Death Comes Knocking: Policing Roy Grace's Brighton

13: When Good Cops Go Bad

‘Trust me, I’m a policeman!’ has a reassuring ring to it. More so maybe than ‘Trust me, I’m an MP/journalist/estate agent’.

You would expect me to be among those who do trust the police. However, that faith has been shaken many times over the years. I have seen a number of previously respected colleagues arrested and jailed for offences as diverse as downloading child abuse images, selling information, fraud and plain theft.

Brighton has an infamous history of corruption. In 1957 there was an institutional police culture of demanding backhanders and turning a blind eye to the fencing of stolen goods, blatant licensing breaches and even illegal abortions. The CID was divided into the fors and againsts. If you were for, you could expect to augment your paltry pay packet with gratuities from local villains and businessmen. The againsts were allowed to get on with the job with integrity, providing they kept their mouths shut.

It took some brave junior officers and the evidence of career criminals to disrupt this murky world. PC Frank Knight and DS Ray Hovey showed outstanding courage by breaking the code of silence that had protected corrupt practices for years.

The trial of Chief Constable Charles Ridge, DI John Hammersley and DS Trevor Heath shocked the country. PC Knight gave evidence that he was openly asked by Heath whether he would ‘like to earn a tenner a week’. He turned the offer down flat but knew it was an attempt to co-opt him into the criminal cabal that prevailed in CID. DS Hovey corroborated this and said in court that he had not said anything before as he feared the consequences given the relationship between Heath and the Chief Constable.

The evidence showed that not only were there relatively junior officers prepared to openly take bribes to allow crime to flourish, but that it was sanctioned from the very top. Ridge’s acquittal in light of the conviction and five-year sentences that his underlings received did not go without comment from the judge. His scathing indictment of the Chief Constable made it crystal clear that he thought Ridge was far from innocent and that without a change in the leadership of the force the judiciary would feel unable to believe any evidence proffered by Brighton police.

People think that cops are naturally suspicious, always looking for the chink in someone’s armour, for their Achilles heel. We have all experienced it at parties when people trot out their tired old prejudices: ‘Oh, you’re in the police, are you? I bet you are sizing me up?’ ‘Nothing gets past you coppers, does it?’ ‘I’d better watch what I say.’

Cops need to read between the lines; interpret what people really mean. Healthy scepticism is a useful attribute in budding law enforcement officers. It’s a bit different with colleagues though. The starting point with your mates is to presume honesty, dedication and selflessness. It hits hard, then, when you learn that someone you worked closely with, whom you actually quite liked and would certainly have laid down your life for, is no better than the people you have committed to lock up.

In December 2000 everything was looking good for me. I had just achieved my boyhood ambition by being promoted to DI at Brighton. I was immersed in my new job of setting up and running a hate crime unit. I handpicked a team of the best investigators to work with me and I was the deputy SIO on two murder enquiries. One was a horrific homophobic killing of a lonely gay man by two thugs who targeted him just for those reasons and the second a cold execution of an elderly man by his gay lover who sought to benefit from his recently rewritten will.

At home, we were living the dream. We had just squeezed in two holidays over the summer, one to Crete where our daily trip back from the beach involved a 200-foot climb up a sun-baked winding road, pushing a double and single pushchair. We got to know the owner of the bar half way up very well over the fortnight. The second was to Devon, which was lovely, but the constant calls of ‘I need a wee’ from the back seat as we meandered around the notoriously narrow country lanes with no stopping points or facilities in sight wore a little thin.

In the September, Conall, Niamh and Deaglan had just started play school and Julie was working tirelessly at home and at her part-time job to keep everything together.

It did not occur to me, however, that despite all of our struggles to have children, I was spending less and less time at home. I was no social animal — I had outgrown that — but I just loved my job and all the demands it put on me. Julie and I were becoming ships in the night. In hindsight, we were at risk of becoming another Roy and Sandy Grace or Glenn and Ari Branson where the job came first and everything else had to fit around it.

On one of my rare evenings off, just before Christmas, Deaglan complained of feeling unwell. I gently lifted him out of his junior bed and carried him downstairs so as not to wake Conall and Niamh. I held him and tried to get him to tell me, between his tears, what was wrong and where it hurt. Suddenly his eyes fixed and his face went ashen.

I sensed something was about to erupt so held his face away from me. With that, he promptly vomited what seemed like gallons of blood all over the lounge carpet.

‘Julie, come in here. I need help,’ I yelled. She dashed in from the kitchen.

‘Oh my God,’ she cried, ‘what happened?’

‘I don’t know. He was grizzling and then this. What are we going to do?’

‘Phone the out-of-hours doctor,’ she commanded as she took our sick little boy from my arms.

We were terrified and after some frantic phone calls — including one to get DI Bill Warner to take my on-call and one summoning my dad and stepmum Sue to look after the other two — on the advice of the doctor we rushed Deaglan to the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital in Brighton.

