Death Comes Knocking: Policing Roy Grace's Brighton

6: Horror Amongst Thieves

Everyone needs friends. People who stick by you through thick and thin. Grace and Branson have just that in each other: a lifelong bond, underpinned by trust, tolerance and forgiveness. Sometimes it’s only when these are tested to the limit that you can really be certain whether those around you are the real deal.

One middle-ranking villain made some huge assumptions about the bona fides of his mates. His wake-up call came in the most eye-wateringly brutal manner imaginable.

DC Andy Mays is a great friend of mine. We first worked together playing undercover cops in the banally labelled Plain Clothes Unit at Gatwick Airport in the late 1980s and his first wife worked with Julie. We socialized together often and Andy arranged my stag night before Julie and I jetted off to get married on a beautiful Seychelles island in 1992.

His career eventually moved into a world too secret for these pages but no less exciting for it. We are friends to this day.

We shared a good number of years too as DCs on Brighton CID and, during that time, Andy developed a phenomenal talent for getting villains to talk to him — not just because, being a lookalike of Phil Mitchell from EastEnders, he resembled most of them.

Policing is often very reactive. We think that we have our fingers on the pulse and that intelligence-led proactivity is how we get our best results. We flatter ourselves. Like the consequences of the crash that killed Tony Revere in Dead Man’s Grip, the most serious jobs are the ones we often fail to see coming.

There does seem to be something about Sundays that causes them to generate the most intricate and intriguing policing challenges. The late shift on this particular winter’s day in 1992 was no exception.

Andy was clearing an outrageous backlog of reports that his sergeant had been badgering him over, while willing the clock to tick round to 9 p.m. when, as was the custom, he could go to the pub. The phones rarely rang on a Sunday so when his did, he sensed his evening was about to be disrupted. With a sigh he reluctantly lifted the grey receiver.

‘CID. DC Mays.’

‘Oh, hi. It’s the control room here. Response are at a job in the Rose Hill area where a chap has fallen out of an upper-floor window. The sergeant is saying he doesn’t think the bloke is going to survive. He’s in a really bad way. They’ve taken him to the hospital and they are asking for CID to meet them there.’

‘Why do they want us? Do they suspect foul play?’

‘They’re not sure; there’s just something they aren’t happy about.’

‘Jeez, they give these sergeants stripes for a reason,’ Andy muttered. ‘Why can’t they make a bloody decision? Yes, OK on my way,’ he continued, this time intending to be heard.

The cars we were forced to drive rudely quashed any credibility Brighton’s finest detectives tried to purvey. As they were no doubt procured solely on the basis of price and economy, we never quite felt like the slick crimebusters we aspired to be as we rocked up in one of these rusting, pastel-coloured Mini Metros. Distinguished only by their whining engines and the fact they looked ridiculous with two hulking great detectives wedged into their tiny front seats, they were more suitable for a circus than the UK’s second-busiest police station. Grace’s sidekick, Branson, with his somewhat frighteningly advanced driving skills, wouldn’t have been seen dead in one of these tin cans. Still, that was all we had so, having grabbed a set of keys, off Andy went.

The gridlock that irritates Mafia hit man Tooth after he has abducted Tyler Chase in Dead Man’s Grip is omnipresent in Brighton. Sundays are no exception. If it isn’t caused by the hordes of day-trippers clogging up the streets, it is the fanatics who insist on crawling from London to Brighton by various modes of transport ranging from veteran cars to historic lorries and good old-fashioned bicycles. Every weekend there are always people trying to make the fifty-five miles from capital to coast by one means or another, and they all seem to come to a standstill just by the police station.

Andy used his encyclopaedic knowledge of the city to snake through the backstreets, engine shrieking, to the Royal Sussex County Hospital.

On arrival he abandoned the car in a bay marked ‘Taxis’, slipped his Sussex Police log book — which serves as a ‘park anywhere’ permit — behind the windscreen and marched into the Accident and Emergency Department.

Among the teams of doctors, nurses and paramedics, he located the sergeant who seemed unable to make a decision.

