Gangbuster

by Peter Bleksley

  It went well. I strolled into the Hilton only a couple of minutes late and met my Dutch contacts.

  ‘Good flight?’

  ‘Yes, fine.’

  ‘OK, we’ll take you to meet some of our people.’

  I suppose I asked for it in a way, but the bastards did to me exactly what I had done to them in London – only ten times worse. It was, in short, fucking terrifying. They put me in a top-of-the-range Volvo, screeched off and took me on a merry-go-round of a journey at high speed, ducking, diving, trying to disorientate me like I’d done to them.

  Well, I tried to look cool, like I did this all the time. In London, I never had a problem jumping in a car with someone I didn’t know because I was born and bred there. I’d always know roughly where I was going. You could drop me anywhere and within a couple of minutes I could go to the end of the road and know where I was. This was a whole lot different. It was what we called a dry-cleaning run, an anti-surveillance technique to make sure no one is sticking with you. I was totally thrown. I hadn’t got a fucking clue where we were going. I was trying to look calm, as though 80kph in a built-up area didn’t faze me, as though I didn’t mind running the odd light at red. It was like the Dutch fucking grand prix. All the time I was trying to clock buildings, rivers, tower blocks, any landmark that might tell me where I’d been. Except that the same landmarks kept cropping up time after time.

  I now knew I was dealing with premier division criminals; no more Mr Nice Guys. All the time I was thinking perhaps this was all a scam to keep me hostage until the £350,000 had been paid. It had happened several times among the Dutch drug gangs.

  The gang suddenly drove into a car park and stopped. This was the meeting place, they said. My heart jumped. No one was there. Then suddenly, wallop! They shoved me into another car and off we roared again. If it was a kidnap, I thought, I’d need to know where I’d been taken. I was busy looking everywhere but trying at the same time to hold a normal conversation.

  ‘Have you been to our red-light district?’ one of them asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I have, but I don’t like paying for it.’

  I thought I’d best compliment them on their anti-surveillance techniques rather than let them think I was worried.

  ‘I do like working with professionals,’ I said after another particularly devious manoeuvre. ‘I’ve been having a look myself and I don’t think anyone is on to us.’

  We were now in a commercial district. I was trying to catch the street name. Then we stopped outside a bank. We went quickly inside and I was introduced briefly to a man who was every inch the bank manager. Grey-haired, smartly-dressed, a little aloof. The conversation was brief, almost non-existent. It was, ‘Right, you know him, he knows you,’ and we were on the move again. As we headed back to Schipol by another roundabout route, it was explained that he was the banker who would launder the drugs cash, convert my £350,000 when I brought it over, into guilders or invest it in the gang’s phoney businesses. These really were proper crooks. And I knew I had to be doubly careful being on foreign soil. I was on their territory with no back-up. I was in company but, by fuck, I didn’t half feel lonely.

  I was mightily relieved to be able to settle back into my seat for the flight to London knowing I had infiltrated a gang operating at the very highest level of international crime. I gave the Dutch police a full briefing. I gave my own bosses a detailed run-down. We sat and we waited for the bomb to drop. Nothing. I waited for a call from the London-based Dutchman. Nothing. I waited for word from across the North Sea. Nothing. The job just disappeared into a black hole.

  I was never given a proper explanation but the clear implication had to be that corruption had thwarted our investigation. I’d given the Dutch police a leading drugs gang and a bent bank manager on a plate. But, as far as I could establish, he’d never been arrested, never even been questioned. It left a very nasty taste in the mouth. Was this Amsterdam establishment closing ranks?

  The Dutchman in London made contact after several weeks – we’d let him run so we could keep an eye on him – and he seemed fine so I was happy I’d not done anything wrong in the inquiry. He seemed as puzzled as me that the cocaine trade had been shelved. The whole business remains as much a mystery to me today as it did then.

