Chapter Thirty-Four

Old habits die hard and after I disposed of the fire extinguisher business I awarded myself some time off. After about a month of golf and general relaxation I was chaffing to get back to work. I’d had a couple of trips to Sydney with Mary and she’d taken a liking to Double Bay. She loved the amazing ambience of the place, the great shops, restaurants and coffee bars that were so far ahead of what we had in Auckland. For me it was a special place with its Jewish and Mediterranean owned businesses and flamboyant community of colourful residents. I was happy in Auckland, but being back in Sydney on my own terms gave me an inclination for something even better. Every day in Sydney I scanned the papers for sales and franchise opportunities. There were heaps of get rich quick schemes advertised and they always required a down payment to acquire the secrets to success. I cut out ads that interested me, made a few phone calls posing as a possible investor and had their sales material posted to me at a friend’s address. I’d dabbled at a couple of mail scams but hadn’t really given it the concentration it needed. Now, free of any distractions I was ready to give it my all, especially if it meant I was going to be able to spend more time in Sydney. I felt it was safer to base these upcoming capers of mine in Sydney, so that if things went badly I could bolt back to New Zealand. As long as you weren’t doing anything violent you could always pay Sydney’s uniformed finest a fee to look the other way. What they called a ‘tickle’. You have to remember that in the early days you needed a conviction, usually for dishonesty, to get into Australia and from thereon, scams of one sort or another were bred in the bones of Aussies. I think that then as now, Aussie is the spiritual home of the scam. And if they don’t originate in Aussie they certainly get perfected there. At any moment in history the Aussie con man will be state of the art.

An early foray of mine was the ‘Love Letter Scam’. I didn’t invent it, but I certainly gave it a new twist. Often these scams lie dormant for a few years and then soundly bounce back. The timing of this one was perfect. Worldwide there were a large number of major construction projects going on which attracted workers from different countries. Single men, lonely and trapped at remote sites around the globe. I arranged to share an office with a fellow ‘give-it-a-go’ merchant in George Street and acquired that essential tool of the trade, a post office box. I then placed ads in the classified section of various Mining Magazines and suchlike. Remember this was before the advent of dating agencies and lonely-hearts clubs. The ads were very simple:

Jennifer, lonely lady
aged twenty-five.
I am considered
attractive and want to
meet a caring man
with a view to a long
and genuine
relationship. I need a
loving person
to guide me in life.
Reply to Box 11111
Sydney, NSW,
Australia.

The responses usually all came in within the first week. They were keen, but a little reserved. I had met an alcoholic ex-schoolteacher who had lost his job as a result of the drink. He turned out to be well suited to this job. His task was to write tearjerking initial letters, containing a photograph, to the lonely respondents, designed to arouse their interest. You could see them thinking about Jennifer and saying to themselves: ‘what harm can this do?’ and ‘it sounds like she needs me and might actually like me.’

The important letter was the follow up. We had three standard versions for Tom the Teacher to use to hook the fish – letters A, B and C. We got responses from all over the world, but usually they were from professional types. A bearded scientist at an Antarctic research base; an engineer at an oil site in Saudi Arabia; a university lecturer at some remote outpost of the empire and even a missionary in Borneo. We attracted a very international clientele. If we had preponderance from any one group it was the Irish. Independence from Britain had put an end to deportation and they had to find new ways to acquire Australian citizenship. All of them were out there hoping for love and for one reason or another looking for Jennifer.

If a respondent was still with us by the time he received letter B, he was hot. Jennifer would by now be declaring a feeling of love and an inexplicable chemistry between them. If he was in cold climes he would receive a pair of thick, apparently home-knitted, socks from the caring Jennifer. If in the tropics he might get some linen handkerchiefs with a heartfelt plea to take good care of himself because a happy future beckoned from just over the horizon. Those little touches tended to close the deal. And now a meeting became necessary. When would the besotted letter writer be on leave? To where could Jennifer travel to meet him in person? Her wholesome photo no doubt adorned the wall of his lonely, bare sleeping quarters. They must meet, but there was the question of expense. Jennifer could get time off work but had no available funds given the need to care for her terminally ill mother. There would be the matter of her airfare and travel expenses and the cost of a housekeeper to look after her mother. Jennifer felt the break from her daily obligations would do wonders for her health and happiness. Only a miser could begrudge the two thousand Aussie dollars that was needed to arrange the rendezvous. If the target made it to Letter C it was almost certain he would remit the funds and often with a little extra for Jennifer’s ailing Mum, to whom he sent his kindest regards.

We could count on closing about ten per cent of the initial responses. That amounted to about twelve transactions a month for four months until the bubble burst. We started to get newspaper reporters making enquiries as a result of complaints by disappointed bearded scientists. Often this was triggered by the letter telling them that Jennifer’s mother had sadly passed away which had prevented her making the rendezvous.

