Death Comes Knocking: Policing Roy Grace’s Brighton

by Graham Bartlett

  We had been made Detective Sergeant at the same time but our paths then diverged. He had been given the job of setting up the first Divisional Intelligence Unit in the city while I moved to Child Protection. Not long after, however, I had transferred again to lead a team of detectives in nearby Haywards Heath CID. While rural policing had its own challenges, lack of staff being one of them, I still looked longingly at what was going on in Brighton. Six months of crime and excitement in Haywards Heath could be crammed into a week in the city I loved.

  Russ was steely, intelligent and a stickler for detail. He worked cheek by jowl with Don to get up to speed on what had now been named Operation Dresden. So far the focus had been predominantly on gathering intelligence. Its success relied on that intelligence being turned into evidence. That was Russ’s job.

  He ploughed through the volumes of reports, the ninety-five surveillance logs, the hundreds of files on all the covert activity. His job was to draw out what would be admissible in court and fill any gaps. He approached his task with dogged determination, sharing Don’s resolve to get this gang locked up for a very long time. He knew Barratt of old, having previously arrested him for a string of burglaries.

  Within a few days the planning had intensified and, after some false starts when members of the gang had overslept, it seemed the day of the robbery had arrived.

  Before dawn, cops secreted themselves around Magpie Jewellers and the getaway cars, providing an all-seeing yet invisible ring of steel. Given the intelligence that the gang would be armed, the elite Tactical Firearms Unit had replaced the detectives to carry out any arrests. That meant that this potentially lethal phase of the operation was now out of Russ and Don’s hands and under a whole new command.

  Where shooting, riots or disaster are likely the police put in place a very clear structure – Gold, Silver, Bronze. It’s deliberately hierarchical with the Gold (or strategic) commander giving the orders what the police should seek to achieve, the Silver (or tactical) commander determining how that should happen and the Bronze (or operational) commander having to make it happen.

  The detectives wanted the raid to be allowed to run to the point where they had their evidence; the firearms commanders were only interested in safety. And safety always came first.

  Thankfully the firearms Silver commander was a gutsy type. He knew that if this lot weren’t nicked for something decent, he would be running this job again somewhere else in the future. People like them do not go straight that easily.

  Everything was looking promising. The gang had made their way over to The Lanes. Their anticipated counter-surveillance phase was under way – driving cars in and out of dead ends, their occupants scouring the rooftops and windows for giveaway signs that they had been found out.

  All it needed was for the police to stay out of sight, letting everything appear normal, then, in the split second when the robbers were just about to attack but before anyone got harmed, they were to break cover in an awesome and overwhelming show of force, paralysing the would-be robbers into submission.

  ‘Bloody hell, they are leaving,’ came the incredulous comment from the officer closest to the targeted premises.

  A scurry of activity confirmed their fears. Not wanting to show their hand, all the officers stayed put but it soon became clear that the gang, for no apparent reason, had all returned to their cars and headed back to Peacehaven.

  The easy thing to do would be to stand down and regroup another day, but the cops had the time and the manpower to be patient.

  ‘Stick with it,’ barked Silver, guessing this was the gang being even more careful than usual.

  Sure enough, after a short break at Aldridge’s house, the targets headed back. But in the meantime they had been plotting. Russ carried out yet another review of the intelligence and called a confidential meeting with the Silver commander.

  ‘I think we’ve got enough to nick them now,’ declared Russ. ‘That activity we have just seen, with everything else, gives us a cast-iron case against all four for conspiracy to rob. I am sure we will find more evidence in the car. But I don’t think we need to let them get near the shop and the public.’

  ‘That’s music to my ears,’ replied the Silver commander. ‘So you are happy for us to intercept them on the way into the city?’

  ‘For sure, but tell your lot that the forensic integrity of the prisoners and anything they find is paramount.’

  ‘After safety of course,’ corrected the Silver commander with a wink.

  ‘Of course,’ confirmed Russ.

