by Neil Woods
He stamped upstairs and I listened to the clump of his shoes as he crossed the floorboards. There followed a much slower and quieter creaking as he crept back out of the room.
When he came back downstairs his voice was suddenly extremely quiet and very business-like. ‘Yes, umm, we’re going to have to evacuate.’
‘Right,’ replied Phil, ‘we’ll pull the team out now.’
‘No,’ the officer quietly but firmly responded, ‘I mean the whole town.’
It turned out that in addition to the dynamite, this old pair of lovebirds had a significant quantity of plastic explosives up in that wardrobe. Lord knows what they planned to do with it, but their entire little retirement village had to be cordoned off and evacuated.
On another job, we tracked five automatic weapons to a house in Teignmouth, a sleepy fishing town on the south coast of Devon. The whole team drove down, assuming that together we could wrap up the enquiry in a night.
The house was large and tastefully done up. It was owned by a guy who lived there with his wife and teenage son; he was reclusive, but otherwise the set-up seemed completely unremarkable.
We stormed in and found the guns we were looking for. But we also found 357 other firearms, and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
This place was stocked for war. There were Navy chests full of pistols; side panels slid back to reveal racks of shotguns, and a belt-fed Vickers machine gun nestled among the rafters in the attic. Along with this, we found several hundred grand in dollars, Deutschmarks, rubles and francs, bags of diamonds, and twenty-four shrink-wrapped tubes of solid gold South African krugerrands.
The entire team was completely gobsmacked. We may have been a major ops unit, but we had definitely just stumbled on something above our pay-grade. We got the guy locked up – freaking the hell out of the local Exeter cops – then Harry got straight on to Special Branch, who in turn, called in MI5.
By the time we wrapped up late that night, the entire team was completely strung out. We all needed a drink, so we piled into a cab and told the driver to take us to the nearest open club.
Tensions were running high after the stress of the day. People were getting on each other’s nerves. We hadn’t got a quarter of the way through our first pint before something was said and Phil and another detective were up and grappling each other by the throat.
We broke the two guys up, but I’d had enough. I just said to myself, Oh fuck this, I’m going on to that dance floor, and throwing myself into the arms of the first beautiful woman I see.
And that’s exactly what I did. Her name was Celine and she was wonderful. I ended up stopping at her place that night.
But, once again, there was some karmic payback for the extramarital fun. I’d recently had a vasectomy. I had made the decision to stay in my marriage for the sake of my children, but I wasn’t planning on having any more.
The next morning I turned up to help catalogue our evidence. By 10 a.m. I was feeling uncomfortable. By 11:30 I was doubled over with excruciating pain where no man ever wants to feel it.
I was rushed to the hospital, sat on a gurney and told to drop my trousers. ‘Oh… Oh right. Yes, we’ll have to do something about that.’
Apparently the sutures from the vasectomy had been sewn too tight. Due to various exertions the previous evening, something had got twisted and now the blood flow was blocked. My testicles were swollen like cricket balls, and about the same colour.
They had to do the procedure then and there, with no anaesthetic. I have never felt such acute, searing agony – nor such immediate, sweet relief when it was over. By 5:30 I was back with the team, cataloguing evidence with an ice pack on my lap.
We never did find out conclusively why that guy had so many guns in his posh Devon home. Harry’s theory was that he was the quartermaster for a far-right, white supremacist group, arming themselves for some sort of ‘rivers of blood’ doomsday scenario.
But what I do know is that he was only sent down for one year. This chap had an armoury that would make Hezbollah wet the bed, and he got less time than people I’d put away for slinging a few pills. One couldn’t help the thought that sometimes the law might function differently for wealthy white men.
But, there were a couple of positive outcomes. Not only had we taken a few hundred guns out of the hands of lunatic neo-Nazis, but also Celine and I stayed in touch. When I went back to give evidence, we were able to meet up again.
Like everyone else, I stared at the television on 11 September 2001 and knew nothing would ever be quite the same. Even up in Derbyshire we all knew these events would have reverberations across the world of law enforcement. But no one had any idea what the implications would be. As it happened, our firearms case was about to force me to brush up against the world of terrorism investigation – with very unexpected results.
Faisal Mostafa was a chemistry professor with a PhD from Manchester Polytechnic. He had been raised among Stockport’s large Bengali community, then moved to Birmingham to take up a teaching position.
He was also a constant fixture on the security services’ watch list.
Mostafa had first been convicted for possession of a firearm in 1996, in connection with a plot to assassinate the Israeli ambassador. Then in 2000 he had been arrested again, on the suspicion that he was using his chemistry skills as a bomb-maker for British jihadi groups. When I interviewed him he was on remand for those charges at Woodhill Prison, a grim Category A facility in Milton Keynes.
Our interest in Faisal was based on the fact that the gun he had been caught with in the 1996 Israeli ambassador plot was one of our very own Derbyshire specials. Jihadi terrorists aren’t known for voluntarily cooperating with police enquiries, so we were very surprised when he agreed to my interview request.
