Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Copyright
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473536081
Version 1.0
Published by Century 2016
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Copyright © Joe Carter 2016
Joe Carter has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Although this book is based on fact and relates to numerous real people, all names, places and identifying features have been changed to preserve their anonimity and, of course, the anonimity of the author and other undercover cops.
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Century
Century
The Penguin Random House Group Limited
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2SA
www.penguin.co.uk
Century is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781780895024
To the most caring, loving and brilliant mum. Thank you for single-handedly raising the most beautiful and talented children. They make me proud every day and I love them so very much. I am sorry that I let you all down.
Thank you to:
Stephen Ainscough for starting me on the journey.
To Paul, Claire, Tom and Mary and the gang at Newman Street.
Sharmaine Lovegrove for connecting me to the right people and enthusing soooo much about my writing.
And a huge thank you to Ajda Vucicevic at Random House for your constant support, guidance and reassurance.
And of course to Boo.
I recall like it was yesterday – the first words that Joseph Dominick Pistone delivered to the hushed auditorium at the FBI Academy in Quantico. I was sat in the stalls exchanging niceties with the men either side of me, part of a select class of undercover officers. I felt honoured and privileged to have been invited on their esteemed undercover course and, as we awaited the talk, a general sense of excitement settled over us. The most famous undercover officer in the world – the first person to infiltrate the Mafia in New York – was about to deliver a lecture.
Donnie Brasco, as was his alias, had been part of one of the most complex and intricate operations of his generation. It had lasted six years and had almost cost him everything. The entire audience was in awe of the man and his remarkable achievements as a UC. He had the class in the palm of his hand, without uttering a single word.
When he finally spoke, his words were slow and considered: ‘Anyone in this room who is becoming an undercover officer to get away from their boss, or is running away from a nagging wife or screaming kids … Anyone who is here to hide from any problems they have in their own lives … Then I tell you one thing – you are in the wrong place, you are on the wrong course, and there is the door.’ He paused whilst people took in the gravity of his words.
The words he spoke, I have come to realise, were true; they were spoken from the heart. He knew all this because he had been there. And before too long, I would learn – the hard way – just how true they were.
It was thirty years, three months and eight days since I had stood with over 200 new recruits, been sworn in to serve my queen and country, and promised to protect the people of London.
I was now sat in a comfy chair at the Hilton hotel surrounded by business men and women conducting meetings and interviews, sipping green teas and cappuccinos, with their Apple MacBooks laid out on the tables in front of them. None of them knew who I was, or why I was there, clutching a crisp white envelope that contained my warrant card.
I was going to hand it in and walk away from a job that I had devoted the best part of my life to. I had never imagined that it would end in this way, with such despair, such unhappiness, and with so much anger and heartache.
There was only one reason I was there: my ex-detective inspector, the only person that I still trusted, had asked to meet me on 21 December. He knew that this was my last day – this was to be the end of my thirty-year police career. I had spent the past twenty years working undercover; I had received over thirty-five Chief Constable’s and Judge’s Commendations for bravery and dedication to my work. I was overwhelmed by sadness and a sense of futility. I thought of trust and support and camaraderie, all the things that I could no longer look to my colleagues for.
It had been a week since I had been told by a twenty-something-year-old kid from HR that I wasn’t entitled to an exit interview with the chief constable as I didn’t fit the criteria. I looked at him, dressed in his Hollister jumper, Primark skinny jeans and cheap shoes. I thought to myself that he had no idea who I was or what I had done. I wanted to sit him, his supervisor and the other ‘luvvies’ from HR down, and tell them my story. Explain to them what I had done in my service, the people I had hurt, the number of times I’d risked my life to put baddies behind bars. That I thrived on danger – the more dangerous the situation or nastier the person, the more I would want to do the job. I wanted to tell them my story.
I looked him up and down, took a deep breath and said, ‘Do you know what? You’re right, I’m sure the Chief has much better things to do.’
In any other walk of life or career, I was certain that I would have been sat down and somebody would have picked my brains, unloaded all the contacts I had accrued over two decades. They would have listened, and documented the knowledge and experience I had of sensitive operations and undercover techniques. Made notes of the tactics I had used that had been successful, and those I implemented that had failed. My head was full of twenty years of detailed information that I had collected working undercover throughout the world. But not a single person spoke to me: no exit interview, no debrief from the unit head, no one from my department even said goodbye.