  That agreed, Silver snapped out his plan to the firearms teams.

  As the car containing Aldridge and Bishop headed west towards the city centre they were tracked by armed police. Close to Roedean School, which sits on the hillside above Brighton Marina, the command came for them to be stopped.

  From nowhere raced four nondescript high-performance saloons, which surrounded the stunned villains. Their shocked faces, as they took in the horror they were about to confront, told the heavily armed car crews that surrender was inevitable.

  Taking no chances however, and in textbook fashion, each car slammed into the target vehicle: the perfect Tactical Pursuit and Contact (TPAC) manoeuvre that Grace considered using to stop the car that he thought contained the kidnapped Tyler in Dead Man’s Grip.

  Half a dozen scruffily dressed yet heavily armed hulks sprang from the cars, their tell-tale ‘Police’ baseball caps giving away their mission.

  Shouts of ‘Stop, armed police’ echoed off the cliffs as the officers thrust their deadly Heckler and Koch machine guns towards the defeated duo inside the trapped car.

  ‘Get your hands on the dashboard now,’ continued the command. No chance to flee, no choice but to conform.

  Dragged out onto the roadway and handcuffed where they lay, the two men knew the game was up. The automatic pistol, the twenty-eight rounds of ammunition, the rope and handcuffs in the footwell ensured that. Bishop and Aldridge were well and truly bang to rights. Bloomstein and Barratt were apprehended elsewhere, with identical tactics which also scared them into submission.

  This was just the start of the hard work. Many think arrests are the end of an investigation. Far from it. Making an arrest, while sometimes momentous, guarantees nothing. Arrests are made on ‘reasonable suspicion’, convictions secured on evidence ‘beyond reasonable doubt’: two legal tests that are poles apart. A justifiable hunch is enough to ‘feel a collar’. The toil to convert that into the absolute certainty the courts demand can feel like climbing Mount Everest in a deep-sea diving suit.

  None of the suspects was inclined to help the police. Even Bloomstein had adopted the professional’s stance – sit and say nothing; let them prove it. The defence lawyers love this approach.

  It must be very hard to defend people who are caught in such compromising circumstances and with such a weight of evidence against them. The temptation must be to urge them to plead guilty. However, there is always another way. If the evidence is damning then the only hope remains in trying to find chinks in the way it was gathered.

  The Crown Prosecution Service instructed John Tanzer, now a respected judge, as prosecuting counsel. This was a smart move given that he was more than capable of handling a major conspiracy such as this. However, faced with a leading and junior barrister per defendant, he, the police and the CPS were quickly swamped with the multifarious demands for additional information and evidence all designed to overwhelm them.

  During the six weeks of legal argument and voir dire – a trial without the jury to determine the admissibility of evidence – the prosecution found that they could not even say that an officer was on duty on a particular day without being challenged. The defence demanded independent proof of the fact. Despite the hundreds of hours spent observing the defendants, each surveillance officer had to prove the identity of the person they had been watching. Barratt’s counsel relied heavily on the stunning similarity his client bore to his equally errant brother. One
cop became so confused that even the judge wondered whether he was telling the truth and warned him accordingly.

  Russ had to arrange for the voices heard through the surveillance bugs to be forensically compared with samples of the defendants’ voices. They even had to prove that a dustcart that coincidentally arrived at one of the places being watched wasn’t staffed by undercover cops.

  The days in court were the easy bit. However, once the judge rose, Russ and the team would burn the midnight oil dealing with the multitude of bizarre defence requests. He recalls, to this day, sitting at his dining-room table late into one evening, using his daughter’s crayons to create multicoloured analytical charts showing the defendants’ phone calls, to head off another off-the-wall demand.

  Finally, a full two years after the arrests and with all the legal issues settled, Bloomstein and Aldridge unexpectedly pleaded guilty and, after a trial, Barratt and Bishop were found guilty by a jury at Lewes Crown Court.

