Death Comes Knocking: Policing Roy Grace's Brighton

8: Walls Have Ears

‘Respect your elders’, they would have been told. ‘Don’t shit on your own doorstep’ would be another code ingrained into them from their formative years. Well, life moves on. That sentimental nonsense counts for nothing any more.

In late 1995 the name of Bloomstein was synonymous with the highly respected jewellery trade that jostled for primacy with the shady knocker boys who shared The Lanes in Brighton.

Michael Bloomstein was a proud professional. His reputation was everything and his bank balance illustrated his success. He knew that he was not going to live forever so he prepared his young son, Charles, from an early age to take over the family business when the time came. Privately educated at the outstanding Brighton College, young Charlie had it all.

Nothing was too much for the apple of Michael’s eye. He ensured that Charlie was looked after, nurtured and educated so that soon he would have the skills, the passion and the savvy to become a worthy heir.

Charlie, though, had different ideas. The money, the flash cars and his waterside bachelor flat at Brighton Marina gave him status. He had the kudos, the girls, and the respect; at barely twenty-one, he had the world at his feet.

Mal, the father of the tragic Caitlin in Dead Tomorrow, considers Brighton as a fusion of city and village, big and bustling but not somewhere to keep a secret — everyone knows each other’s business. So Charlie’s flamboyant lifestyle and wealthy friends soon drew the attention of a band of thugs who saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get very rich, very quick.

Daryl Aldridge, Justin Bishop and Andrew Barratt were sadistic, brutal and greedy as well as scheming and highly professional. They were like early-day Terry Biglows who, in Dead Like You, Grace recalls had his heyday when adversaries were branded with razors or acid. They could also, in the blink of an eye, turn on the charm when needed. And with Charlie they knew a subtle approach was required.

They made it their business to befriend him, and Charlie quite liked the attention. He was attracted to their edginess. He knew they had criminal records going back years but they were cool and dangerous, not like the cultured types he had endured at school. He rather enjoyed the world they introduced him to. His three new friends were clearly bad boys but, hey, didn’t everyone have a dark side? What is more, they obviously liked him. Loved his flat, flirted with his girls, laughed at his jokes. Charlie revelled in their tales of night-time raids on the wealthy and the quick bucks made from drug deals. He matched their boasts with some of his own. He waxed lyrical about who he knew, how rich they were and how well he was trusted.

He was sleepwalking into their trap.

Charlie was being made to believe these three men just wanted to be friends, just loved being around him. After all, they told him all their murky secrets. That’s what only true friends do.

It had not occurred to him that he was being targeted for a reason. Charlie knew people. He was liked and trusted. Unbeknown to him, he was being set up as the inside man for one of the most wicked and violent robberies that Sussex had ever seen. In Charlie Bloomstein, Aldridge, Bishop and Barratt had found an important but as yet unwitting ally.

Sometimes, when a piece of intelligence comes to the police, the first reaction is a sceptical ‘Really? I don’t think so!’ People tell the police all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. To curry favour, to wreak revenge, to distract the Old Bill; all are motivations for criminals to break their so-called sacred code of silence. The police, therefore, have to make a judgement. Why are we being told this? How does it fit in with what else we know? How reliable has this person been before? Also plain gut feeling can’t be ignored. Does this seem right?

Many informants, like Darren Spicer in Not Dead Yet, straddle the line between good and bad. Like Darren, most only give tip-offs if there is something in it for them, not out of some deep altruistic streak.

In the years after apartheid ended in South Africa, it was rare to come across any examples of that country’s coveted and rare yellow diamonds in the UK. In 1995 wealth did not move freely between the Rainbow Nation and Europe. Word that such a gem was being offered around the dealers of Brighton was therefore taken with more than a pinch of salt. Surely this was just another chancer trying to big himself up in the eyes of the police.

Expertise on diamonds in general was in short supply within police circles so, to learn more, DC Nigel Kelly from the Antiques Squad visited a well-known diamond expert. He revealed to Nigel that he too had heard tales of such a gem being touted and that, if it was as described, it was worth tens of thousands of pounds. On this basis, Nigel started to get interested, but not yet excited.

It wasn’t until other intelligence started to drip in that the Antiques Squad gave the tip-off more credence. People were saying that an old lady had been robbed of a yellow diamond right there in Brighton. Word was that it was the hottest property around and it was in high demand.

