Find Them Dead

63 Thursday 16 May

Five minutes later, the hearing resumed.

Richard Jupp leaned across and addressed the jury: ‘I have made the decision, as we are now advanced with this trial, that we will continue with a jury of just eleven people. I’m sure everyone here in this court wishes the absent juror well, especially you, her fellow jurors, who will have got to know her by this time.’

Then he turned to Stephen Cork. ‘You may continue with your next witness.’

Cork stood. ‘I would now like to call Detective Sergeant Jack Alexander. He has confirmed that at the time of the arrest he was working as part of the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team, and acted as Supervisor on the raid on the defendant’s home on Saturday December 1st last year, and subsequently on his office premises.’

A tall, slim man in his late twenties, carrying a bundle of documents and a small laptop, entered the witness box and took the oath. He had a calm and composed manner, and looked around the room, giving the jurors a polite, warm smile as he stated his name, rank and station.

At that moment, Meg noticed Gready staring directly at her, as if fixing her with his gaze. She looked away, hastily and uncomfortably.

Jack Alexander gave his evidence, describing how he had gone to the home address in the early hours of the morning on the date in question under the terms of a warrant issued by a local magistrate. He went into some detail telling the jury what had happened when they had arrived at the defendant’s home.

‘Now, Detective Sergeant, would you please tell this court what you found there?’ Cork asked.

The DS spoke with a clear, educated voice. ‘Yes, the first items of significance, which a search officer discovered concealed inside a bedpost in a spare bedroom, were an SD card and a number of phones.’ He held up his bundle. ‘I have here the detailed report from Aiden Gilbert of the Sussex Police Digital Forensics Unit on what was recovered. The burner phones had never been used, and the contents of the SD card have been analysed thoroughly. To summarize briefly — the full details are in the documents that both the defence and the jury have copies of — they include email communications with a company called Schafft-Steinmetz based in Düsseldorf, Germany, and receipts from this company for the work they carried out.’

‘And what was the nature of this work, Detective Sergeant?’ Cork asked.

‘It was to build, as inexpensively as possible, a replica — or perhaps a more accurate description would be a facsimile — 1962 Ferrari 250 SWB.’

‘And was this in order to try to pass off this fake car as the real thing and to sell it?’

‘No, the instructions to Schafft-Steinmetz were to provide as many voids within the chassis, frame, doors and roof as possible.’

‘And did the company at any time question the reasons for this?’ Cork asked.

‘Yes, they did. They were informed that they had a client who wished to use the vehicle for long-distance endurance rallies, and the spaces were for storage of fuel and provisions.’

Cork nodded. ‘I see. And was anything else discovered on this SD card?’

‘There was,’ Alexander replied. ‘Over the past five years, there were instructions to this same company to construct four previous facsimile classic sports cars with a similar specification of voids. An AC Cobra, another similar Ferrari, an Aston Martin DB5 and a French car, the marque of which is now defunct, a Facel Vega.’

‘And where were all these vehicles destined?’

‘To LH Classics of Chichester, which the Financial Investigation Unit have established is owned, through a convoluted chain of offshore companies, by the defendant.’

Cork nodded again. ‘I see — and to your knowledge were any of these previous cars entered into any endurance rallies?’

‘Not that I have been able to establish, no.’

Cork went on. ‘Detective Sergeant Alexander, during your raid on the defendant’s home, did you discover anything else of interest?’

‘We did, yes. We discovered a number of prepaid travel cards, to countries that tallied with the offshore chain of companies that LH Classics is owned through, which include Panama and the Cayman Islands. The total amount of credit on these cards was just under £200k. We also found in a safe in the house a cash amount of £62,500 sterling, a further £87,000 in US dollars and a further £320,000 in euros.’

‘Well,’ said Cork, ‘don’t we all put a bit of cash aside for our holidays?’

The remark made someone in the court laugh out loud, and Cork milked it for all he was worth, dramatically pausing before addressing the detective again. ‘Was there anything else, apart from the defendant’s — ah — holiday fund — that you found during this raid?’

Jack Alexander nodded. ‘Yes, we discovered an amount of cocaine, which the defendant said was for his personal use. But more significantly, we found a key, very cleverly concealed in the false bottom of an aerosol fly spray canister in the garden shed. It ultimately led, after several months of investigative work, to a private safety deposit box on the premises of a company, Safe Box Co, on the Hollingbury Industrial Estate.’

‘Oh? Did you manage to take a look inside?’

‘We did, it was opened under warrant. It contained more foreign currency, for the countries I have already mentioned, totalling £392,000, along with six USB memory sticks.’

‘DS Alexander, can you tell us what was found on these memory sticks?’ Cork questioned.

The DS replied, ‘Further information relating to the movement of high-value cars in and out of the country that did not contain drugs and were part of appearing to maintain a genuine business front. There was also significant information relating to LH Classics and the company’s bank accounts overseas.’

Cork addressed the DS once more. ‘I am now going to ask you to tell the jury and the court in more detail about the information you have just summarized.’

Jack Alexander then spent the next two hours going through in detail the information found on the USB sticks. As he finished sharing the information, Cork asked the officer to wait and invited Primrose Brown to proceed.

Primrose Brown got to her feet. ‘Officer, you mentioned earlier in your evidence information relating to a German company, Schafft-Steinmetz. Can you confirm that at no time progressing these enquiries is my client’s name mentioned?’

Alexander replied, ‘That is correct.’

Brown continued. ‘In relation to the instructions regarding specifically the four classic sports cars, can you again confirm that my client’s name was not found anywhere on that paperwork?’

‘That is correct,’ said Alexander.

Primrose Brown persisted. ‘Detective Sergeant, did you find anything untoward about these four previous cars, other than them being replicas?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I did not. But, of course, they have never been examined.’

‘Would you consider yourself an expert in the field of classic vehicles?’

‘Other than my father owning a vintage Harley Davidson motorbike, no, probably not.’

She nodded. ‘I understand there is a large and legitimate market in replica models of classic cars. Many of these are exhibited and raced at classic car events in the full knowledge they are replicas. So, you would not be aware of this?’

‘No,’ Alexander admitted.

‘You have also just said that LH Classics of Chichester is owned by the defendant through a chain of offshore companies, as if you were casting aspersions on such a thing. Many highly reputable companies operating out of the UK are in fact owned by companies registered abroad, either for tax mitigation or for other equally legitimate purposes. Do you have any reason to suppose my client had a nefarious reason for having this company registered offshore, if indeed he did? Our case is that he had no connection with this company.’

‘Beyond masking the ownership of the Ferrari seized at Newhaven Port, no,’ he conceded.

Brown then spent the next hour running through the evidence that Alexander had given but was unable to sway his evidence or gain any advantage from what he had said to the court that would help her client.

She paused for a moment. ‘One more question, officer. Is it possible that someone who visited the house could have placed these items in the post of my client’s bed? Can you discount that?’

He replied, ‘No, I cannot.’

‘Thank you,’ she said and sat down.

Cork then rose to his feet. ‘Officer, how likely is it that the scenario my learned friend has just raised might have happened?’

‘It is of course possible,’ Alexander said, ‘but due to the nature of where these items had been hidden, I think it extremely unlikely.’

‘Thank you, officer, I have no more questions.’

Alexander left the courtroom.