Of course, I was sure they were all glad to see the back of me. Although we’d had a huge amount of success in the undercover unit, and had never before put so many top-echelon criminals ‘away’ for serious offences, I knew that certain senior officers wanted me off the premises. I brought success, but at a risk to them and their spotless CVs. They were always concerned when I was deployed; they worried about the job going wrong, the money getting stolen, or bad press about the tactics used. I never felt they had any genuine concern for my safety or me. Their number one priority was their own reputation. With me out of the way, that meant that there was one less thing that could prevent their path to promotion.
I knew that I wouldn’t get any big send-off, that there would be no collection amongst my peers to buy me a retirement present. I’d witnessed colleagues in the past, who had done little to nothing in a thirty-year career, receiving Mont Blanc pens or nasty cut-glass decanters. There wouldn’t even be a card for me, adorned with handwritten comments from people I barely knew and certainly didn’t care for. No drunken slaps on the back or speeches from insignificant and boring senior officers chronicling my career over thirty years that they had no personal knowledge of. But most of all, there was one thing that really got to me, the thing that hurt the most and would stay with me forever. There was not one single person to say: ‘Joe, thank you.’ I realise, now, that’s all I wanted: someone – anyone – just to say something, to give me a little sign that what I had done mattered. That I hadn’t wasted my life.
I had sacrificed a marriage and hurt so many people on the way. I wanted to be told it wasn’t all for nothing. I just wanted someone to say thank you.
It was 1984, and the early months at Chiswick Police Station were not filling me with joy. I seemed to go from day to day, shift to shift, without feeling I had any direction to my life. Shifts became all too familiar. We would all parade into the briefing room before a shift. We would be asked to produce our appointments. We would all then hold out our wooden, leather-strapped truncheon, our silver whistle on a chain and our up-to-date, ruled-off pocketbook. At this stage, the sergeant would read us our postings and what time our ‘refs’ (refreshment meal breaks) would be taken.
I would invariably be posted to the furthest beat from the station. I would walk there aimlessly, not really knowing what I should actually be doing to fill my eight hours, and then wander the streets in a daydream for most of the shift. I was only ever awoken from this when the radio would shout my number to take a call. This used to startle me, and almost amounted to an inconvenience. I was aware that all the decent calls – the meaty ones, the ones with any action – were always taken by the cars. The walkers were left with rubbish. The old lady who wanted to report her cat missing. The family who were being kept up all night by their neighbours blasting Bob Marley until the wee small hours.
When I walked into these houses, flats or bedsits, I knew everyone was thinking that they had sent the work experience boy to deal with their problem. I was nineteen, I had only been in the police for three months, and it was clear to see that I was in the wrong job. I was always polite; I had been brought up to treat people with respect. I had no prejudices and believed in the moral values of right and wrong. I always managed to deal with each situation professionally. I would normally get a cup of tea and slice of homemade Victoria sponge from the dear old ladies. They were grateful for a natter and I always left with ‘such a lovely young man’ ringing in my ears.
My police career was going nowhere. I was coming up for my three-month probation report. I thought I’d had a right score, as the station’s football manager was my reporting sergeant. That meant he was responsible for signing off my probation reports. Without being big-headed, I was a half-decent footballer. I was fit and played to an alright standard.
The rivalry and competition between police stations in the 1980s and 90s was huge. On a Thursday at any of the police sports clubs in London, the pitches would be full of rival teams, playing competitive football and taking it very seriously. The bar afterwards was a place for banter, and rubbing the noses of a rival nick in the sand if they had been on the receiving end of a Chiswick and Brentford defeat.
This is where my naivety showed. I knew my three-monthly report was imminent, and the skipper had said we would have a chat. I just didn’t expect it after five pints of light and bitter in the bar.
My sergeant was a smart-looking man. He was about thirty-eight years old, with a short mop of jet-black hair and a matching, thin moustache. He was slim and wore police-issue spectacles, which he let fall to the end of his nose. He loved a drink and was a sucker for Fuller’s ESB. It was our local brewery in Chiswick, and as he used to say, ‘It would be rude not to.’ He put his arm around me, like an uncle would at Christmas after one too many glasses of port. He said, ‘I’ve checked your work return for the last three months and noticed that you’ve only reported six people for traffic offences. Why is that?’
Quick as a flash I countered him: ‘Traffic really isn’t my thing and I like to use my discretion. I tend to give verbal warnings to those that have committed minor infringements.’ There was a verbal-warning book held in the police station that catalogued the names and details of the offences for which members of the public had received a warning. My skipper patted me on the back and said, ‘You were our best player today, son. Well done. We’ll go through your report tomorrow.’ I thought no more of it, finished my pint and revelled in the celebrations of another victory for the nick.