Unfortunately this letter often arrived after the bearded one had commenced his journey to the Holy Grail. Bizarrely, the dead Mum letter often brought in further funds to help Jennifer with her grief. They exhorted her not to write again until she had had time to deal with her grief. Jennifer took them at their word and didn’t ever reply, so deep-seated was her grief. The only real problem was that Tom the Teacher had become so immersed into the role that in his drunken state (when he wrote his best letters) he started to believe he was Jennifer. When he was really pissed he would often burst into tears at the loss of his beloved ‘Mummy’ as he wrote the cancellation letters. I reckon if we’d been malicious we could have sent him off to one of the meetings with a bearded one. It would have been hilarious, but of course two thousand bucks is two thousand bucks and I had a responsibility to the business.

There was an additional problem that we would often get letters from workers at the same construction site. Replying to these upped the risk level. After all, bearded research scientists are almost human and are just as likely as any other males to indulge in boasting about their new girlfriend Jennifer. As long as Jennifer confessed to them that she had used that name as a pseudonym and we made sure they got different photos from a differently named girl we were probably going to be okay. However, one day Tom was so drunk he sent out identical photos to three different men at the same construction site. It hastened the end of the con and I have to say it brought home to me the perils of drink that the Salvation Army chaps had always gone on about. We shut down the office, parted company with Tom who for years afterwards no doubt regaled people in bars with stories of the Kiwi called Mo who had introduced him to the elusive Jennifer. Well, you have to cover your tracks don’t you? And let me offer a piece of wisdom to anyone foolish enough to get involved in these scams. Knowing when to get out is far more valuable than knowing when to go in. As I’ve said before, I’ve always had a sixth sense for danger and my continued liberty has been dependent on it on many occasions.

It was one thing to move businesses, but I saw no need to move countries or even cities. A new office and a brand new scam. I thought I should try my hand at the old ‘bill them and they’ll probably pay’ lark. The best version of this had been done by three Kiwis in London who came back with hilarious tales and a lot of money. I heard of mailbags full of cheques and a lordly lifestyle. The boys had needed to beat a hasty retreat when ‘The Met’ decided that as they hadn’t been paid to ignore the scam they weren’t going to allow a bunch of colonials to take the Mick. Fortunately this team of Kiwi trailblazers made it home and lived happily ever after. Perfect examples of the motto – ‘get in, get rich, get honest’. And having achieved that, they must remain nameless, especially their leader who is now a very prominent citizen, well known to me. The scam was called pro-forma invoicing. You sent an invoice out for work that had not yet been done or even been requested and as often as not the accounts clerk paid it. Time to work the Antipodean version.

I had the bright idea of promoting an ‘Asian Restaurant register’. I designed the invoices to resemble a government request for information that required the proprietor to register the business. It was signed off by an Inspector Jordan who had a number of impressive letters after his name. Many of the restaurants were owned or operated by illegal immigrants and they didn’t want to take the chance of offending officialdom and having some hard-nosed Aussie inspector calling. Some of them were actually pleased by the idea of having official registration. It’s a numbers game. We sent out something like two thousand invoices all round Australia for an eighteen per cent return at about ninety dollars a time, about thirtytwo grand. Not big money, but it helped the comfort fund. Still it wasn’t enough money to be worth the risk of going to jail. I felt it was time to take a break from Sydney and let the dust settle. I said farewell to my Aussie partner and headed back to New Zealand being careful to leave a trail that suggested I’d gone back to the UK.

And in fact it was now thirteen years since I’d left England. It seemed like a good time for a trip back home. I had a few ghosts to bury back there and I wanted to re-establish myself with my family. It was summer in New Zealand and it was hard to interest Mary in travelling. She was a sunshine girl and her main pleasure in life seemed to be a strategically placed sun lounger. We had a great caravan site at Orewa, a very popular holiday resort about forty miles north of Auckland. Our site was next door to our old family friends, the Claphams, who owned the boarding house I holed-up in, after narrowly avoiding Birdie. It was lovely at Orewa in summer and I couldn’t really blame Mary for preferring that to a cold English winter.

I don’t think the word ’triumphal’ would be entirely out of place when describing my return to Rickmansworth and the family hearth. The family came to Heathrow to meet me and I found I had a whole lot of nephews and nieces who hadn’t existed when I left. It was an emotional moment returning home, although I can remember conjuring with the word ‘home’ in my mind and wondering which of the islands at opposite ends of the world was actually my true home. The furore over the car and my sudden departure weren’t mentioned on arrival. I acted quickly to avoid any bother and tracked down the guy I had taken the deposit from and paid him back with a bit extra for his troubles. It was Christmas time and I’m sure the money came in handy for him. My other worry was the crash and the brawl but the police seemed to have lost interest in that episode. I relaxed and addressed the family problem. There was lingering disappointment over my selling of the cleaning business. It must have rankled seeing vans with my name included in the business buzzing around the area. I did my best to mollify my father who had taken it quite badly. I was quite happy to do this and often it could be achieved by funding all his betting. It cost quite a bit of money but it was nothing compared to what he had given me.

