by Adam Croft
He’d been thinking of leaving the police for a while now. He’d wanted to be a copper ever since he was a kid, but the job hadn’t turned out the way he’d expected. He was just another number on a system, with next to no autonomy and very little of the excitement he craved. Policing wasn’t anything like people expected. TV had a lot to answer for.
He went into the shop and greeted the elderly owner, who introduced herself as Pat. She seemed a nice enough lady, but reeked of old carpets. It was almost as if she’d become one with her shop over the decades. The shop had been there for as long as Theo remembered, and probably many years before that.
‘I’ll be honest with you,’ Pat said, grabbing him by the forearm, ‘I’m only hanging onto the place out of principle. William Hill offered to buy me out a couple of years back, but I made a promise never to do that. My husband used to run the shop, see. He worked for William Hill many years ago and had a big falling out with them, which is why he set up on his own. That’s why the buggers opened two branches on this high street. Trying to squeeze him out. He wouldn’t have it. It sort of feels like my duty to do what he would have done and to hold firm, you see what I mean?’
‘Absolutely,’ Theo replied. ‘There aren’t enough independent businesses around any more. It’s a shame to see them all gobbled up by the big boys.’ Although it was worth paying lip service to the woman’s views and opinions, Theo knew it was useless. Every local business he went into had a similar story. They were either hanging on for dear life through some sort of family loyalty or a fierce determination to be the captain who goes down with his ship. It was either admirable or foolish; he didn’t know which.
The pair spent twenty minutes looking around the shop and the back office. Remarkably, the shop had never been robbed in its history — something almost unheard of for a betting shop. Perhaps it was the case that the big boys were seen as a more justifiable target. After all, they could absorb the losses. They were insured to the hilt. Who’d want to do over a little old lady when there were plenty of huge corporate chains on the same stretch of high street?
The security measures at the shop seemed pretty sound, even for a bookies. The alarm system was fully functioning and linked to the police. The safe was well hidden and of the highest commercial grade available. Bulletproof screens above the counters were, unfortunately, a necessity and were of good quality. The place had clearly been looked after, even if it was in need of a bit of TLC and some new carpets.
‘What about CCTV? Is it fully operational?’ Theo asked.
‘It is, yes.’
‘And where does it record and backup onto?’
‘It goes onto the computer in the office, love.’
‘Can I take a quick look?’
The old lady nodded and led Theo through into the office. She walked over to the desk and jiggled the computer mouse, watching the screen come back to life. She moved the cursor down to the bottom of the screen and clicked on an icon, loading the bank of live CCTV coverage. Theo could see that one or two of the outside cameras were askew, recording far more of the wall than they were of any potentially useful areas.
‘Don’t worry about those,’ Pat said, as if reading his mind. ‘We need to get them sorted.’
‘Is this computer on all the time?’
‘Oh yes. The cameras don’t record otherwise.’
Theo nodded. ‘And do you do backups?’
‘Yes, we’ve got a man who comes in once a month to do upgrades and things to the computer. Backups, things like that. I don’t really understand it, so we pay him on a maintenance contract and he does that as part of it.’
‘So the recordings stay on this machine until he comes in to back them up elsewhere? They don’t get stored anywhere else?’
‘No, love. Is that alright?’
Theo smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, of course. Absolutely fine.’
26
One of the three covert officers closed the door gently behind him. They’d be in and out within a few minutes. It was yet another way in which things could move very quickly indeed when they had to. He knew nothing of the operation this was a part of, and wasn’t aware of whose flat he was in.
He hadn’t been told by his superiors that he was there to bug the home of a serving police officer, although it was easy enough to spot whenever that was the case. There’d often be paperwork left lying about, perhaps a staff pass or the telltale shift pattern marked out on the calendar in the kitchen. It was all part of the job. If there were corrupt officers in the force, they needed to be rooted out.
The covert operation had been authorised almost instantly, and was being headed by DCS Andrew Davis. The fact that a woman had died as a direct result of an armed robbery had ensured the decision to investigate on grounds of corruption was made with the utmost speed and diligence. This was a current and live case, and if more lives and livelihoods were potentially at risk, there was no time to lose. There was a very real chance that another robbery could take place either that day or the next. Failure to act in the shortest possible timeframe could reflect very badly on them indeed.
Professional Standards investigations took place entirely independently of the main investigation. DCI Jack Culverhouse and his team would have nothing to do with the investigation into PC Theo Curwood, nor would any other member of the force other than the officer who reported it — plus the Chief Constable — be made aware an investigation was going on. After all, there was no way of knowing how many officers were potentially involved in this corruption, or who they were.
The first part of the operation had been to find a friendly and willing local business owner to assist with the integrity testing side of the investigation. The obvious choice had been the bookmaker’s shop run by Pat Dilliard, widow of Paul Dilliard, who’d not only run the shop with his wife for many years before his death, but had also been a prominent local councillor, sitting on the local police authority before authorities were abolished in favour of elected Police and Crime Commissioners in 2012, the same year Paul died. He’d taken his role seriously, and had developed good links with high-ranking local police officers. This made Pat’s shop the ideal honeypot for testing Theo Curwood’s professional integrity.
