Andy listened intently. He, along with just about every other detective south of Bedford, was well aware of this vicious spate of tie-up robberies.
We had all dealt with them. The calls always came in before the first coffee of the day had been drunk. The gang struck, seemingly at random, at small travel agents, in numerous towns and cities, just as they opened. Relying on a lack of customers, they would bundle the staff into a back room, force the shop keys from them, lock the door, tie them up and then, with threats of horrific violence, similar to those used on ninety-eight-year-old Aileen McWhirter in Dead Man’s Time, demand the safe keys. They would grab as many traveller’s cheques as they could in a minute or two and then scarper.
‘We never hurt anyone. We only needed to scare the shit out of them. They were trained to sell holidays, not to protect the family silver, so we always got what we were after. What we nicked were worthless pieces of paper unless we could turn them into hard cash. As I’ve been living here and know a bloke who can deal with traveller’s cheques, we decided to do a job in Brighton. It all went well and we got away with a few grand’s worth. It was my job to convert them into cash quickly.
‘So, I took the cheques and gave them to my contact. He said he could deal with them. Well, after a few days the lads started to ask questions. “Where’s the money?” “When are you going to pay us?” “How well do you know this bloke?”
‘I kept chasing him but it seems your lot were putting some pressure on his bloke up the chain so he couldn’t shift them on. Well, we were all getting nervy and the others were getting suspicious. They started to accuse me of nicking all the money for myself. There was no way I was going to tell them who my contact was, so they thought I’d made it all up.
‘They started to get nasty, threatening all sorts of things. I mean for Christ’s sake, we have known each other for years. We’ve never let each other down but they were turning the heat up on me. I got scared so I stopped taking their calls, moved out of my flat and tried to lie low until I could get the cash. I was getting desperate and was begging my mate to get the money but he was in as much of a corner as me. I knew the others were trying to find me. I had to keep out of the way, but at the same time be around to make sure I was there to get the money when the cheques were fenced.’
This was all very interesting for Andy; it filled in some gaps, and was certainly going to be instrumental in dismantling this hitherto elusive gang. It did not, however, give many leads to help protect Angus and Jenny.
Andy’s silence prompted Sherry to continue.
‘So, eventually they tracked me down to the flat in Rose Hill. I’ve told you what they did to me there but it was basically torture. You know the score, tell them what they want and I would walk away. If I wouldn’t, or in my case couldn’t, I would never walk again. Thing was I had no way of conjuring up the money or knowing when they would get it, so they did what they did and here I am.’
Andy kept quiet.
‘They are going to kill me unless I get the money. They were watching while I was scraped into the ambulance. They followed it to the hospital. You can’t protect me unless I get the money to them and you ain’t going to let me do that now. They said they’ve got guns and they are going to come here.’
‘How have they told you all this?’
‘They phoned me really early, before you got here today. Your guards just stepped out. I said it was my missus and they didn’t question that.’
‘For God’s sake,’ muttered Andy. ‘OK, now tell me who they are, where they are, what they have said, what they are going to do. Every last detail, and now. I’ll be the judge of what is and isn’t relevant.’
Finally, like an opening lock gate, Angus gushed the details that Andy needed to piece the jigsaw together: the key to stopping a slaughter.
‘Right, I’m just going outside to make a couple of calls.’ He and the PC guard swapped places.
Time was against them. All the police knew was who they were looking for and in which town. Like the hunt for Bryce Laurent in Want You Dead, this was a life or death hunt for a needle in a haystack.
Nobody could be certain what the targets’ movements would be, which of their threats were scare tactics and which were real. What was certain, however, was that if they attacked the hospital Andy and the unarmed uniformed guard would be woefully inadequate protection. Some serious firepower was called for.
Intelligence was now coming in thick and fast; the gang intended to take Angus out at the hospital. The impact of that would be devastating. It would inevitably result in a shoot-out or siege which, with hundreds of sick patients as potential hostages or secondary targets, had the potential of being catastrophic.
A ring of steel was thrown around the hospital and its numerous entrances. Armed officers were drafted in, forming concentric circles of protection around the stronghold containing Sherry.
One of the core values of the emergency services is courage – the willingness to put oneself in harm’s way to protect others, whoever they are. Whether it is the firemen running towards the Twin Towers on 9/11 passing thousands sprinting away or Grace risking his life to save Pewe on the cliff top at Beachy Head, both depicted in Dead Man’s Footsteps, extraordinary gallantry is a role requirement for officers. Andy knew he and others would need to draw on every ounce of theirs.
Meanwhile, surveillance officers were combing Hastings, thirty-five miles east of Brighton. Intelligence suggested that the gang were holed up in that area but were planning to make their way towards the city imminently. The pressure was on to get to them before they reached their quarry. And the odds were very much stacked against the police. They had no registration number, just a rough description of the gang and of the car they would use to travel on their brutal errand.
By an astonishing piece of skill, a sharp-eyed undercover detective spotted a car similar to the one being hunted, with out-of-town number plates, parked in a row of vehicles on a dimly lit backstreet in Hastings.
