sight

22 Friday 28 September

Jack Roberts had been at his desk, in his comfortable office, since 6 a.m., as he was most days. A tall, muscular man in his forties, with a shiny head and a light beard, he exuded natural charm which always inspired confidence in his clients. But he could be tough as nails at the flick of a switch, when he needed to be.

He retained the same enthusiasm for his work as he had as a youngster, when his dad had taken him to see The Spy Who Loved Me. He had been immediately captivated by James Bond, and determined, one day, to be like him.

At the age of twenty-one he began working for a firm that traced people, and four years later started his own private investigation agency, Global Investigations. His company, based in a modern low-rise office block, offered a range of services including carrying out background checks, tracing missing persons, surveillance of suspected unfaithful spouses and investigating fraud. During the past few years, much of their business was with online scamming, and increasingly with the new menace of so-called ‘romance fraud’.

With three beautiful daughters and a wife he still adored every bit as much as when they had first married, he loved the photographs of his family on his desk. They gave him an often-needed reassurance of normality in what seemed to him to be an increasingly toxic world — all the more so with the shameless targeting of the vulnerable and elderly by online predators.

He liked the early morning, the sense of being ahead of the world. In the silence of his company’s otherwise empty first-floor office suite with a view across the quiet high street, he caught up on his emails and the overnight reports filed by his field agents. He was smiling as he read through a surveillance report emailed from one of his agents.

The man had spent two days concealed in a tree, in pelting rain, watching a secluded cottage in Dorset, the suspected illicit love nest of a couple having an affair. It reminded Jack of a case early on in his career. He had spent three days concealed in a hedge bordering a lay-by, watching and photographing a man who had been claiming disability benefits, who was out every day, digging in his cottage garden. Jack had worn his ghillie camouflage suit to reduce the chances of being spotted. Around midnight on the first day a car had pulled into the lay-by, and a man got out and walked straight towards him. Convinced he had been spotted, he braced himself. Instead the stranger unzipped his flies, urinated on him, blissfully unaware of his presence, and drove off.

Some parts of being out in the field he really did not miss, he reflected.

‘Good morning, Jack, what are you looking so cheerful about?’ his long-standing secretary asked, breezing into the room.

He decided she might take it the wrong way if he said, ‘Being peed on,’ and instead simply replied, ‘Oh, nothing, Lucy.’

‘Your 8.30’s here.’

He glanced at his calendar on his screen. ‘Elizabeth Foster? Romance fraud issue?’

‘That’s her.’

‘Fine, show her in.’

He stood up as a smartly dressed fair-haired woman in her mid-thirties entered. She was a lot younger than most victims of romance fraud, who were more usually in their fifties and upwards. He shook her hand, ushered her to the black leather sofa in front of his desk, then sat down in a chair beside her and picked up a lined pad and a pen. It always put his clients at ease to sit beside them rather than the more confrontational position of facing them. ‘Would you like some tea or coffee, Ms... Mrs... Foster?’

‘Liz is fine — and just some water would be good, thank you.’

He gave the instruction through the intercom, then asked her if she would be OK with him recording the interview. She was. He placed the recorder on the coffee table in front of her. ‘So, Liz, how can I help you?’

Wringing her hands nervously, she said, ‘My mother is being conned blind by someone she met a few months ago on an internet dating site, and won’t believe the man’s not real. She’s in thrall to him. She’s already paid some cash and I’m scared stiff he’ll keep going until he’s bled her dry and she’s lost her home and everything.’

It was an all-too familiar story. ‘Cat-fishing’, the Americans called it. He did his best to put her at ease, mentally adding that she was probably worried about her inheritance, too. ‘OK, can you tell me about your mother — start from the beginning.’

She paused, as if gathering her thoughts. ‘Her name is Lynda Merrill. She’s fifty-nine and was totally devoted to my... our... father, who died four years ago after a horrible time with early-onset dementia. He worked in the Diplomatic Service and we lived abroad, moving around for much of our lives — my two brothers and I. When he retired, my parents came back to England and settled in Surrey, just outside Godalming, near Guildford. When he became ill they moved to Hove, to be near myself and my husband.’