When I think back, playing for the nick was the only part of the job I actually enjoyed. I lived for Thursdays – we were allowed off early ahead of time to play, and came into late shift after the match had finished, and if lucky we were let home early from night duty to sleep.
The next shift at the nick I was called into the sergeant’s office. He told me to sit down and was not his normal self. He passed my three-monthly probation report across the table. He told me to read it. I opened it and read what he had typed. It was not pleasant reading. He said that I was not progressing as he had expected. He said if I continued the way I was going he would not recommend that I got through my probation. My arrest figures were poor and my traffic offences were disgraceful. Even worse, he commented that I had told him that I preferred to issue verbal warnings rather than report people for traffic violations. However, having checked the verbal-warning register, he saw that I had not made a single entry. The last line of the report read: I recommend this officer is placed on monthly reports and is spoken to by the chief superintendent.
He looked at me and said, ‘Is there anything in there that isn’t true?’ I paused and stuttered before I feebly said, ‘But I thought you were my mate?’ It sounded pathetic and naive and childish. He said that the Chief would be seeing me tomorrow, and to make sure I had some reasons for my poor performance so far. I learnt a big lesson that day, a lesson that would stand me in good stead throughout my thirty-year police career: Never, ever trust any of your colleagues.
I wasn’t sure what I should do next. Maybe call it a day; I wasn’t enjoying being a policeman and I had never wanted to be one in the first place. This was down to my mother. I could kill her … why had she insisted that I filled in the forms to join the Met? I can hear her even now, saying: ‘If you don’t, I can only see you being locked up by them.’
I needed to think over my options, and there was only an hour left of my shift. As I contemplated going back out to walk down those last sixty minutes, I bumped into Eammon, who had just come in from the back yard. Eammon was a lovely, gentle man; he was softly spoken, and everything he did was done in a calm way. He was the first Eammon I had ever met – not a common name, but one you associate with a librarian or maybe a farmer. However, Eammon was a detective and an experienced one, though I only knew this because he played for the football team. I had not had any professional dealings with him. In fact, I had never set foot inside the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) office. I knew it was at the end of the corridor on the first floor. The door was always closed, and the detectives that worked there were not the approachable type.
Eammon asked what was up. I explained that Skip had put me on monthly reports and it was very unlikely that I would pass my probation. And to top that, the chief superintendent wanted to see me.
Eammon looked at me and said, ‘Don’t worry about that. Meet me in The Barley Mow at two thirty and I’ll help you out.’ Then he skipped up the stairs and disappeared out of sight.
I was a bit taken aback by Eammon. I didn’t really know him; we had exchanged a few pleasantries whilst getting changed for football, but no more than that. But I knew I fancied a pint, and I was intrigued to find out what Eammon might say.
When the shift finished, as ever the entire relief went for a drink in the pub next door. I made my excuses, turned left out of the nick and walked along the alleyway behind the High Road towards the quaint Barley Mow pub. I had only been in there once before, and as I walked in this time I saw Tommy Cooper – a tower of a man – having a drink with his wife. He looked at me, and he had a twinkle in his eye. He was holding court, and on any other day I would’ve loved to listen to his tales.
I walked past him and his entourage and saw Eammon nursing a pint, sat on his own at a table. I asked him what he wanted, but he said he was fine and that the rest of the CID office would be joining him in a while.
I ordered my pint and sat down. He looked at me and said, ‘You don’t want to be a policeman, do you? You’re thinking of throwing the towel in.’
I stared at him as I took the first gulp of my lager top. It felt like I was talking to an older stepbrother. ‘That’s exactly right, Eammon. I don’t think this is the job for me.’
‘You don’t have to walk the streets and be told when to eat and when you can use the Gents. There is another job in the police – the brains behind everything that happens.’
‘What job is that, Eammon?’ I asked. ‘And what makes you think I can do it?’
He told me the CID were a family, and they stuck together. They solved all the crimes and put right the ‘fuck-ups’ that the ‘helmets’ made. ‘We think differently, we act differently and we speak to people differently. It’s not an “us and them” mentality with the public. We need them on our side if we’re going to get results. I know it sounds like I’m slagging uniform off, but what I’m trying to say to you is the CID is a totally different job. If you want I’ll help you as much as I can to join us. What do you think?’