He was admitted immediately and Julie and I took it in turns to be at the hospital over the next few days. Conall and Niamh were sensing their brother’s absence and our angst; they needed us to comfort them as much as Deaglan did.

I was too anxious to work but Bill and another DI, Vic Marshall, covered for me in the way I would have for them. Thankfully, after four frantic days of tests for various conditions including leukaemia, the cause of Deaglan’s vomiting was discovered. He had idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), caused by a disorder that leads to excessive bruising and bleeding due to unusually low levels of platelets. His prognosis was excellent, he fully recovered, and was discharged in time for Christmas.

Knowing Julie was with the other two along with her sister Maureen, who had popped in to help, I called my dad to drive us home. True to form, he dropped everything and was with us in no time. He took care of the bags and I carried a very sleepy little boy to the car parked nearby. I settled Deaglan in the back with me and gently told him that we were off to see Mummy, Conall and Niamh. He grinned so broadly when I said that it was only three more sleeps until Father Christmas would be coming. He stretched up to kiss me, cuddled up and dropped off to sleep.

My memory stops there and doesn’t restart for another twelve hours. For what followed next I had only my late father’s account to hang on to.

As Dad drove off the A23 towards Burgess Hill on a country road, a car coming from the other direction suddenly veered into our path. It was heading straight for us. There seemed no escape. Mercifully, my dad’s skill and lightning reactions meant that, instead of the 60mph crash being completely head on he was able to steer away slightly, reducing the final impact by a few per cent, doubtlessly saving our lives.

After being cut out of the car, we were all rushed to separate hospitals. My dad told me later that I kept pleading with the fire-fighters and paramedics to let me see Deaglan before I was taken off. Apparently I was inconsolable with worry.

My first memory was waking up the following morning in the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath unable to move, with the creeping foreboding that something awful had happened. In my state of amnesia I was convinced that Deaglan and Dad had been killed. No-one could tell me otherwise and my certainty that I was paralysed paled into insignificance. I was bereft at the thought I was the only survivor.

It seemed an age, but later that morning Julie arrived. (I learned later that Maureen and her brother John had taken over babysitting duties and she had been shuttling all night between my bedside and the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital where Deaglan had been returned.) I was convinced that I was about to experience what it was like to be on the other side of a death message.

Relief flooded through my aching body when she announced that Deaglan and my dad had both been patched up and released. I was not paralysed, just very bruised, and was to be transferred to the specialist plastic surgery centre at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead for my severe facial wounds to be fixed. This is where Dr Sir Archibald McIndoe pioneered the treatment of severely burned Second World War allied air-crew, the Guinea Pigs. It retains its reputation today as a world-class facility for reconstructive surgery.

Once released, on Christmas Eve, I was driven home by Maureen’s husband Ted, and all at once it hit me what I had so very nearly lost. They say things happen for a reason and this crash was a savage wake-up call. It dawned on me that, while my job was very important, it was nothing compared with Julie and the children.

Their love and kindness coaxed me through a very difficult recovery period. I slowly became more able, my wounds started to heal and the realization of where my priorities should lie came into sharp focus.

My colleagues too were exceptionally supportive. From hospital and home visits to buying presents for the children, they never stopped thinking of me in the dark months that followed. One even came round on Christmas Day both to visit me and to give the children the treat of a drive out in his all-singing, all-dancing police car.

As well as the scars I still bear, I had sustained a significant brain injury that made simple cognitive activities such as reading, remembering, concentrating and staying awake a massive struggle. Julie had the patience of a saint as I inched towards recovery. Her love and that of the children made me resolute that I would now rebalance my life.

On my eventual return to work the following March, I tried to continue where I had left off but with renewed emphasis on my family. However, I was deluding myself that I had fully recovered.

I was really struggling and in October, having come home after a typically busy day in floods of tears, I realized I was defeated. I couldn’t keep up the pace so had to give up my precious job and take a policy role at HQ. I was devastated.

I thrived on proper policing. It was what I lived for. I knew the back-room job was for my own good but I was starved of adrenaline. I was well supported but so bored by the nine-to-five lifestyle.

My boss, Detective Superintendent Dick Barton (that was his real name — perhaps his parents knew his destiny), wandered into my office one Tuesday morning in spring 2002.

‘Graham, are you free next week?’ he enquired.

‘Yes, nothing I can’t shift,’ I confirmed.

‘There’s a confidential briefing at the National Criminal Intelligence Service, about a national computer job. I don’t know much more but do you fancy going? Get you out of the office, eh?’

I needed no hard sell. Whatever it was, it was a day away and something that sounded vaguely interesting; certainly better than pushing paper around.

The room in the anonymous South London NCIS HQ was packed. Officers from across the country had accepted the invitation and descended to hear the unveiling of the organization’s closely guarded secret. We all speculated what was about to unfold.