‘Right, Sarge. What have we got, then?’

‘Well. It’s hard to say. It seems this chap has taken a tumble out of a small casement window. It’s quite high up and we can’t really work out how he’s done it.’

‘Are you saying he might have been pushed?’ asked Andy, coaxing his senior colleague to express a view.

‘That’s the point,’ said the sergeant. ‘We’ve been up to the flat and it’s a lounge window but a bit of a squeeze. Oh, and there seems to have been a bit of a disturbance in there.’

‘Oh, right. And what’s the deal with matey, then? I take it he’s in resus? Who is he? What are his injuries?’

‘Don’t know who he is but some of the neighbours say he’s only been living there for the last couple of weeks. He’s unconscious, which is definitely a bonus for him given the mess he’s in. He seems to have fallen smack bang onto some spiked railings. One has impaled him, then his weight must have pulled him back as he has fallen off them, ripping his innards in the process.’

‘Jesus,’ winced Andy.

‘What’s more, his leg is in a right state. Looks like he’s somehow got a horrendous break resulting in, well, put it this way, his knee is now fully double-jointed.’

‘How’s that happened if he’s fallen out belly first, landed on the spikes then fallen off? How’s he done his leg?’

‘That, DC Mays, is why we called you all-seeing detectives,’ the sarcastic sergeant replied, implying that Andy’s muttered dissent earlier had not been as hushed as he intended and that his sentiments had been passed up the chain of command.

The problem with being a detective is that once you show a hint of interest in an incident, it’s yours to keep. It’s like a one-way game of Pass the Parcel — you never get to give it back.

Like so many of the calls Grace picks up, be it the disappearance of Michael Harrison in Dead Simple or the dredging of the first body in Dead Tomorrow, the full story is seldom evident straightaway; indeed some such incidents can be dismissed by indolent, less gifted cops, thereby denying justice to victims.

This was a dreadful fall, possibly a pretty serious suicide attempt, but something was not quite right. How does anyone actually fall out of such a small window? If the man did jump, why from there? What about that snapped leg? How did he do that at the same time as skewering himself on the ironwork below? These questions gnawed away at Andy.

Good cops don’t ignore their niggles. The hair standing up on the back of the neck can be as good a clue as any at the outset of an enquiry. Good old copper’s nose is something you learn to trust. Sometimes you just can’t put your finger on why you feel suspicious but that is no reason to shrug off your hunches.

As I moved up the ranks, I was always sure to help junior officers listen to their inner feelings and encouraged them to follow lines of enquiry on the sole basis that ‘something just didn’t add up’. If it didn’t feel right it probably wasn’t; the trick was to find out why.

Andy waited at the hospital, working the phones in an attempt to find out more about this mystery man and how he ended up fighting for his life.

Having been told the ward where he had been taken, Andy emerged from the groaning lift at Level 7 of the hospital’s Thomas Kemp Tower, and quickly orientated himself while absorbing the distinctive ‘Eau de Hospital’, an aroma of disinfectant and disease combined with death.

Quite miraculously, after just a few hours and against the odds, the casualty, his body wrecked and saturated with morphine, regained consciousness. Despite his best efforts Andy still had little to go on other than it all seemed a bit odd. He therefore charmed his way through the medics to see him.

Breezing past the maelstrom of activity at the nurses’ station with a quick flash of his warrant card, it didn’t take his years of detective training to locate his man. Mummified neck to toe in plaster and bandages, the victim was wired up to the same squawking machines and slowly bubbling drips that shocked Ashley in Dead Simple, when she visited the same hospital to see the aftermath of her fiancé’s disastrous stag night.

An unannounced visit from the CID often provokes a prickly reception. This can be rooted in curiosity, guilt or just plain irritation. The reaction Andy received was no exception but he was accustomed to frostiness.

‘Hello, mate,’ he said. ‘I’m DC Andy Mays. Looks like you’ve had better days.’

‘Piss off,’ grunted the stricken man.

