Table of Contents
Article
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
LAURENCE TODD
THORNWYN
THE CHOIR PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Laurence Todd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
The right of Laurence Todd to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by
The Choir Press
ISBN 978-1-910864-82-1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events in real locations or to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
For Karen, Caitlin and Ryan, who make it all possible.
Thanks to those who helped, encouraged, advised and
criticised (you know who you are), and to Harriet
(for the guidance and wisdom).
O N E
Friday
The inevitable outcome of the trial had been the only topic of discussion in the office since the jury had returned its verdict. Yesterday, at the Old Bailey, Commander Neville Thornwyn, a much decorated and senior police officer, had been found guilty of several charges relating to bribery and corruption whilst in pursuance of his sworn duties as an officer of the Crown. This had included accepting payment not to arrest a suspect, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, and receiving money from criminals to allow them to continue with their illegal activities, notably dealing class-A drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine. Thornwyn had been found guilty after a trial lasting eight days, and the jury had taken only one day to deliver its verdict on all charges, such was the weight of the evidence against him.
The trial judge, His Honour Mr Justice Lincoln QC, had said this was the most distressing case he’d had to adjudicate and, in all his many years of experience at the bar and now as a high court judge, he could never have believed he’d ever have to preside over a trial where a senior police officer in this country had acted so heinously in dereliction of his sworn duty. Rather than pass sentence immediately, the judge had remanded the defendant whilst he reviewed reports concerning the likely sentence, though he did stress a custodial sentence of many years was a very real likelihood.
I was remembering the sense of shock when news had first come through several months previously. The Yard had been burning with unsubstantiated rumours about someone very senior being investigated and about to be arrested on charges of bribery and corruption. Several candidates had been mentioned, none of which I or anyone in Special Branch could credibly believe. But then the news had come through, stating someone had come forward and offered incontrovertible evidence, in the form of detailed ledgers containing dates and names, of suspect payments being made to someone holding the rank of commander. The commander had been suspended from duty with immediate effect whilst the allegations were investigated and he had eventually been arrested and charged.
I was aghast when I heard the name of the man arrested: Neville Thornwyn. Because of his seniority in the force and the charges being brought, the arrest was headline news in the national media, though, of course, whilst still sub judice, only the outline of the charges could be given. Frankly I didn’t believe the allegations and I wasn’t slow in claiming it must all have been a mistake of grievous proportions, given the seriousness of the charges and Thornwyn’s reputation as a good cop, which was stratospheric. I didn’t even expect the matter to come to trial, but I was proven wrong and the evidence proved I was very wrong in my belief as to his innocence. The case did indeed go to trial and Thornwyn was found to be demonstrably guilty. There could be no arguing against the weight of evidence presented against Commander Thornwyn.
Everyone in Special Branch knew or knew of the defendant, whether personally as a friend, by reputation (which up to the trial had been stellar, given his thirty-three years’ service and his achievements) or, like myself, through having served in his team before moving from CID to Special Branch.
After promotion from being in uniform to becoming a detective constable in CID, I’d been assigned to the team run by Thornwyn. He was then fifty-three years old, a DCI and a legendary figure in the Met, having been an outstanding police officer for many years. He’d refused promotion to commander a few years previously as he said he was happy out in the field taking down criminals rather than accepting a promotion which would see him become largely office-bound. His record of arrests was extremely impressive and included a number of major criminals who’d been taken off the streets after Thornwyn’s team made it their business to put an end to their nefarious activities.
I’d only been in his team a few months when I had a part in arresting a gang of violent criminals attempting to hijack a juggernaut lorry from a car park in East London; we’d intercepted them in the process after a tip-off from one of Thornwyn’s informers, of whom he had a veritable army. This was the first occasion I’d ever come up against hardened criminals using firearms, though only a couple of shots were fired and, happily, none in my direction.
The trial had made nationwide news because of the notoriety of two of the robbers, one of whom was an escaped convict with a very violent disposition, and Thornwyn had received a commendation for bravery after successfully disarming him and bringing him down when attacked with a machete.
I’d served with DCI Thornwyn for just over three years when he finally took the promotion he’d been offered to the rank of commander, up there in the stratospheric heights of the Metropolitan Police and rubbing shoulders with the great and good of the force, as well as with top political figures in the Home Office. He’d ultimately joined the ranks of those to whom senior Government figures would defer when it came to converting policy aspirations into workable and enforceable legislation. At the same time as his elevation to such rarefied heights, I too had been promoted, to the rank of detective sergeant, and I’d transferred over from CID to Special Branch.
