Gangbuster

by Peter Bleksley

  Surveillance on the drugs gang had profiled the kind of hard-case villains we were up against. The main suspect, an Irish Catholic we knew as Joe, and Alan Johnston, a known contraband smuggler from Ulster, had been seen at meetings with known middle-ranking IRA members discussing the funding of heroin shipments into the UK for onward transfer to the USA. The suggestion that guns would be acceptable as payment in lieu of cash clearly implied that the weapons could end up in terrorist hands.

  The report said starkly that the gang bosses knew that ‘Peter’ was a policeman and not the heroin dealer they thought and ‘did not intend to let the matter rest’. Irish Joe, whose surname I can’t disclose for legal reasons, told another undercover operator, this time from Customs, who had also infiltrated the gang, that they were planning to ‘put a team on Peter to do the hit’. They had actively been seeking a professional hit-man to do the job and discussing locations in London where it could be successfully carried out. Irish Joe had been so confident of terminating me that he had talked to our informant about resuming the heroin deals once I had been taken out. The hit-man was to be referred to as ‘the Doctor’ during his mission to London and his gun was to be called ‘the Doctor’s bag’ in all conversations among the crooks. It was chilling stuff, straight from the pages of The Godfather.

  The Drugs Enforcement Agency in America had relayed details of the assassination plot against me to the British Customs investigation branch on 18 July 1992, just 19 days after the arrest of Johnston. A detective inspector at Scotland Yard was alerted by phone, followed by the DEA fax. Yet amazingly the first I knew about it was nine months later when my pal whisked me into the photocopying room and shoved the report under my nose. It had also been a full two weeks since the dossier had vanished from Detective Sergeant Sam Davies’ car. And nobody had bothered to tell me. Every hour of every day had left me exposed. Such was the detail about the death plot, the source, the places involved, the people involved, that I knew we weren’t dealing with empty threats. I’d been threatened many times. It goes with the territory. Now I was dealing with serious honchos on both sides of the Atlantic. I was potential target practice for some of the most dangerous and violent hoodlums on the planet.

  What to do now? I went in to see DCI Germaine as arranged. I was now armed with vital information about my intended murder that had somehow failed to come my way until the Zulu Cricket report had gone missing. Germaine was with two of the Yard’s most experienced and respected senior officers, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Roy Ramm and Detective Chief Inspector James Read of the Witness Protection Programme, which was now under the SO10 umbrella and used more for looking after frightened witnesses and informants rather than their own men.

  Their mood was grim. They obviously wanted to know my feelings given the deeply ominous revelations of an hour ago in the photocopying room. I expressed my fears forcibly. Why hadn’t I been told about the hit? That was serious enough. How on earth had the report been stolen from a coppers car? That made things a thousand times worse. I told them I wanted out, meaning out of my home address for good. They had turfed me out without notice the night before and it would surely be madness to return now. DCI Read’s response puzzled me.

  ‘What, out of the police?’ he asked.

  I said, ‘No, out of my house permanently. I will need a completely new ID and address. They might be on to me already.’ We agreed that the only sensible precaution at that point in time was for me to keep my head down, look for new accommodation and pray that the missing report hadn’t fallen into the wrong hands.

  I took my filched copy of the Zulu Cricket dossier back to the hotel and went through it line by line, with a worried Elaine at my side. I just couldn’t believe that my name was in it, bold as brass. Even in internal communications, all undercover operators were supposed to be referred to by their covert aliases or by a registered number. Over the years, I had worked with so many false names I sometimes had to do a double-take at Tesco’s checkout before remembering who I was supposed to be that day and make sure I profferred the right credit card. The whole Zulu Cricket cock-up made a nonsense of our squad’s supposedly skilled undercover techniques devised to protect each and every operator out there in the field on frequently dangerous assignments. This looked very much like a flagrant breach of procedure which had resulted in me now facing the most serious threat of my career.

