22. And Daniel wept, and howled with bitterness of heart.
23. Then he returned unto his place.
I READ AND re-read the article with wide, unblinking, disbelieving eyes. It was from The Argus. It was from 14 January 2000. It was real.
And it was incredible.
CON ARTIST SENTENCED FOR TRAIL OF DECEPTION
A con artist who became one of Britain’s most wanted men has been jailed for deception. Raymond Price, 59, specialised in cheating kind-hearted members of the public. He toured the south claiming his car had broken down and he needed cash for his train fare home.
It was about here that I choked and coughed tea through my nose. But there was more . . .
Price promised to send the money back to his victims, taking their names and addresses, but they never heard from him again.
But when he committed offences in Worthing he came under suspicion by murder squad detectives.
His description was circulated nationwide and his picture was issued to the media and was shown on Crimewatch.
Murder! Offences! Victims! And Crimewatch!
Price, of no fixed address, gave himself up to police at Heathrow.
He was quickly ruled out of the murder investigation.
But yesterday Price was jailed for 18 months at Chichester Crown Court after admitting 13 charges of deception and asking for another 162 to be taken into consideration.
Make that 163!
Beverley Cherrill, prosecuting, said Price gave his victims a false name and borrowed sums ranging from £7 to £20 for his bogus train fare.
Ranging from £7 to £20! And yet he’d tried his luck and nabbed £38 from us! He’d seen my happy-faced joinees, taken them for simpletons, and gone for the bloody record!
The court was told Price had previous convictions dating back to the early 1950s.
Warwick Tatford, defending, said that between 1973 and 1986 Price had kept out of trouble because he was a talented painter and ran an art gallery in Rye.
Mr Tatford said Price was painting again in prison and hoped to make a living again from art.
Judge Anthony Thorpe said he hoped that Price would use his artistic abilities to keep out of trouble in the future.
Well, Judge Anthony Thorpe is obviously a bloody optimist then!
Oh my God.
Raymond Price had sucked me into a world of crime. He’d served his eighteen months, walked out of jail, and almost immediately tricked my good-hearted joinees, just as he’d been tricking people since the 50s. The man had made off with our money!
This undermined everything my joinees and I had been working towards. How could we have taken inspiration from helping a criminal? How could I encourage people to go out and make random people happy, when random people would take advantage of their kindness and steal from them? They say a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet. Now I was starting to believe that a stranger was just someone who hadn’t ripped you off yet. I had uncovered the one major flaw in my plans – not all people are good people.
I was very, very upset.
* * *
‘So,’ said the taxi driver, as I struggled with my seatbelt. ‘What brings you to Teignmouth?’
Well, wasn’t it obvious? Couldn’t he tell from the look in my eyes? From the short, sharp, angry tugs of my seatbelt? I was in Teignmouth to find a man named Raymond Price and bring him to justice. I was going to track him down and demand my joinees’ £38 back. And then I was going to go home and carefully rethink this whole being-nice-to-strangers thing.
‘Hello?’ said the taxi driver, and I realised that it’s all very well having an internal monologue, but it does tend to leave the other person a bit stranded, conversationally.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m here to see an old friend.’
I hoped I’d said that a bit mysteriously, in a way that I suggested I might very well be a hitman, here on a mafia contract, but I’d actually accidentally said it in a way that suggested I was probably here to see an old friend.
‘And what’s the address?’ he said.
‘Well,’ I sighed. ‘He probably won’t be there, to be honest, so I don’t know what the point in going there is.’
I shrugged, and sat back in my seat.
‘Right,’ said the driver. ‘So . . . what’s the actual address?’
‘Well, I can give you the address if you want. The newspapers couldn’t. They thought he was of “no fixed address”. But I’ve got one. Though I’m warning you, he’s probably long gone, so don’t get your hopes up.’
‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘But what’s the address? I need that to get there.’
‘Oh, mate, believe me, that’s what I would have thought, too, but that’s because we’re too trusting.’
‘Well, why do you want to go there?’
‘Ha! You tell me!’ I said, with a casual shrug of the shoulders. ‘It’s a false address. Or the address is real, but he isn’t. Or he’s real, but he doesn’t live there.’
I smiled at the driver and threw my hands up in the air, as if he knew exactly what I was on about and could relate to the situation entirely.
‘Okay,’ said the driver, switching the ignition off, and turning to me, semi-menacingly. ‘Do you want to just sit here and talk about some possibly fictional man who may or may not live in a place that may or may not exist, or do you actually want to go somewhere?’
I thought about it.
‘I’d like to go somewhere, please,’ I said, timidly, and showed him the piece of paper on which I’d written Raymond’s address.
I had spent the journey from London to Teignmouth going over what had happened again and again in my head.
Already somewhat disillusioned with Join Me from my meeting with Joinee Benjamin and troubles with Hanne, I’d nevertheless pressed on, checked my emails, and then found one from a man named Mr Jackson.
