To Cut a Long Story Short

‘How many?’ asked Chief Inspector Travis.

‘Ninety-nine.’

‘Ninety-nine? There has to be a reason,’ was Travis’s immediate response.

He was even more puzzled when he discovered that there was already a magazine called Business Enterprise, and that it published 10,000 copies a month.

The Hong Kong police later reported that Kenny had ordered 2,500 sheets of headed paper, and 2,500 brown envelopes.

‘So what’s he up to?’ demanded Travis.

No one in Hong Kong or London could come up with a convincing suggestion.

Three weeks later, the Hong Kong police reported that Mr Merchant had been seen at a local post office, despatching 2,400 letters to addresses all over the United Kingdom.

The following week, Kenny flew back to Heathrow.

Although Travis kept Kenny under surveillance, the young constable was unable to report anything untoward, other than that the local postman had told him Mr Merchant was receiving around twenty-five letters a day, and that like clockwork he would drop into Lloyd’s Bank in the King’s Road around noon and deposit several cheques for amounts ranging from two hundred to two thousand pounds. The constable didn’t report that Kenny gave him a wave every morning just before entering the bank.

After six months the letters slowed to a trickle, and Kenny’s visits to the bank almost came to a halt.

The only new piece of information the Constable was able to pass on to Chief Inspector Travis was that Mr Merchant had moved fro

m his small flat in St Luke’s Road, Putney, to an imposing four-storey mansion in Chester Square, SW1.

Just as Travis turned his attention to more pressing cases, Kenny flew off to Hong Kong again. ‘Almost a year to the day,’ was the Chief Inspector’s only comment.

The Hong Kong police reported back to the Chief Inspector that Kenny was following roughly the same routine as he had the previous year, the only difference being that this time he had booked himself into a suite at the Mandarin. He had selected the same printer, who confirmed that his client had made another order for Business Enterprise UK. The second issue had some new articles, but would contain only 1,971 advertisements.

‘How many copies is he having published this time?’ asked the Chief Inspector.

‘The same as before,’ came back the reply. ‘Ninety-nine. But he’s only ordered two thousand sheets of headed paper and two thousand envelopes.’

‘What is he up to?’ repeated the Chief Inspector. He received no reply.

Once the magazine had rolled off the presses, Kenny returned to the post office and sent out 1,971 letters, before taking a flight back to London, care of British Airways, first class.

Travis knew Kenny must be breaking the law somehow, but he had neither the staff nor the resources to follow it up. And Kenny might have continued to milk this particular cow indefinitely had a complaint from a leading company on the stock exchange not landed on the Chief Inspector’s desk.

A Mr Cox, the company’s financial director, reported that he had received an invoice for PS500 for an advertisement his firm had never placed.

The Chief Inspector visited Mr Cox in his City office. After a long discussion, Cox agreed to assist the police by pressing charges.

The Crown took the best part of six months to prepare its case before sending it to the CPS for consideration. They took almost as long before deciding to prosecute, but once they had, the Chief Inspector drove straight to Chester Square and personally arrested Kenny on a charge of fraud.

Mr Duveen appeared in court the following morning, insisting that his client was a model citizen. The judge granted Kenny bail, but demanded that he lodge his passport with the court.

‘That’s fine by me,’ Kenny told his solicitor. ‘I won’t be needing it for a couple of months.’

The trial opened at the Old Bailey six weeks later, and once again Kenny was represented by Mr Duveen. While Kenny stood to attention in the dock, the clerk of the court read out seven charges of fraud. On each charge he pleaded not guilty. Prosecuting counsel made his opening statement, but the jury, as in so many financial trials, didn’t look as if they were following his detailed submissions.

Kenny accepted that twelve good men and women true would decide whether they believed him or Mr Cox, as there wasn’t much hope that they would understand the niceties of the 1992 Data Protection Act.

When Mr Cox read out the oath on the third day, Kenny felt he was the sort of man you could trust with your last penny. In fact, he thought he might even invest a few thousand in his company.

Mr Matthew Jarvis, QC, counsel for the Crown, took Mr Cox through a series of gentle questions designed to show him to be a man of such probity that he felt it was nothing less than his public duty to ensure that the evil fraud perpetrated by the defendant was stamped out once and for all.

Mr Duveen rose to cross-examine him.