‘Now let’s not be like that. I don’t do pissing off when people are lying half dead in hospital beds and in your state you’re stuck with me. Why don’t we start by you telling me who you are and see where we go from there?’

‘Fuck, well, I suppose you will find out eventually. I’m Angus Sherry, that’s all I’m telling you.’

‘That’s better. Look, you’re not in trouble, Angus, not with us anyway, but it would be nice to know how you managed to take the dive out of the window today.’

‘I just fell out. I was taking some air and I fell.’

‘Look, mate, you and I both know that’s a load of old bollocks. No-one falls out of windows like that, let alone big blokes like you. Just tell me what happened, I can go and satisfy my bosses everything is OK and, tough as it may be, we won’t need to see each other again,’ suggested Andy.

At this, a nurse entered the ward wheeling an aged payphone on a trolley.

‘Angus, there’s a friend of yours on the phone. Would you like to take it now or shall I get them to call back?’ she chirped.

Andy gave a nod of permission and settled back in the chair as she plugged the phone wire in. Angus lifted the receiver, struggling with pain.

His face took on a deathly pallor. His eyes widened to the size of saucers as he listened intently, spluttering to get a word in. Andy could hear shouting coming through the earpiece.

Eventually Angus managed to speak.

‘You fucking leave her out of this. Fucking touch her and I’ll rip your fucking head off. Do what you want to me but I’m fucking warning you. Harm one hair on her head and you are dead,’ he ranted as Andy sat up, riveted by this angry call.

A short pause, then, ‘I fucking told you yesterday. It’s safe but now you’ve done this to me it’s going to take a bit fucking longer.’ Angus slammed the phone down as the other incredulous patients stared on, fascinated by this dramatic interruption to their tedium.

Recognizing that his intuition had, as usual, proved right, Andy swiftly arranged for Angus to be moved to a side room and made a flurry of calls to get some uniform back-up at the hospital in case it all kicked off. Once the emergency actions had been put in train, he returned to get to the truth.

‘Right, Angus. Shall we stop pissing around now? Something’s going on. Someone has hurt you and, unless you co-operate, sounds like someone very close to you is going to be in the next bed or even the morgue. Start talking and make it quick.’

‘First things first, get someone round my girlfriend’s house in Kemp Town and get her out of there. They are going to kill her and, as you can see, this lot don’t fuck about.’

He gave a name and address, which Andy scribbled down, before dashing out to the nurses’ station to put in the call that would send a marked police car straight round to protect her.

He slid back into Angus’s room and quietly clicked the door shut.

‘Right. She will be safe. Now everything, please.’

‘Well, I’m not a grass so you ain’t getting everything, but as you will have worked out, I’m in a bit of shit. I’m no angel and I’ve fallen out with some very bad people.’

‘Well, that was a bit careless,’ quipped Andy.

‘Yeah, right. Anyway, I’ve pissed them off big time.’

‘Right, I want to know how much shit you are in and what we need to do. No doubt we will need to speak to you later in more detail about what you’ve done but for now let’s just see if we can keep you and your girlfriend alive, shall we? What happened today for you to end up in here?’

‘Well, I had a visit. They’ve been after me for a couple of weeks. They reckon I’m trying to cut them out of a deal. Anyway, they were in a bad, bad mood. They came down to beat the crap out of me until I gave them what they wanted. When I wouldn’t play ball the three of them started on me. First it was just a few slaps, then they got more and more angry. Kidney punches, cigarette burns, knives at my bollocks, the whole lot.’

‘So what happened then?’

‘They could see that I was holding out and they were livid. They knocked me around so much I was just a heap on the floor. Then they rolled me on my back, held me down, and put my leg up on a chair. I couldn’t move. My leg was completely locked out. I had one bloke holding me down and another sitting on my foot; I was trapped. I couldn’t work out what was going to happen. Then the third bloke climbed onto the table just by my side. The penny still didn’t drop. Then the bloke on my foot yelled, “One more chance ’cos this will fucking hurt.” I stared back at him and told him to fuck off.

