Steve and I got out of the car and ambled up to our colleague.
‘Hi Graham, hi Steve. What are you doing out this way? Fancy a cup of tea?’
That must have been a reflex response. He couldn’t have failed to notice four overalled officers alighting from the white lorry with ‘Sussex Police Specialist Search Unit’ emblazoned along its sides.
‘Not really thanks, Chris, but we do need to talk. Inside might be best,’ I said as I gently ushered him towards his block.
As we stepped through the door, I produced the search warrant. ‘Chris, I have a warrant to search your flat for items connected with you buying child abuse images on the internet.’ His faced drained of colour. He started to shake. I sat him down.
I told him what NCIS had found. I told him he was not, at that stage, under arrest and I cautioned him, explaining his rights.
We searched the flat from top to bottom. Everything that could possibly hold data was seized, all his credit card records too. We had intelligence only that he was buying pictures of child abuse. To prove an offence we had to find them in his possession. We couldn’t do it there. We had to load up the lorry and get the techies in the Hi Tech Crime Unit to sift through everything, byte by byte.
Still not under arrest, he agreed to go to Police Headquarters to be interviewed – he was too well known for us to wander into a normal police station. That might come later.
His initial account was that he had accessed the Reedys’ vile site but maintained he was undertaking his own private investigation. He said he had intended to tell his Chief Superintendent but simply had not got round to it. He assured us that he had not saved any pictures. This dancing around the law came as no surprise. I knew it was nonsense, just as I knew he was never likely to admit downloading or keeping illegal images. Effectively he was throwing down the gauntlet. Prove it.
Chris was suspended from duty while the brains in Hi Tech Crime scoured his computers and disks for any sign of child abuse images.
We hear of this unique department in Looking Good Dead. The fictional Operation Glasgow occupying the working lives of the eclectic collection of techies that comprise Hi Tech Crime is very similar to Ore. Hundreds of paedophiles being exposed by the wonder of the World Wide Web.
The staff could have come from central casting. The dapper, suited and booted boss; the pony-tailed, denim-clad loner; the loud, ex-military code cracker – they were all there. All very different; their workstations ranging from a bewildering chaos of computer components on a bed of spaghettied cabling to a neat display of hardware set at right angles against a pristine desktop at which no-one else dare sit – hallmarks of their tenants’ natural working style.
Two things, however, this pot pourri of personalities had in common: an awe-inspiring ability to make the most complex and deeply encrypted computer give up its secrets and a phenomenal resilience to spending days examining and cataloguing the most horrific images of child abuse anyone could imagine.
Less than a month after the search, I received the call I was expecting.
‘Graham, are you sitting down?’ asked Sergeant Paul Hastings, the head of Hi Tech Crime.
‘Go on,’ I urged.
‘I think Chris is going to prison.’
‘Tell me more.’
He then itemized the most repulsive description of child sexual abuse images I had ever heard; they were all there hidden on his floppy disks. This was the evidence we needed to prove that he had been more than merely looking. He had deliberately saved these horrible pictures for his own future use. As we predicted, his unlikely assertion that he was doing some detective work would not save him. The next time we spoke to him it would be under arrest.
He was unable to come up with a more plausible excuse during further interviews – he knew there was none. He was eventually charged with downloading ninety-five child abuse images.
Strangely, throughout all his court appearances he was always very civil to me. My father was, at the time, seriously ill with prostate cancer and Chris had heard about this. Each time he saw me he was keen to find out how Dad was faring, offering him his best wishes.
He maintained his innocence until the first morning of the trial. He realized that his account of a supposed investigation that he had told no-one about would be exposed for what it was: nothing more than a pathetic attempt to avoid inevitable conviction and imprisonment.
