by Dick Kirby
A large-scale operation was set up to nab Martin when he returned for the passport: five OPs containing twelve officers, eleven squad vehicles containing twenty-seven officers (nine of them armed) plus fifteen additional C11 personnel. At that time, eight 42s (covert motorcycles) used by C11 were the total number for the whole of the Metropolitan Police District; six of them were deployed in this operation.
It was all to no avail; if Martin did arrive, his finely tuned sixth sense probably advised him to vanish down St James’ Park Underground station, which did not have an OP, a car or a surveillance officer on foot covering the entrances. The significance of this oversight becomes apparent in the next chapter.
What appeared to be just as promising was the telephone call I received from the manager of a very upmarket hotel. ‘I hope I’m not wasting your time,’ he said, ‘but a couple have booked into the hotel and they’ve given their names as Mr and Mrs David Martin.’
‘What do they look like?’ I asked.
‘Oh, he’s about thirty, I suppose, about five nine, slim, with blond hair,’ he replied, adding, ‘and she’s a pretty blond.’
‘Are they in their room, now?’ I said and the manager replied, ‘Yes, but I believe they may be going out.’
I put the phone down, thinking furiously. Over the past few days, I’d been finding out quite a bit about Martin. Coolness in a tricky situation – well, I knew all about that from my previous encounter with him and he’d demonstrated it in spades at the time of the PC Carr shooting. Arrogance? Yes. A massive ego? Too right. It would not be beyond the bounds of possibility for Martin to book into a classy hotel like this one, giving his real name and if nothing happened, to telephone the press the following day, telling them that he’d put himself on a plate for the police and still they’d been unable to catch him.
But if something did happen – what then? Was Martin trying to lure us into a situation where he could have a shootout? It was possible, and there were still those five missing handguns, plus an awful lot of ammunition. The manager thought the couple might soon be going out, so no time to organise a D11 team. All these thoughts had gone through my mind in a matter of seconds with no time for prevarication.
‘Gerry! Branchy!’ I called out to Gerry Gallagher and Alan Branch. ‘Grab some shooters and a driver – come on!’ We got into our cars and we roared out of Paddington Green and into the heart of Mayfair.
‘Are they still in their room?’ I asked the manager and he nodded, sweat beading his upper lip as he looked at the half-dozen scowling desperadoes forming a semi-circle around him in the hotel foyer. Some passing guests also gave us apprehensive glances before slotting us into the ‘bad news’ category and hurrying away.
‘Perhaps … perhaps, I should telephone them and ask them to …’ he started to suggest before Steve Holloway fixed him with a baleful look. ‘You go anywhere near a phone, mate,’ he growled, ‘and I’ll …’ and I gave him a look and shook my head. A good man in a tricky situation, Holloway could be a little impulsive with his comments.
‘Just take us up to the room,’ I told the manager and up we went, leaving a couple of authorised shots downstairs in case Martin was coming down as we were going up.
We were shown the outside of the room; at my request, the manager opened up a nearby unoccupied, similar room so that we could get some idea of the geography. Next, I discovered that the rooms either side of Mr and Mrs Martin’s room were occupied; and since bullets can very easily go through walls, I asked the manager quietly and without any fuss to get the guests out of the rooms. This he did, and as the bemused guests left their rooms their eyes bulged in astonishment at the very determined-looking men dressed in the type of clothing which failed to conform to the hotel’s dress code.
The corridor was clear and the shots downstairs were called up and took their place outside the door. Gerry Gallagher, revolver drawn, could hear from an adjoining room the introductory music to the television programme This is Your Life. In the event that Martin emerged from the room, brandishing one or more firearms, the thought in his mind, as he later told me, was, ‘This was your life, mate!’
I went into a vacant room, picked up the telephone and dialled Mr and Mrs Martin’s room number.
‘David Martin, this is the Flying Squad,’ I said, in a voice the Daily Mail later described as ‘chilling’. ‘Your room is surrounded. Get on your hands and knees and open the door. Now!’
