Please Let It Stop (10 page)

I went to Croydon police station. The detective constable did not take it very seriously, despite all my evidence. He did, however, take notes and pass it on to his superior. The next
day I received a telephone call from Scotland Yard who said they were very worried and came down to see me. I have to say, they were absolutely amazing and very helpful. They named the case ‘Operation Lemon’. They were taking no chances and set up more CCTV at my home and told me to change the car I was driving, so I hired a rental car. I was also told not to go out without anyone accompanying me. I felt stifled, like a prisoner. While I did change my car, I still went out on my own and I suppose my defiance comes from my childhood: I was determined not to be a victim in any sense of the word and that included letting somebody have a hold over me. I’d been through all that with John – I’d been through much worse with him – and this was not going to break me. Sure, I might have been scared but I was also angry. I used to sit in my house that I’d worked so hard for, thinking, ‘This is supposed to be my sanctuary and I don’t feel safe.’ I used to wonder if it might even be a neighbour. As a child I’d known what it was like to be constantly tortured by the threat that something might happen to me. I’d lived all those nights in my bedroom as a young teenager, hoping and praying that John would not choose to come in and sexually abuse me. Even when he was not around it was constantly playing on my mind. And now I had the thought that someone was out there, just waiting for their chance to come and terrorise me.

Jason cancelled our meeting in the churchyard at the last minute. The police had planned to catch him there but now
they had another plan. They placed a recording device on my office phone so that they could record him, and so I had to persuade him to ring the office number. They were very kind and assured me that I would not have to be on the phone for more than just a couple of minutes for them to find out exactly where he was. The Detective Superintendent in charge, Steve Gwillam, gave me a lot of confidence. We set it up. My sister would be in another room listening. As soon as Jason called, Vanessa would ring Steve Gwillam so they could activate the trace from their end.

When the call came in on my mobile, I knew I was on a mission. I was at home and had to persuade him to call me back on my office number. I was so afraid it would fail but I hoped I’d persuaded him. I asked him to give me time to get to the office so he could call me back on that number. I drove like a maniac to get there and when I did I reversed into a parked car (I sorted it out later), I was in such a panic. The call came into the office and after a minute they were having trouble tracing him.

I was actually on the phone for an hour calmly talking to him and asking him questions about his life to try and keep him talking. He told me his brother had cut people’s ears off. At the same time I was making hand signals to Vanessa, asking her if the police had found anything. No, not yet. By now he was in full flow, describing his brother’s criminal activities, and I believed him and it terrified me. Suddenly Vanessa came back into the room and signalled to me that
the police had traced the call. I could finally come off the phone but I was shaking uncontrollably. I can’t say I was relieved at that point, especially since Jason had said he wanted to meet me. I thought they would just arrest him then and there but they didn’t. Apparently he was attached to another crime so the police wanted to keep him under surveillance for a while.

It turned out that the reason it took so long to trace him was that he actually lived in Lincoln. His name was Dean Bentley, he was twenty-one, and apparently he’d driven down to my house at least three times and slept outside in his car. He’d read about me and found my home address and postcode on the electoral register. He’d made up the drug thing about Ben, which was quite spooky. It turned out it was all his idea. He’d read about me in the
Sunday Mirror
and persuaded his mum to hire someone to attack me so that he could save me and be my knight in shining armour. He’d written the scripts for his mother so she could speak to me on the phone. His mum, Olwyn, had found a thug and offered him £400 to do the job. They had already set a date, in April. When he was finally arrested – in March – they found he had photos of me that showed exactly where the knife was going in and how he was going to save me. But that’s not all. After he’d saved me he would bring me flowers the next day. We would go to Skegness and live happily ever after. The police described him as a fantasist but to me the whole experience was terrifyingly real. He
had terrorised me and invaded my life for three months and now I hoped I would get some justice.