I looked up old friends. Dinger was overseas in the army. He was now a Sergeant and doing well. A few old girlfriends had married and were trotting up the high street with toddlers and babies in pushchairs. Not a situation that lent itself to chat up lines. I had a few nights out with the local guys, but they were all married and our nights were much quieter affairs than they had been. I realised how much my life and expectations had changed. I’d walked through a one-way door when I’d left Ricky and after what I’d seen and done in New Zealand and Aussie, there was no way I could settle back into life in the Home Counties. I was never a pub man and there wasn’t much overlap between what I wanted and the life my mates in England enjoyed. I made a point of looking up my aunties. They were getting on in age and I knew I mightn’t see them again. One was our lovable Aunty Grace who had so brightened our lives during the war and the austere years that followed it. I made it my business to tell her what a saviour she’d been for us and great tears of happiness welled up in her eyes. She understood how much I loved her and how important she’d become in my memories. It made me realise how important it is to tell people when you feel great affection for them and not just assume that they’ll know. Hearing it said is the real reward.

Another favourite was Aunty Ruby, one of my father’s four sisters. She had regularly sent money to my mother to put food on the table when Dad lost the week’s wages at the greyhound racing. She was a throwback to the Bargee days of the Russell family. She had tanned skin, curly black hair, dark eyes and had been a Romany-looking beauty in her day. She rejoiced in the name of ‘Roll your own Rube’ owing to her smoking strong rolled up tobacco fags. She had a nice three bedroom Council house but preferred to sleep on an old handmade mat on the hard floor in front of an open fire in the living room with an old Navy issue greatcoat for a blanket. She spent most of her days with the greatcoat on as well. She presented quite a sight, riding around the village on her bike, very upright with the tails of her coat flapping behind her in the breeze. Unfortunately, she lost the softness that would have matched her early looks and her harrowing domestic circumstances had made her a gruff character in Mill End. These childhood memories have been seared into my brain and I remember my aunts in great detail and with deep affection.

A month flew by and it was time to return to my home down under. The trip had tidied up a lot of loose ends and my return seemed to have made up for my hasty flight. I was no longer a slave to guilt about my past misdeeds in Ricky. I also knew I could change and become whatever I wanted to be. I wasn’t trapped by my past. I felt that those I was leaving behind in England were held in the tight grasp of habit and regimentation and that I had a freedom that was denied to them. There was probably a bit of the Bargee alive and well in my spirit.

On my way back I stopped off in Hong Kong for a few days. I had a contact there I wanted to meet. He was a friend of a business colleague of mine in Auckland, an interesting Kiwi named Adrian Harding. The contact was a jeweller who supplied cut-price fake Russian CZ diamonds, particularly diamond rings. Even established jewellery shops struggled to distinguish them from the real thing. I met up with him and he took me to a workroom at the back of his shop. Adrian had given him the necessary assurances about my trustworthiness. He showed me a selection of his CZ diamonds and the real thing. After he was satisfied with me he took me to a bar that I think was called ‘Bottoms Up’. It was near his premises in the infamous Wanchai District. Over a few drinks we formed an association, despite the distraction of the dancing girls. Following this first meeting I went on my way with a clutch of fake diamonds. I sold some as soon as I returned to New Zealand. Others I kept and many years later used them as part of the purchase money for my lovely boat the Amalfi. I bought this from another well-known wheeler and dealer, ‘Chappie’, Paul Chapman, another rascal extrordinaire and a good bloke. They were always accepted as real and I’m sure were regularly checked out by experts.

The Amalfi was a stately, wooden-hulled, built for comfort, Cabin Cruiser. No speedy fibreglass gin palace. She was thirty-eight feet, diesel powered and slept six comfortably or eight if arrangements were ‘friendly’. I had some wonderful holidays and weekends cruising on her. The main beneficiaries were often my daughter Sam and her friends and my son Lenny. Being the proud dad, I was always happy to indulge them.

My Hong Kong alliance enabled me to do a lot of business over the years. It concluded spectacularly with a run of fake Rolex watches. This was in the early days before they became known as ‘knock offs’. Like the CZ diamonds they were almost indistinguishable from the real thing. We cornered the very large market for them in Auckland and Sydney for a while. We had such success with them that there were dustmen running around Auckland and Sydney wearing them. This eventually brought howls of protest from the agents, reinforced by the pillars of society and the posers who were wearing the real thing. Later I will relate a very humorous incident involving good old Adrian who really was your classic loveable rogue. It’s a real ‘gang who couldn’t shoot straight’ story and would have beautifully suited the George Daly character in the Minder TV show.