David Martin, a slim, blond, 28-year-old singer with the group Hollywood, had just emerged from the bathroom to answer the telephone and was clad only with a towel around his waist. He dutifully got on his hands and knees and started shuffling across the room towards the door. At that moment, his blonde girlfriend, similarly in a state of semi-déshabillé, walked out of the bathroom to see her boyfriend performing some very odd antics as he crossed the carpet, endeavouring to struggle into a pair of underpants. Before the thought could cross her mind that this might be some sort of an erotic game in which she could be invited to participate, the door flew open and she saw some of the most frightening looking men in the entire universe, pointing revolvers right at the middle of her paramour’s forehead. Realisation immediately set in. ‘It’s not him!’ she screamed and the gun-toting ruffians, after a close inspection of Mr Martin’s naked shoulder which revealed no recent gunshot wounds, conceded that he was not.
Soothed with a number of large scotches, supplied by the management, the wholly innocent Mr Martin later told reporters, ‘It was terrifying; my life flashed before my eyes. They were so tough and professional. There was no way I was going to try anything on.’ Perhaps thinking we might return, he added, ‘They were only doing their job and they behaved perfectly.’ As an afterthought, he said, ‘I might change my name if this goes on much longer!’
This episode prompted a quote from the real David Martin’s doting father: ‘He escaped for only one thing – his freedom. And now he’s got it, he’s got to keep on moving. If they want to catch him, they are going to have to do it without my help.’
He also told the Daily Express: ‘The police have shot one innocent man already. My son is innocent, too – until proven guilty. Since David escaped, he has been branded as viscous – it isn’t true.’ Cynical, hard-bitten detectives had a hard time swallowing that one as no doubt did the shot security guard Edward Burns, Police Constable Carr and Detective Constable Finch.
Later that evening, we were back in action again; a tip-off led us to a Kilburn address at Belsize Road, which, wearing body armour, we duly stormed. ‘One minute, everything was quiet,’ said resident Michael Claney, ‘and the next, the street was being blocked off and police marksmen were diving into doorways.’
But although a man was brought from the house, made to lie down and was frisked, it wasn’t Martin; no more than he was at a house in Swiss Cottage which we later surrounded. Late that evening, I sat down in the canteen at Paddington Green police station with a cup of coffee. None of us could relax with a drink; since we could be called out for an armed operation at any moment, at any time of day or night, the thought of alcohol was out of the question. We were getting lots of action but absolutely no results. As I sipped my coffee and stared out at the black, impenetrable night sky over Paddington, I thought, ‘You bastard – where are you?’
I thought back to my own successes catching criminals who were on the run. I had always put myself in their position. Where would I go? Who could I go to for help? Where would I hide? Using this logic, I had often succeeded in tracking them down. Martin though was different. He was inventive, he was clever. He had been planning to get a false passport but that had been thwarted. Might he try it again? I shook my head – unlikely. Would he go somewhere else, somewhere outside London? This went round and round in my head; until I thought ‘No.’ He’s here in Paddington, Hampstead, Notting Hill, Belsize Park. I nodded. This is his territory, his habitat. This is where he’ll stay, I thought, to take us all on until a final confrontation.
&n
bsp; We were unaware of course that our adversary was in a hovel, just over a mile away from us. I’ve often wondered if at that time Martin, like a fox gone to earth, was similarly gazing out of the window of that reeking tip of a flat thinking, ‘Where can I go? Who will help me? Where can I hide next?’ It’s possible, but also more than probable that seething with hatred for those hunting him, he was thinking, ‘Fuck the lot of you!’ Who knows?
‘The boys are waiting to go, Sargie.’ This was Tony Freeman, who looked at me somewhat askance, probably due to me staring out of the window, muttering and nodding and shaking my head. ‘You coming?’ I stood up. ‘Yes,’ I answered. And then, still looking out of the window, I thought once more about Martin’s whereabouts. Now I was certain. ‘Yes,’ I said once more, loudly and I expect Tony thought that I was repeating myself, because he said impatiently, ‘Come on, Dick – it’s gone midnight.’