The first thing he did was to apologise for not being able to offer me tea. This was odd. We were in a maximum security interview suite – he was the prisoner, and I was the cop. But as far Faisal was concerned, I was his guest, so he should have been able to offer me something.
This was emphatically not the psychopathic jihadist I had been expecting. Throughout our interviews Faisal was unassuming, softly spoken and unfailingly polite and courteous.
He also consistently maintained his innocence. He may have had the tips of both middle fingers missing from explosive accidents, but he absolutely insisted that he was just a geeky science nerd who loved making his own fireworks. ‘Neil, I understand why the security services are interested in me. I know I’ve been silly in the past. There’s no resentment – but really, they will find that I am not who they are looking for.’
I didn’t know what to believe. Faisal genuinely did come across as a gentle, interesting, sympathetic character. On the other hand, in the past he had definitely associated with known jihadists, been found in possession of Hizb ut-Tahrir literature, and had been testing explosives in various Birmingham parks. As much as I respected Faisal’s intelligence, I didn’t want to be suckered into sympathising with a murderous terrorist by a bit of charm and basic good manners.
Luckily, I didn’t have to decide. I was there to chase guns. And in this at least, Faisal was incredibly helpful. He detailed with a scientist’s precision how he had bought a deactivated gun from our suspects in Derbyshire, along with the kit to reactivate it – which of course, he had the knowledge to do quite easily.
At Woodhill there were two wings in which high-risk prisoners were kept apart from general population prisoners. One was for terror suspects, the other for sexual offenders and psychopaths.
Faisal had originally been held on ‘Jihadi Wing’. But when he had agreed to talk to us the other terrorists had started bullying him, so he had to be transferred onto ‘Psycho Wing’. This led directly to our most interesting exchange.
It was coming to the end of our final interview. Faisal leaned in close. ‘Listen Neil, there is something else I have to tell you. There’s another prisoner here who I think you should know about. He’s dangerou
s.’
‘Go on.’ I was intrigued.
‘This man, he comes to my cell and talks to me because I know about guns. He is completely obsessed with guns. But this man – Wesley Dickens – he is evil.’
At that name, I stiffened instinctively. This was a name I knew.
Wesley Dickens was from my hometown of Buxton, and was familiar to every detective in Derbyshire. He had first been arrested at around twenty years old for having a couple of sub-machine guns. But his father was a wealthy landowner and he was let off with a conditional discharge. A few years later he was living in Stockport and had gone on a rampage in full combat gear, threatening people with a reactivated AK-47. Due to legal technicalities he ended up only getting two years.
Of course, in prison he had made underworld drug connections. A few years later he was arrested again, with three Ingram MAC-10s and about fifteen nine-bars of hash. This time his psychological profile landed him on the high-risk wing of Woodhill Prison.
Which brings us to Faisal Mostafa. Apparently, Dickens was coming into Faisal’s cell, and saying some very scary things.
‘He says he dreams of killing someone,’ Mostafa whispered to me. ‘He says that he will never feel truly complete until he has murdered somebody – Neil, I’m telling you, this man is evil. He is sick… but he’s up for early release in a few weeks. If he gets out I am sure he is going to murder someone. Is there anything you can do?’
Here was a suspected jihadist warning me that a Derbyshire lad represented a danger to society. This was something I had to take seriously.
I took the story to Harry Dick, and we wrote a letter to the parole board saying we had information that Wesley Dickens was fantasising about murdering someone, that he was obsessed with guns, and that as this was his third firearms offence he needed a full psychological profile done – and should certainly not be eligible for early release.
We received a letter back saying that our concerns had been noted. Of course, a month after, he was released at the earliest opportunity.
Six weeks later he had murdered someone.
In prison he had made arrangements to set up an amphetamine production lab. Once released, he had sourced PMK, the precursor chemical, and found a farmer willing to let them use his land. The farmer then got cold feet, so Dickens and an accomplice broke into his house, dragged him to the bathroom and fired nine shots into his head.
As gruesome as this was, for me there was a bizarre personal element to the story. When we were teenagers growing up in Buxton, Wesley Dickens had been a key fixture in my, and particularly Sam’s, circle of friends.
Over the years I’ve frequently seen Faisal Mostafa’s name in the news. He beat the charges for which he was on remand when I interviewed him. But since then he has been arrested, released and rearrested many times, in both Britain and Bangladesh. I have still never been able to make up my mind whether he was just a misunderstood chemistry teacher, or a cold-blooded terrorist bomb-maker.
We wrapped up the firearms investigation successfully – managing to secure a conviction for the Derbyshire arms dealers, and take thousands of weapons off the streets. It had been immensely rewarding, and a real education, to work with such an experienced and talented set of detectives.
But the War on Drugs still needed to be fought. The bosses knew how to exploit people for their particular skill set, and mine was undercover work. Not long after the Derbyshire investigation ended, I got the call.
It was time to leave behind the detective’s suit and tie, and go back to the stained tracksuit and bomber jacket of the homeless street junkie.
CHAPTER 11
LEICESTER
EVERYTHING CHANGED WITH the Leicester job.