‘He then just nodded to the bloke on the table who jumped in the air and, with both feet, crashed down onto my leg, crunching right through my kneecap. The last thing I remember was a crack like a gun going off and seeing my foot flipping up towards my face. I was in fucking agony; it shot through my whole body. They knew they had gone too far, as I was screaming my head off. They needed to shut me up. The next thing, I was being grabbed, the lounge window was opened and they carried me over to it. Thank God I can’t remember being chucked out or landing on the railings. They wanted to kill me. They will next time.’

‘Jesus,’ muttered a stunned Andy, ‘who did that and why?’

‘I can’t tell you. You just need to protect me and my girlfriend. They will kill us if you don’t help.’

Three uniformed PCs arrived and Andy told them to take positions outside the room to prevent anyone dodgy getting near Angus. He briefed the hospital staff, informed hospital security and did his best to ensure no-one had a second go at punishing this mysterious villain. After all, the windows here were significantly higher than the last one he had been thrown out of.

Everything in place, Andy phoned his DI, John Grant, and asked to meet him back at the police station. John abandoned his plans for a night in front of the telly, made his excuses to his wife and rushed back to the nick to run his own real-life drama.

They needed to find out who was behind all of this. With Angus disinclined to further endanger his precarious future by naming names, the only hope was Jenny, the girlfriend.

Andy briefed John while they headed off to find the tiny Kemp Town flat. It was relatively easy — the marked police car guarding her door was a bit of a giveaway.

Kemp Town features heavily in Peter James’ novels due to its quirky multiple characteristics. It is described in Looking Good Dead as having evolved from a posh Regency enclave to one that has ‘the same seedy tatty aura that has corroded the rest of Brighton’. Logan Somerville in You Are Dead was kidnapped in that neighbourhood and an officer met a fiery death there in Want You Dead.

Playing good cop, bad cop, Andy and John pumped Jenny for information, Andy using his matey charm in an effort to persuade her to see the sense of spilling the beans and his boss adopting a less compromising style. The combination soon drew from her what they wanted.

She knew that Angus had been in deep trouble for a few weeks. It was all down to some money that three blokes accused him of stealing. As the phone calls had become increasingly menacing, so he had been getting more and more scared. She insisted that she did not know their names or what it was all about, but she gave enough to set the police on the trail.

‘Right, love, where are you going to stay tonight?’ demanded John.

‘Well, er, here, can’t I?’ she asked, glancing from one officer to the other, seeking reassurance.

‘No you can’t,’ replied John. ‘I’m not giving you a twenty-four-hour guard. You need to find someone who can put you up where these delightful people can’t find you. Once you have found somewhere, give the details to your babysitter here,’ pointing to the bored-looking police constable, ‘and we will get there like yesterday.’

On the short drive back to the police station, at around 2 a.m., they agreed that Andy would need to turn the screw on Angus. The time for pussy-footing around had come to an end. Others would be following up the scant leads they had picked up so far, but Angus needed to fill in the gaps.

As Andy slipped into the side ward shortly after 7 a.m., an almost indiscernible flick of his head gave the uniformed guard the clear message that he was not welcome for the moment. He stepped outside.

Angus tried to sit up, momentarily forgetting in his trepidation the extent of his massive injuries. He was convinced that Andy was bearing bad news. Sensing his anxiety Andy quietly reassured him, ‘Jenny’s fine, Angus.’

Visible relief washed through him.

‘Jenny is safe, out of the way, but you and me are going to have a chat.’

‘I’ve told you all I can,’ Sherry replied.

A common tactic when trying to get someone to do or say something they would rather not is to blame an uncompromising higher authority.

‘Listen, Angus,’ urged Andy, ‘my boss is getting very pissed off. When you see Jenny, ask her how he spoke to her. He can’t stand what he calls “tossers like this” upsetting his city. He doesn’t much care what you do to each other, but it never looks good with people flying out of windows on a Sunday evening and then us having to tie up our scarce cops sorting it all out and protecting people like you.’