I said to him: ‘Anything is better than what I’m doing now – anything.’
He asked what shift I was on tomorrow and I told him I was early again. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘That gives you at least three hours before the Chief will call you in. Tomorrow morning stand on Chiswick Common Road, and at about seven thirty a blue Maestro will drive towards the High Road. You stop that car and check the driver’s documents. You’ll find he’s disqualified from driving and has a fake licence. Trust me, and when the Chief calls you up, you’ll either be in the charge room or interviewing the prisoner with me.’ Eammon wrote down the car number and a name on a Fuller’s beer mat that he’d ripped open. He shook my hand and said, ‘Don’t let me down now. See you in the charge room in the morning, and not a word to anyone.’ Then he patted me on the back and walked round to the other bar, and left me with my thoughts.
For some strange reason, the chat with Eammon had really given me a lift. But how did he know such precise detail and why was he helping me? For now, all I knew was that to keep the Chief off my back, nothing was better than a crime arrest apparently off my own initiative. If he didn’t find out, then I certainly wasn’t going to tell him.
I decided against joining the rest of the relief and instead went back to the section house, which was supposed to be my home.
I was tossing and turning all night in fear that I would sleep through my alarm. My state-of-the-art, digital-radio alarm clock, fitted with a large snooze button, was perched on the wooden-topped stall that stood next to my bed. The alarm was a recent addition to the few personal objects I had in my room in the section house.
I had the full-length poster of Fiona Butler approaching the tennis net, with her racket in her right hand. She was lifting her skirt with her left hand to reveal she wasn’t wearing any knickers under her white tennis attire. This poster filled the entire length of my bedroom door.
I had a single bed, and had removed the police-issue orange-and-purple blanket and replaced it with a Paddington Bear duvet cover and pillowcase. Quite sad really, for a Metropolitan Police officer approaching his twentieth birthday. I had a black-and-white picture of my mum and dad, looking like film stars in the early 1960s, and some birthday cards from my younger brothers and sisters. It wasn’t cosy and it felt nothing like home.
This was my sad room on the fifth floor of the Brentford section house. This was the hall of residence occupied by young male and female police officers, or occasionally older residents who had found themselves in marital difficulties and for whom this was their only solution.
There was a sink in each room which was metal and had corrosion around the taps and smelt of urine. The fact of the matter was, most people used their sink as a lavatory as they couldn’t be bothered to walk the length of the corridor in the middle of the night to empty their bladder. It was far more convenient to take the two steps from one’s bed, step on your tiptoes and use the sink for a wee whilst running the cold water tap. Far from hygienic, but very practical and rewarding.
The toilets consisted of two urinals that stunk to high heaven and two individual toilet cubicles, which were permanently soiled and not conducive to having a relaxing ten-minute, peaceful sit-down. The toilet paper was tracing paper and was lethal, so it was essential that you had your own roll of Andrex in your room. There was also a single bath, which had the enamel wearing off around the plug area and was never washed by the previous bath-goer. There were three individual showers, which were adequate; the shower curtains smelt rancid and I would only ever shower wearing flip-flops, but they were powerful and hot.
My alarm was set for 5.05 a.m., but I had glanced at it regularly since 4.10. I was sure that I was going to oversleep and miss the opportunity of making my first arrest on the back of Eammon’s tip-off. I couldn’t face another turn in the bed and jumped out at 4.45, grabbed my towel and ran to the shower. This was the first time since I had finished at Hendon Police Training College that I was excited about going to work. I had a super-quick shower and got dressed in my uniform in no time. I normally left it until the last moment to leave my room, but I was starting up my car at 5.10.
It was only a ten-minute drive from the section house past Kew Bridge and over Chiswick roundabout to the nick. I decided I’d make a short detour and check whether the motor that Eammon had described to me was parked on or around Chiswick Common Road. I’m glad I did, as the excitement it gave me when I spotted it was ridiculous. I was onto something; I had a cause, a reason to be. I was gonna nick someone. I would have to caution them, put the handcuffs on them. The control room would hear my voice, asking for the van to come and collect a prisoner. Yes, today was the day.
I got to the parade room early – well early. I had already booked out a radio, one that I knew worked, not one of the dodgy old ones that I would purposely book out sometimes to avoid hearing the control room dispatching work.
The inspector allocated beats, and although Chiswick Common Road wasn’t on the beat I’d been allocated I had to walk that way to get to mine, which as usual was at the edge of our territory. I walked out of the station with a bounce in my step.
