Have you got what it takes?

As I'm sure you can imagine, we are frequently approached by people looking to start a career as a private investigator and thus thought I would take a moment to detail what qualities I think the role demands.

By far the most common aspect of our job is watching people. Many people think that surveillance is something that anyone can do, but this couldn't be further from the truth. Leave behind your perception of the traditional private investigator, standing in the shadows with his hat pulled down over his eyes hiding behind a newspaper and instead replace that with a perfectly normal looking person sitting in a car on the side of the road for hours and hours on end.

Surveillance is all about patience - watching the same spot hour after hour for the 20 seconds of action that you need to gather your intel. You can't abandon your position through fear of losing this intel which means the only refreshments you have are those that you bought with you and toilet breaks are non-existent.

Imagine sitting in that same spot for hour after hour only to walk away with nothing (your target often won't perform as you would wish) Only to come back the following day and repeat the same exercise all over again - at what point would you lose your patience?

Most people that contact us don't get interviewed as we can see from their CV for the job just isn't for them, but for those that do, a practical interview awaits them. They will receive a briefing document via email with a fictitious case for them to work. The target will be one of our existing agents and the brief will be simple - follow the agent from point A to point B and record their movements.

Around one in 10 people that attempt this fail for the simple reason that they don't have the patience to do the job. They fail by blowing their cover by getting too close, by losing the target altogether or even in one case following entirely the wrong target for a whole day before contacting us to see if he got the job! (This chap, by the way, wholeheartedly argued that he was in fact brilliant at surveillance. When we bought up the small point that he had actually followed the wrong person for the day, he insisted that this was just a minor detail and argued that the surveillance that he had done had been spot on, wrong person or not!)

Contrary to popular belief, being a good Private investigator isn't all about incredible gadgets, high-speed pursuits through the streets or clandestine meetings at abandoned train stations. It is about being able to remain in the same place for a long period of time yet remaining invisible. It is about blending in to your surroundings and making yourself just another passer-by and it is about being able to pre-empt what a target might do to ensure you don't miss that vital bit of Intel.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to put you off coming into the field but before you do, why not test yourself... Go and park in your nearest Sainsburys car park and covertly note every fourth person to leave the store. Do this for five hours and let us know how you got on.

You never know, if you have a good list you might just end up working with us...

The great moral question...

In all the years that I have been doing what i do, there have been very few occasions when i have questioned the morality of my role. I believe that i provide a service that helps people to open up to their partners and discuss their relationships free of the lies that affairs create. Most people, after the initial shock of discovery, relish the chance to rid themselves of the guilt that has burdened them and seize the opportunity to make right the things they perceived were wrong in their relationships.

However, there is one case (also famous for being the shortest case in our history at just 24 minutes start to finish!) that stands out in my mind as being the closest i have come to questioning whether what i do is right.

The client call came through at around 1130hrs. The job was a simple one; follow his wife during her lunch break to ease his suspicions about her relationship with her boss. He was insistent that his suspicions would be unfounded and laughed at the idea of even proceeding, but still, he had a nagging doubt that he couldn't put aside and thus we took the details and agreed to feedback following the operation.

Leaving the office, we all believed that this would simply be another hour or two of fruitless surveillance whereupon we could put the clients fears to rest, but this wasn't to be the case. Shortly after arriving at the targets workplace, she appeared alone and was observed walking across the car park. She paused by a 4x4 vehicle and was soon joined by a man who had left the office a minute or two after her. They both climbed into the vehicle, her in the passenger seat and set off, soon blending into the lunchtime traffic. After a few minutes of mobile surveillance, the targets pulled into an area of woodland and shut off the engine. We parked 100 yards or so further down the road and doubled back to scope out an observation point from which we could gather photos.

From our position, we could clearly see and document that target and her associate (who was later confirmed to be her boss) had climbed into the rear of the vehicle and were engaged in sexual activity. At this point, we contacted the client to confirm whether or not he wanted us to break cover to get more a detailed image from inside the car - the target and her associate had dropped down below the window line and thus more detailed pictures would mean standing immediately next to the car shooting in and down. He confirmed that yes, he wanted close up faces and actions documented and thus the order was given to break cover.

