John was told that from now different police units, C1 Reserve, Organised Crime Branch would take charge jointly with Criminal Intelligence Branch.
He remained outwardly unconcerned and exercised his right to silence, not saying one single word to the police, even with his solicitor present. However, he indicated that he wanted it to be noted on the official statement‑paper and signed for by all in the room, that he had said absolutely nothing.
At eight o’clock next morning John Forbes was brought from his cell to be formally charged with conspiracy to murder David Kennedy between January 1979 and September 1979, within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court, and also conspiracy to import a controlled drug class ‘B’ namely cannabis. Thereafter he was fingerprinted and photographed, and returned to his cell. Two hours later, he was led, handcuffed to two uniformed officers, to an armoured prison van with outrider escort and sirens wailing, which took him to nearby Marylebone Magistrate’s Court where he was remanded in custody for three weeks to Brixton Prison. Ernst Rubinstein made no application for bail on his behalf.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
_________________________
C Wing, Brixton Prison, London, March 1980
‘The Number One’, a trustee called Charles Peary was called into the Wing PO office of Brixton Prison and told that eleven remand prisoners would be arriving that evening.
Peary considered it strange he had been told this, but didn’t think any more about it until he had allocated cells to all the prisoners coming back from court and waiting in the prison reception for him to finish his allocation job.
‘Hurry up, Charlie, for God’s sake. I want everyone banged up, before that lot of eleven VIP’s are coming onto the wing. They’re getting very impatient.’
‘It takes the time it takes,’ Charles said. ‘Anyway, I’m ready now. What’s the big fuss about?’
‘Better keep on your toes,’ the duty officer warned. ‘Word is they can bring this prison to a standstill, so don’t mess with them. Governor’s instructions are to give them exactly what they want.’
‘OK, guv.’ Peary shrugged. ‘No skin off my nose. What are they in for?’
The duty officer tapped his nose. ‘Don’t ask questions, Charlie. You know how the system works. A phone call here, a bit of oiling there – anyway, word is they’re to have star treatment. So make sure you give them the best accommodation. Unless you want to leave here minus a vital bit of your equipment!’
* * *
Behind a warder, Peary could see a line of men in dark business suits, the first of whom looked familiar. As he moved closer, peering in the dim light, Peary realised who it was. He approached the man at a fast trot, falling over himself to be helpful.
‘Welcome to C Wing, Mr Forbes.’ That should impress the screw, he thought. And it wouldn’t do him any harm with their distinguished visitor either.
‘Thank you.’ John Forbes looked at him blankly, obviously not recognising him.
‘What are you doing here?’ Peary asked jovially.
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow. For now, just allocate us single cells next to each other, so we can get our heads down.’
‘That’s out of the question,’ Peary said without thinking. ‘If you want singles, I’ll have to move more than thirty men who’re probably already asleep. You will become very unpopular here. They’re three to a cell in here, you know.’
Forbes shrugged. ‘So?’ He looked steadily into the orderly’s eyes.
Peary averted his gaze and jumped to attention. ‘Right away, Mr Forbes, sir!’
‘Who was that?’ John asked William Webster on the way up the clanging iron stairs to their hastily allocated cells on the second landing.
‘Charles Peary,’ William said.
‘I don’t remember him.’
‘You probably don’t even know him. He’s obviously been told by the officers to show you respect. I suppose he could be a customer of Auto‑Trade‑Factors. He was running a huge international travellers’ cheque fraud before they fingered him. Well, it’s good to have someone we know in the job of ‘Number One’. He can be trusted, but he’s a bit of a MASDOHL.’
‘What’s that?’
William smiled thinly. ‘Middle‑aged smoothie down on his luck.’
* * *
At seven next morning John was allowed to phone Great Ormond Street and speak to his son. Michael had been told about the situation and John promised that everything would be back to normal within a few weeks. Then he phoned the hospital close to Holloway Prison. Catherine was much better and the solicitor had seen her there late last evening. She would be released on police bail this morning and promised to visit him as soon as she had been to Great Ormond Street.
By nine o’clock the same morning the ten members of John Forbes’s hemp team were gathered in his cell.
‘The seventh sin is regret, I was once told,’ he said, looking round. ‘So let’s all remember that. Why we find ourselves here is of no real importance today. How we get out and back to normal should be our first thought. We must set up lines of communication with Ramona in Holloway.’
‘Vera could visit them daily.’ William suggested, confident of his wife’s willingness to help in any way she could.
John nodded. ‘Yes, good idea. Please organise it so she comes here before visiting Ramona. I’ll arrange solicitors and barristers for all of you. There’s not much else we can do at the moment. We can’t hope for bail until things calm down and we’ve found out exactly what they have on us. So if you all agree, for the moment no one will apply for bail.’
Asking for their consent was just John’s way, a formality he liked to observe before carrying on business as usual. Even banged up in Brixton, John Forbes was firmly in control.
The whole team knew there was only one way to survive prison life, and that was by not taking it seriously. Their laughter could be heard echoing throughout the Wing. The prison officers were suddenly betting on John’s stream of racing tips, which usually brought them winners.