I had fifteen minutes to be in position. I didn’t want to be late; I couldn’t contemplate missing him. I was going to nab this fella and make it the first of many, many arrests for me.
Like clockwork, the Maestro chugged along the road. The driver couldn’t have seen me stood behind one of the large horse chestnut trees that lined the pavement. In September conkers would fall in abundance from the branches; today, they provided the perfect screen for me to step out from. The look on his face resembled what I imagined would be the look of a train driver when someone stepped out in front of his or her train. There was instant shock and he brought the car to a stop.
I went through all the pleasantries with the driver. I noticed how nervous he was, fumbling in his wallet for his driver’s licence. He handed me a very new, pristine paper licence. It had the correct colours and font, but the paper did not feel right. I looked at him as I rolled the paper between my thumb and forefinger. I said, ‘You going to tell me where you got this from, Mr Smith?’
‘I needed a licence ’cos I lost mine for three years for drink driving. I won’t fuck you about.’
I told him I was arresting him for producing a fake driving licence and for disqualified driving.
Before I cautioned him, I asked him if there was anything else he wanted to tell me. He pointed to the boot and said there was some ‘tom’ in there. I didn’t have a clue what he meant, but I opened the boot to find a yellow cotton moneybag containing all sorts of jewellery: necklaces, rings, bracelets and two big chunky watches. I could’ve shouted out loud – here was a bag of stolen jewellery. I later found out, without declaring I hadn’t got a clue, that ‘tom’ was short for ‘tomfoolery’, which meant jewellery.
I nicked him for handling stolen goods and then called up the station asking for a van to convey a prisoner and myself to the nick. The control room immediately asked if I was with anyone else. I said I was alone. I had the prisoner handcuffed, a bag of tom and a forged driving licence, all before 7.45. I was so chuffed; it felt really good.
The van driver pulled up, took one look at Mr Smith and said, ‘Harry, what have you been nicked for this time – I thought you were going straight?!’
Chiswick Police Station was a lump of a building that sat on the corner of tree-lined Linden Gardens and the bustle of Chiswick High Road. It was a typical 1970s structure that added no class to the High Road, and no awards would have been collected by the architect. It served its purpose: it was full of uniform officers and detectives responsible for policing the streets and solving the crimes that were committed locally.
This was my place of work, the first police station that I’d been posted to since I passed out from Hendon Police Training School. I should’ve been excited; I should’ve been the keenest officer ever to enter that station. Eager to walk the streets, greet people, help them. Eager to arrest as many people as I could, and make the streets of Chiswick a safer place. But that wasn’t me. I didn’t want to be there. And I don’t mean Chiswick – I just didn’t see myself as a police officer. I had never planned to be one, yet there I was, not even reached twenty years old, with a huge responsibility on my shoulders.
There was a four-team system that operated to cover the twenty-four-hour period. The teams were called reliefs, and I was allocated to ‘C’ relief. There was a uniform inspector in charge of each relief and four sergeants. The remainder of the relief was made up of PCs, of whom there were about ten. The shifts were: earlies (6 a.m. until 2 p.m.), lates (2 p.m. until 10 p.m.) and night duty (10 p.m. until 6 a.m.).
The relief pecking order was an established and engrained culture, and you had to understand and acknowledge your position in it. The lowest of the low were the probbies, the new probationary PCs who had been allocated to each relief. Then there were the walkers, those PCs who had yet to be given a driving course – who therefore, by default, spent eight hours a day walking their assigned beat. If they were lucky, during the last few hours of a night shift they might get picked up by one of the cars.
The next in line was the van driver – he was the ‘elder’ of the relief who was often the person with the longest service. The van driver, as well as attending emergency calls, had the responsibility of collecting and transporting all the prisoners from wherever they were arrested to the police station. Our van driver always wore his police flat cap tilted to the back of his head. He kept the keys for the precious van on the aerial of his police radio, which was clipped onto the breast of his police tunic. He often smoked roll-up cigarettes, and bragged that he could roll one while taking a call at breakneck speed.
The kings of the relief were the area car drivers. They were the PCs who had passed the advanced driving course, and who on each shift were allocated an operator to answer all calls over the radio and keep a detailed log of the calls the car had dealt with. These men loved nothing more than to drive at ridiculous speeds, to get to every call dispatched from Scotland Yard as fast as they could. The ones that were really up themselves would wear standard black driving gloves, which, when not on their delicate hands, would be hanging out of their tunic breast pocket.
