Trail of drugs and violence

For a man with a fortune of more than £2 million, Amarjit Chohan spent carefully. He drove an eight-year-old Ford Escort and lived close to the Heathrow flightpath in a run-down bungalow with peeling paint and a rotting front door. His friends say he was a modest man with simple tastes but the truth about Mr Chohan, whose death has prompted one of the most baffling murder mysteries of recent times, is far more complex. The businessman, family man and erstwhile crook may have lived simply - but he also lived dangerously.

When his body was found floating off Bournemouth Pier last month, the police established quickly that he had been murdered. His wife Nancy, mother-in-law Charanjit Kaur and two infant sons have been posted as missing but you would be hard put to find a detective who doesn't think they, too, have been killed.

It is suspected that their bodies may have been dropped overboard from a small boat off the Dorset coast. So far nothing has been found.

What the police have discovered is an unsettling tale of drugs, money laundering and men whose connections go to the very pinnacle of Britain's criminal hierarchy. How, it might be wondered, does a man like Mr Chohan, 46, come to be involved with such people? I put the question to an underworld source who has monitored closely the swirling eddies of gossip and facts that circulate among the denizens of London's criminal milieux. The answer was short and coded in gangster slang: Mr Chohan made his criminal contacts "at school".

Indeed, there is reason to believe that if Mr Chohan had not met certain people "at school" - in jail - he, his wife, mother-in-law and children would be alive today. But their bungalow in Heston, once filled with the sounds of family life, is now an eerily silent crime scene. A baby's feeding bottle lay on the floor, the washing machine was filled with newly-laundered clothes and a treasured model of Thomas the Tank Engine was among toys strewn across the living room when the police went in. The Asian community in west London was shocked by the family's disappearance. But in business circles there was a sense that Mr Chohan - who was thought to have been courting disaster - had finally run out of luck.

A prominent Asian businessman who had dealings with Mr Chohan said the beginnings of the tragic story were to be found in his conviction for fraud in 1996. Mr Chohan always had a reputation for being rather sharp and he was known for trying to overcharge customers at his import and distribution company, Jumbo Freight Services. In the mid-Nineties he discovered a way of vastly boosting his firm's profits by swindling the taxman out of payments due on consignments from overseas.

He was found out and sentenced to three years in prison after being convicted of 13 tax evasion charges.

In prison he met a man on the fringes of London's gangster netherworld. When Mr Chohan was released, he surprised his friends by surrounding himself with white men who treated him familiarly, calling him Neil and making themselves busy at his new firm, Ciba Freight Services.

He split up with his wife of more than 20 years and moved in with Nancy, who was 22. They married last year and had two sons, Devinder, 18 months, and Ravinder, three months.

"His firm was doing exceptionally well," the business contact said. "But he didn't want people to see he had money. He was quietly buying up properties all over west London, for cash. His main trade was importing vegetables from Kenya but there were rumours about drug smuggling and money laundering."

The key figure in the new circle around Mr Chohan was Ken Regan, a career criminal whose contacts include the Adams family - the trio of brothers who ran one of the biggest and most successful criminal enterprises known in Britain.

The Adams brothers made their fortunes smuggling drugs, and Regan is believed to have helped them launder the proceeds. When Patsy Adams wanted to slip out of Britain on a false passport, Regan supplied him with one. Phoney passports were once Regan's stock-in-trade.

He is believed to have made more than £1.75 million from selling up to 1,000 genuine passports doctored with false names. He supplied bespoke passports to some of Britain's most prolific gangsters with the help of an accomplice, William Horncy.

Horncy is a failed accountant who recruited drug addicts, derelicts and the homeless at £50 a time in exchange for personal details that could be used to obtain a passport. The police caught up with them eventually and they were both jailed in December, 2000. Within two years both men were free and today they are the prime suspects in the Chohan murder.

Mrs Chohan did not like Regan. Few people did.

A friend of Mr Chohan said: "Why was he involved with a man like that? Regan is a thug.

"He crashed his lorry into a car driven by a friend of mine down at the yard one day. When my friend pointed out the damage, Regan fixed him with this terrifying stare. He said: 'You didn't see anything. Nothing happened here.' My friend drove off. Fast."

Regan, 54, and Horncy, 51, were seen boarding a ferry for France shortly after Mr Chohan's body was found. Underworld gossip suggests they may be heading for Thailand or possibly Senegal in West Africa. Senegal has become a new haven for British crooks who might once have sought refuge in Spain.

There are still many unanswered questions in the case. But the identity of the key suspects and their activities in the past few months point to a chain of events that leave little hope of finding Mrs Chohan, her mother and children alive.

Regan was a professional money launderer and his dealings were with high-level criminals like the Adams brothers. If, as suspected, he had found a profitable way of using Mr Chohan's firm in an illicit trade, he may well have involved such people. Certainly, there is evidence that Mr Chohan was afraid of something and wanted out.

In the weeks before his disappearance on 16 February, he tried to interest several people in buying his company. By then, Regan was heavily involved in the firm. He introduced Mr Chohan to Belinda Brewin, a former London public relations executive, and she was employed on a part-time basis.

Regan appears to have been obsessed with Ms Brewin, an attractive 41-year-old who was close to Paula Yates, the TV presenter who died of a heroin overdose. The police have discovered evidence that indicates Mr Chohan's body was buried on Ms Brewin's farm in Devon before being dug up and dumped at sea. She knew nothing of this and describes Regan as "scary".

The police think Regan scared Mr Chohan, possibly by telling him that he was at risk from someone. The family left their house in a hurry, but there were no signs of a struggle, suggesting they went willingly.

Did Regan tell him he was taking them to safety? Regan and Horncy have family connections in Dorset and both were based in and around the Bournemouth area. By strange coincidence, Horncy's son Brian, 33, was paralysed diving from Bournemouth pier 10 years ago. The spot where he plunged into shallow water, breaking his neck, was just yards from where a canoeist found Mr Chohan's body.

The fact that Regan and Horncy knew the Dorset coast well, prompted the suspicion that they may have used a boat to dispose of the Chohan family. They are believed to have headed for the South Coast at the time the Chohans vanished.

According to Mr Chohan's business contacts in the Heston area, it was Regan's behaviour after they disappeared that suggests he was involved.

"He tried to take over the company with a fake power of attorney," one businessman said. "He pretended Mr Chohan had handed over control to him. It seems Mr Chohan was trying to put a stop to whatever was going on and Regan decided to get rid of him."

There was an attempt to create the impression that the Chohans had left Britain voluntarily. A letter, purporting to be from Mr Chohan, arrived from France, saying he had "had enough" and was taking his family to India.

What the letter's author did not know was that Mr Chohan could not have left Britain then; his passport was with the Home Office. Did Regan send that letter? He was certainly known to have boarded a ferry for France. Did Horncy fake the power of attorney? He certainly has a record for forgery. All attempts to find the two men have failed.

Police forces across the world have been asked to look for them, but in the matter of travelling under false names, using false documents, Regan and Horncy are experts.

Meanwhile, Mrs Chohan, her mother and children are still missing. The coastguard at Portland said a body in the sea can travel more than 20 miles a day with the tides and, after a while, it can sink without trace.

It is an appalling thought for Onkar Verma, Mrs Chohan's brother. He travelled from his home in New Zealand after she vanished and keeps a lonely vigil at the Chohan bungalow in Heston, awaiting news.

He has reconciled himself to the thought that it may never come.