CHAPTER TEN
THE GLOBAL ARM OF THE LAW
Scotland Yard has always been renowned the world over. Perhaps this is because in the past its take on policing was markedly different from other forces’ more oppressive and intrusive approaches. In the late nineteenth century, for example, political radicals from the continent who came to London were astonished to find that the police were not there to follow their every move, beat them up, demand their papers, haul them before magistrates and imprison them. Equally, though, the Yard has always been known for its cutting-edge policing and there were times when authorities in other countries would call upon its expertise to help solve especially baffling riddles connected with ingenious crimes. The Yard’s fame and influence has always reached right around the world.
The puzzles in this section involve conundrums set on transcontinental trains and ocean-going ships, as well as whodunnits in capitals across Europe. Indeed, in the days before Interpol (a body that had its origins in the early years of the twentieth century but coalesced into its current form in 1956), Scotland Yard was most assiduous at forging new and productive links with police forces elsewhere. Victorian detectives were faced with a newly interconnected world where villains might sail to distant continents and cross vast land masses by rail. The committed criminal with international ambitions had to be countered by a similarly international network of detectives. This often proved difficult in the early days of Scotland Yard, when long-distance communication was slow and inefficient.
Nonetheless, one of Scotland Yard’s most strikingly cosmopolitan figures in the days of gaslights and hansom cabs was Inspector Charles Hagen. He was one of the very first recruits to the newly branded ‘CID’ in 1878 and his particular speciality was cases involving criminals from abroad. Hagen himself was a man of German heritage and as well as being fluent in German, he was also a superb French speaker. For a time, he had been personal bodyguard to the Prince of Wales, accompanying him as he made visits to continental Europe. In an age of political violence and assassinations, this was not an easy assignment and Hagen was himself once arrested by the Austrian police in Vienna; they had not realised that this man treading so close upon the footsteps of royal dignitaries was there purely for protection.
Back in London, Hagen was a formidable multitasker and a great detective. He once stepped in to aid the Russian ambassador Count Schuvaloff when a young German approached him and offered to sell him secret super-weapons that had the power to stop torpedoes. There were no such weapons and it was clear that the man was a con artist. It was Hagen who traced the man back to his dwellings in a south London suburb, following a trail of German expatriates whom he had swindled.
Then there were the more athletic cases he faced. In one situation he was required to chase a French forger through the tight, winding maze of alleys that lay in the heart of the City of London. The Frenchman thought he had found a hiding place in one of the tucked-away taverns near the Bank of England but the patient Hagen was simply waiting for him to break cover. And once he had brought this variety of continental miscreants to court, Hagen had a further task: very often he would step in to interpret for them. First, he would relay the questions of prosecution and defence and then, for the benefit of the court, he would translate the accused’s answers. While no one ever suggested that Hagen was anything other than objective and truthful, the general principle of a detective interpreting the words of the accused was eventually felt to be rather inappropriate.
Another strand of Charles Hagen’s working life was the presence in London of a wide variety of hot-headed political revolutionaries. Exiles from Germany and France would congregate in the smoky taverns of Fitzrovia near Oxford Street, and distribute and sell revolutionary newspapers calling for anarchy and assassination. One such person was Johann Most, who edited a newspaper from an office just behind the Euston Road in the early 1880s. Scotland Yard kept a careful eye on such publications and organisations but did not approach all the eager young anarchists who attended. The police were there to observe fiery speeches in the back rooms of pubs, but it was felt that taking action would be stepping over a boundary into political control, and most of these men weren’t a threat. Nonetheless, when Most’s newspaper put out a special edition exulting in the violent killing of Tsar Nicholas II, he had taken things too far. Any publications that threatened to bring violence, especially to the streets of London, could not be tolerated. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to eighteen months in prison; thereafter Most emigrated to America.