I had no aspirations to be any of these people, and some of them I felt sorry for. I appreciated their individual skills – after all, it’s not easy to steer a police car safely through the streets of London at ninety miles per hour. But to me they were caricatures, desperate to be known as the best. If truth be told, they would often get themselves to the call in lightning-quick time, but the driver was far from the best at dealing with the incident and often wouldn’t get his hands dirty. He would stay in the car and let his operator deal with whatever the incident was.
The person who really made the relief tick was the leader, the man at the helm – the inspector on the team, or the guvnor, as he was referred to. In the short time I spent in uniform, it was always a male guvnor. My inspector was a man’s man, with hands like shovels and a big heart. And he had a story to tell. He had fought career criminals toe to toe in the 1970s and 80s, and was now in the twilight of his career. He had been ‘busted’ back to uniform after a colourful and traumatic career as a detective on the Flying Squad, amongst other postings. He had a misdemeanour whilst a detective inspector and his punishment was losing his position as a detective and reverting to being a ‘helmet’. Punishment enough for a career detective. But I must say, it never dampened his appetite for work or his desire to put the baddies away, and his enthusiasm was infectious.
I grew fond of him, and he taught me a thing or two about the way to get a job done. He taught me the Ways and Means Act, which was not an Act of Parliament but rather the unofficial rules we adhered to so that a situation was dealt with, a person arrested or a crime solved. It was not always textbook, but it always got a result.
I remember one September morning, it was about eleven o’clock and I was on my way into the front office of the police station. I’d been walking for the past four hours in the depths of Strand-on-the-Green, taking in the autumn air and the silence of the river. A call sounded over the radio about an armed robbery at the NatWest bank, where two suspects had made off wearing blue overalls. The guvnor ran to the tall grey gun cabinet that stood in the front office. He had the key on the duty inspector’s key ring. I saw him open the cabinet and grab two small revolvers and a fistful of bullets.
He shouted for me to jump into his Austin Allegro. No sooner had I sat in the passenger seat than he threw me both guns, and put his huge fist over my lap and dropped the bullets. I looked at him in amazement and said, ‘What am I supposed to do with them?’
He looked at me and laughed. ‘Load the fucking things, otherwise they won’t go bang.’ He leant over and released the barrel that held the bullets. I could see that there were chambers for five bullets. I was shaking as I placed them into the first revolver.
I went to load the second one, and it dawned on me that there was only the two of us in the car and I was now loading a second gun. ‘Who is this one for, guvnor?’ He took a brief sideways look at me and said, ‘Just load it.’ As I loaded the second revolver, a voice crackled over the radio saying that the two men had last been seen going into the underpass of the A4 at Sutton Court Road. We were within fifteen seconds of there. He shouted at me to tell control we were taking the exit of the subway riverside. The Allegro flew across the A4 and screeched to a halt on the upslope of the subway.
I was a nineteen-year-old boy, who had never before in his life handled a gun, and I was now sat with two I had loaded in my lap, listening to the female radio operator saying at least one of the male robbers was in possession of a sawn-off shotgun. Was I really in this situation? Should I actually get out of the car?
The guvnor grabbed one of the revolvers and leapt out of the car, screaming at me to join him. I put the gun in my waistband and jumped out. He shouted at me to get the other gun. I showed him my waistband and he shouted that it wasn’t much good in there. We were now stood shoulder to shoulder on the upslope of the subway, both holding police-issue revolvers. I could hear the guvnor breathing heavily. I looked at him and said, ‘What do I do if they come up the slope, guvnor?’
‘Shoot them, and shout as loud as you can “Stop! Police!”’
I took a deep gulp and prayed that I wouldn’t see two men dressed in blue overalls coming out of the safety of the underpass carrying a sawn-off shotgun. I prayed that I wouldn’t have to shoot someone, prayed that if I did that I would miss them but they wouldn’t shoot me. It’s amazing how many thoughts can rush through your head in seconds.
I looked at the two-handed grip the guvnor had on his gun and tried to replicate it. As the seconds ticked by, the guvnor starting to creep down the slope and told me to follow him. We’d got to the right turn to the underpass when two teenage boys in smart school blazers came out. Both of them were visibly shaken and put their hands up in the air. The guvnor growled at them to lie down and asked if anyone else was in the underpass. Both boys said no but were apologising profusely. The guvnor then turned the corner to view the subway, and all that was there was a ray of sunshine illuminating the far end of an empty, robber-free subway. I could’ve shouted out loud I was so happy.