Cigarettes were in plentiful supply for all the remand prisoners. Every afternoon two black cabs arrived with food from outside restaurants, and a cell had been converted into their dining room.
One thing was uppermost in John’s mind. He had to find out how the police knew about the hemp operation, how they had managed to arrest the whole team and how they had tied the name of David Kennedy to the operation. Only he knew what the Clark twins had done with David Kennedy. There was no way his body could have turned up, so it had to be a leak.
The first name to spring to mind as a possible informant was Erick Elgberg. He could have made a deal with the police while they were investigating him, before John helped him out over the television report. But he did not know the names of the hemp team, and certainly would not have known of David Kennedy’s death.
Another candidate was Rudi Grattini. He knew the team. But why, if he had wanted to close down the operation, had he gone to the trouble of setting up the Serissa deal? Serissa were now being marketed throughout Europe, and its success depended entirely on effective, discreet distribution. But Grattini was an obvious suspect, whom John would have to keep in mind.
Bernard Boucher knew the team. He knew about David Kennedy. And he had a motive: to gain control of the drugs empire. But it did not make sense. John had already offered him so much and told Boucher that he planned to step back from the drugs operation as soon as he could.
Of course David’s wife could have talked. Any member of the team itself could have grassed to the police, but in that case the informer would have been separated from the others in prison as sooner or later the truth was bound to be discovered.
Whoever it was would have had to make a written statement to the police. John knew he would have to get hold of that statement. It was more than likely the police wanted to keep it to the very last moment, hours before the hearing started. He had told Erick and Arthur that should he be arrested they should not
visit him under any circumstances. A communications system was set up whereby letters destined for him were sent to various reliable cons at Brixton, as the censoring process for convicted criminals only involved opening envelopes to check for money. Charles Peary, who as ‘the Number One’ had permission to go anywhere in the prison, picked up and delivered this correspondence. The names Forbes and Elgberg were never mentioned in these letters.
As John believed the solicitor’s room in the prison could be bugged, the communication to his solicitor was therefore mostly by the means of letters via the convicted criminals serving their sentence at Brixton. John instructed Rubinstein to use any means he could to find out from where the police had got their information. After Rubinstein had visited an Inspector on Bancroft’s payroll, with cash discreetly concealed in a newspaper, all defence solicitors received copies of police statements, forensic report and a photocopy of David Kennedy’s letter, together with various forensic reports.
John immediately realised that this whole situation was his own fault. It had been his decision not to take the twins’ mention of David Kennedy’s letter seriously.
He looked at the note about Duncan Grace and smiled. Not much chance of anyone finding him either.
* * *
Catherine stayed constantly with Michael at Great Ormond Street during the first difficult weeks of his treatment. At first she refused to take John’s phone calls, still furious with him for her arrest as part of the drugs team. But after he had written her several increasingly anguished letters and constantly rung Michael’s consultant for updates on his son’s progress, she realised that John was still going to be a presence in her life, even locked away in Brixton Prison.
Grudgingly, and making it quite clear that she did so only for their son’s sake, she agreed to receive Visiting Orders and came to Brixton at regular intervals to tell her husband how Michael was progressing. He’d come through a course of chemotherapy with the loss of all his hair but his spirit unbowed.
The Great Ormond Street doctors were cautiously optimistic about his case, and Catherine told John that she was expecting Michael to come home to Cerne in the next month or so. After that it would be a waiting game to see if the disease recurred, in which case he would need more chemotherapy and a possible bone marrow transplant.
John had never felt so angry or so helpless in his life. In this particular crisis he had no role at all to play but that of a passive spectator, powerless to help his own son.
* * *
In Brixton month after month went by. They were refused bail as conspiracy to murder was one of the charges still preferred against them. The police obviously hoped someone or something would break and were prepared to wait as long as the High Court would allow.
As every member of the team knew that time spent on remand would count against their sentence, they decided that they might as well make the best of the relative comfort which Brixton afforded them and the fact that they still were together as a team.
Eighteen months after their arrival, Charles Peary put his head round the door to John’s cell. ‘Customs and Excise want to see you.’ He gave John a Visiting Order and waited for him to move.
‘Tell them to piss off.’
Peary smoothed out the VO. ‘I think you’d better read the back of it,’ he said.
John turned it over and frowned.
In large handwritten capitals were the words: MONA HOBSON. ST JOHN’S WOOD.
An hour later John passed Peary’s desk. ‘I need the education room for half an hour,’ he said shortly. ‘Set it up for an urgent meeting, will you?’
The hemp team congregated in there soon afterwards, Peary and a couple of his friends stationed outside to ensure they remained undisturbed. John stood in front of the blackboard.
‘We now have a situation,’ he began, ‘where Customs have found out something seriously damaging to me. Not a criminal matter, a private one. I’ve had to act quickly.’
‘Don’t rush anything,’ William said. ‘Everyone here is on your side.’
