41 Ergebnisse - Zeige 1 von 20.

When Nick Storey visits the Overseas Parcels Office (OPO) at the Royal Agricultural Hall, to check whether the Temporary Charge on Imports is being collected, the arrangements look wide open to fraud. After this is confirmed by two postal workers, Nick is threatened by a local trade union official and his thugs. The local C&E, manager is sacked after an argument with Post Officer managers about the level of thefts from the OPO. Nick and Rosema...

1965. Starting work in Customs & Excise HQ in London, Nick Storey comes across some strange people, including a bully and a very tall rude man with a violent friend. He strikes up a friendship with a colleague, who is subsequently stabbed to death in an alley near the Monument. Though the police believe it was a robbery, only his briefcase was taken. Helped by Rosemary and a purloined notebook, Nick comes across a strange brotherhood, based on...

1996. Nick and Rosemary Storey are enjoying a river cruise from Moscow to St Petersburg when two British passengers from their excursion group are murdered, apparently on return from a visit to Yaroslavl. The cruise line ask them to get statements from relevant British passengers before the ship docks in St Petersburg. Facing a curtain of lies and half-truths, tales of hidden Nazi gold, well-concealed Russian connections and unable to check mu...

1994. Customs & Excise staff in Dover find revolting pornography being imported by a Cabinet Minister. Various underhand attempts are made by the Minister to retrieve the porn or get the case heard before a compliant magistrate. But how does this link with the ?Hades Club? many of whose members are ?the great and the good? and whose initiation rite appears to be to take a woman off the streets and rape her? Nick and Rosemary Storey and colleag...

1993. Concerns about former Soviet bloc weapons falling into the wrong hands leads to Nick Storey becoming a member of a Cabinet Office committee and a special committee of the World Customs Organisation (WCO). Having seized harmless ex-Soviet weaponry at Felixstowe, Nick?s belief that such materials would be imported into the UK is shaken. Claims made by his Russian opposite number about UK firms engaged in this trade lead to further, more se...

Along with the rest of the Civil Service, Customs & Excise are required by Government to market test some of their activities in competition with private sector firms. As the majority of market tests are in the Outfield, Nick Storey keeps a careful eye on how they are proceeding, especially ones where he believes Collectors may be trying to fiddle the results. He also suspects some of the private sector bidders of collusion.As the results come...

Just promoted to the Board of Customs & Excise, Nick Storey is asked to help a Metropolitan Police enquiry into illegal arms sales to Morocco. Military hardware for "rockhopper" missiles misdescribed as telephonic equipment and destined for Morocco has been seized at Avonmouth. The exporters claim that they had Ministry of Defence approval, which the Ministry denies. Investigating a series of exports by British arms manufacturers indicates a p...

Smugglers of a powerful methamphetamine, nicknamed Òdilithium crystalsÓ , by speedboat and light aircraft kill themselves rather than be caught by Customs. Nick Storey, Collector London Port, identifies patterns of evidence and smuggling routes by small ships and light aircraft, which lead to several dubious businesses in South Essex, a City investment company and a Belgian security firm with antecedents in African mercenary operations. Tracki...

Despite Nick StoreyÕs reservations, London Port Collection are ÒtwinnedÓ with the port of Bordeaux in an EEC project. NickÕs counterpart in Bordeaux is equally suspicious, but examination of their trade reveals a lot of medicines and drugs being exported from London to Bordeaux for an international charity called ÔSantZ MondialeÕ, but also many which are supposedly exported to Bilbao which invariably get diverted to Bordeaux. As Nick and his c...

1985. As the new Collector London Port, Nick Storey inherits a Collection with low morale and weak performance in a declining port. Among the changes he makes, flexible use of staff to massively increase controls at random times, leads to the discovery at Tilbury of large quantities of cash in a mattress and cocaine in furniture destined for a new hotel to be built by an Italian company in the proposed development at Canary Wharf. The company ...

Nick Storey is asked to carry out a review of Cabinet Office security procedures, but learns from a contact in MI6 that the real purpose is to identify a mole leaking secrets to the Chinese. Making slow progress because of the defensive attitudes by Cabinet Office staff, he is diverted by a botched Investigation Division operation in Liverpool against a Chinese smuggling gang. Sorting that out gives him an idea how the microfilms with leaked s...

1984/5. Nick Storey is seconded from Customs & Excise to review DHSS work to tackle benefit fraud. Ministers have received an anonymous letter alleging a large scale fraud involving National Insurance numbers. Nick and Rosemary go undercover in Newcastle as VAT inspectors to follow a trail of evidence linked to a series of companies owned by a Geordie ex-miner, Mick Sutton. As they start to close in, one of the suspects vanishes and appears to...

1979. Nick Storey is transferred to head up a new internal investigations unit required by Mrs Thatcher's new government. His unit uncovers several illegalities including thefts of Government property and a false travel expense claim by an official who subsequently kills himself. Nick is alerted to a massive undercover operation which appears to be both leaking large sums of VAT revenue and also involving illegal action by investigators. When ...

Shadowing an Excise officer in a tobacco factory, Nick Storey finds he is using incorrect procedures. When Nick carries out the right ones, he discovers that the company are importing large amounts of tobacco illicitly. But the evidence goes missing and Nick starts to feel the hand of Freemasonry protecting the firm and encouraging him to let matters drop. However, some unofficial surveillance and Rosemary going undercover leads to where the s...

1978. On holiday with their children in Oban, Nick and Rosemary Storey stumble across a stone hut filled with barrels of what seems to be illicit whisky. While on their way to walking nearby hills, they smell the unmistakeable smell of barley being fermented in a mash tun before distillation. But having overheard a conversation about the illegal whisky operation, Nick is unable to contact the local police or Excise officer. A chance remark and...

1977/8. Informed by an Italian diplomat that English Wine producers are using foreign grapes, Nick Storey investigates, but within weeks, one of the English Wine producer's equipment is blown up and his vines ploughed over. The possibility that this is retaliation for a refusal to cooperate with a local mafia in Calabria leads to information about imports through Avonmouth. When an examination of a similar type of import leads to the discovery...

1977. Nick & Rosemary Storey's help is sought by the EEC Commission to track down those responsible for fraudulently claiming money from the EEC's Regional Development Fund to convert a former copper mine in North Wales into a tourist attraction. As they pursue their enquiries, they come across "ghost beer", illicitly-produced beer which is being sold in North Wales and the Borders. Unmasking a crooked bank manager appears to lead to a dead en...

Having disposed of the bodies of the would-be informant and his killers, Rakvir and Arhilka Stagarnik try to unsettle the still largely unknown conspirators. Learning that a force of Borvmen soldiers are involved in some way, they discover their whereabouts and persuade them to depart. Shortness of time and the unhelpful intervention by a corrupt merchant mean that they have to force matters to a head. The conspirators are rounded up, but the ...

Nocturnal excursions enable Rakvir Stagarnik to gain useful information about who killed the Kerkrander and how the two Thanians were involved. Tracking some of these people leads to an empty house in a wealthy quarter of Ralchis and the realisation that a huge conspiracy is taking place. Through the intervention of a corrupt merchant and an old friend, Rakvir and Arhilka are able to put pressure on a high-placed merchant adventurer, while con...

Suspicious visitors from across the ocean, who vanish once they reach Ralchis are followed by several untoward events, culminating in the brutal murder of a citizen of Kerkrand. Evidence suggests the Ralchis authorities wished to conceal it. Rakvir and Arhilka Stagarnik travel to Ralchis, in the guise of merchants from Kardakan attempting to sell 'ghan'. Negotiating with three merchants shows their remarkable duplicity and deviousness - and a ...