  * * *

  Corruption has been and, I fear, always will be, a sad fact of life in the police force. I’ve turned down offers that could have made me millions. Informants have suggested that, when we raided the home of one coke dealer known to keep a stash of £100,000 in his deep freeze, we hand in only £40,000 and split the rest. Informants have put up propositions that when I went into a drugs job in which six kilos of heroin would be found, I could say it was four and we’d share the other two between us and make a nice few quid. Invariably, each time I’d turn round and say, ‘I didn’t hear that,’ or ‘Look, mate, we haven’t had this conversation, get my drift?’ You could see the look in their faces, the palpable disappointment, when they realised I wasn’t up for a fiddle. They thought we were going out there to earn a bit, and why not? We go out there and infiltrate these people, we’re all in it together, we’ve put ourselves on the line here, now come on, let’s just have a little weed out of the gear. They have no scruples about it at all.

  I’ve turned down every proposition ever put to me, but I’ve had to be very, very careful. If you upset the informant, if you don’t go along with the scam, he might not want to work with you and the whole operation could fall flat on its face. They always make it sound so easy, so foolproof. Be it money or drugs that mysteriously go missing, there aren’t many villains likely to say, ‘I’ve been robbed – I had six kilos on me, not four,’ or ‘I had a 100 grand in there, not 40,’ because the more they had, the more it would implicate them in the crime. So they keep quiet. And who would believe them anyway, when two or three fine, upstanding members of Her Majesty’s police force stand up in the witness box and give their version under oath? Of course we didn’t nick the stuff, Your Honour. Perish the thought! It’s the oldest defence in the world to say the cops are bent. Not hearing any slippery propositions in the first place was always the best way of dealing with it. An informant can’t then go back to his handler, who would be in on the scam, and say, ‘You’ve got to sack this bloke ’cos he’s not playing ball.’ It stopped things in their tracks before it got out of hand. I just wanted to get on with the job of nicking villains, not robbing off them.

  I think a lot of informants assume that because you are playing the part of a villain, you must be a bit of a villain. The better the undercover guy is, the more likely he is to find himself being offered dodgy dealings. They think you really are one of them, not just Plod playing the bad guy.

  I must admit, I’ve seen systematic corruption and suspected even more. But what do the public perceive as bent? What do they regard as a bent copper? There are many different levels as to what people will accept. They will tolerate having a box of paper clips and a packet of A4 out of the office. Every level of society has a tolerance level regarding corruption in whatever walk of life.

  But bent cops are always a no no. The police are expected to be paragons of virtue in everything they do. But what people often fail to remember is that the police are plucked from society. They are not a separate society; they are a reflection of society. So to expect that there won’t be any misdemeanours taking place, and expecting some sort of idealistic, whiter-than-white police service, is pure naïveté on the part of the public and foolhardiness on behalf of the police authorities.

  My area of expertise, the deep undercover mission, was more prone than most police departments to the spectre of corruption and it sometimes took great strength of mind to turn down the offer of easy money or the temptation to ‘go native’ and join the villains in money-making enterprises. On the face of it, they always seemed to be having a much better time than anyone else – better homes, better cars, better holidays and didn’t even have to get up in the morning to clock o
n for work. But underneath you always had a sort of satisfaction that it wasn’t going to be Easy Street for them much longer because you were there to see to it. I was there to take them out. That’s the way I liked it.

  But what can happen, even when you resist all temptation, is that you can still get tainted because some other bastard on your team is doing a double-reverse ferret.

  A pal of mine on the undercover squad did a job on a dealer in possession of 30,000 tabs of LSD. He went back to the nick and wrote up his evidence immediately after the event in accordance with police procedure.

  His statement said, ‘I saw and counted 30,000 doses of LSD, 30 sheets each containing 1,000 doses,’ and it was all done and dusted and he submitted it to his supervising officer for his signature. When the arresting officers came up from the charge room a couple of hours later, they said, ‘Right, we’ve charged him, 20,000 tabs of LSD, all done.’