The guvnor came over to me, put his arm around me and walked me up the slope back to the car. He took the gun from my hand and could see I was shaking. ‘I think you deserve a drink for that,’ he said. ‘Now get back in the car and let’s try and find these robbers.’ Thankfully, we never did find them.
I realised that if I put the effort into my police work then I would reap the benefits. I now had a bounce in my step; my sole focus was to nick as many people as I could for decent criminal offences. I had a target – I now knew I wanted to be a detective. I didn’t want to wear the uniform, or ‘fancy dress’ as some of the older detectives used to call it. I wanted to don a suit, work on the first floor of the nick, and rub shoulders with all the other detectives in the pub at lunchtime. I had Eammon’s words echoing in my ears: ‘If you talk to people nicely, you’ll be surprised what they’ll tell you.’
I wasted no time in my quest, and it took me only three months and many, many arrests to get out of uniform and start my CID apprenticeship. There was an easy route to take, but that involved joining the Masons, and as a good Catholic boy with a lack of interest in boys’ clubs I declined that route. Instead, I stuck to hard work and nicking lots of villains. I worked with many seasoned detectives; I picked up good techniques from some and discarded many from others. It was on-the-job learning, and there was nobody in that police station that was working harder than me.
My efforts were rewarded with an early posting to the crime squad. I was now able to wear my own clothes, and I started growing my hair long and trying to do everything to not stand out as a police officer. I started meeting contacts and sources in pubs, and listened to them tell me what was going on amongst villains in the area. We had a very simple technique, and it would be as effective now. We would do at least one search warrant a day, based on intelligence. We would crash through an unsuspecting villain’s door early in the morning, seize whatever we were there to find. Nick them, interview them, and convince them that it was in their best interests to help us out. Inevitably this would lead us to the information for the search warrant for the following morning. It was not rocket science, but it worked.
I was beginning to make a name for myself, and had gained a good reputation as a thief-taker. I progressed to the district crime squad, where I was in competition with other prospective detectives: it was awash with testosterone. I kept my head down and was lucky enough to have some decent informants, but I was at a disadvantage because I had declined the offer to ‘join the square’. At that time, the CID was controlled by the Masons, and I’d chosen not to join. However, I was very fortunate that, against all odds, my hard work was rewarded and I passed an interview at the age of twenty-one to become a detective.
It is fair to say that being a detective in the 1980s was full of fun and excitement. There were real characters in the police in those days. There was a sense that you could rely on each other, that your team or partner had your back. So very different from the experiences I encountered in the last decade of my police service, when at every opportunity your colleagues would do whatever they could to catch you out and drop you in the ‘proverbial’. No one had your back; in fact, you most definitely had to watch it.
I was given a really decent posting, a proper posting – I was going to Harrow Road Police Station in West London. This was an imposing red brick building that sat on the Harrow Road, surrounded by black railings. Ten stone steps led up from the pavement to the huge black front doors. The building was set on five floors, including the basement, and it had history; you could sense the stories that the walls of the rooms held.
The Harrow Road station had quite a reputation in the 1980s, and the uniform officers took no shit. They ran the streets and ensured that the locals knew that. They didn’t suffer fools gladly and there was – very much – an ‘us and them’ mentality. It appeared to be the uniform versus the world. The problem was, they struggled to see the difference between the hugely lawful and supportive community, and the bad guys. It is fair to say that some of the challenges that faced the police were huge.
I was one of eight new DCs at Harrow Road, and it was an exciting opportunity to make a name for ourselves and the department. There were four teams in the CID office, with a detective sergeant in charge. The night shift was always frantic and incredibly busy. It was the responsibility of the night duty detective to prepare the night duty occurrence book – or the OB, as it was known. This was a typed report that was left in a ring binder in the office to notify the day shift detectives what had occurred overnight, who had been arrested and dealt with, and most importantly what prisoners were sat in the cells awaiting interview and investigation. You could tell the lazy detectives from the industrious ones by the number of prisoners that were handed over in the morning. If you had an old-school detective who saw night duty as a way to have a late drink away from his wife and catch up on a few hours’ sleep in the DI’s office, then there would be maybe eight to ten prisoners in the cells. All the detective needed to write was: Placed in cell to sleep. The industrious ones, however, would do all they could to leave the minimum amount to interview.