A guilty plea was his only option in the end. It was a late attempt to retain his liberty in the wake of the demolition of his good character. All he could do now was hope. In a highly unusual move, Judge Richard Brown ordered that video screens be placed along the press benches so that the journalists could see the images while he was delivering sentence. It was obvious that he did not want them to minimize the depravity of Wratten’s crime. It was a way of ensuring no titillating ‘kiddie porn’ headlines appeared in the next day’s papers.
Chris’s pleas for leniency were heartfelt. It emerged that he had made a serious suicide attempt while on bail and that he and his wife were both slipping into mental illness. He mustered thirty-three friends and colleagues to provide him with character testimonies.
However, Judge Brown was clear. This behaviour could never be condoned, especially from a serving senior police officer. Whatever the effect on his health, however hard prison life would be for a paedophile ex-cop, to jail he must go. He was sentenced to six months and ordered to register as a sex offender for the next ten years.
Prison must have been hell on earth for him – nothing, however, compared with that endured by those poor children, images of whom he had bought and downloaded for his own perverted gratification. He was dismissed from the police, but due to his length of service kept his pension.
It might be thought that losing his job, reputation and liberty, and suffering as he must have in prison, surely would have been enough to steer him away from such disgusting crimes. However, ten years later he was caught for the same thing yet again. This time his sentence was doubled and he was reported to have finally accepted he had a problem. Time will tell if this realization will lead to him changing his ways.
This was not the first or last time I encountered bad apples within the ranks.
The first was in the late 1980s when I lived in a nineteenth-century stately home. Slaugham Manor accommodated around sixty single officers who worked at Gatwick Airport. A highly sociable environment, the Manor, in its idyllic rural location, was the place to live with its bars, swimming pool and regular parties. All for £2 per month to cover the cost of the newspapers.
I lived in an annexe called Ryders, a smaller house set slightly apart from the main building. One resident, who I will call Dan, worked a different shift pattern from most of us. Sandy-haired and stocky, at thirty he was older than most of us but fitted in well nonetheless. He would always have a tall story to tell, especially about some of his more outrageous antics in the Royal Navy, and he certainly liked a drink. I don’t think we were meant to believe all of his tales but what they lacked in credibility they made up for in entertainment value. He was great to be around.
That was until one late shift at the airport. We heard rumours of a police officer having been arrested, following a chase and a struggle in nearby Crawley. Word was that the off-duty cop had been caught stealing a bottle of whisky from a town centre supermarket. As the gossip evolved into hard fact we discovered it was our housemate, Dan. We were told he had been interviewed, bailed and suspended from duty. Inevitably we were shocked and we presumed that would be the last we would see of him.
However when we arrived back at Ryders after work we were stunned to find him happily crashed out in the communal lounge watching TV.
‘Er, Dan, are you supposed to be here?’ enquired Benny, our burly spokesperson.
‘Oh. You’ve heard, have you?’ came the sheepish reply. ‘Well, it’s all a mistake, of course. I just forgot to pay.’ Like we hadn’t heard that one before. ‘It’ll all be sorted but, even thou
gh I’m suspended, they say I can carry on living here.’
‘OK. How long for?’ I asked.
‘As long as it takes but don’t worry, as I’m not working I’ll make sure I keep the place clean for us. I can cook for you if you like. Hey, I can even go shopping for you.’
A babble of ‘No, you’re OK’, ‘Don’t worry’, and ‘I don’t think so’ from us all, accompanied a hasty mass exit as we made our way to our respective rooms for an uncharacteristically early night.
Everyone ensured that all their stuff was locked up after that – just in case. While you start by trusting your colleagues, once they betray you that changes to instant and irrevocable suspicion.
Thankfully, justice was swift and it was only a few months before Dan was convicted, sacked and evicted, but the nasty taste of that experience remained for years.
Peter Salkeld was not always a high flyer. He blossomed relatively late. The ex-drugs squad PC had, like me, spent most of his early years honing his craft on the streets of Brighton; he was popular and effective. You had to be both back in the late eighties if you wanted to fit in. If you were good at your job, fearless and ready to watch your mates’ backs then you were OK. Lack any of those attributes and, well, the Job Centre was only across the street from the nick.
