Real Hard Cases

by Robert Jeffrey

  The favourite for this last race was odds-on and carrying a whole bundle of money. At the start, this odds-on favourite’s jockey was clearly seen to be having trouble positioning his mount and, not long after the field set off, the horse was already ten lengths behind. It had no chance and the eventual winner was none other than our number five. But the cops’ nice little day out then turned sour as the crowd, suspecting a fix, became ugly. Everyone in the force there that day had a real job on their hands calming the unhappy punters down while making sure our winning betting slips were kept well out of sight!

  12

  INSIDE JOB ON AN INSIDE JOB!

  Some detectives will tell you that, in this game, you are only as good as your informants and, to some extent, that is true. You can cut out a lot of time-consuming legwork on an enquiry if you have someone or other on the inside track. The only folk who keep a closer eye than the police on what’s happening in the criminal world are the criminals themselves. And I know, from first-hand, that some criminals like to drop a titbit or two into the ear of a friendly cop if the result is a rival or competitor getting a few years behind bars. The anonymous tip-off is a good way of settling old scores without any need for messy violence or complications. Everyone likes a nod in the right direction when faced with a tricky case. In my time as an investigator, such ‘steps for a hint’, as cops would say, happened all the time and, like my colleagues, I cultivated a few criminals who enjoyed a bit of grassing if they thought it was in their interest.

  Career criminals value the inside job. They are on the look-out all the time for the bent bank clerk who will hand over a key, a cleaner who knows where the cash is or someone in a warehouse or shop able to do bit of creative paperwork to disguise some thieving. And, if the thieves are clever, it can take months for what is going on to be recognised. That’s where the annual stocktaking can come in handy. The usual culprit turned up by stocktaking tends to be a pub manager or a lowly employee in a booze bottling plant. But, on occasion, items a tad larger and less easy to conceal than a bottle of hooch are involved. I was once given an enquiry to track down a large number of bathroom suites that turned out to be missing when a plumbers’ supply business did the annual check.

  I spoke to the owner of the firm, a large and successful one, and he agreed with the police plan to do what you might call a reverse inside job. The bathroom suites were not walking out the window so there was only one explanation – an inside job. So we leaned on an ex-con who was conveniently out of a job and he was employed by the firm to fill an existing vacancy and secretly briefed to keep an eye on his workmates. The boss of the firm was so anxious to stop this business of the vanishing suites that he agreed to pay the spy out of his own pocket. Looking back, it all seems a bit of a no-brainer as they say nowadays. For a week all was quiet. Then I got a call from our man. He said that a lorry was heading out of the depot with two expensive bathroom suites and there was fake paperwork to cover them.

  Our informant described the lorry, gave us the registration number and told us it was heading for Hillington Industrial Estate. We intercepted it, watched as some deliveries were made and then saw it go from Hillington towards Cathcart. We surmised that there would still be a bathroom suite left in the vehicle but it soon became obvious the driver knew he was being followed. An old trick I learned in my days driving Jags for the traffic department was to try to get a look at the rear-view mirror of any car you were following. Seeing the driver’s eyes in it will often reveal whether he knows he has a tail and I reckoned this guy had clocked us. So we stopped the lorry and the driver confirmed he had spotted us following him. I told him we had reasonable ground to believe he was transporting stolen goods. He, of course, denied it. But we searched the cab to make it look good before we turned our attention to the bathroom suite which we were pretty sure was in the back. The driver produced a delivery note for a customer in Hillington, the area we had just left.

  I ran an eye over the paperwork and said that someone must have given us a bum steer but added that we would escort him back to Hillington to let him make up lost time on the delivery. He insisted he was fine but I was adamant that a police escort would smooth the journey to the delivery point. When he finally realised we really meant it, he said, ‘It’s not going to Hillington – it’s going to a house in Cathcart Road, Govanhill.’

