by Cliff Todd
7/7 and 21/7 delving into room 101
Cliff Todd
Contents
Introduction
7 July 2005
8–11 July
12 July
12–14 July – Leeds
21 July
23 – 31 July
August – November 2005
December – New Year 2006
Pagan Truffle
The Forensic Evidence – Pre-trial (for 21/7)
The Trial
The Defence Expert
Millie
The Trial – continued…
Jean Charles de Menezes
Application to Appeal
Copyright © 2017 Cliff Todd
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To the memory of Vanessa my wife, for all that she was to me. And to Jim & Gillian, without whose encouragement I would never have seen this through.
Introduction
Room 101 – in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dread place where one’s worst fears are kept, as instruments of torture and control. Popularised by the TV programme as somewhere to drop things into, anything you don’t like or don’t want to face. And if you don’t go back in there, you won’t have to face them – maybe. The thing is, for me anyway, that stuff has not actually gone away, it just sort of – lurks. Which can have its own effects, if perhaps more subtle than trying to deal head-on with whatever you’re not facing.
When I retired, I was asked if I was going to write my memoirs, to which I replied, quite emphatically, no. I was done with work. My wife, Vanessa, had cancer, but it was under control, we and her doctors all thought she would have a few years in which we could do lots of stuff that we had always wanted to, and basically have some quality time together. Life had other ideas, and a few years turned into six months, when she died very suddenly. This hit me really quite hard, and my main way of coping was to do what I think I’ve always tended to do – tell myself to suck it up, there’s nothing I can do about it, move on. But I also started writing a bit, just purely personal stuff, not for anyone to read, and it seemed to help a bit. Anyway, after a couple of years, I was more or less done with that, but I still quite liked writing, so was casting about for something a bit more specific to write about. And then I just suddenly thought about 7/7 and 21/7 – that was a very intense part of my life, which I had never really talked about much, just bits and pieces with close family and friends. Maybe I could write something about that, might even show it to some family or friends, if they were interested – there was certainly a story there. And while in the past I had written much on the subject, it was in a professional capacity, so all very objective and addressing specific questions for specific audiences. This time I could write something personal, and with no constraints, since it would be for my own benefit.
And so I started writing it. But in doing so, I was having to try and remember things that had long since been put out of my mind – and I gradually realised that actually, I had never really thought about any of it in any sort of reflective way – I had just moved through it, never looking back. So when I began, thoughts I had about personal aspects of this story started out as one thing, but as I reflected, while trying to remember the course of events, those thoughts and opinions gradually became somewhat different. And only right at the end did the term ‘Room 101’ occur to me, but when it did, I thought – “You know what, that is a really good metaphor for what I have been doing in my head, just dropping stuff in there so I don’t have to face it.” Probably for much of my life, but certainly where 7/7 and 21/7 were concerned. And so I missed the chance to see that I might be being affected by what I was dealing with – and the effect that might have had on Vanessa. And now, of course, it’s too late to change any of that. Perhaps there’s a useful lesson in there for others who might find themselves in similar situations at some point in their lives.
Anyway, now it’s written. Of course, it is now several years since all this happened, and although I had a few notes, basically this is all from memory – so it is bound to be flawed and hazy, certainly not an accurate chronicle. And I will say this here – I think I did an OK job with it all, but only because of everyone else who contributed – but I believe that the whole 7/7 and 21/7 thing was the main reason for my OBE, though I can’t ever know for sure. Bottom line, I don’t think that my contribution was even close to meriting the OBE, but I was only too happy to accept it – for Vanessa’s sake, for all she’d had to put up with; late-night calls, disappearing off to places at short notice, generally not being around much, and for all my own faults. And then she was so proud, and she gets a day at the Palace, and she loved that all. So as far as I’m concerned, the OBE was hers. Anyway – the story…
7 July 2005
First, a quick explanation of where I worked at the time. This is an establishment known as the Forensic Explosives Laboratory (FEL). The function of the FEL is to provide police forces with a forensic investigation service into the explosives aspects of any incidents of the criminal misuse of explosives on the UK mainland. The FEL is based on a Ministry of Defence (MOD) site at Fort Halstead, near Sevenoaks in Kent. Hereinafter, this establishment is referred to as either the Fort or FEL, which I have used interchangeably. The part of the MOD that this site is used by is the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, otherwise known as Dstl, and FEL is part of this larger organisation. The main point to note here is that, although FEL’s work is largely for the police, rather than the MOD, and is hence generally quite self-contained within Dstl, FEL does, on occasion, need access to the wider facilities of Dstl, and this will become apparent later in this narrative.