‘Thanks.’ John looked around at the faces of his team, every one of whom had been proved by the long time on remand to be fiercely loyal. ‘Right. This is how things stand at the moment. The most serious charge against us is murder, or conspiracy to murder. It could theoretically become two charges and in any case carry a life sentence for all of us as conspirators. I’ve now made a deal with Customs that they’ll ensure the police will not do anything about the Duncan Grace matter and that they will drop that charge relating to David’s disappearance.’
There were murmurs of interest and relief.
‘This means we only face the drug charges. Apparently they had every one of us under surveillance for months, so I’m afraid that these will stick. Half an hour ago I was forced to make a statement admitting to having financed two years’ supply of raw hemp. This means that bail can now be considered for each one of you, but to avoid undue publicity it has been agreed that the applications will be processed one by one.’
Ray Immerman spoke up. ‘How serious is the charge against you?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll have to speak to my brief. We’ve been on remand for some time, which will knock a good deal off any sentence. My pleading guilty doesn’t mean you have to do the same, but we have to be realistic. Let’s see exactly what evidence they’ve got on each of us before we decide.’
The room fell silent. Each member of the team knew how unlikely it was that they would be found not guilty.
‘I’ve already told Ramona’s solicitor to get her out of Holloway. And as you, Ray, are the eldest, I suggest your solicitor acts on your behalf as soon as Ramona’s out. Then, when Ray is released, we’ll move up the scale. William and I will be the last to go.’
* * *
At the beginning of December William Webster was finally told by his solicitor that there would be no objections to bail.
John was now the only member of the team left in Brixton.
On Monday, 14th December, Catherine did not arrive in the morning for her usual weekly visit. At three o’clock John asked for a phone call to be put through to the Cerne Estate. After a long while, it was answered by Michael.
At the sound of John’s voice, his son said brokenly, ‘How could you? How could you?’ and put the phone down. John rang again, becoming desperate, but it just kept ringing. In the evening he tried every hour without success.
He spent a sleepless night, hearing his son’s voice constantly. He was even more determined to get bail so that he could begin to sort out his private life.
On Tuesday morning a Visiting Order was brought to him. He rushed over to the large visiting room and waited for Catherine with growing impatience.
Instead of sitting, she pushed the chair under the table and looked down at him.
‘I’ve lived with your deceit since the day we married, so it’s my own fault I’ve been hurt. But for fourteen of those years you’ve been screwing Mona Hobson and that I can’t tolerate or live with. Don’t try to deny it. I’ve read the police report and believe every word.’
John was shattered. The most important aspect of his agreement with Customs had been that his affair with Mona would be kept absolutely secret from his wife. Why had they gone back on their word? The most likely explanation had to be that the police had not agreed to honour the deal and being more than mortified with losing the murder charge, had decided to take their own crushing revenge.
‘Catherine, please sit down and give me a chance to explain,’ he said weakly,
She glared at him. ‘Are you saying this affair didn’t happen?’
‘No...’
‘And it’s gone on for fourteen years?’
‘Yes, but...’
Before turning on her heel, Catherine threw her wedding ring across the table, hitting his cheek.
It fell to the floor and lodged in a crack in the lino from where, weeks later, half buried in cigarette ash and grime, a prison inmate, work
ing as a cleaner picked up and studied it.
With its engraving smoothed away, it should fetch a pony or so. ‘C Undying love, J’. What was the silly bitch doing letting go of it in a place like this? Some people deserved everything they got, he thought, and then swallowed it.
* * *
John was granted bail on Monday, 21st December 1981 and moved into a furnished flat Arthur had rented in Hans Place, Knightsbridge. Every day he had to report to his local police station.
He made no attempt to contact Catherine by phone, but wrote a letter urging Michael and her to meet him in the New Year. He gave his address and telephone number.
On Christmas Day he ate a solitary ready‑made dinner from Harrods food halls, waiting in vain for the phone to ring.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
_________________________
Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge, 2nd January, London 1982
When John reached Erick at Mirage Consulting in the New Year, he said, ‘Remember that restaurant where we first met? Be outside tomorrow morning at six.’
At one minute past, a thin‑ faced, nondescript‑looking man walked towards Erick, wearing a workman’s donkey jacket and flat cap. It took Erick a moment to recognise his usually dapper, smiling friend John Forbes.
‘I hope you’re not getting paranoid,’ he joked as, on John’s instructions, he hailed a passing taxi which took them to Victoria Station, from where they caught a tube to Turnpike Lane, changing trains several times on the way. They hardly spoke leaving the tube, but walked for ten minutes, then John led Erick up Green End Road and turned into the gateway of a shabby Victorian terraced house whose front‑door key had been left under a plant pot.
‘That’s better.’ John took off his disreputable cap and jacket. ‘It’s been a long time, Erick. How are Andrea and the kids?’
‘Fine.’ Erick hesitated, then said, ‘I was sorry to hear about Michael. Tough on you all. Andrea meets Catherine regularly so I’ve been updated.’ He poured coffee for them both from a thermos flask which had been left on the kitchen table.