  What could he do, what could he say? His evidence had been totally compromised, and he could see what was likely to happen. Six months up the line, he would be standing in the witness box at the Old Bailey telling how he saw 30,000 tabs when the accused is charged with possessing only 20,000. ‘How can this officer’s evidence possibly be believed, members of the jury?’ Acquittal, internal investigation and his name tarnished throughout the job. We were, effectively, the cops’ own crooks in our game, playing the part of villains to catch real villains. We knew the risks. We knew the temptations. I was always gutted if I knew blokes were going over to the other side and letting us down.

  I often found myself the ‘tail-end Charlie’ on operations when my knowledge of the drug involved required special expertise. Another undercover officer might have already infiltrated a drugs gang but wanted me pulled in at the last minute to be the tester. Everybody knew that I was experienced in handling all types of gear. Some undercovers were equipped to go in and infiltrate but when the parcel arrived on the plot they didn’t have the confidence in their own abilities, or sufficient knowledge of the drug involved, to test it themselves to see if it was the real stuff. I would arrive as the trusted ‘mate’ who knew about these things and would sample the drugs and give an honest opinion. I’d pop along with my hold-all containing my scales, all the drug paraphernalia, the weights and what have you, and do what I had to do in the way they wanted to see it done, by an expert. I was the professional at this. My bag and I got called all over the show. With us travelled the spectre of temptation. You might meet an undercover cop who was already inside the gang and he’d say, ‘It’s going to be eight kilos of heroin they’re bringing you this afternoon, but, er, between you, me and the gatepost, we’ll say five, eh? Don’t worry about it, we’ll call you in a week’s time and we’ll meet up and all have a nice drink.’

  His proposition got short shrift from me. ‘We haven’t had this conversation,’ I replied in time-honoured fashion. And the deal, I’m glad to say, usually went through straight without any gear going AWOL and with the villains all getting banged up without the knowledge of being stitched up by bent Old Bill. I couldn’t help thinking over the years there should have been one or two police officers doing bird with them.

  Whatever my knowledge or suspicions I never grassed any of my fellow officers up. That’s the way I was. I didn’t mind what names people called me as long as one of them wasn’t grass. I knew the temptations out there. How easy it would have been just to say OK and make more money in an afternoon than I was likely to earn in a year as a straight copper.

  Huge sums of money were part and parcel of my everyday life and the opportunities were there, the enticement factor immense. They had a cash room at Scotland Yard where you’d go to pick up the dosh and I was a regular customer. I was always drawing big sums, £50,000 and up as regular as clockwork. And the distrust within the police always used to entertain me. The money had to be signed for, counted, and signed for again by the commanding officer. It was then counted again to make sure that what you’d been given by the cash room staff was all there, then you’d go out and use it on the plot and it’s all got to be accounted for and signed for again at the end of the day when they want to put it back. You had to be so careful to prove the continuity of who you gave it to because, on more than one occasion, it would get back to the cash room and they’d say, ‘No, we haven’t got £50,000 here, we’ve only got £47,500.’ Then the shit would hit the fan and everybody would come to you straight away as the officer dealing and have a little look. Fortunately, because of my reputation I never used to get seriously grilled over it and I’d say, ‘Well, you’ll just have to work backwards and find whose hands it’s passed through. But don’t look at me.’

  I don’t think they ever managed to nick anyone for thieving the Commissioner’s cash. The perpetrators would have been too careful.

  If you were handling these huge sums of money almost every day, and you’d got bills, or a mortgage to pay or needed a holiday or whatever, you had to be straight, and strong. You could find yourself spending months and months targeting someone suspected of running a major scam, who lived in a fucking great house, drove a top-of-the-range Merc, ran what appeared on the surface to be a successful business, and lived the life of Reilly. After months of tedium, and sometimes some danger, it all ended in a huge search of the place and there was a fucking great Joey full of scratch. The Old Bill were resentful of the fucker anyway; he’d got all these ill-gotten gains, so was it to be on-the-spot fining? Into the cash stash and away with a nice wedge of spending money. It was hardly surprising that a bit of dough went walkies now and again. I knew it happened, but it wasn’t my scene. Where’s my big Jag and mansion?

