The Many Faces of Crime

1

THE MANY FACES OF CRIME

I have an excellent memory for faces. I recall the face of every dead body I have ever seen. Every murder victim, every suicide, every cot death and every death reported as unexplained. Some faces stand out more than others, of course.

The clock in the mortuary had just touched 1800 hrs, but there was still one body on the examination table under a white sheet. The child's tiny corpse had laid in-waiting for four long hours, whilst my exhausted mortuary team - their faces pale and drawn, their eyes soft and sad - examined the child's young mother. She had died from multiple stab wounds.

I watched the mortician lift a corner of the sheet, pulling it back gently to expose the sweet face of a young girl with long, dark hair. She looked like she was in a peaceful sleep, but she was dead, of course, and her moment of death had been far from peaceful.

She was around the same age as my own daughter. She had the same olive skin, the same long, dark hair. I swallowed. In all my thirty years in the force, I had never been quite so impacted as I was in that moment. Another victim of a horrendous knife attack. Her slight frame was still fully clothed but heavily bloodstained. She had a stab wound on the right side of her skull. She gripped in her right hand a fistful of what would turn out to be her own hair. I didn't want to be there. I wanted to see my children but it was my business to stay. To ensure that even the smallest piece of evidence was taken, recorded and managed correctly.

A suspect was in custody. All I could hope for was that, under my leadership, everybody would do their job correctly (which, as you will see, is not always the case), that justice would ultimately be served. A justice too late for this little girl and her mum - innocent victims whose faces will stay with me forever.

Victims of horrendous crimes start as strangers but, case after case, I have been drawn into the intimate details of their fate. Whilst working on each case, their features, eye colour, likely complexion whilst living, are brought to life in stark detail, reminding me that each victim was once a person with dreams, a future, a life. Someone's brother, sister, daughter, mother, son, father, friend, uncle, aunt. Crime leaves a trail of victims in its wake. Even fifty-eight Chinese immigrants, dead in the back of a lorry at the Port of Dover, were so much more than numbers to me. Each one had a story I would have to investigate. Each linked back to a family, across the other side of the world, who I hoped to meet in order to glean enough insight into their lives from their loved ones, anything which might help me solve the case.

It is not only the snapshots of the victims which live in my mind's eye.

All the investigative stories in this book are based on fact. The names of several officers and witnesses are excluded for a variety of reasons, predominantly out of respect for those involved and especially because, after personal and traumatic events are placed in the public eye, only a scant degree of privacy remains.

I will show you how the investigation into the now famous 'M25 Road Rage' killing developed. We will follow the details about the hunt for, and subsequent conviction of, the notorious criminal Kenneth Noye, who was responsible for that brutal murder. Criminals such as Noye run, but they cannot hide from justice.

I am often asked why I had the urge to take up a career in which I would inevitably witness so much misery. After all, I grew up in a loving, stable family home and my childhood was a happy one. During the summer of 1969, however, Belfast (the capital city of Northern Ireland) saw the first of the now historic disturbances, which came to be known around the world as 'The Troubles'. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) supported a campaign of civil disobedience, predominantly carried out by Republican communities, which resulted in unprecedented attacks on the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Some Loyalist communities carried out similar protests, which resulted in further attacks on the RUC.

It didn't take long before the IRA waged a counter attack. They launched a campaign of violence against the RUC in which former street violence was replaced with firearm and bomb attacks on police stations and individual officers.

The arrival of the British Army - who were brought in to support the RUC - and the resulting media stories were my first introduction to terrorism. My parents were supporters of law and order and we lived on the south side of the city where we, as a family, were mostly sheltered from what was happening in other parts of the province.

I had wanted to be a police officer since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Perhaps it was my maternal uncle Ed who inspired me, as he was a serving officer in the RUC. He was quite a character and I was very close to him. Much to the horror of our family, he was targeted by the IRA. His house on the south-west side of the city was the subject of an IRA bomb that had been planted minutes after he, his wife and my two cousins had left their home. Thankfully, no one was injured in this attack, but it brought it home to our family just how serious the situation was. No one was safe. The perpetrators of such attacks used any method they could to achieve their goals, based on what we considered to be misguided beliefs.

With this incident and such political unrest as a backdrop, I decided I wanted to be a police officer.

'I'm going to apply to join the RUC straight after my 18th birthday,' I declared. My parents were deeply concerned about this after the attack on my uncle's home.

After those few tense days, we finally had an open discussion and my Uncle Ed was present. After some wrangling, and with Uncle Ed's endorsement, I finally agreed to go to England and join a police force there instead of at home. I was forever grateful to my uncle for acknowledging and respecting my dream.

After the decision had been made, I went directly to my bedroom, where I studied the map of England in my atlas. I shut my eyes and placed my finger on the map at random. It landed on Dartford. I then applied for and was subsequently accepted into the Kent County Constabulary.*

I only returned home occasionally, but my parents did regularly holiday in England so that they could visit me. Some forty years later, however, my mum was well into her 80s and I went home to Belfast to see her. Dad had passed away some years before.

This was when my mum took my hand and said, 'I thought you would come back home after only a few years in England.'

She had never mentioned this before, but it was then that I realised what a great source of sadness my absence must have been for her, despite me telephoning her every week without fail.

I never did return to live in Northern Ireland.

When I first left school, I was still too young to join the Police Service in England, so I took a job as a laboratory technician in a local school. The year was 1971, and I had nine months to wait until I was permitted to join the Kent Police.

My first steady girlfriend, at that time, was the only one of my friends who drove her own car. One evening, we went out together and stopped in a country lay-by to kiss goodnight. Within minutes, I saw blue lights in the darkness, approaching our location. Very shortly afterwards, two military jeeps pulled up - one in front and one behind our car. I established very quickly that they were the newly formed Ulster Defence Regiment. They had obviously designated our location as a key position for a motor vehicle checkpoint.

It was concerning for such a young man (desperate to impress his girlfriend) to watch this bunch of soldiers decamp from their Land Rovers and stride across the tarmac with such determination.

I wound down the window and said, in what must have been a very shaky voice, 'Sorry, officer, we're not doing anything.'

To which he replied, 'Well, get out of the way, son, and let a real man in there.'

I half smiled - I didn't know what to do. It suddenly dawned on me that I wasn't as grown up as I thought I was.

Thankfully, this situation was quickly resolved. We drove off into the darkness and my girlfriend took me home. In hindsight, I find the soldier's line amusing, and he certainly meant no harm, but little did I know then how many times I would be held at gunpoint in my career when the potential stakes would be much higher than they were that evening.

One particular day in November will always stay in my mind: Tuesday, 2 November 1971. I had finished work at the school in the late afternoon, when I started to make my way home. As I approached the Ormeau Road, which was close to our home on Jamison Street, there was a large explosion. I rounded a corner and stared down the road towards the local police station.

A cloud of dust and smoke rose into the air some 300yd away from where I stood. I ran towards the scene, hoping to help. Initially, I thought the police station had been the target of a terrorist attack, but as I moved closer, I realised it was the Red Lion Public House and a small shop, both of which sat on either side of the police station, which had been bombed.

People were screaming and wailing, and within minutes the military, police, fire service and ambulances arrived at the scene. I tried to be of some use but, in truth, all I was good for was clearing rubble, together with many other community members.

Later that day, I returned home to discover on the news that three people had died...