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(or Jacques as he was still known then) was recruited by Sabini when his gang went to war with the Brummigan Boys. The rival gang from the Black Country was headed up by William Kimber, a Birmingham-based bookmaker. Young Jacques Rinieri fitted the bill: though not Italian by nationality, he had enough hot-headed Mediterranean blood coursing through his veins to find an affinity with Sabini. And Sabini liked young Jacques, saw something of himself in him. He treated him like a son and renamed him ‘Jack’. And so it was that young Jack went about his work for Sabini with a diligence and enthusiasm that, along with his club foot, marked him out from the others. Jack was soon leading from the front, cutting, beating and shooting his way to a reputation of fearlessness.
    The battles on the racecourses, involving gangs of one or two hundred, made a day at the races a dangerous place to be for the average punter in the late twenties. But Jack didn’t just wait for the race meetings to show his supremacy; he took the fight to them. Ambushing the Brummigan Boys in their pubs, clubs, spielers, train stations or on street corners. When dead bodies started turning up, this new type of organized violence made front-page news, and questions were soon asked in Parliament. An elite group of tough coppers known as the Ghost Squad, with the authorization to fight as dirty as the gangsters themselves, was put together to crush the gangs. It all came to a head in a fierce battle at Lewes racecourse. The Sabini mob, with Jack leading the fray, beat Kimber’s Brummigan Boys, but the game was over and his men were rounded up. At Lewes Assizes, forty of Sabini’s men were handed heavy sentences of up to twenty years each.
    But young Jack, and Darby Sabini himself, slipped under the net and moved down to Brighton. It’s in Brighton that Jack further anglicized his name, deferring to the royal origin of the town by turning Rinieri into ‘Regent’. Darby Sabini, wise to the last, understood the Darwinian nature of his business and, sensing Jack’s growing contempt for the old-school ways, began to fear his ambition and ruthlessness and decided not to stand in his way. Sabini relinquished his penthouse suite in the Grand Hotel, and retired to the more sedate garden squares of neighbouring Hove.
    Whatever mobs existed in Brighton, they were no match for Jack. They’d never seen anything like him. He soon imposed his will and took his slice of everything Brighton had to offer. And that was a lot, including gambling, thieving, fencing, protection , prostitution, pubs and clubs. The town was wide open, ready and waiting, and when the War came, Jack turned even more profit. The black market, ration cards, petrol cards, blackout smash-and-grabs, not to mention headline-grabbing bank and wages robberies. Post-war austerity soon turned into post-war prosperity and ‘You’ve never had it so good’, and no one was having it as good as Jack. With rock and roll playing on the jukebox and a packet of three in every man’s back pocket, Jack invested in vending machines – slots, jukeboxes, arcades. Every time a day-tripper put a penny in a slot machine on the south coast, they also were putting a penny in Jack’s pocket. He had the town sewn up, his enemies stitched up, and ‘allegedly’ the law in his pocket.
    But, to Vince, Jack Regent wasn’t just a name on a case file, or a criminal that needed catching. Vince had grown up on Albion Hill, a tough breeding ground for young tearaways, so he had lived under the spell that Jack cast over the town. Kids would sit around and swap stories in hushed tones of his daring deeds: the headline-grabbing jobs he’d pulled, the beatings he’d doled out, the killings he’d committed, and the fear that he invoked in grown men. Young Vince would listen to those whispered stories, and had once asked his mother about Jack Regent. He’d registered the fear on her face as she told him never to mention that name