We moved quickly back to our vehicle and repositioned it immediately adjacent to the target car. The target and her associate obviously spotted us jumping out but were unable to respond fast enough to our cameras at the windows and thus, our job was done. We got into our car and sped off back to the office leaving them in little doubt that they had just been caught red handed.

The preparation of the report and the download of the images took around 30 minutes and after a quick lunch, we were on our way to the client house to present our findings. He was devastated and told us that he would confront and then leave his wife upon her return. As we left, we met a lady coming in with two happy children in tow. As i passed them on the drive, i thought back to the report i had just handed their father, the report that presented their mothers betrayal, the report that heralded the breakdown of their family unit.

At that point, i wondered whether or not we had done the right thing. Would the affair have just fizzled out in time with no harm done, would it have just been a passing phase that left no-one any the wiser?

On the way back to the office, i called the client and told him that he should give himself time to digest the information before confronting his wife. We talked for around 20 minutes and concluded with him agreeing to stay with his father for a day or two to think things through.

As it transpired, after this period of reflection the client agreed to attend counselling sessions with his wife. As a result, they stayed together, worked through their problems and i am told that they are now as strong as ever. The family stayed together.

Most couples dont separate on the mere suspicion of an affair, most need irrefutable proof and irrefutable proof is what we provided during that day in the woods. So the question that i find myself asking is this: Had the couple of split up based on our evidence for an affair that, like most, may have died out in time without anyone ever knowing about it, would we have been partly to blame for the breakdown of that family...?

Your marriage is a masterpiece

It's a lot easier to create a picture from a blank canvas than to restore an existing piece of art. All pictures will, in time, need restoration to bring them back to their former glory but the restoration process is both expensive and time consuming and thus one could ask 'What's the point in restoring it, why not just paint a new one?' The answer of course, in this context, is obvious - nothing beats an original, and the same philosophy can be applied to marriage.

Your marriage, in the beginning, was a masterpiece created by you and your partner. It painted a picture of your hopes and dreams, your ambitions and goals. It created a path for you to travel together as the years ticked by. In time as with all masterpieces, the colours will fade, the edges will lose definition and the finer details will become harder to see. The canvas might be scarred and your path may be hard to see under the damage. But does that mean the path is no longer there?

As the years go by and we face the trials and tribulations life throws at us, it is easy to lose sight of why you got married in the first place, to lose the feelings that you once had for the person you started your path with. But often, these feelings aren't gone - they are simply faded by time or lost under damage. With careful restoration, time and commitment, your original masterpiece can shine through again.

Marriages are originals. They cant be replaced when they perish. They needs to be cared for, protected and occasionally restored. People will come into your life and offer replacements - reproductions - but they will never be as valuable as your original or fill the void in your life if you choose to trade your original in.

Remember why you painted your masterpiece in the first place and who you painted it with. Keep a brush in your back pocket and touch up the faded areas from time to time. As life evens out and the troubles you face now are long gone, you'll be glad you did...

Time to put away the swimsuits

So, it looks like the summer may be finally over - The kids are back at school, margaritas sipped over ice on white sandy beaches are but a distant memory and the dark seems to fall ever sooner as we prepare for Autumn. Family life across the country is finally back to normal. 

But normal is a subjective term. For some, normal means back the daily grind of a work/life balance. But for others, normal means that family time is over and the delicate balance between maintaining their homelife and their mistress  can be resumed once again. Cynical? possibly, but nearly all of our clients tell us that the signs of a cheating partner become even more pronounced during the holidays when families spend so much more time together and if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

Take yourself back to the early days of a relationship. It is something we have all experienced: The excitement of being with your new beau and the longing you feel when you are not with them, the all important contact you share when you can't be together like texts, emails and letters and the happiness that comes from planning new adventures together. 

Now imagine what it would be like if something stood in your way of that planning, something that dictated that you couldn't live your life the way you wanted to. In this case, that something is a partner and family.

Day to day you can make excuses for your absence like meetings, trips to the Gym, being stuck in traffic, meeting your friends after work. During the holidays, those excuses aren't available to you and your frustration bubbles under the surface until it can no longer be contained. It manifests itself as the arguments that our clients tell us come out of the blue. The storming out of the house or more passively, a general reluctance to get involved in anything orientated towards the family.

And then, the holidays end and everything returns to a twisted version of normality. So, cynical? possibly. But this cynicism is only based on the lives that our clients lead.

If this sounds like you, maybe we should talk.