Before Angus could argue Andy held up a hand. ‘His words not mine. So. Let’s have it. Everything. No more bullshit. No more misguided loyalty to blokes who use kneecaps as trampolines. I want everything and I want it now or else, the mood my governor’s in, the next time you see me I could be wearing a hospital gown identical to yours.’

Silence is a powerful tool. People hate it. The power lies with the person who left it; the person whose turn it is to speak feels an almost irresistible urge to fill the gap.

Andy just sat there; nothing but the whirr of machines and the distant chatter of nurses punctuated the hush. He simply stared at the man in plaster. He knew he would give in first. They always did.

‘Shit, I’ve never been a grass before.’

Bingo. Works every time. Now for a little encouragement.

‘You’re not grassing, Angus. You’ll be saving your life and Jenny’s. It doesn’t get much bigger than that. Tell it from the beginning and we can stop all this.’ Keep it all positive. Emphasize the benefits, don’t mention the risks.

Criminals would have you believe that they subscribe to some Mafia-like code of omertà — or not informing to the police. Unlike in Sicily, most UK villains are more fickle in its application. Darren Spicer, the career burglar in Not Dead Yet and Dead Like You, is typical of many in being happy to play Judas when it suited him.

‘What will happen when I’ve told you?’ asked Sherry.

‘We will look after you and Jenny will be safe, but we have to know. You have to trust us. We can’t do this without you and, from where I’m sitting, you need all the help you can get right now.’

‘What are my options?’

‘You’ve run out of those.’

‘Shit.’ Angus closed his eyes. His fists clenched. He shook his head. Andy saw that he was in turmoil. He was weighing it all up. This was positive. So long as he was thinking about it, rather than telling Andy to go fuck himself, there was hope.

Silence again, then: ‘Bollocks. Right, here goes.’

In the back of the net! Andy was all ears.

‘You’ll have worked out I’m no choirboy. You’re right but, believe it or not, I have some honour. I never break my word, I am loyal to my mates and, until now, I’ve never grassed.’

Andy kept quiet; just a nod of the head encouraged Sherry to continue.

‘Me and my mates, we’ve been very busy. You must have heard about what we have been up to but hopefully not who we are. All across the south of England, we’ve been robbing travel agents. Their security is a joke compared to banks or building societies but they all have thousands of pounds in traveller’s cheques and foreign currency. I’ve got a mate who tells me which shops are having cheques delivered and when.’

Andy listened intently. He, along with just about every other detective south of Bedford, was well aware of this vicious spate of tie-up robberies.

We had all dealt with them. The calls always came in before the first coffee of the day had been drunk. The gang struck, seemingly at random, at small travel agents, in numerous towns and cities, just as they opened. Relying on a lack of customers, they would bundle the staff into a back room, force the shop keys from them, lock the door, tie them up and then, with threats of horrific violence, similar to those used on ninety-eight-year-old Aileen McWhirter in Dead Man’s Time, demand the safe keys. They would grab as many traveller’s cheques as they could in a minute or two and then scarper.

‘We never hurt anyone. We only needed to scare the shit out of them. They were trained to sell holidays, not to protect the family silver, so we always got what we were after. What we nicked were worthless pieces of paper unless we could turn them into hard cash. As I’ve been living here and know a bloke who can deal with traveller’s cheques, we decided to do a job in Brighton. It all went well and we got away with a few grand’s worth. It was my job to convert them into cash quickly.

‘So, I took the cheques and gave them to my contact. He said he could deal with them. Well, after a few days the lads started to ask questions. “Where’s the money?” “When are you going to pay us?” “How well do you know this bloke?”

‘I kept chasing him but it seems your lot were putting some pressure on his bloke up the chain so he couldn’t shift them on. Well, we were all getting nervy and the others were getting suspicious. They started to accuse me of nicking all the money for myself. There was no way I was going to tell them who my contact was, so they thought I’d made it all up.