Jack jotted down a note.

‘Dad did everything, taking care of all the bills, and Mum was totally dependent on him. She was lost for a long while after he died and they didn’t have many friends here. Both my brothers live abroad — one in California and the other in Australia — so it sort of fell to myself and my husband, Don, to take care of her. She wasn’t that tech-savvy, so Don pretty much taught her how to use her computer for more than just emails and changed her old phone for a smart one. The next thing I knew was that she very excitedly told me she’d joined an online dating agency. A recently widowed member of her book group had told her about a wonderful man she’d met online. So mother decided to join one.’ She hesitated.

‘As a lot of single people do,’ Jack encouraged.

‘Absolutely. Next thing, she told me she’d met someone. At first I was delighted — I thought he was probably a retired professional, someone like Dad, until one day I went round to the house and saw a picture of this — er — fellow — on her computer screen. A very good-looking man, younger than my mum, whose name, she told me, was Richie Griffiths.’

‘Richie Griffiths?’

‘Yes. I discovered that what she’d done was put up a photo of me, because the earlier ones of her looked out of date — we looked very similar when she was my age. I told her that the moment they met, he was going to realize she had lied.’

‘How did she respond?’

‘She got angry with me and told me I was being ageist. That what did an age gap matter? She said she’d read about a sixty-nine-year-old man in Holland who’d gone to court saying his doctor had told him he had the body of a forty-nine-year-old, so that’s what he wanted to change his age to. He argued that if you could change your name or your sex, then you could change your age — he wanted to be twenty years younger to help his chances of getting a job. Mum said that when they met she knew Richie would forgive her little white lie. She said they were madly in love and that she slept with his photo under her pillow.’

‘OK, so then what happened?’ Jack prompted.

‘Well, I help out with her paperwork — I go over there every week. A couple of months or so ago I opened a bank statement and saw a whole bunch of payments to an account in Munich. Small at first — £250. Then £500. Then £800. Then £2,000. I asked her about them. My mother told me that Richie Griffiths was a film-maker, originally from England, and married to a German actress in Munich. They’d recently split up and were going through an acrimonious divorce, and he’d had his bank account frozen by a German lawyer. He was strapped for cash and if she could help him out he would pay her back when he got his life sorted out. I wasn’t happy about this, obviously.’

‘It’s a familiar kind of pattern.’

‘Next time I visited her, I was alarmed to see a much bigger payment, £15,000. This man had told her his sister had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and needed immediate treatment. He was in despair and could she lend him the money to pay for her treatment until he got his affairs sorted out? Then yesterday morning I went over to her and she told me he’d offered her a great investment. His marital home, in the best area of Munich, was worth a lot more than his ex-wife was claiming from him. If my mother loaned him the money to buy out his wife’s share of their home, they would both make a killing when he sold it.’

‘How much is the loan he’s asking for?’

‘In the region of £450,000.’

Roberts whistled. ‘Does she have that amount in cash available?’

‘She has, invested. Luckily it’s going to take a while for her to get all the money because much of it is in bonds. I’ve told her she needs to get her solicitor to make sure it’s all done correctly with this fellow — hoping any lawyer would realize pretty quickly it’s a con. I’ve spoken to her bank manager. She was sympathetic but said she was powerless to stop her. But she said she would speak to her to try to dissuade her. What is even more alarming is that the manager told me, in confidence, that my mother had enquired about remortgaging her house. When she told Mother that she was unlikely to get a mortgage due to her lack of income, my mother said she had been looking into equity-release plans. So this Richie — whoever he might be — is clearly not going to stop at £450,000. That’s when I decided I needed urgent help and found you, on the internet. You seem to be specializing in this kind of fraud — if that’s what this is.’

‘You did the right thing,’ Jack Roberts reassured her. ‘When I got your message, via my secretary, I did some background checks on this “Richie Griffiths” and found out he’s a pretty busy guy out on the internet. At least half-a-dozen different ladies are all in love with him — and several of them in the process of helping him buy his ex-wife out of their property.’ He grimaced. ‘Not bad for someone who doesn’t actually exist.’