Every single day, six out of the eight new detectives – who were spread evenly across the four teams – would rush into work. Most of us lived in the suburbs, and my drive took between one and a half and two hours, each way. I always left home before six and drove as fast as I could to get in first, so that I could sign for the interesting prisoners from the OB. This meant two things to me: a guarantee of overtime and an opportunity to ‘roll over’ a suspect (get them to admit offences, and also have the potential of an informant). I had learnt in my very early days that if you talked to people the right way, they would respond. I also knew that the most successful police work was based on the best intelligence.
CID was based on the first floor. Before you entered the main office, you had a small interview room on your right and a small galley kitchen, where cups of tea and coffee were made. This area should have been condemned as a health hazard. It was not a tidy office in any shape or form. Every detective had their own desk, with a three-tier set of locked wooden drawers that slotted underneath and a three-tier set of plastic in-trays that sat on the desktop.
On my team, I had a dynamic new DS who was a ringer for the TV presenter Richard Keys. He was a good man, and a good supervisor and detective. He allocated the work evenly and always pitched in to help. I worked alongside another two new DCs. One we all referred to as the Commander, as even back then we knew he was destined for high places and better things. He was educated – well, certainly more than I was – and had an air of rank about him. He was a very good detective and a talented chief. Then there was a really tenacious local fella from an Irish background. He was a quick thinker and steady as the day is long – he was like a bloodhound, and never gave up on a case. You certainly wouldn’t want him on your trail if you were a criminal. We all worked really well as a team, and spent long, long hours together at work.
Our supervisor, Jack, was a great character; he was a Celt, and coming to the end of a long and distinguished career. He had served on the Flying Squad and was a true leader – he had the respect of the office without really having to do too much. Their office was called the Pips Club, as a uniform inspector had two silver ‘pips’ on his or her epaulette to show their rank.
Every day, there were two tasks that the detectives on duty had to complete. Firstly, once the supervisor had completed his meetings and attended to all necessary matters for that day – a detective would be allocated to take the boss to the pub, or a number of pubs. Jack was very slight of build and wasn’t a great lover of solids, but he would easily drink eight to ten pints of bitter each lunchtime. Some people enjoyed the chaperone task, but others dreaded it, because if he didn’t like you or thought you weren’t good at your job, he would tell you.
Then, at 5 p.m., all detectives on duty would down their tools on hearing the words ‘The Pips Club is now open.’ There was a huge double cabinet full of booze in his office; we would all have a drink and talk to each other, taking the piss and showing the camaraderie you have in a close-knit team, like detectives did in those days. It made for great team spirit and bonding, and it would always be a thing of amusement to see what state Jack was in – or more importantly his chaperone – would come back in. Work would always get finished, the prisoners in the cells would be dealt with, and those that wanted to continue drinking would take the short trip across the road to the Elephant pub. It was the task of the night duty CID to ensure he and his car got safely home so that he could drive in the following morning. For us, the pattern was the same every day.
We played hard, but we also worked very hard. Drinking was a huge part of the detective culture and if you got the balance right between work and drink that was the recipe for success. We got through a tremendous amount of work in those days, and I used my time wisely to recruit a number of good informants.
Harrow Road was a vibrant and extremely busy place to work, and competition was fierce to be the best detective. I was learning so much, and I was enjoying my time at the station. Time flew past, and securing a place on the crime squad had given me a well-earned break from the daily toil of interviewing the prisoners left in the cells every morning. It also got me away from the daily allocation of crimes to investigate that had occurred overnight in the area. I was now free to run whatever operations I wanted. This was the type of work I thrived on.
In that part of West London at the time, it was crucial to have the ability to blend in with the community, otherwise you stood out a mile. By now I had hair down my back and sported a ponytail. I always had a penchant for decent clothes, and dressed different to my colleagues. I had my own approach to police work, and I was an individual and a leader rather than a follower. I got the job done – it wasn’t always textbook, but it was successful. I was a true believer in talking to the baddies, getting down on their level and trying to learn what it was like to be a villain. I found that they warmed to me, and I had a great talent for getting them to talk to me. I probably saw a lot of me in them; if I hadn’t taken a different path, I may have been in the same position as them.
One day, out of the blue, I received a phone call from Mary, asking me for a favour. I had known her many years – she was a great detective and she would often disappear for days, apparently working for the Yard, but no one would ever ask any questions about the specifics of what she was doing. She told me she wanted me to meet someone at a local pub and fill him in about a particular housing estate on my patch. She said it would be worth my while.