Recognizing the twitch of his ‘copper’s nose’, he shouted for his colleague to stop the car; they watched and waited. A swift Police National Computer check on the car’s registration plate confirmed their suspicions. Moments later he glimpsed three burly men furtively making their way towards it, jumping in and driving off.
They started to follow and it wasn’t long before the car headed west towards Brighton.
This was it.
Providing the suspects did not get near the hospital, or Jenny’s secret hideaway, the advantage had now switched to the police. The order to arrest would be finely timed to ensure the safety of all but at the point where enough evidence had been gathered to see the gang locked up and the key thrown away.
Thankfully, the journey from Hastings to Brighton can be slow and tortuous. Normally this is acutely irritating, but with a high-impact firearms operation to plan, the more time available the better.
Andy, still in the ward, felt his pulse racing as, together with the armed officers who had joined him, he planned the contingencies should the bandits evade the pursuing cops.
Would they get warning of an imminent attack? Where would they take cover? What about Sherry? How would they protect a man encased in plaster? Please God, don’t let them get through.
The knowledge that there were several lines of defence that would have to be breached before their sanctuary was invaded did little to assuage their anxiety.
‘I hope you lot know what you are doing,’ Sherry remarked.
‘You’re bloody lucky,’ replied PC Mick Richards, one of the firearms cops. ‘If anything happens to me, just make sure Andy grabs my gun. I trained him at Gatwick and I tell you, he can shoot as straight as me.’
Despite his intentions, this quip did nothing to lighten the mood.
On the street, a plan was being hastily pulled together. These three men who had shown their propensity to inflict the most appalling violence were not going to come quietly. It required military tactics and an over
whelming show of force to make them realize there was no chance of escape and to shock them into submission.
You could have cut the atmosphere with a scalpel in the hospital room as the armed cops heard that the team had crossed the Brighton border. Their radios squawking into their earpieces, the firearms officers were privy to exactly what was happening and where. Andy could rely only on their body language and a few snatched code words that his previous firearms training had allowed him to grasp.
The grip on their weapons became tighter. Their features took on a tautness that betrayed the adrenaline coursing through their veins as they anticipated a kill-or-be-killed firefight. Their bodies tensed as they took up tactical positions to give them dominance, intended to overwhelm their targets the second they breached the doorway. They hoped beyond hope that, like with so many operations before, their precautions would prove unnecessary and they would not be forced to take a human life.
The four occupants of the side ward were bonded by a common silence, a shared fear. Only two knew exactly what was going on; the others tried to pick up and read any signs given away.
Suddenly, a stunning array of firepower and fast cars exploded onto Eastern Road, below them. From nowhere, three plain but high-powered police vehicles raced up to the bandit car. In a flash, twelve heavily armed police officers clad from head to toe in black surrounded the targets, their weapons a frightening reminder that they had not come in peace. With no choice but to surrender the villains clamped their hands on their heads, awaiting the ignominy of being dragged onto the cold tarmac, cuffed, searched and dragged off to custody. The meticulously planned and executed high-threat arrest had neutralized the suspects.
‘Got ’em,’ was all Mick Richards said. They could all unwind. Except Sherry, that is. His relief could only be temporary; he was now an even more marked man.
Other officers dealt with the aftermath of the arrests, the securing of evidence from the car and the searches of various properties long into the night.
The next day, as Andy arrived on the ward just as Sherry was being wheeled off for yet another operation, he found an argument going on between the patient and a porter.
‘Tell him, Andy. I need my tissues with me,’ demanded Angus, holding a box of man-sized Kleenex.
‘Your tissues? What on earth do you want those for? You will be sparko. If your nose needs wiping, I’m sure the NHS can find someone to do that for you.’
‘For Christ’s sake. Well, you look like you need one. You’ve got a bogie.’
‘What’s all this about bloody tissues, Angus?’ replied Andy, subconsciously wiping his nose.
‘Just take the fucking tissues,’ was the patient’s last word as he was rolled from the ward.
Andy took the box from him and, still puzzled, casually glanced inside. Expecting to see a bed of snow-white paper handkerchiefs, he was perplexed when he tried to make out the strange objects wedged beneath a couple of tissues in the carton.
He probed in through the slot and pulled out half a dozen sealed bags, all containing paper bills.
‘Good God,’ was all he could mutter as he laid them out on the over-bed table. Each contained thousands of pounds of crisp, new, unsigned traveller’s cheques.
How on earth did they get there?
Only one person could spill those beans and he was sleeping like a baby while the National Health Service’s finest strived, once again, to fix his broken body.
Hours later, when Sherry returned from the operating room, Andy quizzed him on the miraculous appearance of the cheques.
It seemed that the guards posted on the room weren’t up to much. When one had disappeared to answer a call of nature, a mysterious visitor – a local pub landlord – slipped in to see Angus. In that short visit he brought him the box of tissues with its very valuable contents. As the officer returned he made polite excuses and scurried away.
