The Rules

by Laurence Todd

  The violent killing of a young police officer, only twenty-four and a policeman for two years, at a public meeting was a further blot on Britain’s radical heritage.

  F O U R

  Tuesday

  The front pages of most national newspapers were predictably dominated by a picture of a smiling young face: PC Dan Jones, taken on a summer holiday with his girlfriend the previous year, standing on a beach with the sea behind him, holding a bottle of something in his right hand, his left arm around her shoulders, looking relaxed, happy and with his whole life ahead of him. The tabloids led with emotive headlines along the lines of “Slaughtered in the name of liberty”. Media consensus was that he’d died protecting the right of Britain’s enemies to denounce the United Kingdom from a public platform and, as such, he was a hero who’d died a violent death doing his duty.

  There was also anger at the decision made by police to allow the meeting with Khaled al-Ebouli, a known proponent of a jihad, to proceed. Several of the tabloids openly called for the officer taking the decision to be reprimanded, as well as calling for al-Ebouli’s immediate deportation. The fact of the meeting being held in support of a Muslim candidate in the forthcoming election for Mayor of London was overlooked.

  It was a sobering experience looking at the picture. The story accompanying it said he’d recently become engaged to be married and his girlfriend was four months pregnant. Every police officer reading this story knew he or she could easily have been PC Jones had the circumstances been different. I’d policed demonstrations and effected arrests when I’d been in uniform, and despite aggravation from mouthy demonstrators, none had been as bad as last night’s. I was aware PC Jones’ fate could easily have been mine.

  I wandered across the office to pour myself a coffee and returned to my desk. I looked at the picture of Jones on the front of the Guardian again, and then the realisation dawned on me. He’d been one of the two police officers at the school last Saturday evening when DS Roberts had poured scorn on the injury one of al-Ebouli’s bodyguards had endured. We’d all been amused by Roberts’ comment about having had worse shaving cuts than the bullet wound. This was something to consider. Was his presence outside last night’s meeting just coincidental?

  I read an interim report about last night’s killing and then began scanning the CCTV images from outside the hall. Detectives had already identified a few faces of interest, and had begun the process of bringing people in for questioning. One person clearly identified was al-Ebouli’s bodyguard, the one grazed by a bullet. He’d been spotted talking with a group of four other people, two of whom couldn’t be identified as they had their faces covered by scarves and were wearing baseball caps pulled down over their foreheads, with just their eyes visible. It had been one of these who’d been spotted leaving the square after Jones’ body was discovered. They were leaning in close together, looking furtively around as they talked. The bodyguard moved forward, said something to the group, then walked away into the venue.

  The other two men were smarter in appearance – jackets, shirts and ties – and looked almost out of place in such an unseemly crowd. They were casually looking around, as though taking in what was happening. One of these two seemed familiar. Initially I couldn’t place him, but then it hit me. He was the man I’d seen leaving Perkins’ office yesterday morning. Qais? He’d seemed familiar even then, I remembered, and after a moment’s thought I realised he was one of the men I’d seen with Debbie Frost, crossing the lobby of the House when I’d been babysitting Ian Mulvehill. What would he be doing here?

  After a few moments, the other bodyguard was seen entering the hall. The two smartly dressed men were then seen moving away towards the back of the crowd, by Drake Street, whilst the two other men the bodyguard had been speaking to were spotted shuffling through the crowd in the direction of the police lines, which had been formed to allow access to the hall for those attending, directed from nearby Southampton Row.

  It was at this point that counter-demonstrators the other side of the road, by the corner of Princeton Street, began pushing forward. The police were soon grievously outnumbered. The two men with concealed faces were seen moving apart in the crush around several police officers, who were attempting to prevent the two sides clashing. I pinpointed Jones. I could see him attempting to apprehend someone whilst trying to stop himself being dragged to the floor by demonstrators, one with his arm round Jones’ neck. At some point in the next few seconds, Jones’ life was brought to a premature end.

  The difficulty of scanning the CCTV images was that the direct act of knifing Jones couldn’t be attributed to anybody. Jones, along with a couple other police officers, had disappeared from view. The actual act of slashing the throat wasn’t captured on camera.

  I watched the scene again, closely, and it looked no better second time around. I could imagine the helplessness police at the scene felt, being heavily outnumbered as they were whilst attempting to keep the two sides apart, and being on the receiving end of sly punches and kicks. Whilst in uniform, I’d been in situations like this where crowd control had been an issue, and had taken a few sucker punches from various people, but I’d never been in a situation where police had been as desperately outnumbered as this.

  I watched it a third time. And then a fourth time. This time I noticed that, as the two men with their faces covered were moving apart, with one moving forward, the one behind had turned to his left, looked over to where the counter-demonstrators were massed and raised his left arm above head height, giving what appeared to be some kind of signal with his fingers. A few seconds later the melee began. I watched it for a fifth time, focusing purely on this guy, and I was convinced what he was doing was signalling to someone. A signal to attack?