In addition, a long time before the official protocols of Interpol, Inspector Charles Hagen was among those who helped set up an intricate network of crime-fighter contacts across Europe. The information stream flowed both ways, with Scotland Yard being alerted to criminals who had escaped custody abroad and were most likely to try and find refuge in London, and foreign forces being informed of offenders who had fled the capital and were known to be making their way to France, Germany, or even America. This cross-border cooperation was also deployed in the solving of some puzzling and ingenious thefts. In 1913, a haul of extremely valuable pearl jewellery was artfully lifted from a sealed box as it was being transported from London to Paris. Here was a crime that exercised the detective minds of both Scotland Yard and its French counterpart, the Sûreté. The ingenuity of the theft was one thing–among the items spirited away were sixty-one pearls that had been replaced with sugar lumps, replicating their weight in the sealed box–but the key mystery was: at what point in the journey had this audacious robbery taken place? On board the first class train compartment to Dover? In the smart suite on the boat that sailed across the Channel? The train set for Paris? The theft was only discovered when the parcel arrived at the Parisian offices of the pearls’ owner Max Mayer. The thief or thieves clearly had full knowledge of the itinerary of the sealed box. All items within were safe and accounted for in London, so had the thief been disguised as a train or boat steward? And as the insurance company started clamouring for more information before making a payout, could the police on either side of the Channel agree upon whose territory, and therefore whose responsibility, this was? This rare case seemed insoluble. It seemed unlikely that the haul would be sold at once thus giving the police teams a new lead–as with other successful high-profile robberies, the villains were presumably under no pressure to offload the valuables quickly as the sale of a precious pearl here and there would likely have been enough to keep wolves from the door.
Yet the persistence of Scotland Yard, and detective Alfred Ward, led them to monitor a known and rather suave jewel thief called Joseph Grizzard, and to establish who his contacts and associates were by means of undercover officers. After a long investigation, they sent out trick messages to each gang member telling them to rendezvous at Chancery Lane tube station at a certain time. Grizzard materialised, as did his associates, and all were arrested. But there were no pearls to show for the arrest. Astoundingly, they did turn up, though, but as a result of pure chance. In a quiet north London suburb, a piano maker on his way home saw a man stop and very carefully drop an object in the gutter before sprinting off. Intrigued, the piano maker investigated, found a discarded box of matches and opened it: within lay the palely gleaming pearls. The police assumed that another of Grizzard’s associates had seen how the Yard was closing in on the gang and, in a panic, tried to get rid of the haul.
But how had Grizzard pulled off the crime in the first place? By targeting one particular link in the journey of the pearls: the Parisian postman who received the package as it arrived at the Gare du Nord station. In return for a large sum of cash, the postman arranged for one of Grizzard’s associates to get access alongside him to the package–just for a matter of seconds–and pull off the swap. A clever ruse relying on the fact that no one gave a second glance to men wearing postal uniforms…
Away from the glamour of Paris, London was also a deeply attractive destination for a new professional class of criminal. This was partly because the British authorities had never been as zealous as their continental counterparts when it came to all citizens and immigrants carrying documentation and being registered with town halls and police stations. Gangs who had carried out heists on the continent could sail to England and acquire a house, or houses, in which to stash both loot and even gang members. There were lurid reports of houses in London that had hidden staircases and special buttons that rang warning bells in the house next door to alert gang members that they needed to make themselves scarce (though in these newspaper reports, the gang members retained their anonymity).
In the early years of the twentieth century, one enterprising criminal was apprehended by Scotland Yard detectives using a combination of international cooperation and a most amazing new technological innovation: Professor Korn’s ‘telephotography’ apparatus. A young German scientist had formulated a means by which a photograph might be sent by telegraph, arriving hundreds of miles away in just minutes. The technique involved glass cylinders, prisms and a substance called selenium. The idea, a precursor of the principles of television, was considered startlingly brilliant and effective and it worked terrifically well in the case of a chief bank cashier in Stuttgart who had succumbed to temptation and made off with an enormous sum in cash and gold. The German police, with their telephotography apparatus, transmitted the man’s photograph to the detectives at Scotland Yard. In a matter of hours, they were able to make multiple copies of the image and then take them to the major railway terminals–Waterloo, Victoria, Charing Cross–that greeted the boat trains from Stuttgart. The thief was horrified when, upon arrival at Charing Cross, he saw officials intently comparing large photographs of him with the faces of disembarking passengers. Escape was futile and all the stolen loot was recovered from his baggage.