  The report, referred to officially in police terms as a Briefing Note, had been written by Detective Sergeant Davies in response to a request from the DAC in charge of Special Operations to bring him up to speed on the complexities of Zulu Cricket. So many different law enforcement agencies were involved that conflicts of interest had arisen between them with allegations of informant poaching and double-dealing, and a few egos had got bruised along the way. The DAC had become so concerned at the bad feeling creeping into such an important investigation that he had called a meeting with the head of the Customs Investigation branch in London in a bid to iron out the problems. The targets were just too big to risk the chances of petty in-fighting jeopardising a successful conclusion to the operation.

  This highly detailed report, which also named the Customs undercover officer involved with the gang at top level, but retained the secrecy of the informant, had been left by Sam Davies in his car in a Central London car park as he stopped off to do some shopping either on his way to work or on the way home. The exact details were never made clear to me.

  OK, it happens. Car crime is a big big problem. It can happen to anybody. But a dynamite report like this, left sitting in an unattended car? And by a highly trained detective. Why take it home in the first place? The inner sanctums of Scotland Yard is where material like that belongs.

  I didn’t know what to think. But I knew I was angry. Common sense and experience told me that some opportunist kid had snatched it looking for easy drugs money. But on the other hand … I mean crooks have contacts all the way up the criminal ladder. If someone realised the value of the information they could have sold it on for a tasty sum. We had to consider the very serious possibility that the once anonymous ‘Peter’, the pony-tailed drug-dealer, was now known to the Mafioso and the IRA as Peter Bleksley, Detective Constable, New Scotland Yard. In short it might already have put me ‘in the frame’ big time. We weren’t talking some scrote drug-dealer from a South London sink estate. We were talking about having two of the world’s most ruthless criminal organisations on my trail.

  My first priority was to get myself and Elaine right away from my old address. I was struck off normal duties while I looked for a suitable, but safer place to live. The Yard’s witness protection people were on the case through their internal property purchase section. We decided to move from our pricey hotel, away from the temptation of the well-stocked minibar, and take a room in a lower-grade hotel a few miles away. It was a time for restraint and reflection. The Yard came up with three properties which might suit, all unoccupied police houses. Although it didn’t seem awfully bright on the surface using ex-police homes as safe houses, I was assured they had all been empty long enough for them not to be traceable back to the police. They laughed at my joke about the blue light outside being a dead giveaway. Realistically, we had no choice but to take one of them and we set off on a weekend viewing trip.

  We ruled out the first one instantly. It overlooked a hospital where Elaine’s father had been treated for alcoholism. Too many bad memories. The next had no garage. When you’ve collected the baggage of life that I had you needed a garage. And I reckoned it would be safer if I could lock the car away at night if the boyos were looking to place a bit of Semtex under it.

  It was third time lucky, or so we thought. Number 4 Glendale Mews, Beckenham, seemed a decent house in a pleasant street and was in an area I knew well and liked. But when we walked through the door, our hearts sank. It was a complete shit-house. How a police officer and his family had lived there, no matter how long ago, was unbelievable. There was total squalor everywhere. It was
filthy from top to bottom. Maybe squatters had messed it up, I don’t know, but one thing was sure, this was totally unacceptable. Even in the perilous situation I found myself, a Mafia bullet almost seemed more preferable.

  I drove back up to the Yard to tell them, ‘No deal, not in that condition, thank you very much.’

  To their credit, they gave us virtually free rein to bring it up to standard at their expense. It took about a month, with help from willing friends in the building trade, to make it habitable.

  No Jacuzzi and no gold taps. Just pleasantly liveable. Although I was still mightily aggrieved at my life being turned upside-down, I realised there was no mileage in upsetting the Yard with extortionate refurbishing costs. We were shipshape for £11,000. We moved in without any of the excitement that a new home usually engendered. To date it had been all stress and worry. This was a hideout, not a home.