The head of the squad, DS Don Welch, started to get curious. Surely they would have heard if an old lady had been attacked in her own home. There was no way a theft of this magnitude could have slipped under the radar.

There is little that angers cops more than crimes that target the elderly and vulnerable. Roy Grace is typical in his hatred of that genre of villain, never more so than towards those who attacked Aileen McWhirter in Dead Man’s Time. Little did he know that was the work of another wealthy boy turned bad: her own great-nephew.

In the 1990s, a search of the crime records meant just that. No clicking of a few keys in the hope that the answer would immediately flash up on the screen. No neatly indexed database that could be analysed from the comfort of the office. In those days, searching records meant donning boiler suits and risking life and limb going down the perilous stone stairway into the dark of the grimy, dusty, rat-infested police station basement. There, it could take days to sift through the dozens of racks of long-forgotten files hoping that whoever had catalogued them had done so carefully, in case one day someone just might want to retrieve them.

Having unsuccessfully searched the recent crime reports, more conveniently held on the same floor as his office, Don grabbed Nigel and together they reluctantly descended into the bowels of the station. After a mere three hours, they struck gold. Nestled between dozens of other unsolved robberies they found the scrunched-up buff crime report they were looking for. Old lady, robbery, own home, four men, yellow diamond — it was all there. So why were the Squad not aware of it when it happened a few months ago? Why had it not been splashed all over the local paper, the Argus? Why was it lying here forgotten and uninvestigated?

On reading it, Don realized that the officers who had been sent on the day had decided the robbery had probably not happened. They thought the old lady, Alice, was not quite with it. She was losing her marbles. She was confused. She must have imagined it. Their justification for ‘sleeving’ this evil crime was shameful.

Don decided to pay her a visit.

She was confused for sure. There was a good reason for that; she was terrified. She explained what had happened.

A few months ago she had met four nice young men at the Co-op supermarket round the corner. They were so kind in offering to carry her shopping home. Chatting freely with them, her faith in the youth of today had been restored, especially when they helped her open her front door and asked if she would like a hand indoors with her bags. Then, out of the blue, these nice young men hurled her to the floor, held her down, threatened her with all kinds of harm and then wrenched her beautiful sapphire and yellow diamond rings off her frail wrinkled fingers before making off.

Don realized that Alice had been targeted by a novel yet callous method. Her grip on the supermarket trolley showcased her glistening rings for all to see.

She may have been duped but this old lady was no shrinking violet. Don decided that his team would pick up where their colleagues had left off. First of all, he wanted to find out a bit more about this plucky victim.

Alice and her husband had lived most of their lives in colonial southern Africa, moving around Commonwealth countries enjoying a very comfortable yet discreet lifestyle. She was used to having staff at her beck and call. She was to the manor born.

Don established that her yellow diamond ring had been a gift from her late husband and its sentimental value greatly surpassed its monetary worth. Alice gave a detailed description, backed up by a crystal-clear photograph on the mantelpiece depicting her wearing it. If only the previous officers had bothered to look.

Don and Nigel grew very fond of Alice and she was delighted that those lovely people at the police station had sent that nice sergeant and constable to help her.

A few days after that first visit, they dropped back round to tie up some loose ends. No sooner had they wiped their feet on the doormat than it became apparent that the class system was alive and kicking in central Brighton.

‘Yes, I know you have to talk to me about all this nonsense with my rings but, Mr Welch, be a dear and pop to the shops to fetch me a few things. Here, take this list, it’s all there and hurry back now,’ she commanded.

Another day, the request was, ‘DS Welch. My car needs one of those wretched MOT tests. Be a good chap and pop it to the garage for me. I’ve told them to expect you.’

How could they refuse?

Having given way to her eccentric demands, Don and Nigel worked hard to get to the bottom of this intriguing case. Rumours were reaching them that young Charlie Bloomstein had flown out to Switzerland with a yellow diamond. Bona fide dealers require a certificate of authenticity to accompany high-value stones. At the time, these could only be obtained in New York, Amsterdam or Switzerland. Eager to find out what had happened, Don flew out to Geneva and confirmed that Charlie had indeed made the trip. At any other time, it would have been an unremarkable visit but now it raised the stakes.

Accepting that confronting Charlie with this information or even obtaining search warrants would serve little purpose other than spooking him and pushing him and the elusive diamond further underground, Don opted for a more covert approach.