I didn’t attend the court. I went away to Portugal and watched the outcome of the trial on
Sky News
. Even with that distance between us, I found it very chilling and stressful; once Dean had been caught it seemed like everything I was keeping inside came to the surface. First I got tinnitus and then dermatitis – both stress reactions. To make matters worse, he was not given a custodial sentence. Nothing is simple where the legal system is concerned. Dean Bentley was put on probation for two years and ordered to do a hundred hours’ community service, while his mother was given a conditional discharge. I was absolutely outraged. How could it be possible for two people who’d conspired to put me through hell to be let off so lightly? The answer was that they’d been charged under something called the Malicious Communications Act, which did not have provision for a custodial sentence.

I was to find out again just how hard it is to convict a stalker when, in 2005, a letter addressed to me was received at our offices. It was opened by my PA at the time, Sarah. Inside was a black and white photograph of a man who described himself as ‘56, 5 feet 11 inches, reasonably slim, with size 11 feet, and a frustrated polymath’. The letter was very garbled and didn’t make a lot of sense, apart from the sexual references. It mentioned Vanessa a couple of times as
well. The man wanted me to make contact with him and threatened it would be a ‘massive mistake’ if I didn’t.

The next day this man went into our Brewer Street store and handed over a package for me to the Store Manager. The parcel was forwarded to my office. This time my Managing Director Julie Harris opened it and when she saw what was in it, she alerted security. Inside were some abstract oil paintings with a note attached, and a further letter. Again, the content was incoherent but referred to porn magazines, sex acts, my sister Vanessa and his ‘luscious slut of an adopted daughter’. He also said that he had written to other high-profile females, talked about getting money from them and requested financial assistance from me.

Julie can sometimes be overly protective of me and, because I’d been having a tough time, she decided that I should have my holiday free of worry and that she would deal with the situation on my behalf. She called the police and met with two detectives to assess the risk to me. After the police made enquiries they reported back to Julie, saying that the letters were from a schizophrenic under medical treatment and they assessed him to be a serious threat. The police wanted to make me aware of the situation; however, Julie was insistent that I should have my break. The police went to the man’s home several times that week to try to take him in for questioning, and hopefully have him restrained under the Mental Health Act. But he was never there.

On Monday morning, the day after I returned home, the detectives and Julie came over to explain what had been happening. What annoyed me was how unhelpful and even elusive the police were when we asked them questions about the man’s previous convictions and what they thought the actual threat was. It was time to increase the security around my house, which we did. I also gave all the people who work for me at my house pictures of him so they’d know who to watch out for. The police told us they would continue to visit his property until they could arrest him. Three days later, on 7 July 2005, the bombings in London took place and the detectives involved in my case were moved over to Scotland Yard.

I didn’t receive any further communication for a few weeks, although Julie insisted that she had seen him one day at the petrol station across the road from the office. The police were alerted, but they did not arrive in time to see the man. Then, on 16 August, what was to be the last letter from him arrived. It was not as explicit as the early ones he’d sent and the handwriting was better. Apparently the erratic writing and incoherent expression we’d seen previously indicated that he was not taking his medication. Nothing more was received from him and he was never charged with harassing me.

At the time I wondered what it would take for police to detain someone like him. What does it take for people like him to be considered dangerous? Unfortunately, often it’s
not until something tragic happens that these cases are taken as seriously as they should be. As I sit here over a year and half later, I see a report in the
Observer
newspaper that chills me: apparently one person in Britain a week is killed by a psychiatric patient who has been assessed as being low risk.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Everybody that knew Paul seemed quite surprised at the way he was smitten with me and they were equally amazed when his roving eye was put on hold after we first got together. After I’d split up from Ben I started to think that maybe the relationship with Paul could really work. Sure, he wasn’t the most successful guy but I managed to encourage him to do something different, with more opportunity, and he started a job selling systems for an alarm company. He still wasn’t the sort of man I’d normally go for but he was very sexy, charming and outgoing. Still, it’s amazing what we women will convince ourselves of when we’re feeling vulnerable. It’s as if all that intelligence and rationality that carries us through the rest of life deserts us when we most need it!