She’d been briefed on what to say during the security review. She should intimate that CCTV backups were not done automatically, and only sporadically. They’d also move a couple of the cameras to ensure there were some CCTV dead spots. For PC Curwood’s professional integrity to remain intact, these were things he should spot and feed back to Mrs Dilliard, as any competent officer would.
But proving incompetence was not enough. Evidence was needed that PC Curwood was not only failing to highlight security concerns, but that he was using this information for his own advantage, thus proving corruption. That step would be much harder to prove.
Not only had they begun to trace PC Curwood’s phone calls, text messages and emails, but they’d spoken to the Chief Constable to seek authorisation for the usage of covert listening devices in the suspect’s flat, at which point he’d been made aware of the investigation into PC Theo Curwood. The Chief Constable had authorised the operation, although realistically he didn’t have much choice. A life had already been lost, and denying Professional Standards full access to investigate a matter of potential police corruption would not reflect well on his position.
And so it was that three officers had been sent to PC Theo Curwood’s flat. He was known to live alone, and was out at work during the time of the bugging operation, but the lead officer had been instructed to knock at the door — just in case. If someone were to answer, he’d say he was from a neighbouring block and wondered if anyone had seen a small black cat, which had gone missing a day or two previous. It was simple and innocent enough.
Fortunately, no-one had answered, and let he’d let himself in by picking the lock on the door. The flat wasn’t alarmed, but that didn’t matter either — there were numerous ways of getting around those if they needed to.
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The covert listening devices used GSM technology — the same gadgetry that enabled mobile phones to work without wires. They were not much bigger than the SIM card they contained, although they were extremely powerful in a policing sense.
Having scoured the living room for the best available position, he bent down in the corner and unscrewed the face plate from the double wall socket. It was a dangerous job — they couldn’t risk switching off the power at the fuse board and alerting the suspect to their earlier presence by means of his household electronics having reset themselves. If done properly, though, he wouldn’t need to make contact with any live wires. The covert listening device would simply slot inside the back of the existing facia, clip onto the correct wire for a constant power source and continually transmit audio via the SIM card installed within in.
Once he’d installed the device and screwed the face plate back onto the wall, he took his mobile phone out of his pocket and dialled the number of the SIM. The call connected immediately, and he tapped the face plate lightly with his screwdriver, hearing the loud boom broadcast through his phone as the ultra sensitive microphone demonstrated its capabilities.
Next, he moved into the bedroom, then the kitchen and did the same with a socket in each of those rooms. The whole operation took less than five minutes. It would have been quicker if they’d had three officers inside, but they knew they had plenty of time.
When he was done he left the flat, locking the door behind him again. Without saying a word to his colleague who’d been waiting on the stairwell as a lookout, they jogged back down the stairs, rejoining their third colleague in the downstairs lobby before making their way back to the car.
27
When Jack Culverhouse had a bee in his bonnet, there was very little anyone else could do.
He was understandably frustrated that Professional Standards had taken over the investigation into PC Theo Curwood — as was their remit and entire reason for existence — and was clearly struggling with the loss of control in that area.
‘I don’t know what they think they’re going to be able to do that I can’t,’ he’d told Wendy earlier that morning in his office. ‘The whole unit’s full of wet university graduates and computer analysts. That’ll never beat looking some scrote dead in the eyes and seeing him shit himself right in front of you. You can’t beat intuition and experience when it comes to spotting a fucking liar, Knight.’
Wendy had, like most people who’d worked with Jack Culverhouse, known that he was a fan of the old school methods of policing, but it was rare that he went off on a rant quite like this one.
It was clear to her that he was going to become a liability, but at the same time he had an unbeatable record for successful investigations when his head was in the right place.
So far she’d managed to stop him from approaching PC Curwood and interrogating him himself, but it was only a matter of time before something knocked him over the edge and he got to the point where nothing would stand in his way. That was why she’d reluctantly kept her mouth shut when he said he was going to visit Sophie McAreavey, part-time employee at Fogg’s jewellers.
‘I only worked there a few hours a week. On a casual basis, like,’ she said, sitting on the sofa in her parents’ living room while her mother and father hovered behind her.
Wendy had accompanied Jack to Sophie’s house, keen to provide a calming presence should he decide to explode under the pressure.
‘And you were there on the day the police came to do the security review?’ Jack asked.
‘Yeah. Elsie normally asked me to come in whenever she had to do something, like bank meetings, visiting family, all that sort of thing. Sometimes if it was going to be busy, like in the run up to Christmas or Mother’s Day, I’d do a few days in the week too. But she knew she had this meeting with the police, so she asked me to come in and cover while she was busy doing that.’