Mr Jackson had discovered the Join Me website while searching for the name Raymond Price, and recognised a photo on the news page as a man he had met only the previous week . . .
Hi
I was interested to read about your joinees in London who met Raymond Price from Teignmouth in Devon. Apparently his car had broken down and he needed £38 to get a train ticket home.
I gave him £30 on Thursday last. He promised to return it to me by mail by the Saturday, but to no avail. There is no sign of the money and no sign of Raymond Price. I suspect this is a scam and we have all been ripped off.
It is a shame since it will just make me think twice before helping out like this again. I was actually scammed like this some 12 years ago. You would think I would learn.
All the best
I. Jackson
I had emailed Mr Jackson back, saying that there was no way this could be a scam, and he must have the wrong end of the stick, and was he sure it was the same bloke, because to be caught in that situation twice only to be rescued by complete strangers was . . . well . . . a bit of a coincidence.
And it was a bit of a coincidence.
Maybe too much of a coincidence.
And that’s when Mr Jackson had sent me the article.
So here I was in Teignmouth, in Devon, on the trail of Raymond Price. But did he even really live in Teignmouth? The article mentioned Rye, and Worthing, and both Mr Jackson and my group of joinees had met him in London . . . who knew where he was nowadays? The only thing I could do was turn up at the address I’d been given and see if I could find him.
But what were the chances of all this happening? Raymond Price must have thought Christmas had come early that day, sitting in that pub. He’d probably just got out of jail that morning and could well have been sitting there wondering who he was going to scam and what he was going to tell them, when bingo! Five people present themselves out of the blue to him and ask him whether there’s anything at all that he needs. ‘Anything we can do to make you happy?’ they say, and he smiles. And he tells them he needs some money, just as he’d told hundreds of people since the 50s. And they’re only too happy to oblige.
And it was my fault.
I’d attributed the birth of the Karma Army to that one moment of chance. It was the inspiration I’d needed to make others go out and do good. But now it had a far more cynical edge. The Karma Army was tainted. It had been borne out of something far less pure-hearted. It had been borne out of a lie.
I should have known the moment my letter to the address I was now standing outside had been returned. I should have known, and thought, and stopped what I was doing. But I didn’t. I got carried away. And now, like Mr Jackson, I’d learnt my lesson.
So what did I do? Did I take the chance that Raymond still lived there, and had opened the letter, read it, resealed it and sent it back to me? Or did I walk away? Did I get angry? Or did I get even?
I’d come all this way and all I now had to do was knock on his door, but I didn’t know what I’d say when or if it opened . . .
I’d soon find out.
I rang the doorbell.
No answer.
I rang it again.
Still nothing.
I rapped on the door. By which I mean I knocked on it, not that I did a little MC-ing. But if I had’ve done a little MC-ing, it would’ve been quite angry stuff, like NWA when they’re on about the Rodney King incident. Only I’d have made it less about police brutality and more about old Devon men ripping young folk off with their made-up stories of broken down cars. And there I think you’ll find the main difference between British and American crime.
There was still no answer. So I tried the neighbours.
‘Nope, don’t know him,’ said a lady in a blue dress. ‘There was a chap who lived there several years ago.’
‘When was that?’
‘That would have been several years ago now.’
‘Right. So he doesn’t live there any more?’
‘Nope. He moved. Several years ago.’
Leave me alone. I never claimed to be Columbo.
So I walked back into town and found a pub called the King William IV I ordered a lager and sat by the window. So this was Teignmouth. This was where people like Raymond Price were from. I drank my pint and scowled at my fellow drinkers.
Oh, they looked nice enough, with their casual shirts and kind faces. But underneath it all, were they not all just the same as Raymond bloody Price? This lager cost me £2.20. How much of that was going in the landlord’s pocket? Oh, I expect he wanted me to buy some crisps, as well. Well, no way, pal. You’re not getting my 40p. Wait for some other London chump to walk in.
I watched as a lady with a charity collection tin wandered from table to table, asking for money. Where would this moneygrabbing tyranny end? Yeah, yeah . . . she was polite to people. On the outside. She was probably swearing and calling them wankers on the inside.
‘Collecting for disabled children,’ she said, when she reached me.
‘A likely story,’ I said, eyebrows raised. ‘I suppose you want £38, do you?’
She looked slightly startled, and I got all embarrassed, and reached into my pocket and gave her a quid despite myself. Christ, these people were good.
So, yet another pound down, I left that pub in that town of sin. Teignmouth. Sinmouth. Put it in the binmouth. And I walked away.
I had come to Teignmouth on instinct. But really . . . what would giving Raymond Price a ticking off have achieved? What did any of this mean any more? I was confused, and sad, and just knew I didn’t want to be a part of it. The battle between good and evil had been fought. And evil had won.
I got a bus back to the station and made a decision on the way.
I was giving up on Join Me. I was giving up on the Karma Army.
It was time to stop.
