By Peter Torley, Lead Global Investigator: PDL, Mayfair, London
As a Private Detective in the heart of London, conversations with strangers often start the same way. “Oh, you’re a detective? How fascinating! What’s it really like being a private eye?” Even more so when the International Investigations angle is involved.
The most recent instance was last month. An old friend had arranged for myself and some others to attend a big football game in London. While there, I got chatting to the gentleman on the other side of me at half-time – let’s say his name was ‘Paul’. Anyway, myself and ‘Paul’ got talking and the conversation veered to what line of work we were both involved in. He told me that he was a dentist – but quickly admitted that root canals didn’t leave much room for excitement.
Investigating abroad
It turned out that he was much more interested in my particular line of work as he had just seen a film about an American Private Investigator who had to come to London on a global investigation case. So he asked me if I ever got to investigate abroad, and he was genuinely keen to know exactly what it was like.
I wondered for a moment if he was seeking a career change. But no, he was just intrigued by the fact that one morning you get a phone call and later that evening you might end up working in Toronto, or Paris, or Hong Kong or… wherever.
I began by telling him that all Global Investigators based in London were in an excellent strategic position – geographically speaking – as we’re able to get the most out of any day. For example, we can be dealing with somewhere in the East, like Singapore, early in the morning and then consulting with New York in our afternoon, just as America is waking up. So our positioning is extremely fortuitous.
Agile thinking, extensive knowledge
‘Paul’ then said he imagined that a successful global investigator would need to be pretty quick-thinking.
I agreed. I told him that when we get that early morning call, you need to be up and at it straight away. For example, there might be a plane to catch, so decisions need to be made in an instant, sometimes with rather incomplete information from a client.
As it happened, our PDL office had just taken a call the previous week from someone who wanted to obtain information on a French citizen – not a million miles away geographically speaking, of course, but with totally different legislation in operation. So we quickly set expectations for the client, processed timescales, and informed them about French regulations – all of which comes from specific, granular knowledge that we’ve collectively built up over the years.
So the ability to quickly Assess, Adapt, and Act – all while keeping a cool head, of course – is crucial to the success of the many different types of International Investigations we undertake from our Mayfair base in London.
I also mentioned to ‘Paul’ that cultural awareness is critical, too. Investigating globally means respecting the laws and nuances of every place you go to. What works in London won’t necessarily cut it in Los Angeles or Latvia. So, to some degree, you’ve got to be an international lawyer or police officer, knowing different legal systems and local rules on things like data protection, etc, as well as understanding the ‘unspoken rules’ of each environment.
Global Investigation Services
We continued to chat about it on and off for the rest of the dreary 0-0 draw and, by the end of the game, ‘Paul’ seemed well pleased with what I had told him. But – as is always the case – on the way home I started thinking about other specific areas I could have mentioned, like:
How we increasingly use the very latest advances in technology. This means we can now do a lot in the office that we previously may have had to reach out to our global partners for. If we’re looking for someone in America or New Zealand, we can now do that in-house. This saves time for us and saves money for our clients!
- How we increasingly use the very latest advances in technology. This means we can now do a lot in the office that we previously may have had to reach out to our global partners for. If we’re looking for someone in America or New Zealand, we can now do that in-house. This saves time for us and saves money for our clients!
Yet more instances include: - Cases we’ve had involving multinational businesses and Global Asset Tracing.
Finding missing persons in other countries, plus things like cross-border divorce investigations.
Collaborating with Foreign Private Detectives – partnerships that we’ve built up over many years. - Serving Documents on multiple offices of a global company with officers in various countries.
- And the several corporate crises and family emergencies that we’ve solved abroad.
Yes, we’ve done all of those in recent times. Some days it will be a call from the States wondering if we can collaborate quickly with them on an urgent case. Other days – like a very recent example – it will be a call from Cyprus asking us to urgently follow a person who was on a flight landing in London imminently:
“Sure,” we said. “Which airport? And what time?”
They didn’t know.
So we quickly spoke to our PDL contact in Cyprus and had them conduct surveillance at both of the airports on the island. In that way, we were able to determine what flight our target was on and were then able to deploy our UK team to follow the person after they landed in Britain. After that little flurry of activity, it didn’t take very long until the job was completed successfully.
I think my new dentist acquaintance would have been impressed with that one. All done and dusted… practically in the time it takes to do an awkward root canal!
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