  We went with him to the address and knocked on the door, which was answered by middle-aged man. ‘Bathroom suite?’ I said and the man said, ‘Just bring it in.’ I had a better idea and just barged in. The phrase ‘Aladdin’s cave’ is a bit overused but it describes exactly what we found.

  We spotted three complete bathroom suites and many other valuable items of plumbing equipment. The driver and the owner of the flat were locked up and, while they languished behind bars, we paid a visit to their homes and it was no surprise to find they both had show-house style bathrooms. We then nabbed some of the warehouse staff and got some idea of where the stuff had been going. The bathroom furnishings were of high quality and our enquiries took us to a selection of wealthy suburbs where we found identical bathrooms, all recently acquired. It seems that, when offered a bargain, even high earners can’t resist something that has obviously fallen off the proverbial lorry. One example of this was particularly revealing. It was in a leafy upmarket part of Pollokshields and the owner was a high-ranking naval man. He got on his high horse and insisted that it was not stolen property but then shot himself in the foot by admitting he had bought it in a pub.

  All the suites we located in private houses were photographed and the ‘owners’ were interviewed. They were then all billed for the true cost by the firm from which they had been stolen and every one of them paid up. Our own inside-job man was offered a permanent position but he declined it. The case had taken a lot of police time and, during this, I became friendly with the owner of the plumbers’ merchants, a man called McGregor who was amusing company with a fund of good stories. He was fond of classical music and one of his favourite anecdotes concerned one of his birthdays. He got a phone call at his city home and, when he answered it, the line was silent. He then heard James Galway playing ‘Happy Birthday to You’ on the flute. McGregor said to Galway, ‘I thought you were playing the Carnegie Hall this week’.

  ‘I am,’ said the maestro, ‘it’s the interval!’

  They lorry driver in the case of the missing bathroom suites couldn’t do much about our searching of his lorry but it can be a different matter entirely if, in the course of an enquiry, you have to search a house. However, a good detective can develop the knack of getting into houses when necessary, even without a warrant. It takes a bit of doing at times because crooks tend to know exactly when a warrant is required and when it is not. To them, this is a sort of insurance policy when they have something to hide and the bizzies are on their tail. Clearly, when the police need a warrant, they should have one but the procedures involved in obtaining a warrant can be time-consuming and can slow an investigation down long enough for the bad guys to have time to hide stolen goods or other pieces of evidence. And, naturally, the times a warrant is most needed tend to be out of hours, which presents an additional difficulty.

  When I was a serving officer, if you had to, you could call out a fiscal or a sheriff to get one but it was not always the easiest of things to do. You could get a warrant from a justice of the peace but I usually felt that, if a case was going to end up in the Sheriff Court, then that is where the warrant should come from. So, in my flying squad days, I occasionally managed to get into a house without a warrant or without the express permission of the householder. But you had to be careful and I had one amusing case where you might say it was me who was the con man.

  Detective Constables John Bekier and Brian McLaughlin were investigating a break-in at premises where a large number of cigarette lighters and other items had been pinched. The boys had a tip-off that the stuff was in a house in Overnewton Square and they asked me to help on a visit to the place. We kn
ocked at the door and it was opened by an elderly man who seemed to be on his guard from the start – as though he had had some dealings with the cops in the past. In any case, he was adamant that, if we did not have a search warrant, we were not coming in. The constables looked at me for guidance and I gently suggested to the man that he might prefer it if we didn’t discuss his business at the door, where the neighbours might be earwigging on what was going on.

  He then showed us into the living room and, when I noticed six adults of the dangerous-looking kind sitting there, my heart sank a little. The guy who opened the door was, by this time, in full flight telling his friends that we were detectives and we had the effrontery to believe we could search the place without a warrant. The six nodded their heads sagely – that was simply not on. The owner of the flat then proudly announced to the assembled throng that the Serious Crime Squad had tried the same thing on him the previous week and he had sent them packing.

  However, he was not prepared for what happened next. I shook hands with him and remarked, ‘It’s a pleasure to meet someone who knows the law. You’re correct – we can’t search your house without a search warrant.’