Sat at my desk, maybe 08.30, quite early for me, can’t remember why, but that was about to change (along with many other things, though I knew nothing of that just then). The phone rings. It’s Geoff (FEL’s police liaison officer), says there’s reports of an incident on the Tube, Piccadilly line, Russell Square. They’re not sure what, calling it a ‘power outage’, but just a heads up at the moment. So I wander down to the liaison office for a chat. What’s a ‘power outage’ then? No one’s sure but Geoff’s got the news on now. And something certainly seems to be happening, and some first reports that there may be some casualties. From a power outage? Gradually it becomes clear that whatever it is, something quite bad has happened and SO15 (the Met police anti-terrorist branch, SO13 as they were then, but SO15 now) are attending.
So I wander round to Kim’s office, give her a heads up that she may need to a
ttend a scene, but not sure at the moment. Also suggested that if there is something, it may be good for Richard to go along, he’s not been to a scene before. In hindsight, maybe I wouldn’t have suggested that, but I had no clue at that point how the day (and in a way my life) was going to unfold.
Well, things accelerated pretty quickly from there, with more reports of similar incidents at Aldgate and Edgware stations. ‘Power outage’ wasn’t cutting it any longer. As luck would have it Sarah L was staying in her flat near Canary Wharf at the time, and she hadn’t left for FEL, having heard about problems on the Tube, and she phoned in, so I asked her if she was OK to go straight to Aldgate and offer her services to whoever was there for SO15 – which of course she was.
Meanwhile, Kim and Richard arrived at the RVP (rendezvous point) for Russell Square – by which time a bus had blown up in Tavistock Square, so SO15 asked Kim to go there, and leave poor Richard at Russell Square – some introduction to a scene! Indeed, given the growing realisation that some kind of multiple attack on London was in progress, Richard being only an assistant case officer, should not and could not be left at that scene by himself.
Which still left Edgware Station, so Hazel was despatched there. Claire was on leave, and Sharon was somewhere else, for the morning at least, so that left only me to go and rescue Richard. So a police car was summoned to the Fort – but by then management were beginning to stir themselves, and asking about – guess what – health and safety, have to have someone from SHEF (Safety, Health, Environment and Fire, our health and safety department)! Well as it happened, my brother Rob was working in SHEF for Dstl at the time, so I said OK, if I must have someone, I’ll take him. Later, there were mutterings that I should have taken Charlie from SHEF, because he was more senior. I won’t get into all that here (that could be its own chapter!). Suffice it to say, I simply said that Charlie’s safety expertise is with explosives – I don’t need that, I am one of Dstl’s top explosives experts, especially with IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). If I need any safety advice, it’s for all the rest (structures, noxious fumes, dust, asbestos, etc.), so if I must take someone (this need to have someone from SHEF never ever happened before or after this day!) then Rob was it. And he was very useful, for many reasons, but not least because he could deal with risk assessments, for Russell Square and the other scenes, and I could concentrate on the reason FEL was actually there, which was to help the police work out what had happened, and provide information to help with investigative leads.
So that’s it, all available people were now deployed from the lab (and pretty much from SO15 I think). Fortunately there were no more scenes – just then at any rate. By now the powers that be were approaching controlled panic mode – the London public transport system was shut down, the rescue/paramedic services were now at full stretch, and still no one really knew what had happened, beyond some kind of probable bomb attacks – but most particularly, if the perpetrators were still out there. Were there more to come? If so, what should they be looking for?
Rob and I arrived at Russell Square, courtesy of a police car from the Fort, at around midday, and found the RV point – a proper SO15 wagon by then. There we were told that Richard and the SO15 scene manager (Robin) had gone down to the train, along with the EXPO and maybe some others. (An EXPO is a Metropolitan Police Explosives Officer – the Met has its own bomb disposal teams, all ex-military EOD [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] officers. Military EOD teams are used for the rest of the country.) This was precisely what I had wanted to avoid – Richard being dragged down there on his own. So I said that Rob and I had to go and join them, which after some debate, we were allowed to do. We were escorted into the station, down in the lift (no escalators there), and along to the end of the platform, where the tunnel starts. Here I couldn’t help noticing a lot of discarded paramedic type materials, empty wrappers, IV bottles and such like, spread around the platform end. Presumably where some people had been treated, under better conditions than just in the tunnel on the tracks. Though how they had got there if they couldn’t walk wasn’t immediately apparent – there was no sign of any train in the tunnel as far as we could see down it, so quite a carrying operation then, if that had been required? Anyway – this was the point at which our escort stopped, and said we would have to walk along the track through the tunnel from there – a few hundred metres he thought! Hmm, OK then – having been assured that the power was definitely off to the tracks and would definitely not be coming back on anytime soon! So off we set, avoiding the conductor rail assiduously, despite being assured it was off – we both felt disinclined to test it!