Since his promotion I’d only seen him on two further occasions, and one of those was when he passed me in the corridor and just nodded at me as he didn’t have time to stop. The other time was at the Old Bailey when he was giving evidence in a case, where we’d managed a quick word before he had to go into court.
The only other time I’d seen him after this was in court number one of the same building a few days back, when the trial judge was completing his summing-up to the jury and instructing them to retire and carefully consider their verdict. I’d not waited around for the verdict as the likelihood of his being acquitted in the face of overwhelming evidence of his guilt was roughly that of the USA ever forgiving al-Qaeda for 9/11. I was positive he was about to be convicted of the serious offences he’d been charged with, which would ensure him a custodial sentence for a significant number of years. I remember leaving the court feeling bewildered by the range and scale of Thornwyn’s extracurricular activities.
I’d spent some of last night watching Newsnight, which had devoted almost a third of the programme to the outcome of the trial. One of the participants, an eminent professor of law from an Oxford college, had raised the issue of lack of accountability and supervision at the top of the police, and had raised the pertinent question of how a top police officer could have got away with such blatant i
llegality for so long. He’d wanted to know the extent of the discretion allowed to senior officers like DCI Thornwyn and who was responsible for regulating and controlling their activities, but the answers given by a recently retired chief constable hadn’t satisfied him.
This morning I’d read a detailed account of the trial and the background to the case in the Independent, which had devoted three pages to the trial and its implications for policing. The case was no longer sub judice, so the media were now able to present far more details of the case against Thornwyn; they presented stories of significant cash payments being made to ensure evidence was lost in transit or confessions retracted before they could be acted upon.
A few of these allegations had been made at earlier trials involving arrests made by Thornwyn or one of his team, but they’d not been admitted into evidence and thus not allowed to be made known whilst the trial was ongoing. One person had come forward with a story about how he’d been forced to plant incriminating material, stolen property, on someone Thornwyn wanted off the streets because it hadn’t been possible to arrest him through following normal police procedures. Thornwyn had justified his actions by reference to what’s known and justified in certain police circles as noble cause corruption: rules being bent or broken because, whilst the defendant might not have been guilty of this particular offence, he was known to be guilty of something of at least equal seriousness, so the ends, getting a working criminal off the streets, justified the means.
Despite all this, for me the most harrowing story was one of a confession being obtained by force from a man charged with attempting to defraud HM Revenue & Customs on behalf of a company known to be a long firm. This man, though aged twenty-four, had a mental age of only eleven and was being interviewed without a competent and independent adult being present to act and advise in his best interests, contrary to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. It was obvious even to a blind man the defendant didn’t have the mental faculties to plan and engage in such a crime, yet an attempt had been made to charge him of this.
The clear impression I was left with was that Commander Neville Thornwyn was now almost the dictionary definition of police corruption. His proud and distinguished record, as well as a stellar reputation accrued over so many years, was now in tatters.
The Independent’s story hadn’t made particularly pleasant reading. None of the other broadsheets that had covered the trial had anything good to say either. The Guardian had also devoted almost three pages to the case and I’d stopped reading after a few paragraphs. Even fervently right-wing papers like the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, which would normally be reluctant to ascribe any blame to police misconduct, had little good to say about the case.
What was worse, for me personally, was the loss of a hero, a man I’d looked up to as a role model upon becoming a detective, someone I’d respected and admired as I was beginning to move up in the force. As a young detective learning the ropes, soaking wet behind the ears but keen to learn, I’d been very impressed watching DCI Neville Thornwyn in action; the cool and methodical manner in which he assessed evidence against suspected criminals; the way he organised raids and deployed his teams across London for maximum impact; the fact he never panicked under pressure and, most importantly, the fact he almost always got the desired results. Sadly, I’d just discovered some of the ways in which these results had been obtained.
I remembered his team talks as we were about to go into action on dawn raids, about the importance of what we were about to do and how we’d be making London just that little bit safer when those we were about to nick were taken off the streets. He had a way of succinctly summing up how and why the streets would be safer once we removed the persons we were about to arrest. It was almost “For St George and England.”
Previously, I’d been particularly impressed with his record of arrests and convictions, stretching back many years, and seeing him in action I could see why he had such a stellar record. However, after recent events, I was now wondering, along with others in the police, how many of these convictions were now likely to be re-evaluated upon what would very probably be a spate of appeals. Several lawyers had already come forward after the trial, stating to the media they would now be considering whether clients they’d represented had grounds for an appeal as their clients may have been convicted on tainted evidence or perjured testimony. I suspected some were already salivating like hungry dogs at the thought of so many potentially lucrative briefs shimmering like a heat haze on their horizon.