I had never met ACC Jim Gamble before. Never even heard of him. Little did he or anyone else know that he would later become one of the most authoritative voices in child protection and online safety. It was Jim who would go on to establish the world-renowned Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

When he stood up and his booming Northern Irish voice echoed around the room, no-one was left in any doubt that this was a big job.

The US Postal Inspection Service had raided Landslide Productions Inc, an online pornography portal run by Thomas and Janice Reedy. On searching their database the service had discovered thousands of people had bought access to hundreds of thousands of horrific child abuse images. A list of UK customers had been passed to Jim’s officers and they, in turn, were handing that to us. This was to be known as Operation Ore; a title with, quite deliberately, no relevance to the job in hand.

We were under threat of dismissal should we prematurely reveal any details and told we were each about to receive a list of names, local to us, who must be arrested on a given day. We would all be provided a further list within the next month, which might run to hundreds of names. We could investigate those at our own speed and by our own methods but the protection of children must be the priority.

Clutching my secret package tight, I boarded the train back to Sussex. There were just five initial targets for us, among the most prolific users of the site and those who had accessed the most depraved images. That was manageable and with some disappointment, having briefed them on what was required, I handed over the suspects to the local divisions. They wasted no time in sweeping up these paedophiles and bringing them to justice. My return to operational policing had been sickeningly short.

If his name had been Robert Davies or John McDonald, I may not have spotted it as I scanned through the anticipated second list when it arrived three weeks later. There were over 200 names on the pages I was idly flicking through. Some names stand out and the name CJ Wratten certainly did to me.

Chris Wratten had been my sergeant when I was a PC at Brighton in 1989. He had known my dad too, when he was a Special at Hove. Chris was a rough and ready copper but a great bloke to have with you when things heated up. I remember the relief on seeing him arrive when I was single-handedly trying to control a massive fight at the bottom of Elm Grove in the city centre.

A few years later he was promoted to Inspector and transferred to Hastings. I knew he had moved house to nearby Bexhill and the address on the list was all the confirmation I needed that it was the same man.

‘Dick,’ I called to my boss. ‘You might want to come and look at this.’ He wandered through and looked over my shoulder.

‘Recognize that name?’

‘Shit,’ he exclaimed.

‘Best we look at the rest of the list in case there are any more coppers on it. In the meantime, are you happy I crack on with dealing with Chris? We can’t send this name to the division as we did the others. He’ll find out in no time.’

‘Yes, if you are happy to. I’ll see if Chief Inspector Steve Scott can support you so at least one of you has a rank advantage over him.’

‘That would be great.’ Steve had briefly been my acting Detective Superintendent when I moved from operational duties. He had just secured a permanent promotion to the same rank in Surrey and was awaiting a start date.

Sussex is not a big force; there were rarely more than three degrees of separation between any two officers. We had to keep the investigation tight, strictly need-to-know. We also had to write the rulebook for investigating offences of child abuse on the internet. I learned never to use the term ‘child porn’ as this gives it an air of grubby respectability. Kids being raped on camera is what it is and that should never be forgotten.

We soon became aware, through NCIS, that perverted cops had also been identified elsewhere. We made contact with those forces, sharing our thinking and developing our plans together.

A date was set to visit Chris. We planned it around his shifts and his likely sleep pattern. His wife also worked for us and we did not want her there, so we planned for that too.

He was not in when we arrived at his flat, nestled in a sleepy Bexhill street. We could have forced our way in but we decided to sit and wait. Ten minutes passed before I spotted Chris strutting up the road carrying a newspaper and carton of milk.

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 though 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 press.

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.’

‘I hope we aren’t going to accept it. If he’s done what you say he needs sacking, not being able to sneak out with a month’s notice and his reputation intact.’

‘Yes, that’s the plan. The Met are clear that we shouldn’t accept it and our Chief Officers agree.’

In that short exchange one of my supposedly finest sergeants had gone from hero to zero. I can forgive a lot of things, see them in context, but leaking information, especially for money, cuts to the heart of all the police stand for. He was finished.

To his credit, his admissions were swift. Taking his sacking with good grace and his early guilty plea must have helped cap his prison sentence at ten months. He was lucky, as selling the fox story was not the only time his greed had usurped his oath of office.

Two more leaks emerged, one involving a child protection visit to a local celebrity and the second regarding a search for dead bodies. Just as no-one suspected Andy ‘Weatherman’ Gidney of being the corrupt computer investigator in Looking Good Dead, who kept evil Carl Venner plied with expertise and confidential information, so no-one had seen Bowes was a mole.

It does pain me to think what he must have gone through in prison. Corrupt police officers are just a shade higher in the pecking order than paedophiles. However, he knew the stakes and got what he deserved.

Most cops have flawless characters and integrity. Most have impeccable morals. When the bad apples are exposed, however, we all feel shame. Every one of us feels let down. We all have to work that little bit harder to regain lost trust. But we do, as the pride we have in the job is indestructible and we can never let those outlaws within prevail.