  Bekier and McLaughlin were as taken aback as he was. The householder then blurted out, ‘You’re not like these other bastards – you’re quite a decent guy.’ If I had surprised them before, my next statement shocked them. I said, ‘You have let the side down. You are obviously not aware that, under Section 223 of the Summary Jurisdiction (Scotland) Act of 1963, if you or a representative swear at a police officer on or above the rank of sergeant, that officer, by law, can search your house without a search warrant. Therefore, I am entitled to begin a search.’ We found the stolen goods in a cupboard of the living room.

  Next we left the house for the station with the prisoner in the back of the car and, during the drive, he told us the names of the persons who had done the actual break-in. He offered to show us where they stayed and, on the way there, he suddenly pointed at two teenagers and said, ‘They did it – that’s them!’ We stopped the lads and arrested them and, by this time, the car was pretty crowded with the three cops squeezed into the front seats and the three villains in the back. One of the teenagers whispered to the householder, ‘Did they have a warrant?’ It was difficult to keep a straight face and a straight line in the road when he replied, ‘They didn’t need one – I swore at him and he’s a sergeant.’

  With all three locked up – the teenagers for the break-in and the householder for receiving stolen property – John Bekier set about preparing the case. The following morning, I went with him to the Sheriff Court. In those days, detectives reporting custody cases went to a room where there were around six procurators fiscal depute and handed over the papers that one or other of the fiscals would read. The system worked sweetly and problems were collectively worked out. Unfortunately, things have changed since these days and now some say it would be easier to get an audience with the Pope than a word with a Glasgow procurator fiscal depute.

  The depute dealing with our case read over the report that Bekier and I had handed in and was pretty quick to ask if we had search warrant. Our ‘No, sir’ was met with a testy ‘Why not?’ I jumped in to explain that we hadn’t needed one since the householder had sworn in my presence and, as he knew, that allowed me, as a sergeant, to search his house without a warrant. The depute said that he didn’t know that was the case and I took the papers to the registry where they were logged in. Back in the car, I suggested we just sat where we were for a bit, listening to the police radio. I suspected I knew what was about to the happen. Sure enough within minutes the call came – ‘Detective Sergeant Brown to return immediately to the Sheriff Court and report to Mr Herron.’ This meant big trouble – Henry Herron was the procurator fiscal for Glasgow and a genuine legend in legal circles.

  He was stern faced as he handed me a law book and said, ‘Show me where it says you can search a house if you are sworn at.’ Things were getting really serious. I had to admit it wasn’t in there and Mr Herron said, ‘I know that!’ but then, showing a flicker of humanity, he added, ‘If you can tell me what the section of the act you quoted refers to, I will not, on this occasion, report you to the chief constable.’ I was able to say to this man with encyclopaedic knowledge of the law that the section gives a sheriff the power to order forfeiture of housebreaking implements. His face was a picture. ‘How did you know that?’ he demanded and I told him I had asked Joe Beltrami (the legendary Sage of West Nile Street and one of the most famous defence lawyers in Glasgow’s history) on the way up the stairs.

  Henry Herron dismissed me with a motion of his hand and said, ‘Don’t slam the door on your way out.’ I didn’t.

  13

  DEATH UNDER THE WHEELS

  One of the most famous of Glasgow murder cases was that of James Robertson, who was hanged in Barlinnie for the murder of his mistress. Robertson was a cop and, as I told in my book Glasgow Crimefighter, there was a strange link between us. As a newly qualified beat constable, I first walked the hard, dangerous streets of the Gorbals wearing the number D69 on my collar and the last cop to have had that particular identification had been Robertson. The real interest in the Robertson case was that it was an early use of a motorcar as a murder weapon.