  I kept in touch with colleagues working on the Zulu Cricket investigation and the internal inquiry into the missing dossier. I asked for the courtesy of letting me know of any breaking developments which might affect me. I remained perturbed at aspects of Zulu Cricket which had been talked through at the highest level at a series of meetings in Providence, Rhode Island, attended by the DEA and the British police, including a DCI and Sergeant Davies. Should they authorise the American informant to release agreed details about me with a view to getting enough evidence to charge two of the IRA-linked crime bosses over here with conspiracy to murder me? Dangerous and slippery territory, particularly as the option had been discussed without me knowing a thing about it. I was relieved to find the idea had been dropped, even though I knew that in the event of such a plan I would have been given protection second to none to ensure my safety.

  All I had to worry about now was that the mobsters might find me of their own volition. I didn’t draw much consolation either from discovering I wasn’t alone on the drug gang’s hit list of ’92.

  The informant, key man in the whole operation and known by the alias Miguel, had received an urgent coded message from one of the main players in the UK. He rang back almost immediately. It was an Irish bar in Boston, Massachusetts. A man with a heavy Irish accent answered.

  ‘Michael, you’re fucking dead.’ The line went dead.

  Miguel knew his head was on the block as well.

  Then there was a woman in the Irish Republic who contacted police with so much detailed background on Irish Joe and his activities, particularly his links with Irish police officers and money-laundering activities on behalf of the IRA, that detectives believed she must be in the law enforcement or security business. There was no way, she said, that she was going to identify herself because she, too, was scared of an assassin’s bullet. Then, sinisterly, her calls stopped. It was more evidence, if any were needed, that the very highest echelons of a powerful criminal world were at work.

  I finally moved into the new house with my new identity and all the false documentation I needed for the gas man, the council tax, the phone people and what have you. I yearned for a respite from the constant threat of an early grave and the niggling hassles with the Yard. A chance to recharge the batteries and prepare as best I could for whatever tomorrow might bring. Mr and Mrs Peter Charles became the new occupants of a spruced-up 4 Glendale Mews. Unimaginative, I know, using my first two Christian names but what the hell. We were, as far as the neighbours were concerned, a nice ordinary couple who kept themselves to themselves, enjoyed the occasional drink and went for an Indian curry at weekends. Certainly, Mr Charles, now minus his pony tail, didn’t look the sort of chap who might go off buying £4 million worth of heroin on behalf of the police or might just find himself on the wrong end of a bullet as he walked out of his front door one morning. Elaine, though living as my wife, didn’t change her name. It was different from mine and anyone checking financial databases looking for a P. Bleksley wouldn’t identify her with me. It looked safe enough for the time being. One neighbour who saw me making a routine bomb check under my motor looked a bit apprehensive. ‘It’s just the exhaust,’ I said, ‘got a bit of a rattle.’

  A couple of months down the line, I decided I would like to buy the property for the long-term security of home ownership. I didn’t want to be off the property ladder too long. My own place was up for sale, but not attracting much interest. We’d hit a slump in the property market. The only offer I received left me £12,000 in negative equity. As the entire move was not my fault, and I was being asked to stump up 12 grand I hadn’t got to clear the mortgage, it was time to go back up the Yard for more delicate negotiations. It was as I expected: ‘Sorry, old chap, we’ve got every sympathy with you but we can’t make a decision like that. You’ll have to take it higher.’

  I went right to the top. Not quite rapping on the Commissioner’s door but very nearly. It paid off. Somebody – and to this day I don’t know who – authorised that my negative equity shortfall would be paid by the police. The relief was tangible as the sale was completed and another problem shelved.