  Although the job was great if you judged it on the mind-blowing adrenalin rushes which were part of the territory, there was certainly no cash incentive to stay on the straight and narrow. My basic rate of pay as a detective constable was peanuts compared to many of the geezers I was put in to investigate. There was no extra five or ten grand a year for going undercover. Fuck all. No danger money, nothing for putting your head on the block day after day, nothing for being the leading specialist in my field. You took home the same as any other similarly ranked officer who walked out of the nick in the morning and spent eight hours plodding the streets looking at his toecaps. Same with the desk wallahs who sat doing fuck all all day while I’d be out there getting shot and stabbed and infiltrating the bad guys.

  There were expenses but, as often as not, you’d be out of pocket on a job and have to do a bit of creative accounting on your expenses to balance the books. They always wanted provable expenses but you can’t do that when you are cruising round with villains; you can’t ask barmen for receipts or suddenly demand that the taxi driver gives you a signed tab. The villains are going to suss you out double quick. There was a bit of overtime once, but that got whittled away eventually in financial cutbacks. The penny-pinching became unbelievable in the end. I told them, ‘Excuse me, I’m out there pretending to be a fucking high-flying, hard-case gangster … I can’t do it on a tenner a day.’

  Several members of the squad made approaches to the powers that be for more money – at least a clothing allowance to help us do the job in as professional a manner as possible. If you were in a position where you were frequenting high-class hotels and eating expensive meals as part of an undercover job you had to look the part. If you pitched up in a Marks and Spencer suit you’d look suspicious right away. Dressing up or dressing down was important; people judge you on first impressions. And you never get a second chance to make a first impression, do you? You always had to be very aware of that, and dress according to the people you were mixing with. Be one of them.

  There was always some bitching and whingeing about some sort of allowance and eventually the police very graciously let us go up to the prisoners’ property store in Cricklewood in north-west London and have a root through to see if there was anything there which might be useful. It was stuff that had been confiscated, marked ‘not claimed’; a lot of it was a
load of old tat, a right load of old garbage. It was laughable, some of the most skilled detectives at Scotland Yard rummaging through old bin bags for something to wear.

  I was described in several of the Yard’s annual appraisals as ‘an imaginative dresser’ which was sort of true anyway. I always liked to dress stylishly – some might say a bit garishly – so the clothing problem didn’t affect me so much. If I looked the part on an undercover job, it was out of my own pocket and not through the largesse of Scotland Yard. My old grandad always used to say you judged a man by his shoes. I don’t know how relevant that is today, but when I went out on a mission I was very conscious of everything I was wearing, from my Gucci watch to my favourite make of Dolce and Gabbana designer-label jeans. They had to be right if you were going to convince the bad guys.

  Several blokes on the squad had relationships with friendly jewellers where they could go to borrow some decent kit. If you went to a meet wearing 10 or 15 grands’ worth of jewellery it was good for your kudos. I was never a great one for jewellery so I never bothered with it myself, but it certainly helped a few of the others establish their credentials.

  I heard various rumours about corruption at high levels at Scotland Yard but nothing I could ever prove, not that I’d go running to the CIB boys anyway. One incident I am sure is true involves a colleague who went undercover to infiltrate a notorious North London criminal gang suspected of being involved in all sorts of villainy from murder to robbery to drugs. The twist was that he’d managed to convince the gang bosses that he was a bent cop prepared to help them out when in fact he was as straight as a die with every intention of getting evidence that would put them behind bars for 20 years minimum. He spent a lot of time drinking with them, getting close, convincing them he was bent and up for any sorts of deals. He came back into the office four weeks later shaking and told me, ‘I walked into the pub today, Blex, and they said, “We know you’re not a bent copper and we know you’re working undercover. Now consider yourself lucky, get out of here, fuck off and be grateful we haven’t put our hands on you.”’