‘And did Elsie mention what was said during the meeting?’
‘She didn’t need to. That place is tiny. You can hear everything.’
‘Do you remember the recommendations he made?’
‘Well, he told her she needed a new back door, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise. I’d been telling her that myself. I’ve seen better doors on garden sheds.’
‘This is the door at the back of the premises, leading through the office?’
‘Yeah, that one. He said the bolts could be ripped off pretty easily and they’d be able to smash through the door with an axe if they wanted to. It was only cheap wood, like.’
Sophie’s father took half a step forward, making the sort of nervous stuttering sound some people made when they were trying to make it clear they wanted to talk.
‘Do you mind if I ask what this is all about?’ he said.
‘It’s just routine,’ Wendy replied, before Jack could speak. ‘Because the shop was subsequently robbed, we need to make sure the advice we gave was sound. It helps us spot any weak points in the crime prevention strategy and to enable us to improve the advice we give in the future.’
Sophie’s father seemed satisfied with this, and took half a step back again.
‘Did the officer give a list of companies that Mrs Fogg could get a more secure door from?’ Jack asked.
‘Yeah, he did, but I dunno if I remember the name. I’ve seen their vans about town and that, but I can’t remember what it’s called. “Super” or something like that, I think.’
‘Supreme Locks and Glazing?’
‘Yeah, that’s the one. Supreme. Like the chicken.’
‘And what about the others?’
‘What others?’ Sophie asked.
‘Was there not a list of approved companies?’
‘Nah, that was the only one. He said that was the only one the police recommended.’
Wendy looked at Jack. She could see in his eyes that something dark was brewing.
28
Jack marched down the McAreaveys’ front path and back to his car like a man possessed. As Wendy got into the passenger seat, Jack thumped the steering wheel with both hands.
‘Knew it. I fucking knew it. The cunt’s in league with McCann. There’s you lot telling me it’s all a big coincidence and that I’ve got some sort of vendetta against him, and I was right all along. We’ve got a fucking bent copper telling people Gary McCann’s the only person who can keep their business secure. Like telling a turkey Bernard Matthews wants to give them a cuddle.’
Wendy wanted to tell him there could be other possibilities. She would have loved to have suggested that maybe Theo had a brother or a friend who worked for Supreme Locks and Glazing, that perhaps he’d forgotten the list of companies and that was the only one he could remember. But she couldn’t. Coincidences didn’t convince judges or juries, but it was fair to say they often convinced detectives.
She sat in silence for a moment or two as Jack tried to calm himself down.
‘Right,’ he said, eventually. ‘We’re going to Peal End.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Because we need to speak to Ian Gumbert. We need to see if he got the same shitty advice as Elsie Fogg. At least he’s still alive to tell us.’
Before Wendy could protest, Jack had swung the car back out onto the main road and was heading in the direction of the village of Peal End.
When they got there, he marched up the driveway towards the front door and banged on it four times with his fist. Wendy supposed it would help vent more frustration than simply pressing the doorbell.
Ian Gumbert seemed surprised to see them, but also appeared to recognise them, and welcome them into the house.
‘Bringing good news, I hope. Have you caught them?’
‘Not quite,’ Jack replied, through gritted teeth. ‘Although I feel we’re getting closer all the time. We were hoping you might be able to help us with that, actually.’
‘Oh? How so?’
‘Do you happen to remember if the officer who carried out the crime prevention
survey on your premises recommended a particular list of companies you might want to use to improve your security?’
‘I don’t think he gave a list, no. He did mention one camera company, but I told him I was happy with the dummy ones.’
‘Even though he advised you a proper CCTV system would be far better for your security?’
‘And far worse for my profit margins.’
‘I’d bet you your bottom dollar — if you had one left — that it would have cost you a hell of a lot less than the forty-five grand you lost on the night of the robberies.’
Gumbert shuffled awkwardly. ‘Well, it’s all academic now. I’ve hired a private security firm to help avoid any more little… mishaps.’
Jack raised an eyebrow. ‘Private security firm?’
‘Yep.’
‘How’d you find them?’
‘I didn’t. They came to me after the robberies. PC Curwood recommended them.’
29
The crisp chill in the evening air was lost on Theo Curwood thanks to the four pints he’d enjoyed at the Spitfire on his way home that evening. He’d left his car in the pub’s car park, which doubled as the car park for the parade of shops next to it, and was walking the last few hundred yards home. He could never get parked anywhere near his flat as it was, and it allowed him to enjoy a couple of drinks after work before hitting the sack. He had tomorrow off, so he’d pick the car up in the morning if there was a space outside the flat once his neighbours had gone to work.
He was starting to wonder when the streetlights were going to be fixed along this stretch of Heathcote Road. They’d been out for at least a week now. He wasn’t the sort of person who tended to worry about the dark, but he was starting to become much more edgy in general recently, and things like this weren’t helping him. Not one bit.