Concentration was almost impossible in this febrile atmosphere. The whole office was in a state of, if not shellshock, then certainly amazement. Thornwyn’s reputation had descended into the gutter almost as quickly as Jimmy Savile’s had when news of his escapades with young children and teenagers had been made known and he’d gone from being a national treasure to a disgraced pariah in the same time it takes me to blow my nose.
I’d read the same page about four times and had taken little in. I was preparing to attend a meeting about this topic soon, something about psychological preparedness when about to undergo hostile questioning in court, and I was not looking forward to it. Not only had someone with a sadistic streak scheduled it for a Friday afternoon, but it was likely to be about as interesting as a wet January Thursday night in Scunthorpe.
The head of Special Branch, my boss DCI Smitherman, entered the office and saw me at my desk. He came over and sat down. My newspaper was opened at the trial report, and he picked it up and glanced at it for a few seconds, then put it down. Given his political persuasion, it was an eye-opener watching him look through the Guardian. I resisted the temptation to take a picture on my iPhone.
“I’ve been hearing whispers about this bastard for some years.” He nodded at the paper.
Smitherman, as a good churchgoing Christian, swears with the same frequency I wear Laura Ashley frocks, so, when he does, it has symbolic meaning.
“You know the old saying, if something looks too good to be true, then it probably is?” he asked. “I keep thinking of that. Thornwyn’s helped put a lot of people away, including several big names in major gangs, and it’s made me wonder if this is how he did it. There were always whispers up on high” – he looked upwards – “about his methods and the results he obtained, but nobody believed them. Looks like they might have been on to something.”
I knew what he meant but didn’t want to think about it. The bad publicity that police and public relations were about to endure would last some while, it would be demoralising and every serving police officer would feel the impact.
Smitherman sat still for a moment, nodding to himself. He looked like he was tensing himself in the dentist’s waiting room. Finally, he spoke.
“You served with Thornwyn, didn’t you? You were part of his team until he went upstairs, weren’t you?”
Why was he asking me this? He knew the answer. I agreed I’d served under Thornwyn before his promotion to commander and my becoming a DS and transferring to the Branch.
Smitherman nodded. “I remember you saying recently, when he was first charged, you didn’t believe any of it. You were convinced of his innocence. I remember you saying this quite clearly. What’s your view now?”
“What’s there to say? Evidence looks pretty conclusive, doesn’t it? He didn’t deny much of what was thrown at him, did he? Looks like I got it wrong.”
“Could it have been, subconsciously, you didn’t want it to be true?”
“Might have been.” I shrugged. “I mean, I enjoyed my time in his team. He was a good squad leader. Maybe I was hoping it wasn’t true because it’s all pretty damning.”
“Stretches credulity to believe some of this could have been going on right under people’s noses, though, doesn’t it? That’s what I don’t get.” He paused again. “Did you ever suspect anything like this was happening whilst you were in his team?”
“God, no.” I was emphatic. “As I said, when I was with him, Thornwyn was a good
team leader, a good boss to work under. I didn’t see much else, certainly none of this.” I nodded towards the paper. “I suppose I should be asking if I’m just blind or too stupid for my own good.”
Smitherman tensed, about to speak, then stopped. He was clearly absorbed in something. He paused for a few moments.
“Come on up to my office.” He said this in a way which made me think it wasn’t because he wanted a chat about the weekend’s football.
I followed him. He closed the door behind me as I took my usual seat in front of his desk, but then he surprised me by, rather than going behind his desk, sitting across from me on the same side, too close for comfort and with a serious expression on his face, which could only mean one thing. He wanted to look me right in the eyes from close range. There was something serious on his mind.
“You’re aware of what Thornwyn’s been found guilty of, aren’t you?” He wasn’t asking.
I told him what I knew about the circumstances relating to his arrest, which wasn’t much as I’d largely gleaned what I knew from the media or in-house gossip.
“Many of his arrests were by the book, absolutely righteous. No one disputes that,” Smitherman began confidently. “However, several, it seems, were only obtained because of either falsified evidence or perjured testimony. He probably won’t be the last to go down either, once the perjury trials begin, and it’ll be quite something if they don’t. Lawyers are going back over some of their old cases as I speak. I wouldn’t be surprised if several officers who’ve served on his teams over the years were already misplacing their notebooks about now so they can’t be tripped up on what they did or didn’t say.”
Thornwyn Page 1