‘They started to get nasty, threatening all sorts of things. I mean for Christ’s sake, we have known each other for years. We’ve never let each other down but they were turning the heat up on me. I got scared so I stopped taking their calls, moved out of my flat and tried to lie low until I could get the cash. I was getting desperate and was begging my mate to get the money but he was in as much of a corner as me. I knew the others were trying to find me. I had to keep out of the way, but at the same time be around to make sure I was there to get the money when the cheques were fenced.’

This was all very interesting for Andy; it filled in some gaps, and was certainly going to be instrumental in dismantling this hitherto elusive gang. It did not, however, give many leads to help protect Angus and Jenny.

Andy’s silence prompted Sherry to continue.

‘So, eventually they tracked me down to the flat in Rose Hill. I’ve told you what they did to me there but it was basically torture. You know the score, tell them what they want and I would walk away. If I wouldn’t, or in my case couldn’t, I would never walk again. Thing was I had no way of conjuring up the money or knowing when they would get it, so they did what they did and here I am.’

Andy kept quiet.

‘They are going to kill me unless I get the money. They were watching while I was scraped into the ambulance. They followed it to the hospital. You can’t protect me unless I get the money to them and you ain’t going to let me do that now. They said they’ve got guns and they are going to come here.’

‘How have they told you all this?’

‘They phoned me really early, before you got here today. Your guards just stepped out. I said it was my missus and they didn’t question that.’

‘For God’s sake,’ muttered Andy. ‘OK, now tell me who they are, where they are, what they have said, what they are going to do. Every last detail, and now. I’ll be the judge of what is and isn’t relevant.’

Finally, like an opening lock gate, Angus gushed the details that Andy needed to piece the jigsaw together: the key to stopping a slaughter.

‘Right, I’m just going outside to make a couple of calls.’ He and the PC guard swapped places.

Time was against them. All the police knew was who they were looking for and in which town. Like the hunt for Bryce Laurent in Want You Dead, this was a life or death hunt for a needle in a haystack.

Nobody could be certain what the targets’ movements would be, which of their threats were scare tactics and which were real. What was certain, however, was that if they attacked the hospital Andy and the unarmed uniformed guard would be woefully inadequate protection. Some serious firepower was called for.

Intelligence was now coming in thick and fast; the gang intended to take Angus out at the hospital. The impact of that would be devastating. It would inevitably result in a shoot-out or siege which, with hundreds of sick patients as potential hostages or secondary targets, had the potential of being catastrophic.

A ring of steel was thrown around the hospital and its numerous entrances. Armed officers were drafted in, forming concentric circles of protection around the stronghold containing Sherry.

One of the core values of the emergency services is courage — the willingness to put oneself in harm’s way to protect others, whoever they are. Whether it is the firemen running towards the Twin Towers on 9/11 passing thousands sprinting away or Grace risking his life to save Pewe on the cliff top at Beachy Head, both depicted in Dead Man’s Footsteps, extraordinary gallantry is a role requirement for officers. Andy knew he and others would need to draw on every ounce of theirs.

Meanwhile, surveillance officers were combing Hastings, thirty-five miles east of Brighton. Intelligence suggested that the gang were holed up in that area but were planning to make their way towards the city imminently. The pressure was on to get to them before they reached their quarry. And the odds were very much stacked against the police. They had no registration number, just a rough description of the gang and of the car they would use to travel on their brutal errand.

By an astonishing piece of skill, a sharp-eyed undercover detective spotted a car similar to the one being hunted, with out-of-town number plates, parked in a row of vehicles on a dimly lit backstreet in Hastings.

Recognizing the twitch of his ‘copper’s nose’, he shouted for his colleague to stop the car; they watched and waited. A swift Police National Computer check on the car’s registration plate confirmed their suspicions. Moments later he glimpsed three burly men furtively making their way towards it, jumping in and driving off.

They started to follow and it wasn’t long before the car headed west towards Brighton.

This was it.

Providing the suspects did not get near the hospital, or Jenny’s secret hideaway, the advantage had now switched to the police. The order to arrest would be finely timed to ensure the safety of all but at the point where enough evidence had been gathered to see the gang locked up and the key thrown away.

