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Ladies are lunching at the fag–end of the afternoon in west London. Behind Harrods, tourists gawp and crane at red–brick canyons of real estate: one–bed flat, one million; two–bed flat, two million. Being unobtrusive here is simple. You just point at everything and speak in a loud voice. Pete Holman knows this and it makes his job easy. "I reckon here you could just walk up and look someone in the face and they wouldn't see you," he says. "The rich don't notice the rest of us." Holman, a former Royal Marine, is on a stake–out. Not fifty yards away, somewhere inside a cavernous Edwardian pile is – or, perhaps, is not – his target. She is an attractive woman in her 30s, a career woman with a rich husband and a lot to lose. She's cheating on him and, if Holman has anything to do with it, she's going to get caught. The target is just one of tens of thousands of "matrimonial" subjects who come to the attention of private eyes each year in a burgeoning industry worth an estimated £150m. Last month, a survey by accountants Grant Thornton found that 49% of all divorce cases now involve the services of private detectives. And, if you believe the gumshoes, that figure is simply growing and growing. No one knows exactly why, but we are more prepared to spy on our partners than ever before. The use of private eyes has always been an option for the rich and famous – just last week a court heard how Tamara Mellon, founder of the Jimmy Choo shoe empire, had allegedly been spied on by detectives hired by her wealthy husband, Matthew Taylor Mellon, during an acrimonious divorce. But now it would appear that the masses have been seduced by their use, too. And it shows. At the top end are the ex–secret service operatives and Scotland Yard detectives who will run to £200 an hour plus expenses. At the lower end comes Holman with a background mainly in "close protection" (bodyguard duties). But even without surveillance training and the gadgetry favoured by the big boys, they get results. "I'd been working in the security industry for seven years doing close protection and the odd surveillance job," says Holman. "Then I thought, why not branch out and do it myself? I set up the business, Scarab Security Management, got a Google account and within five minutes of going live I got my first matrimonial case. That was January. I've had more than 20 since." I'm not expecting much from this stakeout. The wife – let's call her Stella – has been lying to her husband – James – while he's been away on business. For three days last week she re–routed the family landline to her mobile and pretended to be home while Holman and his team were outside her empty house. Now she has told James that she will be at this address with an old friend. James has tipped off Holman. "I doubt if she's in there," he says. "This will be a decoy address. If you're up to no good, you don't give your husband the address you're going to be bad in." Nearby are two of Holman's operatives, ex–army Daniel Williams, and long–time security worker "JD". They are sitting in an old VW Golf. They are bulky and tattooed and have a small digital camera on which to record any evidence. We settle in for a long wait. The Security Industry Authority, which reports to the home secretary, has been promising for years to license private detectives but deadline after deadline slips by. The SIA has already introduced examinations, criminal record checks and licensing for doormen, car clampers, bodyguards, key holders and cash transporters, but it says private detectives are proving more difficult. "We have to consider when does the definition of a private investigator begin and end," an SIA spokesman says. "Is someone who does credit checks a private investigator?" Back in west London, Holman and the boys have had as much success as they had expected – none. Two women have come and gone from the property (which houses six flats) and neither was Stella. "Much of the job is like this," says Holman, an amiable 33–year–old. "It's patience and waiting. You have to be diligent for the client because the client is often in a terribly anxious state. Jealousy can be an awful thing. That pain, the anxiety, the butterflies in the stomach, the nausea. At that point people want to know, even if it hurts." So does he feel guilty when he provides evidence of infidelity? "No, because people deserve to know when their partner is doing something like that to them." Just why more people are spying on their partner is a mystery not only to private investigators, but also to lawyers. Grant Thornton, the accountants, surveyed 100 law firms to establish that almost half of all divorce cases involve private investigators (sometimes, admittedly, only to serve divorce papers). Sally Longworth, a partner at Grant Thornton, says: "These days, gathering evidence of adultery isn't actually that important in getting a divorce. At one time, you needed evidence of infidelity. Now you don't. It seems that people simply want to know what is going on." Nigel Shepherd, a family law specialist with Addleshaw Goddard solicitors in Manchester, says he was surprised at the figure of 49%. "I very rarely use inquiry agents," he says. "You will find that a lot of lawyers worry about the way they collect information. If they break the law to do it, then their evidence is no use in court. "In divorce cases, having evidence of adultery is not that useful. However, gathering evidence of co–habitation after a separation could be. If a wife is claiming she is living alone but is actually living with a new partner, then proving that could have a bearing on any settlement and maintenance." Darkness has fallen in Knightsbridge, and Holman and his boys have decided to call it a day. "She's not in there," says the former Royal Marine. "We've told the client it would be wasting his money to stay here, but he wants us to try again tomorrow. I've advised him that she probably won't come but he wants the place watched." The Beamer purrs into life and Holman moves out of the shadows into the anodyne glow of an empty Knightsbridge street. His client is abroad on business. It's late there and he's already in bed – not sleeping, but eating his heart out. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 Visit the Guardian website to view the article in full.