  Don and Russ finally felt vindicated. Their hard work had paid off. Their professionalism had defeated the shenanigans the defence had engaged in. Despite those attacks on police integrity, justice had prevailed. Now they waited to revel in the length of the sentences.

  It was a stunning victory when the judge sent the four to prison for a total of forty-three years. No-one had expected them to get this long. Nigel couldn’t resist the temptation to turn to the dock to savour the moment the defendants were led away to serve their time. Barratt, Bishop and Aldridge had been through it before but Charlie Bloomstein looked devastated that his charmed life had come to this.

  However, the last words the court heard were yelled by Barratt as the length of his sentence sunk in.

  ‘Fourteen years, fourteen fucking years! You’re having a fucking laugh!’

  His Honour Judge Coltart wasn’t but, despite not seeing justice for herself, when that nice Mr Welch popped round to break the good news Alice managed a wry smile. A very wry smile indeed.

  9: DEATH COMES KNOCKING

  The one good thing about a belly punch from Mike Tyson is that eventually you recover. Two solemn cops, however, wearing white hats, and one gleaming, chequered BMW blocking your drive and you just know it’s not going to end well. After this, nothing will ever be the same again; there will be no recovery. We call it delivering the death message.

  Few people like late-night callers. Someone raps on the door the wrong side of midnight disturbing your deepest sleep. It takes some moments to become compos mentis. The kids are in bed; the last thing they need is to be woken. You grab a dressing gown, hoping it’s yours. Anger mellows to curiosity then ferments to trepidation. The hazy silhouette of those figures through the glass will sap any remaining hope as your realization of their terrible task overwhelms you.

  Thank goodness for police training, you think. For the hours they must spend rehearsing for this most dreadful duty. For all the scenarios they are taught: kids, mums, granddads, crashes, murders, suicides. Thank goodness too for the counselling they get, for this must be awful for them. Thank goodness.

  Thank goodness, then, that you don’t know they aren’t trained in this at all, and counselling? Forget it. We just have to get on with it, learning as we go along, and we all do it differently. And none of us has ever found the perfect way, because that does not exist. Why? Because no death is the same, no family like another.

  I remember hearing of a lady who lived in a basement flat in central Brighton. Her son was in the Army in Afghanistan and she knew that the strict military protocol following the death or injury of a soldier was that a senior officer would deliver the terrible news. She was petrified that each day death would come knocking. Therefore she developed the habit, whenever she saw a pair of shiny shoes descending the steps to her front door, of rushing to the back of the flat and refusing to come out of hiding in case it was the Casualty Notification Officer with the news she dreaded. She did this for months and missed many a caller as a consequence. Eventually her son returned unharmed.

  As a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old recruit I remember a wily old training sergeant drumming into me and my fellow rookies that, where possible, when making an unannounced visit the first sentence must go something like, ‘Hello, it’s the police, there’s nothing to worry about.’ Privately, and definitely out of the fearsome trainer’s earshot, we used to scoff at this advice. It seemed so unnecessary.

  Once out on the streets and assuming that nothing we learned about street craft at training college would survive contact with the public, I spurned that nonsense.

  Not long after being unleashed on the public of Bognor Regis, I attended a burglary and needed to search the neighbours’ gardens for the fleeing offender. It was around midnight and I thought it would only be polite to knock and ask permission to check the back of one particular house. There were lights on, what could go wrong?

  My sharp rap on the door while updating the control room through the ancient Burndept personal radio affixed to my lapel launched a lifelong lesson for me.

  ‘Who is it?’ a croaky voice demanded.

  ‘It’s the police,’ I proudly announced.

  ‘What do you want?’ – the voice now quiet and shaky.

  ‘Please open the door, madam. I need to speak to you,’ I said.

  The door rattled as the locks and chains were released. The shard of light between door and frame slowly widened to reveal a very frightened-looking middle-aged lady.

  She was tiny. A pink candlewick dressing gown enveloped her pencil-thin frame. Her eyes were bloodshot and her straggly blonde and grey hair was matted to her scalp. Her cheeks were rosy, not through drink or healthy glow but worry and dread.