  We sped ahead with finalising the purchase of the new house. And straight away we hit another unexpected and probably unique snag. Strictly speaking, the person buying the property, Peter Charles, did not exist. He was a figment of my imagination along with my other spurious identities. To whom, then, would the property be left if I should suddenly die? And given the circumstances that was not such a remote possibility. It occupied my waking moments more than the average man. We had encountered a situation that the Metropolitan Police had not faced before and had set their legal eagles a conundrum they weren’t equipped to handle. So a former police colleague, now a financial adviser, used his contacts and expertise to go to a building society who were prepared to lend me the money for the house in a moody name. He, too, had to go to the top to persuade them to finance a man who didn’t really exist. The solution in the end was for me to supply the society with a legal document verifying who I really was, that Peter Charles was really Peter Charles Bleksley, police officer. The building society, for their part, swore never to divulge a word about the transaction to a living soul.

  With my home life settled, in a fashion, it was back to work as normal at SO10 – if undercover work can ever be described as normal. For ‘normal’ read subversive, secretive, dirty, dangerous work in the sewers of society. Welcome to my world.

  2: nothing ventured

  Life in the undercover unit was life as the Great Pretender – pretending to be a drug-dealer, a hit-man, a counterfeiter, a fraudster, a gun-runner. Pretending, in fact, to be the very opposite of what I was. I was the cop playing the villain in all the disparate venues of gangland, from swish hotels to grimy back-street pubs. And I learned very quickly that if I was to stay alive in this dangerous and murky world of make-believe, I had to be good. Fucking good. When I went out as a drug-dealer, I became a drug-dealer. I knew the language, I knew the gear, I knew the risks. And I knew just one mistake could be fatal. You don’t get a second chance in the front line. A bullet in the brain is the quick solution to sorting the bastard cop who has infiltrated your scam.

  It was never what I had envisaged when I walked out through the gates of Hendon Training College in north-west London in 1978, as fresh-faced, proud-as-punch PC Bleksley. In fact, I’d never imagined being in the police force at all, let alone the most élite squad at Scotland Yard. It was dear old Mum I had to thank. Like many teenagers with a lot of time on their hands and little ambition, I’d run into a spot of bother with Mr Plod and Mum had received a couple of home visits from a friendly neighbourhood bobby. I think she took the view ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’, and the next thing I knew a Scotland Yard recruitment officer was round helping me fill in an application form.

  Up to that point, my only qualifications towards a career in crime-fighting were my skills as a schoolboy shoplifter and my lucky streak as an under-age gambler. Born on 11 December 1959 at Barnehurst in Kent before it became swallowed in the great suburban sprawl it is today, I’d had a m
iserable life as a kid after the old man had left Mum and I was a dismal failure academically even though, by some miracle, I’d managed to pass the entrance exam for Erith Grammar. I remember the assistant headmaster Mr Mason telling me on my last day, ‘Bleksley, you came to this school with nothing, you are leaving with next to nothing, you are nothing, you will become a nothing. Get out of my school.’ I suppose I wasn’t the greatest advert for Erith’s educational structure at the time. I remember that we’d been over the pub that lunchtime, were a bit pissed and had ink and flour all over a torn uniform.

  My final farewell. The classroom had always been an alien place to me so it was no problem leaving it behind.

  The real fun had started when the grammar was swallowed up by a comprehensive and we had turf wars to contend with. The comprehensive kids seemed to think that us ex-grammar boys were posh tossers. I spent most of my days proving the opposite. I bunked off, took sickies, played the classroom clown, was generally a pain in the arse. Then I discovered that I had a natural talent for shoplifting. Didn’t take any time-consuming study, just a mac with some long baggy sleeves.

  When my parents divorced, and it was good riddance to my father, we moved to Bexleyheath. On my way home from school, I used to go into Hides, the old-style department store, and slip long, thin geometry kits up the sleeves of my mac, one in each arm. They were much in demand among the brainier kids at school and I built up a nice little trade supplying them at discount prices. It was ‘sod school dinners’ after that; it was doughnuts, pasties and ice creams from the shops. Hence I became pretty rotund as a kid. My shoplifting prowess moved me on to dinky toys and other assorted items it was easy to sell on the playground black market.