He was a runner for the man Angus had entrusted with the cheques. Angus had previously lodged at his pub, hence police had spoken to the landlord soon after Angus took his tumble. He had denied all knowledge of anything but clearly alerted the handler who, while keen to get the cheques back to Sherry, was too scared to turn up at the hospital himself.
The plan was for Angus to hand over the cheques in exchange for his life if the gang made it to his bedside. As that clearly was not going to happen now, with great reluctance he made sure that they ended up in the safe hands of the police but trusted nobody except his new mate Andy to deal with them properly.
Following interviews of all four men – Angus’s taking place in the hospital – they were charged with a string of robberies of travel agents across the south east of England.
In a bizarre twist, as yet another uniformed police guard became too confident that the patient’s plaster casts would frustrate any escape attempts, Angus managed to disappear from under the officer’s nose. Having arranged it through many unsupervised telephone calls, he fled not to evade justice but the consequences of being a grass.
He hobbled out of the ward on crutches, employing the ruse of needing the toilet. His accomplices were waiting and wheeled him right out of the hospital explaining, to the few who bothered to ask, that they were taking him out for a smoke.
There were countless red faces as we scoured the city, fearing the worst. As Andy wasn’t available, I was charged with leading the hunt and, despite my very clear assertion on BBC TV News that a uniformed officer had been guarding him, most of my friends and colleagues preferred to believe that I was the clumsy cop. They saw no reason why the truth should ruin an opportunity for a wind-up.
A couple of days later I tracked Sherry down to an address close to the city centre.
‘For Chrissake,’ he said, disgusted, ‘you’re useless, you lot. How d’you let a cripple get away from you? I thought you were supposed to be looking after me!’
He had a point.
Such was the geographic span of their crimes, the gang eventually appeared for their trial at Luton Crown Court in Bedfordshire as that is where they had committed the most offences. Once again their spell in custody had been bungled as some bright spark had put them all in the same holding cell. The cuts and bruises that adorned their faces as they stepped into the well of the court were evidence that they still hadn’t found it within themselves to kiss and make up.
Angus couldn’t resist sly smiles in Andy’s direction, nodding his head at his co-defendants, indicating his satisfaction at the revenge he had exacted. The swift convictions and heavy sentences that followed were as inevitable as they were celebrated.
Despite the months that had passed since they’d last spoken, Andy felt a trip to the Isle of Wight prison where Sherry was serving his time might prove fruitful in squeezing more intelligence from him.
As Angus was frogmarched into the dark prison interview room by two stern-looking warders, Andy stood up, his outstretched hand indicating that he had come on a friendly assignment. Sherry took it and shook it warmly. However, his opening statement made his intentions crystal clear.
‘Andy. Thanks for coming to see me. Nice you should take the time. However, whatever you want you’re going back empty-handed. I told you much, much more than I should have back then in the hospital. That was to save my life. No-one can protect me in here, not even these goons. I speak, I die. You are getting nothing from me. Not one more word. You’ve had a wasted trip. But, before you go, I don’t think I ever thanked you for what you did back in Brighton. Despite all this, you saved my life.’
With that he stood up, turned round and disappeared into the greyness beyond, to a soundtrack of scraping locks and slamming steel doors.
Andy, feeling slightly melancholy, made his way back to the ferry port reflecting that the further intelligence that he sought would have been wonderful but was not to be.
However, he consoled himself with the knowledge that it was his copper’s nose which had started all this that Sunday when he saw Sherry’s broken body in the hospital.
The events that followed were intense and sometimes scary. But with four extremely dangerous people being locked up, the recovery of thousands of pounds and countless cashiers saved from becoming future victims, he rightly felt very proud.
7: EVERY DETECTIVE’S NIGHTMARE
Crimes and tragedies don’t always happen in office hours. For a detective, being on call means that at any moment during the day or night a phone call can come out of the blue that will require you to instantly drop all your plans for the following days and sometimes weeks – if not months. Some jobs crash into you with such devastating force they leave you damaged forever.
It was late 1995 and I had been promoted to DS about eighteen months previously. After a short stint in Child Protection I was back on CID, running a small team of detectives. Julie and I had just celebrated our third wedding anniversary and had moved into a spacious four-bedroom house in Burgess Hill, about thirty minutes from Brighton.
While life was good, my two great ambitions – further promotion and having children – were evading us. Julie was making a huge success of running the Gatwick to Scotland Air UK passenger service operations but we were rattling around in our new home. We craved the patter of tiny feet.
Beep beep beep: three sounds that at 4 a.m. one morning dragged me from sleep. Wake up properly before you phone in, Graham, don’t make a fool of yourself.
Then there was the usual rummage to locate my grey message-pager under a pile of clothes in the inky-black bedroom. Pressing its button, I floodlit the room.
‘Shit, sorry, Julie!’ I muttered as she grabbed the duvet, flung herself over and burrowed under the bedclothes.
As usual, the message gave no clue. Just a bland ‘Please call Control Room Ext 35280 re serial 76.’ The messages never betrayed the waiting horror.
Death Comes Knocking: Policing Roy Grace’s Brighton Page 12