Thankfully, the journey from Hastings to Brighton can be slow and tortuous. Normally this is acutely irritating, but with a high-impact firearms operation to plan, the more time available the better.

Andy, still in the ward, felt his pulse racing as, together with the armed officers who had joined him, he planned the contingencies should the bandits evade the pursuing cops.

Would they get warning of an imminent attack? Where would they take cover? What about Sherry? How would they protect a man encased in plaster? Please God, don’t let them get through.

The knowledge that there were several lines of defence that would have to be breached before their sanctuary was invaded did little to assuage their anxiety.

‘I hope you lot know what you are doing,’ Sherry remarked.

‘You’re bloody lucky,’ replied PC Mick Richards, one of the firearms cops. ‘If anything happens to me, just make sure Andy grabs my gun. I trained him at Gatwick and I tell you, he can shoot as straight as me.’

Despite his intentions, this quip did nothing to lighten the mood.

On the street, a plan was being hastily pulled together. These three men who had shown their propensity to inflict the most appalling violence were not going to come quietly. It required military tactics and an overwhelming show of force to make them realize there was no chance of escape and to shock them into submission.

You could have cut the atmosphere with a scalpel in the hospital room as the armed cops heard that the team had crossed the Brighton border. Their radios squawking into their earpieces, the firearms officers were privy to exactly what was happening and where. Andy could rely only on their body language and a few snatched code words that his previous firearms training had allowed him to grasp.

The grip on their weapons became tighter. Their features took on a tautness that betrayed the adrenaline coursing through their veins as they anticipated a kill-or-be-killed firefight. Their bodies tensed as they took up tactical positions to give them dominance, intended to overwhelm their targets the second they breached the doorway. They hoped beyond hope that, like with so many operations before, their precautions would prove unnecessary and they would not be forced to take a human life.

The four occupants of the side ward were bonded by a common silence, a shared fear. Only two knew exactly what was going on; the others tried to pick up and read any signs given away.

Suddenly, a stunning array of firepower and fast cars exploded onto Eastern Road, below them. From nowhere, three plain but high-powered police vehicles raced up to the bandit car. In a flash, twelve heavily armed police officers clad from head to toe in black surrounded the targets, their weapons a frightening reminder that they had not come in peace. With no choice but to surrender the villains clamped their hands on their heads, awaiting the ignominy of being dragged onto the cold tarmac, cuffed, searched and dragged off to custody. The meticulously planned and executed high-threat arrest had neutralized the suspects.

‘Got ’em,’ was all Mick Richards said. They could all unwind. Except Sherry, that is. His relief could only be temporary; he was now an even more marked man.

Other officers dealt with the aftermath of the arrests, the securing of evidence from the car and the searches of various properties long into the night.

The next day, as Andy arrived on the ward just as Sherry was being wheeled off for yet another operation, he found an argument going on between the patient and a porter.

‘Tell him, Andy. I need my tissues with me,’ demanded Angus, holding a box of man-sized Kleenex.

‘Your tissues? What on earth do you want those for? You will be sparko. If your nose needs wiping, I’m sure the NHS can find someone to do that for you.’

‘For Christ’s sake. Well, you look like you need one. You’ve got a bogie.’

‘What’s all this about bloody tissues, Angus?’ replied Andy, subconsciously wiping his nose.

‘Just take the fucking tissues,’ was the patient’s last word as he was rolled from the ward.

Andy took the box from him and, still puzzled, casually glanced inside. Expecting to see a bed of snow-white paper handkerchiefs, he was perplexed when he tried to make out the strange objects wedged beneath a couple of tissues in the carton.

He probed in through the slot and pulled out half a dozen sealed bags, all containing paper bills.

‘Good God,’ was all he could mutter as he laid them out on the over-bed table. Each contained thousands of pounds of crisp, new, unsigned traveller’s cheques.

How on earth did they get there?

Only one person could spill those beans and he was sleeping like a baby while the National Health Service’s finest strived, once again, to fix his broken body.