In 1992 Peter and I both qualified to be Sergeants but his rise to Inspector was swifter than mine. Thereafter he found his niche. A short stint in the Organizational Development Department, effectively the workhorse of the Chief Officers, brought him to the attention of those who mattered. He worked hard, he was bright, loyal and exuded boundless confidence. The world was his oyster; he was the chosen one.
Change really started to affect the police service from the turn of the millennium. Inevitably, some departments were more ready than others. The world of criminal intelligence was altering, with geographic borders becoming no more than lines on maps. Regional Intelligence Units were being established and they needed clever, driven, operationally credible leaders to meet the spectre of organized crime. Pete was seen as the agent of change needed.
Given a role where he was effectively his own boss meant that he could shine quickly and ensure that any credit due to him was not filtered through a chain of command. Pete had proven his professional and personal integrity many times. He had earned the universal trust he enjoyed.
However, he had a darker side and a perfect storm of temptation brought that to the surface. His job came with a corporate credit card, his work was almost unsupervised and, in his private life, he had befriended a vulnerable old lady.
Eileen Savage was ninety-three. A childless divorcee, she would have been delighted that the senior cop wanted to help her through her twilight years. As dementia gripped, she was happy to appoint Pete her power of attorney, giving him control over her financial affairs.
Whether greed triggered the friendship or whether the opportunities that presented themselves were just too tempting, only he will know.
It was the internal discrepancies that triggered his undoing. Small yet suspicious inconsistencies in the finances of the new unit coupled with a secretive culture prompted wary colleagues to blow the whistle to the Professional Standards Department. His office and home were raided and following a close look at his lifestyle, the true scale of what he’d done emerged.
He had used the cash float and his corporate credit card to buy items including a designer watch and a mini fridge, giving a range of excuses such as the pen was required for a fictitious security operation. He had tapped into the welfare fund, reserved for those with real financial hardship, to pay for his caravanning hobby. Despite knowing full well that Eileen Savage’s estate could afford her £96,000 care fees, he hoodwinked the council into funding those.
There were other allegations that were not proven, but those that were ensured his fall was as dramatic as his rise. He was charged, suspended and sent for trial.
Whatever set him on his road to ruin, it had resulted in a whole host of crimes. Despite his denials, the jury recognized the weight of the evidence against him and convicted him of eleven counts of theft and deception. He was subsequently jailed for three years.
His demise left his reputation in tatters. The order to repay £100k was sweeter still to those who had trusted this rising star. No-one forgives a bent copper.
By 2012 I was the Chief Superintendent in charge of Brighton and Hove, and being a Sussex career cop I went back a long way with various heads of the Professional Standards Department (PSD). That never lessened the anxiety when I received a message that one of them wanted to talk to me. It was never good news. Who’s done what to whom, would be my first thought. It was never a minor matter – they didn’t merit a boss-to-boss chat. Such calls meant that shit was going to happen to someone on my division and it was down to me to manage the fallout.
Throughout most of the first nine novels in the Roy Grace series, our hero is foxed by the near-clairvoyance of fictional Argus crime reporter Kevin Spinella. Seemingly, he had the inside track on each twist and turn of every investigation. He would report details of crimes the police had deliberately withheld, turn up at scenes or search sites at the drop of a hat and repeat chit-chat back to Grace. He had a line into the police.
Grace was convinced that someone was leaking information and no-one was immune from his suspicion. It was not until a bug was found in the software of his own phone that he realized that rather than through a human source, technology was how Spinella picked up his stories. It took the ingenious use of misinformation to trap him at a fishing lake in Not Dead Yet, ending his criminal eavesdropping and his grimy career.