The years following First World War saw police cooperation and coordination placed on a new, ambitious, global footing, a web with threads across all continents: the International Criminal Police Congress. Scotland Yard joined in 1928, and after Second World War, the organisation became known as Interpol. From drug smuggling to terrorism, intelligence was beamed instantly across borders. But in individual cases, there was still a certain etiquette to observe within those borders. New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau recalled a case in the 1980s when US Federal Agents were chasing international arms runners who had pitched up in London; he had to put in calls to ensure that Scotland Yard would allow the US detectives to continue their pursuit in the capital. They were most welcome.
It is pleasing to see that the particular expertise of Scotland Yard is still sought after internationally to this day. Very recently, it was announced that the Yard would be helping out in the matter of treasures robbed from ancient tombs in Egypt and the Sudan. Illicit trade in funerary items from the time of the Pharaohs is still a huge problem and the Yard, with the Egyptian and Sudanese governments and experts from the British Museum, are devising methods by which such trade can be brought to a halt. It is a tribute to Scotland Yard’s hard work and ingenuity that the British–who in the early twentieth century had dived into the most sacred sealed tombs and systematically stripped them–are welcome in this trilateral force.
And so the following puzzles reflect that transcontinental feel; reaching out across the world, the long arm of the law is, in the case of Scotland Yard, quite unusually long!
CAPITAL OFFENCE
The letters in the names of five capital cities have been replaced by the digits 1–9. The replacement digits are consistent throughout. Can you work out where this international traveller has been?
1 1 2 3 1
2 2 4 1 5 3
3 6 7 5 2 2 4 3 2
4 8 1 3 1 9 6 1
5 7 1 9 4
2
WHERE TO?
The hunt for criminal masterminds had always been a global mission. Look at the message below. How many countries have been investigated in this particular case, and what are they?
A person may linger many a time without arousing suspicion. Carrying out what seems like a normal task may not be normal at all. For example, the church I left yesterday has been a focus of suspicion for a long time. An institution such as a church in a strange way should be above suspicion.
Looking at the trade in guns, a rifle ban on the other hand would be understandable. I can’t believe I ran into a rifle dealer purely by accident. One similar gent in another part of the city wouldn’t look suspicious. Perhaps it’s all in the mind; I anticipate an arrest soon.
INTERPOL’S INTERCEPTION
The following message has been intercepted by Interpol. Read it carefully. There are three possible courses of action which you can then take. It is of vital importance you make the right decision. What will it be?
‘Jackal is the code name. Feelings must be kept under tight control. Many an operation fails when the heart rules the head. Appear calm at all times. Make your move only when the time is right. Justice must be seen to be carried out. Judge carefully when it is time to act. Augment your backup team if you feel that it is the right time to do so.’
What is your decision?
a) Never return to HQ if you fail!
b) Secret documents are to be destroyed at once!
c) Return to your head office without delay!
SAIL AWAY
Your first meeting was on a yacht in Monaco. The second meeting was on a yacht in Nice.
The third meeting was on a yacht in the Bay of Naples. It’s hard work, but someone has to do it! The fourth meeting is in Saint-Tropez.
Which of the six yachts is the one you are looking for in Saint-Tropez?
MOVING ON
These are the only instructions you receive to help you find your European destination. Look at the seven countries listed below. Write them going across in the grid in such a way that an eighth country is revealed. This is your destination. There is one letter in place to point you in the right direction.
AUSTRIA
BELGIUM
DENMARK
FINLAND
GERMANY
HOLLAND
ICELAND
INTERLOCKING
There’s not much to go on, just a list of three-letter words. They can be fitted together in an intriguing way to make four, six-letter words. The initial letters of those six-letter words spell out your destination. It’s a tough one! The only clue we give you is the title of the puzzle. Good luck!
ALE
AND
LID
LUG
ONE
PIE
SET
WAS