I looked at my watch; he was right. It was now Friday, 28 January 1983.
Plotting Up
That morning, we took our time getting over to Paddington Green. There had been no urgent phone calls during the night, no ‘get here quick, on the double’ messages, so we’d all managed to have breakfast with our families and now, showered, shaved and relaxed we arrived at the office mid-morning. There was a lot of laughter and good natured leg-pulling going on; someone had opened that day’s edition of Police Orders to discover that Gerry Gallagher, Mick Geraghty and Tony Yeoman had been awarded commissioner’s commendations for ‘bravery and persistence in a case of armed robbery’ where the participants had each been sentenced to fourteen years’ imprisonment. The chaffing was all a front; those of us in the know were aware that the commendation was very well merited. I’d been an aid to CID with Detective Sergeant Tony Yeoman, who would later achieve immortality after being covertly filmed arresting two armed robbers by the simple expedient of scooping both of them up in his arms and running them into a shop’s plate-glass window.
We sat around, checked any possible sightings of Martin and chatted over coffee. Some of the team checked and cleaned their revolvers; but just because I’ve painted a picture of enforced idleness, it does not mean that nothing was going on in the hunt for Martin. Every piece of information coming in to the investigation was passed to the office manager; no matter how vague or even absurd the intelligence was, it would be entered into an action book and the inquiry allocated to an officer. One such action was a sighting, just a glimpse, of Martin in a brown Ford Sierra; that was all. No registration number, nothing. So it was allocated to 10 Squad’s Detective Sergeant Cam Burnell with the directive ‘trace the Sierra’.
I liked Cam. At six foot three and weighing sixteen stone, he was a formidable adversary on both the rugby field and in the nabbing of armed robbers. This was demonstrated when we had tackled a gang who were just about to rob a rent collector in East London. The gangleader saw me sprinting towards him and since he knew me well from a previous encounter, he took off like a greyhound. The adrenaline which had flooded into his system had accelerated his flight and I realised he was drawing further and further away from me when suddenly – Whoosh! – I was overtaken by Cam. The robber darted round a corner, followed by Cam and when I too rounded the corner, there was the robber lying face down and motionless in the road, with Cam standing over him, his police revolver pointing straight at him and an ominous pall of smoke enveloping them both. Initially, I thought that Cam had shot him but what I was unable to understand was why, being so close behind them, I hadn’t heard the sound of the shots. All was soon revealed; first, it was a cold November day and second, the robber had been so traumatised when sixteen-stone Cam landed on his back that he had emptied his bladder – fortunately, it was steam rather than gunsmoke enveloping them. When Cam wasn’t battering adversaries on the rugby field or hauling urine-soaked robbers to their feet, he was the best of companions – and what’s more, a pretty shrewd detective.
‘Trace the Sierra’ – an almost impossible task. This is how Cam did it. Martin was driving a brown Sierra. Did it belong to him? Almost certainly not; it had been a long, long time since Martin had surrendered hard cash for a commodity which he could so easily steal. Did it belong to one of his known associates? Their vehicles were checked – no brown Sierra. In any case, who in their right mind, with all the up-to-the-moment publicity would lend their car to Martin? They would believe themselves to be under constant observation by the police, even if this was not the case. Therefore it would be reasonable to assume that the car was stolen. Cam’s next step was to sit down with an obliging operator with access to the Police National Computer (PNC).