  James Robertson was a sad figure who could have escaped the gallows. He had driven his car over the prostrate body of his girlfriend in an attempt to make it look as if she had died as a result of a hit-and-run. And he could have got away with it if the investigating detectives had not been smart enough to spot, from the tyre marks and the damage to the body, that the car had moved back and forwards several times over the unfortunate woman. One of his defence team at the trial, the legendary Laurence Dowdall, believed that there could have been a lesser charge or sentence if Robertson had let the jury know the real nature of his affair. Instead he chose to protect what he saw as his wife’s reputation and declined to acknowledge that this was a crime of passion that had led to the death of a mistress. Instead, he insisted that the victim had been a ‘casual acquaintance’ rather than a lover and this condemned him in the eyes of the jury as a truly cold-blooded killer worthy of the rope. Before his walk to the gallows in the Bar-L Hanging Shed, he even thanked Jock Cameron and Manuel Kissen of his defence team and remarked, ‘I know I am going to hang in three or four days’ time but I am still glad I did not let my wife down in public.’

  That Robertson was caught was a both a tribute to vigilant cops and a demonstration of the difficulty in investigating hit-and-run crimes. I had a close insight into this in my own career with the tragic case of Sadie Young. It happened back in the sixties in the bitter cold of a January night on the windswept streets of the city. Four youngsters went for a Chinese meal in Gordon Street in the city centre and carefully parked and locked their car, a Ford Cortina. Fifteen minutes later, a few miles away in the Gorbals at Hospital Street, Sadie Young and her nephew, five-year-old Stephen Ure, were at a pedestrian crossing when they were mown down by this same Cortina, which was now a stolen vehicle. On impact, the car stopped momentarily. Young Stephen had been thrown aside and was not seriously injured but Sadie was under the car’s driveshaft. The driver immediately accelerated away and the car was last seen being driven at high speed eastwards along Caledonia Road. It was found abandoned in Braehead Street with the mangled body of Sadie Young still trapped under the wheels.

  I got a call at home and went as fast as I could to Gorbals Police Office to be briefed on what we knew about what had happened so far. Right away, there was an understandable complication. Senior officers were of the opinion that this matter could be handled by the traffic department but, as a detective, I took charge and decided to handle it as a murder enquiry. My reasoning was that, by driving off after the moment of impact, the driver of the stolen car deprived the victim of any chance of survival. Who knows what would have happened if an ambulance and prompt medical aid had been sought? Poor Sadie might have survived. I was much relieved late
r in the case when the procurator fiscal approved of my actions.

  Having finished their Chinese meal, the owner of the car and his friends had, of course, returned to find the Cortina missing. They called the police and it was clear that they had no involvement in the death. The body of Sadie Young was first examined in the street where it was found. The injuries were as horrific as any I have seen in a long career and, after our initial look, the body was taken to the city mortuary. The car was taken to Helen Street Police Office for examination. We were determined to track down the cold-blooded killer who had driven for some considerable distance with a dying woman trapped under the car. The forensic team gave their best. In particular, they were looking for fingerprint evidence but there simply were no dabs available.

  However, we did have one lead. After he had dumped the car, the driver had been seen running along a pathway on the south bank of the Clyde. Witnesses said he appeared to be carrying a blanket under his arm. We sent a support group to search the possible route of the running man and, sure enough, they discovered an old blanket that was still folded up. We got back to the owner of the Cortina who confirmed it had been in his car. This was all a bit worrying and the question arose of what the folded blanket might have concealed. Could it have been a gun?

  This was no simple hit-and-run – it was turning into a major murder inquiry and we sought the help of the press. The Glasgow tabloids keep a daily check on crime because they know that the armchair detectives and true-crime aficionados will buy more papers if they contain juicy stories about those who break the law. But they do also help in the fight against crime. They freely run stories on the latest leads and appeals for information on what can sometimes be obscure complexities of particular cases. And often they turn up vital clues. The circumstances of Sadie’s death made for real human interest and the papers were doing everything in their power to help our enquiry. My team from the Gorbals was joined by officers from the Serious Crime Squad and, at the briefing, I emphasised that we were looking for a murderer.