And so I arrived back in Auckland and joined Mary and the kids at the Orewa camp. By now it was December of 1971 and the middle of a stunning summer. On the way home I’d thought deeply about the events and significance of the previous eleven years. I was thirty years old and looking forward to new challenges, but generously decided to award myself a few months off. We spent the summer at Orewa and used it as a base for Mary and me and the kids to do some touring. Sam was nearly seven and Lenny was almost four. We had a powerful Chrysler Valiant that just ate up the miles. We travelled all around the beautiful Whangaparaoa Peninsula and then down to Whitianga and the fabulous Mercury Bay on the Coromandel. I had thrown off the shackles of rainy day thinking. It might have been necessary in England but it seemed out of place in this land of sunshine and opportunity. I was happy to spend money on the good life for my family. There wasn’t a trendy restaurant we didn’t try and no overseas show in town that we didn’t see. Mary and I got on well together. She was very attractive, as evidenced by her winning a Sophia Loren lookalike contest in Auckland. Mary was quite shy really and only entered it for a dare. We were still all right in those years. I hadn’t crossed the major boundaries that I was to in subsequent years. I keep a very happy memory of that summer when all was right with the world.

Unfortunately we often don’t see what we’ve got until we’ve either lost it or imperilled it in some way. Two years on from that summer I teamed up with my old seaman mate Ray Miller and we delved into the world of massage parlours, strip clubs and all the nefarious activity that surrounds that world. Ray and I took to it like ducks to water. It was a relatively new industry in Auckland and we were its leading lights and of course attracted all the adverse publicity and gossip that comes with the territory. There were constant territorial disputes, fire bombings, threats and police pressure. I also had a successful boxing business, so one way or another I was always in the news. The years in that industry changed me and I lost track of the man who’d driven his kids around in the Valiant during the summer of 1971. There was a new man emerging inside me and he was starting to cast his own dark shadow. The new bloke loved the underworld and thrived on the constant mix of thrills, pleasure, danger, fast cars, boats, boxing nights, restaurants, parties and available women. But there was a price to pay if you wanted to survive in this dangerous and often violent world. I was prepared to take the risks but I couldn’t expect my family to. You could point to specifics like onenight stands, affairs, constant late nights, gossip, but the marriage break up when it came was really because the two worlds – the sunny camp at Orewa and the dark and flashy night-life couldn’t live side-by-side.

I deal with all this, the threats and the bombing, in detail in the second volume of this tale and at the moment my descent into darkness is still two years in the future. I cruised around for a couple of months, not doing much. I went to Sydney to check out new opportunities. I stayed at a great hotel, the Cosmopolitan in Double Bay. It was a marked contrast to the sorry shelter Dinger and I had stayed in the night before we jumped ship to Auckland. I tracked it down and then I retraced our steps down to the wharf and sat on the same bench from which we had watched the Dominion Monarch depart. I suppose I felt a bit boyishly like a returning hero, not on General MacArthur’s level, but I felt that what I had achieved was definitely something to be proud of. I had left Sydney, anxious, flat broke and feeling vulnerable. I was now a cocky young ‘urger’ who could jump on planes and fly first class whenever I wanted to and although I had to watch out for policeman from several branches of the constabulary, Birdie’s Immigration branch was no longer one of them. I’d become a Kiwi (with a bit of honorary Aussie thrown in for good measure) and I felt at home, in pretty much the same way Ernest Hemingway meant when in The Green Hills of Africa he said: “I loved this country and felt at home and where a man feels at home, outside of where he is born, is where he is meant to go.”

I picked up a couple of excellent ideas while I was in Sydney. As they say, travel tends to broaden the mind. I headed home to Auckland to my family, looking forward to setting up a new business and getting on with my life. My descent from there to the world behind the neon lights, a world of guns and drugs, international crime, bent cops and villains, whores and hit men, humour and pain, high times and glamour, is all a story for another day, as is the incident concerning Elton John. I was asked to intercede on behalf of his manager, who had been detained in Mt. Eden, Auckland’s notorious, dangerous jail. Having come with me this far I hope you’ll join me for the second volume of my tale.

Looking back, I believe I was lucky. I was presented with some exciting but dangerous situations. Some eye opening events that I had to handle. I think that today’s world has largely been stripped of adventure and new frontiers. It seems the height of risk taking in this day and age, is a gap year trip, or holiday in Spain, whereby you can Skype call your parents the minute you run into a problem. Strangely I think today’s youth, equipped with their mobile phones and screens are deprived of the opportunity to chance their arm. The golden age of discovery, of pushing boundaries, sadly seems to me to be over and I think something valuable is lost. Life’s experiences are now not lived, but borrowed from the screen.

At this point I’ll simply bid you au revoir and hope to meet you in book two, where the second shadow blooms.