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Old-style Scotland Yard sleuth involved in high-profile cases
Kenneth Etheridge, who has died aged 84, was one of the last of Scotland Yard's old-style, high-profile senior officers, regularly entrusted with sensitive, high-profile cases, not because they had bulletproof reputations, but because they were top-class detectives – unlike their managerial successors of today, more concerned with careers than "feeling collars".
Etheridge epitomised the hard-drinking, fuzzy era of crime and policing in the 60s and 70s – the good old, bad old days. As a detective chief superintendent and deputy head of the yard's fraud squad, he ran a series of major cases during the 70s, most notably those surrounding the architect John Poulson – Britain's biggest ever corruption inquiry – and the runaway Labour MP John Stonehouse.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner James Crane, who headed the Poulson investigation, described Etheridge as "a good thief taker" when asked why he had chosen him for such a sensitive investigation. Etheridge was no respecter of rank, and Poulson's corruption network reached into the highest levels of political parties, local councils, trade unions and the civil service. The Conservative home secretary Reginald Maudling, then Scotland Yard's political boss, was a prime target, though he was never charged.
Very different types, Crane and Etheridge made an effective team. In 1973 Crane arrested Poulson, while Etheridge arrested the senior Scottish Office official George Pottinger and, later, "Mr Newcastle", the Labour influence peddler T Dan Smith. They and 18 others were convicted.
In November 1974 the former minister Stonehouse had faked his own death by drowning off a beach in Miami, Florida, to escape financial problems. He reappeared the next month in Australia. In 1975 Etheridge flew back to the UK with Stonehouse, who stood trial and was jailed in 1976.
Although a Londoner, Etheridge, after second world war service in the Royal Navy, joined Cornwall police in 1946 before transferring to the Metropolitan police. By the early 60s, he was at West End Central, the police station covering Mayfair and Soho, where results often mattered more than methods. He gave evidence at the 1964 Home Office inquiry into Detective Sergeant Harry Challenor, who had planted a half-brick on the cartoonist Donald Rooum, arrested at a political protest in 1963. Etheridge testified about his concerns over Challenor's mental state but typically defended his former colleague, who was found to be unfit to plead and sent to a psychiatric hospital.
CID officers used many of those running Soho's vice world as informants. Tipoffs but also payoffs or discounts bought blind eyes to activities the public wanted, but the law banned. Like many from that era, Etheridge became too close to some Soho figures. A holiday he spent at the Cyprus home of a nightclub owner in 1971 was publicised by a Sunday newspaper, but he was cleared by an internal investigation.
Later in the 1970s, Etheridge was passed over as head of the fraud squad in favour of officers with less success but no Soho stain. He retired in 1977 with 25 commendations .
Etheridge then went on to upset many at Scotland Yard when he became the Lonrho tycoon "Tiny" Rowland's security chief. He had met Rowland during the yard's investigation into allegations of corruption, made in a government inquiry into Lonrho's activities, which had been ordered after the prime minister Edward Heath in 1973 branded the company "the unacceptable face of capitalism". The inquiry included allegations of Rhodesian sanctions-busting by Lonrho.
In early 1978 though, the case was dropped, despite legal advice that charges could be brought. One suspected reason was political embarrassment over the involvement of a Lonrho director, Angus Ogilvy, husband of Princess Alexandra. It was shortly after that decision that Etheridge joined Lonrho.
In the late 1980s Etheridge was instrumental in obtaining a copy of a secret government report that was highly critical of Rowland's rival Mohamed Al Fayed in a dispute over the ownership of the House of Fraser. The report was promptly published in full by the Observer, then owned by Lonrho.
A man who knew how to keep secrets, Etheridge remained a trusted Rowland lieutenant until both left Lonrho in 1995, playing important roles in legal battles with Shell and BP as well as Fayed. He was in charge not just of security but of obtaining information, vetting informants and interjecting scepticism into a fevered Lonrho atmosphere where those offering information for money were too readily believed.
He was involved with the 1994 TV documentary The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie, financed by Rowland, that suggested Libya (which had invested £177m in a 1992 Lonrho hotel deal) was not behind the Lockerbie bombing. After his own investigations, Etheridge, like many others, was not convinced by much of the evidence used to convict Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Predeceased by his wife Maureen, he is survived by a son and daughter.
• Kenneth Etheridge, police officer, born 15 April 1926; died 31 March 2011