Clarke and Nixon felt that there was nowhere sympathetic for women to turn for
information if they felt their partners were being less than honest. “And we
don’t just take a case, deal with it and then that’s it,” Clarke says. “We
always follow up with clients to see how they are getting on after what can
be a traumatic and life-changing experience.”
Before launching D-Tec UK, they spent a year researching the market and the
opposition. Clarke phoned up many detective agencies posing as a client with
an unfaithful husband. All her calls were answered by men; many veered from
the voyeuristic to the disengaged. Satisfied there was a demand for
something more user-friendly, they turned next to a lawyer for advice on
what they could and could not do under the provisions of the Data Protection
Act and other laws.
“For example, if a car is owned by a couple, part of the marriage pot, but
mainly driven by the husband, then his wife is within her rights to have us
fit a tracker to that car,” Nixon explains. “But if the car is owned solely
by her husband’s business, then it is illegal for us to do that. We have to
ask a lot of questions when clients first come to us, so we know exactly
where we stand on who owns what.”
The same applies to fitting the software to a mobile phone that will monitor
texts and calls. “We cannot agree to a husband’s request to fix his wife’s
phone if she pays the bill,” Clarke adds. One way round that is to give your
erring partner a mobile phone as a present but to keep paying the bill. “We
have had clients who have given a fully loaded iPhone to their partner as a
Valentine’s Day present,” she reveals. “Once they have proved that they own
the phone, they sign the software licence and every text in or out can be
copied, along with numbers dialled and received. There’s also the GPS so you
can see the location of that phone at any time. The client can log on, too,
and follow a partner going merrily about their business.” So much for
romance.
“The hardest thing was learning the technical side,” says Nixon. “I couldn’t
even fit a light bulb, let alone a tracker and know how it works.” She
certainly does now. Before opening for business they visited all the leading
manufacturers of the gadgets and gizmos of the PI trade and found themselves
in Bangkok. “It’s the best market,” Nixon says. “Cutting-edge. We’re not
selling gimmicks but stuff that really works. If we don’t record and report
accurately, then our clients and ourselves will be compromised.”
Announcing D-Tec’s arrival on their website, they had to endure some initial
condescension from established male counterparts. “I think they thought,
‘Just leave it to the lads,’” says Nixon. “But we now have good relations
with many other agencies and we work for each other on cases.” Increasingly,
solicitors ask for their help; for example, proving cohabitation. “A
difficult one that, because it has a big impact on the financial settlement
of separating couples who are not married,” says Clarke. Seven days of
surveillance photography of parked cars and comings and goings normally does
the trick.
Their first assignment took them to a pub in Evesham. “Our client was
convinced that her husband was playing away,” Clarke explains. “She had
already installed software on his phone which automatically stored copies of
his texts to her web account, which is how she knew about the pub, but she
needed further proof. She called us at 1pm and said he was due to meet
somebody at 9pm that evening.” Wasting no time, they jumped into their
silver Mercedes SL. “We drove up to Worcestershire and sure enough, there he
was in the pub. We spent the evening there alongside him as he told this
girl that he wasn’t married and did not have any children.” The Evesham
Lothario had definitely run out of wriggle room.
Over the past year, Clarke and Nixon have noticed an interesting trend. Forty
per cent of their clients are now men, up ten per cent on the previous year.
“I think a lot of guys feel happier talking to a female voice,” says
Clarke. Even if they are now tracking more women, it is still more likely
for men to stray – 47 per cent to 35 per cent. She points out another
difference. “Even when we have proved something extramarital, the women
don’t tend to leave, but I’ve never had a male client who has stayed, not
one.” As Nixon puts it, “A lot of women want to keep the lifestyle, so they
just want the mistress out of the way.”
Some find out more than they bargained for, such as a woman in her late
fifties, married for 30 years, whose husband kept disappearing off to Hull
to do “research for work”. Clarke and Nixon staked out the address; the
husband was seeing a much younger woman. Confronted by the “evidence”, he
confided that she wasn’t his lover, but the daughter he had fathered after a
one-night stand. Twice a year for 17 years he had been visiting her to give
her money. “Our client said, ‘I don’t know which is worse, being lied to for
nearly 18 years or that he has another child,’” says Clarke.
The private investigation business is not regulated; they feel it should be.
They will not set honeytraps where pretty girls in bars are used to lure men
into compromising situations. Nor will they work for anybody they think
might be a stalker. When one young man asked them to follow his
ex-girlfriend, “I told him that ‘ex’ meant ‘ex’,” says Nixon.
Hiring Clarke and Nixon doesn’t come cheap. One male client ran up a bill of
£15,000 over five months, but most people find out what they need to know
for much less than that. It costs £695 to load software on to a mobile and
£595 to put a logger on a computer. Results usually come in days. Best value
is the tracker: “We rent those out weekly at £395, excluding VAT,” Nixon
explains. “It’s not a big spend next to £55 an hour for physical
surveillance, and with a tracker you’re live to someone 24/7.”
They always get their man, or woman, even one practised philanderer from
Hitchin. For weeks they followed him, but he was very “surveillance-aware”,
says Nixon. “We thought he had a young woman, but we just couldn’t pin
anything on him.” Then one Saturday he changed routine and went to the South
Coast. “We followed him, and had him bang to rights having dinner with his
lover, holding hands on the beach, kissing and canoodling. Where was Mr
Elusive’s love nest? “Premier Inn, Southsea.”
“His wife knew they were at the end of their marriage and that something was
going on,” Clarke says. “But she just wanted to be able to say, ‘Look, don’t
lie to me any more. I’ve had enough,’ and come away with some respect.”
“We’ve had a lot of emotional times,” Clarke continues, “especially a
suspected paedophile case involving a five-year-old. Breaking bad news is
always the hardest part. We’re counsellors as much as investigators at
that point.”
D-Tec’s work does bring them into contact with the police from time to time,
especially when they are on static surveillance. To avoid potential
problems, they tip off the police in advance. “They do not interfere with
our work, especially domestic cases,” says Clarke. “But they do like to be
kept informed.”
They shield their own kids from lurid details. Clarke says she tries to
present their work in a positive light, that they’re helping people rather
than spying on them. “There are times when I get calls at home and I
have to go into the other room because obviously it’s not appropriate for my
daughter to be listening. But mostly they think what we do is cool.”
Business is so brisk that they are taking on another female investigator –
D-Tec UK will always have a female voice on the phone – and is opening an
office in Marbella following increasing demand in Spain.
“People have always been unfaithful, let’s be clear about that,”
says Clarke. “In Roman times, rich men had a secret passage from their
library for visiting prostitutes. Lifestyles have changed and women work as
much as men, so have all the same temptations. I reckon that over the next
year we’ll find our clients split 50-50.”
The message would seem to be, then, that if your partner wants to move into a
house with a library, check the exits.