Hours later, when Sherry returned from the operating room, Andy quizzed him on the miraculous appearance of the cheques.

It seemed that the guards posted on the room weren’t up to much. When one had disappeared to answer a call of nature, a mysterious visitor — a local pub landlord — slipped in to see Angus. In that short visit he brought him the box of tissues with its very valuable contents. As the officer returned he made polite excuses and scurried away.

He was a runner for the man Angus had entrusted with the cheques. Angus had previously lodged at his pub, hence police had spoken to the landlord soon after Angus took his tumble. He had denied all knowledge of anything but clearly alerted the handler who, while keen to get the cheques back to Sherry, was too scared to turn up at the hospital himself.

The plan was for Angus to hand over the cheques in exchange for his life if the gang made it to his bedside. As that clearly was not going to happen now, with great reluctance he made sure that they ended up in the safe hands of the police but trusted nobody except his new mate Andy to deal with them properly.

Following interviews of all four men — Angus’s taking place in the hospital — they were charged with a string of robberies of travel agents across the south east of England.

In a bizarre twist, as yet another uniformed police guard became too confident that the patient’s plaster casts would frustrate any escape attempts, Angus managed to disappear from under the officer’s nose. Having arranged it through many unsupervised telephone calls, he fled not to evade justice but the consequences of being a grass.

He hobbled out of the ward on crutches, employing the ruse of needing the toilet. His accomplices were waiting and wheeled him right out of the hospital explaining, to the few who bothered to ask, that they were taking him out for a smoke.

There were countless red faces as we scoured the city, fearing the worst. As Andy wasn’t available, I was charged with leading the hunt and, despite my very clear assertion on BBC TV News that a uniformed officer had been guarding him, most of my friends and colleagues preferred to believe that I was the clumsy cop. They saw no reason why the truth should ruin an opportunity for a wind-up.

A couple of days later I tracked Sherry down to an address close to the city centre.

‘For Chrissake,’ he said, disgusted, ‘you’re useless, you lot. How d’you let a cripple get away from you? I thought you were supposed to be looking after me!’

He had a point.

Such was the geographic span of their crimes, the gang eventually appeared for their trial at Luton Crown Court in Bedfordshire as that is where they had committed the most offences. Once again their spell in custody had been bungled as some bright spark had put them all in the same holding cell. The cuts and bruises that adorned their faces as they stepped into the well of the court were evidence that they still hadn’t found it within themselves to kiss and make up.

Angus couldn’t resist sly smiles in Andy’s direction, nodding his head at his co-defendants, indicating his satisfaction at the revenge he had exacted. The swift convictions and heavy sentences that followed were as inevitable as they were celebrated.

Despite the months that had passed since they’d last spoken, Andy felt a trip to the Isle of Wight prison where Sherry was serving his time might prove fruitful in squeezing more intelligence from him.

As Angus was frogmarched into the dark prison interview room by two stern-looking warders, Andy stood up, his outstretched hand indicating that he had come on a friendly assignment. Sherry took it and shook it warmly. However, his opening statement made his intentions crystal clear.

‘Andy. Thanks for coming to see me. Nice you should take the time. However, whatever you want you’re going back empty-handed. I told you much, much more than I should have back then in the hospital. That was to save my life. No-one can protect me in here, not even these goons. I speak, I die. You are getting nothing from me. Not one more word. You’ve had a wasted trip. But, before you go, I don’t think I ever thanked you for what you did back in Brighton. Despite all this, you saved my life.’

With that he stood up, turned round and disappeared into the greyness beyond, to a soundtrack of scraping locks and slamming steel doors.

Andy, feeling slightly melancholy, made his way back to the ferry port reflecting that the further intelligence that he sought would have been wonderful but was not to be.

However, he consoled himself with the knowledge that it was his copper’s nose which had started all this that Sunday when he saw Sherry’s broken body in the hospital. The events that followed were intense and sometimes scary. But with four extremely dangerous people being locked up, the recovery of thousands of pounds and countless cashiers saved from becoming future victims, he rightly felt very proud.