Graham Bartlett - Death Comes Knocking: Policing Roy Grace’s Brighton

3: KNOCKERS AND NOBLEMEN

I recall in my childhood my dad insisting, in his usual no-nonsense way, that every Sunday evening we all sat down to watch BBCs Antiques Roadshow. In my boyhood naivety I believed that the world of antiques was populated by quaint gentlefolk receiving honest windfalls. The one I later battled with in Brighton was riddled with deceit, extortion and violence.

In the years following the Second World War, rag and bone men, of the kind immortalized in Steptoe and Son, were a familiar sight. They would traipse Britains streets with a horse and cart, yelling rag and bone!, inviting people to throw junk such as broken vacuum cleaners out of their houses. But a group of low-lifes in Brighton decided they could enjoy a much more lucrative door-to-door trade by conning unsuspecting people out of their antiques. They became more proactive knocking on front doors, frequently targeting the frail and elderly, offering to buy their antiques and valuables for instant cash.

These knocker boys, as they became known, had only a rudimentary knowledge of antiques enough to spot items of value but their game was to cheat people. A particularly pernicious trick was to carry a bag of sawdust in their pockets. On entering the house of an elderly person, they would furtively pour the sawdust on the ground beneath the best piece of furniture, then warn the victim they had woodworm, and offer to take it off their hands before it spread to all the other furniture. If an owner refused to sell any high-value items the knocker boy would pass the details to a burglar, who would later steal them and give the knocker boy a cut.

Some of these knocker boys graduated into a life of faux-respectability, setting themselves up as bona fide antiques dealers in well-stocked shops in Brightons famous Lanes.

In Regency times privileged classes would divide their balmy days between their modesty-saving bathing machines on the beaches and strutting around The Lanes. This compact network of fishermans cottages would evolve into a market place crammed with a delightfully eclectic mix of art dealers, furniture shops and bric-a-brac stalls. As time passed and Brighton grew, The Lanes gained the reputation as the go-to place for classic collectables and so it remained until recent years, when most dealers turned from the failing antiques market to the more profitable second-hand jewellery trade.

However, this warren of Aladdins caves had a dark side, and it soon became the go-to place to fence stolen property. I was struck by the insightful 1996 Independent newspaper headline that proclaimed:

If your antiques have been stolen, head for Brighton the Sussex resort is now a thieves kitchen for heirlooms.

It was fair advice.

While enjoying the latest gripping crime novel it is sometimes tempting to write off some authors extremes as poetic licence, the writer getting carried away with the story and leaving reality at the door. However, Peter James throughout the Grace series shows flawless authenticity in his depiction of the evil that some are capable of in the pursuit of wealth.

From my days as a DC with Brighton CID, amid catching rapists, robbers and burglars I became very familiar with the vermin who preyed on the lonely and the vulnerable.

The image of Ricky Moore, the slimy antiques dealer in Dead Mans Time, is one I recognized immediately: Fifty-three, balding, long, lank grey hair, shiny white open-neck shirt undone to show his medallion, cheap beige jacket, fingers adorned with chunky rings, booze-veined face and sallow complexion but he knew how to charm his way into any old ladys house no matter how canny she was!

From eyeballing them across an interview room table in the dank grey Brighton Police Station cell block, I could conjure up many a real villain matching this description.

There may well be antiques dealers who are loveable rogues. You have to laugh at some of their nicknames, Two-fingered Wadey, Banjo Banham, and The Dude for example. Some will be straight, with a genuine passion for making profits for themselves and their grateful vendors. But many are just crooks, plain and simple.

I hate to think how many trusting and gullible grandmothers and war heroes I met whom these chancers had fleeced. Far too late, they realized they had been duped and I found it heartbreaking when spelling out that the odds of recovering their treasures were hovering just above zero.

The ruse relied on careful target selection, the ability to pass themselves off as experts, and of course plenty of charisma. However repugnant the inner person may be, like Ricky Moore, the knocker boy must come across to his target as a favourite son.

Many were able to pull this off, but several simply skipped the charm and relied on unadulterated violence and intimidation.

Terry Biglow is described in Not Dead Yet as being from one of the biggest crime families in the city, whose activities included protection rackets, drug dealing and of course the illicit antique trade not a person to be messed with. No surprise that the Biglows and the repulsive Smallbone family (of which the hateful Amis is portrayed as particularly contemptible by James), had Brighton crime sewn up.

There were at least four similar families in my time in Brighton CID. Their tentacles spread into almost any scam you could mention and their reputation for extortion was notorious among would-be challengers. The slam of the cell door on these heartless villains was such a sweet sound.

All through my early career as a detective at Brighton there was a small but highly functioning specialist team who had these criminals firmly in their sights.

The Antiques Squad was housed in a sweltering broom cupboard on the first floor of the imposing Brighton Police Station overlooking the palatial and airy American Express building. Its DS and four DCs held the most complete and sophisticated intelligence of every known criminally active antiques dealer and knocker boy in the UK.

They reflected the more positive traits of Peter James DS Norman Potting and I looked up to these old-school detectives. Most of the time they kept themselves to themselves but their knowledge, expertise and intuition were awe-inspiring and I wondered if I would ever have it in me to graduate to their level.

One of the stars was DC Nigel Kelly. He was like a terrier. He would overwhelm his adversaries with a racing intellect and his awesome grasp and recall of every tiny detail. Even the wiliest crooks would need to have their wits about them if they wanted to pull the wool over Nigels eyes. I took over an investigation from him once and I will never forget the exasperated look in his eyes as he briefed me when I failed to follow each intricate twist and turn as it was fired at me like a Gatling gun.

As well as being looked up to by rookies such as me, the Antiques Squad was the peril of many a villain. So feared were they that many neer do wells would sell their own grandmothers, in an effort to divert the squads attention to someone else.

However, in the early nineties their very existence was in jeopardy. They knew only too well that Brightons knocker boys were venturing further afield. Pressure was coming down from the big UK cities for the squad to get a grip on its bad boys, who were causing havoc far and wide. Officers up and down the country started to target cars with Brighton registration plates and, if they suspected a link to the antique trade, would order the occupants out of town. Questions were being asked. The squad needed a big result and fast. They had to prove their worth to those who were eyeing them up for the next efficiency saving.