Operation Elveden was the Metropolitan Police enquiry into corrupt payments by the press to the police. In 2011, stories of greedy cops and manipulative journalists being caught hit the media. Arrests were made, charges brought and officers imprisoned with sickening regularity. Thankfully no such drama had yet touched Sussex Police.
I happened to be at Headquarters when I got the call.
‘Graham, have you got a minute?’ enquired Detective Superintendent Ken Taylor, a longstanding friend and colleague and head of PSD. It wasn’t really a question, more the entrée to some devastating news.
‘Of course, mate, what is it?’ I replied, my heart sinking.
‘It’s a bit hush-hush,’ added Ken.
‘Are you in your office? I’m at HQ.’
‘Yes, come over,’ he suggested.
His department’s offices were among the most secure in the force, one of the few areas where my access card was impotent. No-one got in unaccompanied unless they worked there.
I patiently waited to be permitted entry and escorted to see my old friend Ken.
‘Graham, thanks for coming. This won’t take long. Tomorrow morning one of your sergeants is going to be arrested by Op Elveden for accepting corrupt payments.’
‘Oh, right,’ I mumbled, trying to hide my shock that I had a wrong’un on the division. ‘Do you want to tell me who? What have they done and when?’
‘Love to answer, Graham, but the Metropolitan Police have asked us to give you no more than that. Just so you know.’
‘Well, you can tell them that’s worse than bloody useless. I suppose I am being told so I can prepare the division and the public for any fallout but unless I know who it is and what their role is, I can’t do anything but guess. What world are they in? Can’t you tell me?’ I asked, more in hope than anticipation.
I knew he would not reply and it was wrong of me to press him. Someone else was calling the shots and despite my outburst I appreciated the position he found himself in.
‘DI Emma Brice will be in your office at eight tomorrow. She will tell you everything,’ he said. ‘Until then, that’s all you can know.’
Overnight, I tried to compile a mental list of likely suspects. I did not get very far. Despite the sergeants under my command having a huge variety of roles and backgrounds, I could not think of any who would sell their soul to the pr
ess.
Emma had a fabulously caring yet forthright way of breaking bad news. A consummate professional, she would say what was needed but knew the impact it would have. We sat at my round table, each with a steaming cup of tea. Emma wasted no time in getting to the point.
‘Graham, Sergeant James Bowes has been arrested by Op Elveden on suspicion of receiving corrupt payments from the Sun.’
‘James Bowes? Are you sure?’ I was incredulous. ‘I’ve been trying to work out who it might be since I spoke to Ken. James never entered my head. He’s so nice, so quiet, so loyal.’
I was flabbergasted. James was a stalwart of the Neighbourhood Policing Team. He was not your usual copper though. An ex-public schoolboy, he had spurned the draw of the City to join the police. He was in his element in his early years, revelling in the cut and thrust of response policing. His move to the street community team – the officers who dealt with the drunks, drugged and homeless – angered him. However, he soon found that he was starting to make a difference to people’s lives, rather than sticking plasters over problems that response work inevitably entailed. His gently assertive manner encouraged some of the city’s most desperate people to enter treatment, find hostels and start to turn their life round. He had found new meaning in his job.
Following his promotion he had taken on a sector of the city centre and led a small team of police officers and Police Community Support Officers to clean it up. An electrician in his spare time, he was forever sourcing the latest gadget or gizmo to keep one step ahead of the villains. His highly technical and imaginative funding requests read like reports from the fictional Q, the Mr Fixit of the James Bond films.
‘He offered to give them details of a girl who was bitten by a fox,’ Emma continued. ‘They paid him £500.’
‘How strong is the evidence? I mean, how certain are they that he did this?’ I probed.
‘Well, they paid him by cheque which he put in his bank, so it’s pretty cut and dried.’
‘So what now?’ I asked.
‘His house is being searched and he is being taken to a London police station. I believe he has already offered his resignation.’
Death Comes Knocking: Policing Roy Grace’s Brighton Page 21
