Death Comes Knocking: Policing Roy Grace’s Brighton

by Graham Bartlett

  It was another five months, the day before Christmas Eve, that a shocked council workman clearing gullies some thirteen miles away in Hailsham unearthed in the bucket of his digger the final piece of the jigsaw. Among the decaying vegetation and sodden soil, up came Reg Connolly’s rotting, putrefied torso with the tell-tale stab wound still just visible. We had no idea why this was separated from the rest of the body but it must have been deliberate.

  For the police and Reg’s family it started to bring some kind of grisly closure to what had been a bizarre and tragic case.

  Why Reg was killed we will never truly know but Jenny was a young and vulnerable woman who was being regularly and horribly abused. Her plea of guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility was accepted. The horrors she had faced in her own home and the mental strain and impairment that this had caused were enough to convince the court that she could not be held fully accountable for her actions. However, to add to the tragedy, she took her own life midway through her community sentence.

  This was another violent death solved, though, one that would have been straightforward were it not for the expertise in the disposal of the body. It may be reassuring to know that the clear-up rate for murders in the UK is 93 per cent. This is not because these cases are easy, nor because villains give themselves up. No, they are solved because of the breathtaking skill and tenacity of people like Peter James’ fictional Grace, Branson, Moy and even Potting or the real life Burky and Corky.

  Those that aren’t solved become cold cases, never forgotten, never given up on but constantly there, filling cabinets in Detective Superintendents’ offices as a constant reminder of the grief and angst families still suffer waiting for closure, answers and justice.

  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.