  ‘No. Oh God, please no!’ she cried.

  Baffled, I spun around to see what had provoked this outburst.

  ‘No, oh God, I knew when he didn’t phone something had happened. Oh no, what am I going to do? How am I going to carry on?’

  By now curtains were twitching, lights were coming on and an impromptu drama was unfolding in which I was the villain.

  ‘I’m sorry, madam,’ I blurted out, raising my hand to try and quieten her. ‘What are you saying? What’s happened?’ Not realizing that it was me who had lit her fuse.

  ‘My husband said he’d call when he got to Manchester. That should have been hours ago. What’s happened to him? Is he dead? Please say he’s not. Please say he’s alive,’ she begged.

  ‘I am sure he is, madam – alive that is,’ was my attempt at reassurance. ‘I just want to look in your garden if that’s OK.’

  ‘You bastard!’ Her worry and angst had morphed into rage and was aimed squarely at me. ‘Why didn’t you say? Have you no idea? I was convinced you’d come about Doug. Don’t they teach you anything at training school?’ she yelled.

  All I could mutter as I made my exit was a pathetic ‘Sorry’, omitting to add that they actually did teach me lots but this one lesson I chose to ignore. We never did find the burglar, and from that day the phrase ‘there’s nothing to worry about’ never left my lexicon.

  As I matured I realized that telling people of the demise of their loved one is a huge responsibility. Of all the tasks that befall the police this one just had to be done right. No second chances, no retakes. Every word mattered, every gesture counted. The grieving process could hinge on how well or clumsily that dreadful message was delivered.

  There is something very sobering in standing outside someone’s house late at night, seeing their shadow behind the curtains, knowing you are just about to rip the heart out of their lives forever.

  It’s bad enough to see a wretched body surrounded by scorched foil or needles, vomit, mucus and the detritus of a life given over to heroin. Horrible to find what a few minutes previously was a laughing, joking, and loving young person, mangled within the wreckage of a hatchback, itself concertinaed into a sturdy oak tree. Tragic to hold a dying lad whose ill-judged retort to an aggressive drunk drew the single punch that crushed his eggshell skull
. All are terrible things that police officers have to face.

  For me, though, the death message was worse than any of those. In Dead Simple as Grace goes to see Phil Wheeler, whose son had just been killed thanks to his ambition to become a hero, he reflects that talking to the recently bereaved is the single worst aspect of police work. I couldn’t agree more.

  Many of the grisly aspects of the job can at least be lightened by gallows humour. A traffic officer once ambled into the station kitchen, looked at my spaghetti bolognese, and demanded to know how I had managed to so quickly recover the human remains of the fatal crash he had just come from. Death messages are the exception. No-one makes light of them. It’s as if prolonging the solemnity is a mark of respect – like sharing the pain for someone you never knew.

  The palpable trepidation in the car as PCs Omotoso and Upperton make their way to break the dreadful news of Tony Revere’s death to his girlfriend in Dead Man’s Grip is something all cops relate to. Their careful but clear approach in giving the awful message is drawn from experience and natural humanity, not training. The real, and now very sadly deceased, Tony Omotoso insisted on getting the word dead out as quickly as he sensed the situation allowed. Others ensure that the grieving relative actually says the ‘D’ word themselves to help them understand. Everyone has their own style. However it’s done, it’s an awful job.

  You go through the words in your mind – never string it out because as soon as they see you they know; whatever they do and say, they know. You try to predict the response – impossible. Remember you may be investigating a crime but most of all remember that you are about to wreck their world.

  ‘You’re lying’, ‘you’re wrong’, ‘he doesn’t touch drugs’, ‘he can’t be dead, he called me earlier’, ‘you bastards’: I have faced all of these reactions when giving the news everyone dreads. Disbelief, blame, anger, all aimed at you, the messenger. All regretted later on but all quite normal. You have to take it on the chin.