Mangled corpse dumped in watery grave

The net closed and then an assassin stole the prize

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This would have been the biggest bust in history - but an assassin's bullet beat Kiwi police to their prize.

A special squad of detectives were just weeks away from swooping on Marty Johnstone, the drug kingpin known as Mr Asia.

They had permission in place to get him extradited to New Zealand from his base in Singapore.

But a phone call from English police ended all that. Their man was dead, their target now a handless, mangled corpse dumped in a watery grave. Retired Detective Senior Sergeant Brears Basham remembers hearing the news:

"(Police officer) Gerry Cunneen rang me up and said 'Do you want the good news or the bad news'?

"He said they'd arrested Clark in London for murder, and that he'd killed Johnstone, and I thought 'There goes five years down the tubes'."

The Auckland CIB's special investigation unit had been inching closer to bringing down the heroin syndicate over several years, with the help of a team of reporters from the Auckland Star newspaper.

Led by veteran journalist Pat Booth - whose work helped free Arthur Alan Thomas - the reporters had cracked the Mr Asia story, even giving Johnstone his nickname. The police saw benefit in working with the Star and together they pursued New Zealand's most notorious criminals.

For five years they railed against Australasia's underworld, corrupt cops on the other side of the Tasman and the strong scepticism of police brass in this country.

"The biggest thing to (brass) in those days was a $100,000 safe break. They couldn't get their heads around a million dollar trade in drugs," Mr Basham recalls.

The case involved long hours and a lot of travel. In 1979 - the first year of his marriage - he spent several months away from home.

Toward the end, detectives had names, addresses and a map that linked everyone together. Surveillance teams were trailing the syndicate's players and many of them were beginning to talk.

"We could find out who they were meeting, where they were meeting, where they were living and what they were doing.

"But we couldn't hear what they were saying to each other."

We had a good list of names and they were getting fingered all the time. It was a matter of pulling all the threads together, here and in Australia ... We had a pretty good handle on it. Johnstone would have gone down."

They had uncovered the biggest criminal network in New Zealand history, a case that would make their careers.

But then a desperate Marty Johnstone botched a drug deal using Clark's cash. He was running out of money and had started to "lose the plot". He got ripped off in Thailand and his name was added to Clark's death list.

Clark leaned on colleague Andy Maher and got him to agree to killing Johnstone, who was lured to England. Maher was driving him north in Lancashire under the guise of another deal. At some stage Maher pulled over in a layby on the A6 road - and shot his friend at point-blank range in the head.

Johnstone's hands were cut off to hinder identification and his body dumped in a flooded quarry. His distinctive Chinese "long life" medallion around his neck helped police identify him. Within days Clark was charged with murder.

Mr Basham interviewed Clark several times while awaiting trial. And Clark helped fit together the last pieces of the police puzzle.

"He couldn't help himself. Once you put him on a pedestal and started talking the bullshit they talk, away he went."

Mr Basham said that while Johnstone was his unit's target, it became clear Clark was at the top of the pile. Even at the end, he was confident he'd get off.

"Johnstone was the naive guy ... Clark was the crook. Clark was the criminal, and he used Johnstone. In a way you've got to admire him for having the balls to do what he did."