We must have had a torch, though I don’t fully recall that, but we had gone maybe 100 metres, and could see that the tunnel curved, when we both heard a rumbling that seemed to come from up ahead. Which there should definitely not be! The whole system was shut down. We knew this. Some kind of tunnel echo effect? So we carried on a bit but it started getting louder – and we could now feel the track rails vibrating. And this is a very small tunnel, there is no more than maybe six inches in places, between the train and the walls. My memory may be hazy now, but on this it is still pin sharp. We knew there could not be a train coming – there was a train stuck in the tunnel for God’s sake – but we also knew what our senses were telling us (somewhere between WTF and aaarrgh!). To hell with this, we now went straight for a nook in the side of the tunnel, which there were at intervals along the way, and waited. Sure enough, the noise got louder, and then there was a light, visible and growing, coming from around the curve! And something did come round the corner – a sort of small, open cart, running on the rails, with a number of people standing up in it.
It turns out that London Transport and the fire brigade, between them, had come up with this idea of a mobile rail cart with an electric motor, that could be taken apart and carried on a rescue wagon and assembled on the tracks, for moving people and equipment for just such an occasion as this. Only no one had told us that before sending us off down the tunnel!
So we started waving our torch at the approaching trolley (which was also something of a surprise to them), but as they came up to us I could see Richard and the EXPO amongst sundry others. It transpired they were finished with an initial look at the scene, now that all the living casualties had been removed, and were heading back up to plan the next moves. Very generously, they offered us a lift back the way we had come – duly accepted.
Now this was a new and really quite weird experience for me, which is quite hard to explain. Oh, the basics are simple enough, just as described above. But the sensations at the time were… well, weird. It was sort of like watching a good illusion in a magic show, except that this was real, and with the potential to be squished between a Tube train and a wall – while at the same time sort of knowing that that can’t happen. Scary? Well a bit maybe, but then again not very. Just – weird. And in terms of new experiences, just one of some much, much worse to come.
As everyone reconvened at the SO15 RVP wagon, rather than the pace of events ramping up, as you might expect, in fact the opposite happened – everything gradually ground to a halt. All the living casualties had been removed, but now there was a jurisdictional dispute, at least partly as I recall, to do with disaster victim recovery teams versus crime scene integrity/recovery teams. And indeed, some still not entirely resolved explosives safety questions, though the EXPO was reasonably happy that there were no more explosive devices or materials in a detonable state.
However, lulls like this are not uncommon at large bomb scenes, and it gave me a chance to get my own thoughts together, from an FEL point of view, and catch up with what was happening with Kim, Hazel and Sarah at the other scenes, and coordinate all that with those back at the lab. Though one of the things I do remember was that the mobile phone networks were struggling, or even maybe switched off for some of the time, which later led to FEL getting some emergency service type sims for our work phones.
My first concern, however, was Richard. I think he had probably been OK until he had actually gone down to the scene with the police, which I had really wanted to avoid, but had got there just too late. Of course, he could have just refused to do so until I got there (he knew I was on the way), but that would have been difficult to do with the pressure from the police to get things underway. From their point of view, they wanted an FEL person, and he was who they had, so they would just go with that. Understandable from their perspective, and under the circumstances he did as well as he could possibly have been expected to. But it seemed to me he was (entirely understandably) somewhat overwhelmed by the whole episode. So I got him to go through with me what he had seen, and what it might have meant, wrote my notes about that, and then told him to go straight home, via the lab if necessary (to get his car, etc.), but not to stay or do anything else there – he was done for the day.
I think Sharon must have just had the day off, because by this time contact had been made with her, and she had said she would be able to come to the scene – I didn’t want to have an individual case myself, I would need to be coordinating the whole FEL response. It was already clear that this was going to be the biggest operation ever dealt with by the FEL, with multiple, coordinated and deliberate mass casualty scenes. As it turned out, Sarah M was also available at this point so Sharon would bring her as an assistant.
Probably around 3–4 pm now, and the waiting was starting to drag a bit. The arguments were growing about the next step – were SO15 evidence recovery in charge or disaster victim recovery (DVR) in charge? This was entirely a police matter, though I was firmly in the SO15 camp. And Robin was doing (I thought) a great job of fighting his corner. I hadn’t worked with him before, so I was unaware of his fiery reputation, but I was about to find out. Robin was a DS (detective sergeant). Keep that in mind, because at that moment a superintendent from DVR came into the RV wagon, asking for the scene manager – Robin. This superintendent wanted Robin to take him into the scene so that he could start to organise the DVR process. Robin politely declined, saying that, until he was told otherwise by his management, his job was to manage the scene and organise evidence recovery, now that the living casualties had been removed. The superintendent became more insistent – and so did Robin. And so the conversation deteriorated, with the superintendent starting to pull rank, but with no discernible effect on Robin! It finally culminated in the superintendent directly ordering Robin to do as he was told – to be advised by Robin that he didn’t care if he was the Queen of fucking Sheba, he wasn’t going into the fucking scene, and to fuck off out of his RV wagon! To which I thought – Bravo!