In the time between Martin’s escape from court on 24 December 1982 and the sighting of the car, how many Ford Sierras had been stolen in the United Kingdom? Even though the Sierra range had only been launched three months previously on 15 October 1982, after the PNC operator had rattled her fingers on the keyboard, back came the answer – an awful lot! This was going to take forever, so Cam narrowed down the search. How many had been stolen in the Metropolitan Police District during that time? The answer slimmed down the field, by quite a bit. Next, how many of those Sierras were brown? More were knocked off the list. Next, how many had been recovered prior to the sighting of Martin? The number of stolen brown Sierras was getting less and less. Details of these remaining vehicles were printed off. Cam went through them, one by one, looking for a clue, any hint of a clue. And then, one caught his eye. It had been stolen, just prior to the sighting of Martin, from a car park at Heathrow – exactly from where he had stolen other cars in the past. Bingo. Registration number BYG 780Y. Cam felt this must be the one. Of course, Martin could have changed the registration plates – he had done so in the past, as a matter of course – but he would have to have purchased them from a shop and it seemed the whole nation was on full Martin alert. Would he risk doing that? Probably not. So if this was the car that Martin had stolen, Cam had to assume that the original registration plates would still be affixed to it. It was a case full of ifs, ands and buts – it was all Cam had. Details of this vehicle were entered on the PNC with the caveat that if it was seen by police, under no circumstances were they to attempt to stop it or arrest the occupant, but to inform ‘Central 899’, the Flying Squad switchboard, which in those days was manned twenty-four hours per day, seven days a week.
It was an excellent piece of detective work; and Cam was not alone. Much more was going on behind the scenes. A reward of £1,000 was offered to the first person to give information leading directly to Martin’s arrest, and a similar amount had been offered for the arrest of Harry Roberts, seventeen years earlier, after he went on the run following the murder of three police officers. This information was released to the press at 4 p.m. on that Friday afternoon and it was timed to coincide with the evening’s major television bulletins.
From the judicial side of the investigation, Lester Purdy and Peter Enter had been charged with handling the goods stolen by Martin and, having appeared at court, had been remanded in custody for a week. Susie Stephens had been similarly charged; however, she was in a precarious position. She needed help and she got it. She was given bail, her telephone calls were intercepted, twenty-four hour surveillance was carried out on her flat and she was told, quite unequivocally, ‘We want Martin on a plate.’
On the Thursday night, she had spoken to Martin on the telephone and agreed to meet him ‘at the last place we met’ the following night. Martin knew that that was The Milk Churn Restaurant, 70 Heath Street, Hampstead.
Heath Street stretched from north to south, and close by the junction with Hampstead High Street was Hampstead Underground station, on the east footway. The restaurant was situated about fifty yards north of the junction; between restaurant and junction were two side roads, both on the eastern side, Streatley Place and Back Lane, both possible escape routes.
Inside The Milk Churn was a detective inspector from C11, with a female colleague. Initially, the manager Tom Chilton was unaware of
the police presence although the clandestine aspect of the observation was spoiled when there was a phone call to the restaurant, which caused Jane Howard, a waitress, to call out, ‘Is there a Detective Inspector Tucker, here?’
Long before the meet, Mick Geraghty, wearing a body set (together with other officers) staked out the plot. OPs were set up, one in the Nag’s Head public house at 81 Heath Street which overlooked the restaurant. At 5.30 p.m., squad officers had approached the manager Steve Ellis to ask his permission to use a private room upstairs. ‘They didn’t tell us why they were there and we didn’t ask,’ said the manager’s wife Christine. The pub was designated OP 1.
Inside the premises were Detective Inspector Brightwell, Detective Sergeants Bradley, O’Rourke, Yeoman, Benwell and Burnell, and Detective Constable Chapman; these last three officers were armed. Also present was Detective Constable Francis from Paddington Green police station, who knew Martin well.
A second OP was set up at Kingswell Flats at 58 Heath Street. This was situated south of the restaurant and on the same side of the road but a curve in the road would permit the watchers there to see both the front of the restaurant and also OP 1. This was manned by Detective Chief Superintendent Brown, Detective Chief Inspector Street, Detective Sergeants Branch and Suckling and Detective Constable Gallagher. These last three were armed. In addition, Detective Constables Clarke and Geraghty were present, as was Police Constable Lucas from Paddington Green police station, who, like DC Francis in OP 1, was there for identification purposes.
A map showing the location of police at The Milk Churn restaurant.
There was a third OP; this was situated at the Nationwide Building Society premises, right at the junction with Holly Hill and Heath Street. Detective Constable Arnold from Paddington Green was there as was the squad driver, seconded for surveillance purposes, Police Constable Colbourne.