(Extract from the ABC News, Tuesday May 22nd 2007) Pete Holman is a private investigator from the north of England with an accent to match. The 33-year-old is an ex-commando from the Royal Marines. He is short and stocky, and his arms are covered in blue-ink tattoos. It was approaching 1 pm when Holman and I got into his black BMW SUV. With minimum use of the brake, Holman drove to a middle class neighborhood near Gatwick Airport, on the outskirts of London. There was a stakeout to be done. This was a new case for Holman. The man who'd hired him was convinced that his wife was carrying on an affair during her lunch hour. t costs about $90 for an hour of Holman's services, cheap by U.K. standards, where a rate of $400 an hour is not uncommon. Demand for private eyes is going up, Holman said, especially in divorce cases. Back on the job, Holman pulled into a parking lot across the street from his client's home. We had a direct view of the front door. Holman took out a digital camera with a long lens and placed it on his dashboard. I asked Holman what his instinct was about the case and the husband's suspicions about his wife. "She's been naughty," he said, without pausing to think. Holman and his partner, Damien Ozenbrook, opened up Scarab Security Management in January. Previously, Holman had worked as a body guard and in surveillance. Since he started his company, he's had 25 cases. Ninety-five percent of them have been matrimonial issues, a booming business in Britain, he said. Holman is not the only private investigator reaping the benefits of the spousal suspicion boom, although not all PI's play strictly by the rules. Recently, the divorce proceedings of Tamara Mellon, the founder and CEO of the British handbag company Jimmy Choo, and her husband, American Matthew Mellon II, the banking heir, took a nasty turn. Tamara Mellon charged her husband hired a private investigator to hack into her computer and otherwise violate her privacy, as well as the law. Matthew Mellon is now facing a criminal investigation to go along with his divorce. And last year, Anthony Pellicano, a private investigator in Los Angeles, was indicted on charges of wiretapping and conspiracy. Pellicano's client list is full of Hollywood heavyweights, from Kirk Kerkorian, former owner of MGM, to film producer Steven Bing, who allegedly used Pellicano in an attempt to dig up dirt on Elizabeth Hurley after she claimed Bing was the father of her child. Pellicano remains in jail awaiting trial. When there's a lot of it, money is often the primary reason to bring in a private investigator. As the London divorce attorney Vanessa Lloyd Platt put it, "If the wife knows that she'll get 50 percent of everything, she'll want to know: What is everything?" Platt estimates that private investigators are used in 10 percent of British divorce cases where the fight is a financial one. In the United States, the numbers are similar, experts say. "People still want to blame the other one, even though it may have no effect in court," said Jack Palladino, a private investigator in San Francisco. "They still want to say, 'You bastard!'" For matrimonial cases, the majority of Palladino's clients are women. More often than not, they are sitting in his office because it has become impossible to deny the changes in their husbands' routines and moods. "They are bewildered," Palladino said. "It is as though a new person has emerged in their spouse. The behaviour is a puzzle to them and really hurtful." Palladino, by now, has a good sense of these men. Typically in their late 50s or early 60s, they are suddenly aware that they're getting old and their power is fading. "I try to make people understand that this behavior reflects despair, desperation and fear, rather than a leaping towards happiness," Palladino said. Pete Holman also takes his client's psychological needs into account. So often the bearer of bad news, he always tries for a gentle delivery. "You speak nice and quietly and approachable-like," he said. "I'd say, yes, she came out of the house and she did kiss the guy. Then, if he wants to know, I'll tell him how long the kiss was, but I'll keep it nice and calm and factual." Despite the unpleasant task of relaying such information — and the ethical implications of intruding into people's private lives — Holman said he has no reservations about what he does. "If someone's cheating on you, you have the right to know," he said. In his quest for the answers, Holman often uses a range of disguise strategies. "We wear a hard hat, a high-vis waistcoat, carry a clipboard," he said. "If someone says, 'What are you doing?' we give them a bit of crap: 'We're here to fix the pipes.'" Holman said he is vigilant about carrying out his work lawfully, but, as the Mellon divorce and the Pellicano case demonstrate, private investigators can cross over the line of legality. Sometimes, the line is hard to locate. Installing recording devices in someone's house is illegal, unless someone who lives in the house has commissioned the job. Who's to say that those recording devices are not there for the purpose of recording oneself? And if, in the process, they happen to capture one's wife and one's wife's lover, the law gets fuzzy. Back in the empty parking lot, Holman and I continued to wait. The hour wore on and the possibility grew that someone, somewhere was cheating on her husband. A cloud of suspicion seemed to descend on everyone on the street in front of us. Who was that woman in the purple sweatshirt and why was she idling on the curb? Who was that guy on the bike? That dog walker? That cabbie? I asked Holman if being in the surveillance business ever makes him paranoid. "Sometimes you've just got to step away from something and say, 'This is what it is,'" he told me. "People are just people. There's nothing untoward going on here." The woman in purple was probably just waiting for the bus, he pointed out. At 2 o'clock exactly, Holman pulled out of his parking space, ready to deliver the conclusive report for the day: He hadn't seen anything at all. Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures Visit ABC News to view the article in full.
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