From the get-go this operation had a different rhythm from anything I had done before. But although it would prove to be one of the most dangerous assignments I ever took on, Leicester wasn’t even strictly ‘my’ job. Once again, I had been brought in to save a failing operation.
Jim Horner took me for a pint and explained that he had been brought in to run an undercover operation for the Leicestershire Constabulary. Two separate teams had been in place for over a month, but no one had been able to get past the lowest street-level user-dealers. They needed someone with experience of infiltrating gangs and working their way up the criminal hierarchies.
I have to admit I was flattered to get called back in after so long. But the more I heard about how this operation had been organised, the more apprehensive I began to feel.
To me, having two teams deploying the same tactics in one small city seemed not just over the top, but actually reckless. OCGs talk to each other. Word spreads around a city’s criminal networks faster than the clap around a brothel. All it takes is one slip, by one undercover, to blow the whole operation for both teams – and potentially put everyone at risk. Undercover operations should be deployed like a scalpel – this sounded like a pneumatic drill.
I was also used to operating alone or with one trusted partner – and I had always designed my own operational strategy. The thought of coming into a larger team and having to start again, not even knowing what mistakes these guys may have already made, made me very uneasy.
But Jim was persuasive, pouring it on thick about how a major new organisation had been created specifically to run undercover ops, so we would now be supported by multiple agencies and have access to the latest cutting-edge kit.
This got my attention. With my experience in CID I was developing an interest in the larger structures of major investigations. But really, once again I was just unable to walk away from a challenge. Jim and I clinked glasses, and I was in.
What I was to learn was that this was not only a transformative moment in my own career, but also in the entire evolution of undercover tactics in British policing.
Up until now I had been operating completely ad hoc. I had a reputation for undercover work, so Jim Horner would get a call from some regional police force. He’d have a word with my DI, and off I’d go.
Now though, five forces had combined to create the grand-sounding East Midlands Special Operations Unit, or EMSOU (we pronounced it M-Sue). Undercover tactics were becoming professionalised.
Under the new system, if any force wanted to initiate an undercover operation they would have to clear it through EMSOU, who would allocate resources and monitor progress. This seemed like a positive step – undercover work is intensely invasive, and should only ever be used as a measure of last resort.
But the EMSOU revolution went far deeper. Thus far my deployments had primarily been short, sharp, in-and-out jobs. The new organisation promised a network of shared intelligence and planning between different agencies, allowing for far more complex and ambitious operations. Deployments would now last for months, instead of days or weeks.
Instead of focusing an operation on one specific target, we would now be given the time, support and equipment to go into an area and build our own picture of how criminal networks operated. This meant that when the bust came down we had the potential to generate hundreds of arrests, rather than just a handful. The EMSOU bosses made wild pronouncements about how we were the elite of British policing, and would receive the best equipment and tech support that money could buy.
But much more significant than any shiny new kit, the formation of EMSOU meant an entirely new operational command structure.
To preserve the anonymity of the undercover agents, and prevent leaks amidst the new sprawl of agencies, the identity of each undercover would now only be known by his DI, his DS and one other experienced cop, known as the Cover Officer. The Cover’s job was not only to sort out logistics and act as a conduit between the undercover and the bosses, but also to act as the undercover’s advocate, looking out for their interests if the brass started making unreasonable requests or ignoring potential hazards.
I could see the wisdom in all this. It was a good system – when it worked. But, while big organisations might enable ambitious missions, they
also allow greater potential for atrophy and error. There would be many moments when I would come to long for the amateurish, making-it-up-as-we-went-along mentality of the early days.
The first briefing was a complete disaster.
Just as I was being officially introduced to Carl, the DI for my new squad, and Rajesh, my Cover Officer, there was a loud knock at the door. Without waiting for a reply, in walked Richard, the DI from the other squad, stationed across town.
‘Ah, so this is the new boy then? Woods is it?’ he jibed in what sounded like a deliberately affected cocky, laddish tone.
This was a concern. Under the EMSOU rules this guy shouldn’t even have known where our squad’s HQ was. And he definitely shouldn’t have known my name, or seen my face. Wasn’t the whole point of EMSOU to protect our identities? The system was still new and there were bound to be some teething problems while it bedded in, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the operation was falling apart before we’d even begun.
Jim shot me a let’s just get on with it glance, and tried to continue. ‘Yes gentlemen, this is Neil Woods. As we’ve had trouble penetrating the gang organisations in Leicester, Neil is going to take over some of our undercover work and see if he can bring his extensive experience to bear.’
He didn’t get another word in before Richard interrupted, ‘Well, I would like to point out that street crime in our sector has actually fallen.’
‘Yes – thanks to Intel from our team on the ground,’ Carl immediately snapped back.
I noticed Raj, who had been taking notes, drop his pen and roll his eyes. It only went downhill from there.
Over the course of the briefing it became painfully obvious to me what was going on. The two teams deployed on this operation weren’t working together. In fact, it looked more like Carl and Richard had an obvious rivalry, and the two squads were actually working against each other. As far as I could tell, all the macho posturing was actually getting in the way of the investigation. No wonder this lot were making so little progress.