We’d only been back together for a few months when I felt things weren’t right. I was beginning to see the real Paul: the Jack the Lad character that everyone had warned
me about. I should have realised this relationship wasn’t going anywhere and cut my losses. The fact that he moved his clothes in but not anything else suggested impermanence. On top of that, he was starting to change and was becoming less affectionate and loving.

By now I’d wised up to the possibility that my partner could be cheating, and I strongly suspected Paul was having an affair. My experience told me the signs were all there – the indifference, the lack of attention – but I needed proof. Being someone who doesn’t do things by halves, and mindful of my previous experience, I decided to employ a private detective to get to find out the truth. The trouble was that Paul was whizzing around the South East in his car for work and the private detective couldn’t keep up with him. However, he did manage to find out that Paul was popping into a particular sports shop in Sutton every now and then. There was a girl working there and he thought that she was probably the one that Paul was seeing.

The detective decided to follow the girl from the shop, because it was easier than keeping up with Paul’s driving and would hopefully produce the same result. He managed to put a transmitter in her bag and followed her home. A few days before that Paul had lost his keys. As I was helping him look for them I’d found a receipt for two sun loungers. I remember saying, ‘What’s this for?’ Paul’s response was that he collected them so he could put them through for tax reasons. I didn’t think anything of it until
the detective rang to say he’d been outside the girl’s house, watching, for three hours. Paul had eventually turned up and taken two sun loungers from the boot of his car. I later found out they were her birthday present. Paul then went in and the detective saw the upstairs curtains close. This confirmed what I suspected: Paul
was
having an affair.

To put it bluntly, I was gutted. The detective then gave me the girl’s phone number and I decided to put into action the plan I’d hatched. I left the office and Vanessa came back with me to my house. With her help, I packed up Paul’s clothes in bin liners and put them by the front door. The idea was to entice him back home as quickly as possible. The best way I could think of was to tell him one of my friends had called in while I was working from home and wanted an alarm system for her house. I rang Paul and told him he had to come home now since this was the only time she could make it. Never one to miss a sale, he said he was on his way.

It wasn’t long before he pulled up in the drive. Seeing the bin bags, he said, ‘What’s all this about?’ I told him I was kicking him out. He asked why and I replied that I knew he was having affair. I wasn’t going to tell him how I found out. He kept asking who told me. I just told him to go. What happened next did not figure in my scenario. For some reason he grabbed my car keys, bundled the sacks of his clothes into the boot of my car and drove off. ‘Oh my God,’ I thought, ‘he’s stolen my car.’ I was outraged but there was nothing I could do except call the police. First,
though, I rang Vodaphone and told them my boyfriend’s phone had been stolen and could they please disconnect it? They were very obliging and said they would do so immediately. I didn’t want him to contact the girl he was seeing before I could get to her. I’d been here before.

I’m not the sort of woman who loses her temper easily and I was in a relatively calm frame of mind as I dialled the number. ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘I’m Jacqueline Gold.’ ‘I know of you,’ she said, as if she was expecting me. I continued. ‘I believe my boyfriend is having an affair with you.’ But hearing me say that, she was absolutely shocked. ‘Oh, my God. We’re engaged to be married and I’m three months pregnant,’ she replied. ‘He told me he was living in a bedsit.’ At this point we were obviously both quite distraught at having discovered Paul’s double deception but neither of us seemed to know what to say next. ‘And by the way,’ I said coolly, ‘he’s stolen my car.’

I came off the phone and then rang the police. They didn’t seem very interested at first, and I’m positive that if it hadn’t been for the policewoman feeling sorry for me, they wouldn’t have bothered with the case. Paul had gone back to the girl and kept my car. The police kept ringing me with promises that they’d help me but nothing happened. I imagine they thought of it as just another domestic issue and so I’d probably just dropped to the bottom of the list. Things had now dragged on for almost a month and I despaired of getting my car back. One day
the helpful policewoman went with a colleague round to tell Paul to give it back to me and he was so abusive, they arrested him. He was handcuffed and taken to Reigate police station, which was miles away from where he lived, and I finally got my car back.