This seemed like the job of a lifetime for the surveillance unit. They were used to being given good quality intelligence packages from the Antiques Squad — after all Don had once served with them — so they knew what bait the undercover boys would go for.

This job had it all. A rich playboy, high-value jewellery and, if they were lucky, trips abroad. Clearly, with the timely trip to Switzerland, Charlie was up to something, but exactly what was still a mystery. Twenty-four-hour surveillance on him started to fill in the gaps.

The emerging association between Bloomstein, Aldridge, Barratt and Bishop astounded Don. They had never predicted such an alliance nor the incredibly suspicious behaviour they were observing on a daily basis.

One of the first signs that gangs are plotting a crime is their obsessive use of counter-surveillance tactics. Driving 360 degrees round a roundabout to see who did the same, heading down dead ends and driving at excessive speeds are all ways by which the guilty try to identify or shake off a tail. This quartet thought they were masters at it. The cops, thankfully, had seen it all before.

In fairness, these were the days when technical surveillance was in its infancy. Naively the gang assumed that covert policing was limited to cops tearing around in unmarked cars, watching from a neighbour’s window and staying ten paces behind the target on a busy shopping street.

One of the challenges for Don was that all four suspects lived in different towns and used various means of travel. Despite the huge number of officers Don had at his disposal, there was a limit to how thin they could be spread before they started to be recognized. The same car containing the same two dark-haired, thirty-something blokes parked outside the same house each morning was eventually going to stand out. The police needed to up their game.

Through the use of various covert technical tactics, such as tapping into their message pagers, and bugging their houses, it became apparent that the gang were meeting up on a regular basis and in a variety of places. They used predictable venues, such as Aldridge’s house in nearby Peacehaven and Charlie’s luxury pad at the Marina. But, thinking they were being clever, at the drop of a hat they would arrange to meet at randomly coded rendezvous points paged to all members of the group.

However, through painstaking detective work and a process of elimination, Don and the team were able to crack the code. They were now on the front foot and there was little the gang could do without the cops knowing. At home or at large their every movement was being tracked and their every conversation eavesdropped on. The police were building a cast-iron case of association to deflect any future defence of being arrested at a ‘chance meeting’.

It was not long before the gang started to boast of their villainy. They thought they could take on the world. In their minds they were invincible. They felt they had the perfect combination of inside information and an inclination to inflict extreme violence on anyone who dared resist.

Most of the detailed plotting took place in either Aldridge’s or Charlie’s home. Even though they assumed they hadn’t been rumbled, they still used code words for most of their planning. Intelligence indicated that one of their tricks was to dress in police uniforms, follow people home and flash forged search warrants to force their way in. Once inside, they would tie the unfortunate victim to a radiator and, with the persuasive power of guns and knives, elicit the whereabouts of their most valuable possessions. The uniforms themselves were coded the ‘Armani suits’.

More and more Don’s team heard them talk about a forthcoming robbery, referring to it as the ‘Tom job’. They didn’t give away much more to narrow it down. However the team assumed it probably involved jewellery, or ‘Tom Foolery’ in rhyming slang. But there were hundreds of jewellers. Which one?

As the weeks went on it became clear that the ‘Tom job’ was clearly a big one. It was to involve the Armani suits, handcuffs and, terrifyingly, firearms. But where was it? Who was the target? Unusually, none of the codes the police had cracked previously were now being used. It was causing Don a real headache.

As with any investigation, motivation and energy ebbed and flowed. As the senior officer he needed to keep the whole team motivated — but it was a struggle. The gang weren’t doing much and the surveillance was becoming tedious.

‘Barratt keeps walking past Magpie Jewellers,’ came a crackled radio message from the surveillance officer watching the gang meandering around the narrow confines of The Lanes one morning. ‘Might be nothing but he’s paying a lot of attention to it.’

‘That’s Tommy Preisler’s shop,’ Nigel reflected. ‘He’s a good friend of Michael Bloomstein.’

It hit him like a bolt of lightning. Grace’s love of Occam’s Razor, the simplest solution usually being the right one, would prove true yet again.

‘We’ve got this all wrong. Get me the logs from the listening devices!’ Nigel demanded.

He grabbed them from Carol, the dutiful Antiques Squad administrator. Scouring the pages in a wild frenzy as his incredulous colleagues watched on.