  Jones had been present at Saturday’s meeting where al-Ebouli had spoken and been shot at. Now, outside a public meeting with the same person, he’d been murdered.

  *

  Smitherman was in his office. I told him where I’d seen PC Jones the previous Saturday evening, and why we’d been there. I mentioned al-Ebouli and his entourage being displeased by DS Roberts’ comments about the injuries received by the bodyguard, and that the same bodyguard had been outside the meeting. It was tenuous, possibly just a coincidence, but worth checking out. Smitherman agreed and told me to look into it.

  The whole police force had been galvanised into action by the murder of PC Jones. The sense of solidarity was overwhelming. This was because the police are more than just a force; they’re a tribe, a close-knit community where every serving officer out there on the streets can be classed as one of us, and when one of us falls in the line of duty, particularly when it’s intentional, and the victim is as young as Jones, no effort is too much to find the culprit.

  The deliberate taking of the life of a police officer is verboten to the criminal classes. It’s one of the golden rules, and no less forceful because it’s unwritten. Every criminal knows and understands this. It’s one of the lines you don’t cross, not ever. It’s like hurting women and children, or involving people’s families when your business is with them. It’s the big no. Even notoriously violent criminal families like the Krays, the Richardsons and the Chackartis understood this. Utilising violence against your own was one thing, but only if they were male. Honour meant everything to the true criminal. Anyone deliberately or recklessly flouting this unwritten norm in the underworld code could expect no help from his fellow criminals.

  This was because criminals don’t want anarchy. They don’t want their lives and their livelihoods turned upside down whilst police mount an intensive hunt for whoever has deliberately taken the life of a police officer. And it really is intensive. All bets are off until the killer is identified and caught. Activities which police might ordinarily turn a blind eye to, small quantities of low-level drugs like marijuana being bought and sold in return for tip-offs, or the selling of counterfeit goods in a street market, are now clamped down upon. Hard. Informers are told to get out and list
en more closely to what’s being said, and report anything which might give a lead. People who might normally expect to be left alone suddenly start seeing police at their front door. Regularly. Cars are impounded if there’s even one unpaid parking ticket. Lorries suspected of being used to import drugs or bring in quantities of alcohol and cigarettes from France are routinely stopped and made to unload, causing enough delay to miss ferries to and from the continent. Arrests are made for spurious reasons and bail objected to, meaning detaining in custody. People held in custody hits manpower on the streets. Even low-level individuals selling miniscule amounts of cannabis in pubs are subject to arrest, meaning fewer sales. Enough harassment and arrests means serious gaps in cash flow and profits. The criminals’ ordered world is turned inside out until someone is in custody.

  Even police officers suspected of being too friendly with certain criminal families suddenly remember where their true loyalties lie, and what the words of the oath they swore on joining the police really meant. Police life deliberately taken affects them as much as any other officer.

  Faced with this pressure, some of the best leads police get are from other criminals, who don’t want cop killers in their midst. And even though society and societal attitudes today are very different from when Smitherman joined the police in the mid-1970s, the golden rules are still mostly applied. Despite recent situations where police have got it wrong, in a few cases very badly wrong, police still command respect from most in society. More times than not, police will still get the benefit of the doubt from the public and the media. The UK is not yet the USA, where police on the streets are seen as fair game in some of the more violent cities across the nation.

  The problem for police in this case was, I suspected, we were dealing with people who didn’t know the rules, who probably saw police officers as being no different to soldiers. We could expect no help there.

  *

  I contacted Kilburn police station and was put through to DS Roberts. I explained to him where he and I had met PC Jones, and the context involved. He had the names and the addresses of al-Ebouli’s two bodyguards. They lived around Islington, close by their boss. Roberts said he’d meet me outside one of the addresses.

  I pulled up in Finsbury Park Road. Roberts was nearby, standing by his car.

  “Moussa Dhelkili lives there.” He nodded to a house across the road. “He’s the one who took the bullet. The other one lives quite close by.”

  “Let’s start with this one.”

  We crossed the road and approached the house. I could see the curtains in the ground floor window twitching slightly. Someone had noticed us.

  Roberts used the knocker to bang on the front door, slightly too hard to emphasise a point. A few seconds later it was opened by a young Middle Eastern looking woman wearing jeans and a colourful top. She seemed completely unfazed by police at her door.

  “Police.” We both showed ID. “We need to talk to Moussa Dhelkili.”

  We stepped forward. She could see we weren’t going to wait to be invited in. She stood back and allowed us to enter the premises, then closed the door.

