Water Board in order to gain access to a house in Edgware Road, from which he made his way into the shop next door by smashing through the wall. He then extracted the safe, which was transported to Hunt's Garage at 39 St Luke's Mews, where it had its door removed using gelignite. Chapman was arrested in Scotland and charged with blowing up the safe of the headquarters of the Edinburgh Co-operative Society. Let out on bail, he fled to Jersey in the Channel Islands, where he unsuccessfully attempted to continue his criminal career. Chapman had been dining with his lover and future fiancée Betty Farmer at the Hotel de la Plage immediately before his arrest and, when he saw plain-clothes police coming to arrest him for crimes on the mainland, made a spectacular exit through the dining room window (which was shut at the time). Later that same night he committed a slapdash burglary for which he had to immediately begin serving two years in a Jersey prison, which, ironically, spared him at least 14 more years' imprisonment in a mainland prison afterwards. Second World War Chapman was still in prison when the Channel Islands were invaded by the Germans. While incarcerated he met the petty criminal Anthony Faramus. Following a letter in German which they concocted to get off the Island, they were transferred to Fort de Romainville in Paris. There, Chapman confirmed his willingness to act as a German spy. Under the direction of Captain Stephan von Gröning, head of the in Nantes, he was trained in explosives, radio communications, parachute jumping and other subjects in France at La Bretonnière-la-Claye, Saint-Julien-des-Landes, near Nantes, and dispatched to Britain to commit acts of sabotage. On 16 December 1942, Chapman was flown to Britain in a Focke-Wulf bomber converted for parachuting, from Le Bourget airfield. He was equipped with wireless, pistol, cyanide capsule and £1,000 and, amongst other things, was given the task of sabotaging the de Havilland aircraft factory at Hatfield. Chapman became stuck in the hatch as he tried to leave the aircraft. Finally detaching himself, he landed some distance from the target location of Mundford, Norfolk, near the village of Littleport, Cambridgeshire. The British secret services had been aware of Chapman's existence for some time, via Ultra (decrypted German messages), and would know his date of departure. Section B1A, the MI5-backed department with the task of capturing