‘Yes, that’s it. I’ve got it,’ he shrieked.

‘Got what?’ asked Don.

‘The “Tom job”. We’ve been looking at it all wrong. We’ve over-complicated it. It’s not slang at all. It’s not jewellery. Tom is a person, Tommy Preisler. Read the conversations from the log and it’s clear. They are talking about Tommy Preisler.’

Shell-shocked and red-faced they realized that they had been looking in the wrong place. Don grabbed the logs, determined to see for himself.

‘Bloody hell, you’re right. They are using Charlie to select the targets. It’s going to be Preisler.’

Now with an identified victim to protect, Don felt he still owed it to Alice to find her jewellery. The squad had a tip-off that a yellow diamond had been sold by Charlie Bloomstein to a dealer in Bond Street, London.

Unlike popping into a local high street jeweller, Don and Nigel had to pre-arrange their visit, provide descriptions of themselves, set out their enquiry and, of course, arrive with bundles of identification. The henchmen outside made up for in muscle what they lacked in social graces. Eventually the two detectives persuaded the monosyllabic guards that they were who they said they were.

Whisked off the street, they were prodded down a darkened stairway into a musty strongroom beneath ground level. The room, similar in appearance to where Gavin Daly emasculated Eamonn Pollack with his ninety-year-old handgun in Dead Man’s Time, took their breath away. The walls were almost entirely made up of Perspex cases containing hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of priceless watches and diamonds.

A portly, gracious gentleman, who was the antithesis of the goons who provided his front of house service, emerged from a door they had not spotted.

‘Officers, I am Edwin Hanson, how can I help you?’ he enquired softly.

‘Well, as we said on the phone, this needs to be in the strictest confidence,’ explained Don.

‘Of course, of course,’ Hanson reassured them. ‘Discretion is my middle name.’

‘Thank you. We believe a dealer by the name of Bloomstein from Brighton sold you a yellow diamond we are interested in,’ continued Don.

‘I see. Interested in what way?’ replied Hanson, feigning genuine concern.

‘Well, stolen,’ interjected Nigel, ‘but you wouldn’t have known that of course.’

‘Of course,’ confirmed Hanson, clearly grateful for the get-out clause Nigel had suggested. ‘Yes, I do remember being sold a yellow diamond by a chap from Brighton. I am quite a specialist in these rare stones, you know.’

‘Do you still have it by chance?’ asked Nigel, more in hope than expectation.

‘Yes, of course, I am collecting yellow diamonds to make a bracelet for a particularly affluent Saudi gentleman,’ he boasted.

‘That’s fabulous,’ said Don, in a rare display of excitement. They were on the verge of tying Bloomstein into the robbery and Alice was going to get her heirloom back.

Hanson moved to the corner of the room and unlocked a small wall safe. He stepped back to the table carrying a tiny chamois pouch in his right hand.

‘Now, let me see,’ muttered the jeweller, building up to something.

Like a magician fanning a deck of cards, Hanson flicked the bag. From it, the most stunning and blinding array of yellow stones sprayed across the baize table top.

‘Gentlemen. Just tell me which of these is the stone you are after and it’s yours to take away,’ he promised with a glibness that revealed why he had been so helpful. They all knew that there was no hope of picking out the right gem from this glittering pile.

Dejected and empty-handed they were gently escorted from the subterranean goldmine. Don and Nigel knew there was now no hope of finding Alice’s treasured diamond but were even more determined than ever to see her robbers locked up.

The big ‘Tom job’ was getting closer and closer. Almost daily, cars were turning up at the house in Arundel Road, Peacehaven, that doubled as Aldridge’s home and robbery HQ. Number plates would be switched and the cars driven off. They were being hidden in various anonymous car parks and streets in central Brighton, readied for a complex getaway.

The Armani suits had been sorted, a fake search warrant prepared, pistols sourced, and restraints all in place. A very good friend of Charlie’s family was about to realize that, in the world of crime and greed, there is no such thing as friendship, only opportunities.

As happened in those days, when the arrests drew closer an investigative team were briefed to take the job over. This was to be led by a long-standing colleague and good friend of mine, DS Russ Whitfield. Russ was a dyed-in-the-wool detective, who had graduated from policing Whitehawk into CID and then been promoted.

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.