  “My brother’s in here,” she said as she led us into the front room, overlooking the road. It was a nicely appointed room, well-furnished and comfortable. There was a coffee table in the middle of the room covered with magazines written in a language I didn’t recognise, but from the pictures of Obama on the front, plus pictures of Islamist militants holding rifles and black flags aloft, my guess was they were political. I was surprised to see a copy of New Focus amongst them, and wondered whether Richard Clements would be pleased knowing who some of his readers were. The room was wallpapered in garish red and purple shades which, given how deep the colours were, and how dull the lighting was, gave an almost oppressive feel, despite the sunshine outside.

  The object of our attention was sitting in an armchair in the corner, facing the window. He immediately recognised Roberts and me, and he shifted uneasily in his chair. He said something to the woman in a sharp tone and she left the room.

  Roberts and I stood close by. I wanted him feeling uncomfortable.

  “How’s your shoulder?” I began, resisting the temptation to pat him hard on his back.

  “It is fine,” he replied formally, as though talking to a doctor. “The painkillers work.”

  “You know why we’re here, don’t you? A police officer was brutally murdered last night and we’re looking for the scum who did it,” Roberts said, his voice bordering somewhere between forceful and aggressive.

  “I don’t know who did it. Why come to me with this?”

  “Because you were there,” I replied. “CCTV picked you out in the crowd. You were seen talking to a couple of other people there.”

  He interrupted me before I could finish. “So? It is now a crime to talk to my friends?”

  “It’s a crime to kill a police officer, is what,” Roberts interceded, “which is why we’re here. Why were you at the meeting? What were you doing there?”

  “Khaled was speaking there. I work for him, so I go where he goes. My job is not to let harm befall Khaled. He has lots of enemies in this country because of what he says, so I stop people getting too close to him. I thought you people in this country believed in free speech.” There was a mocking tone in his voice.

  “He’s got a lot more enemies after last night, trust me.” Roberts laughed for a moment, then his face registered a serious expression. “British people don’t like seeing their police getting killed, and they like it even less when it’s done by jihadists crowing loudly when British soldiers die. So you’d better get serious, pal, and quick. This is no laughing matter.”

  There was something about Roberts’ expression, the determined look in his eyes and the tone of his voice, which made Dhelkili recoil slightly in his chair. He looked concerned.

  Roberts waited a moment. “You were identified talking to two guys whose faces were almost completely covered. I wanna know who they were. One of them was seen moving towards the officer who died, and we think he could be our killer. Who are these two? Where can I find them?”

  “I’m not knowing them. We were just talking.” He wasn’t convincing.

  “The officer who was killed last night was also at last Saturday’s meeting. You remember that one?” I asked.

  He did.

  “That’s quite the coincidence: you at the same place where PC Jones was on duty, you’re seen talking to a couple of people we can’t identify and, soon after this, Jones dies,” I said, calmly but with enough emphasis to make my point.

  “I had nothing to do with his death.” Dhelkili stared directly at us.

  “Who were the men you were talking to, the ones with their faces covered?” Roberts again demanded to know.

  “I don’t know their names.”

  “Well, I think you do, pal, so either you remember them here or you do it in custody.” Roberts smiled at him. “I don’t care which.”

  Dhelkili sat quietly in his chair for several seconds. His gaze went past us, and out the window. He was thinking about his situation. There was certainly enough suspicion to justify taking him into custody. Given why we would have taken him in, he wouldn’t have received a favourable reception either.

  “They just approached me and asked what was happening here. That’s all,” he said nervously.

  “And you don’t know who they were?”

  “I don’t,” he said firmly. “They just came up alongside me and asked. I didn’t see them coming, and I’m not knowing who they are either.”

  “You were also seen talking with two other guys, smartly dressed compared to most others there, plus the two we just mentioned. CCTV hasn’t yet put names to them. Who were these guys?” I looked at him with an inquisitive manner. I knew one name but wasn’t going to let on I did.

  “I only know one of the names. If I tell you, do you promise not to mention my name to these people?”

  “No, I don’t. You don’t get it, do you? A p
olice officer’s been murdered, so all bets are off. But I won’t use it unless I have to.” I tried to sound reassuring.

  He bit his lower lip whilst taking a few deep breaths.

  “I was speaking to a man named Qais Jaser.”

  I noted the name. “Who’s he?” I wanted to know what he knew about this Qais.

  “He’s someone I know. I occasionally see him in the mosque where I go to pray.”

  I heard Roberts snigger behind me. Dhelkili kept his eyes on Roberts as he spoke to me. He didn’t look too happy at Roberts’ show of disrespect.

  “Do you pray?” Dhelkili looked directly at Roberts. “What god is it you pray to?”

  “Me? I pray to whoever can help us get the bastard who killed our colleague last night. That’s the god I pray to.”

  “You’re sure you don’t know the two other men standing near Jaser?” I tried to refocus Dhelkili. “The two with their faces covered?”

  “That I’m not knowing. Maybe they’re friends of Qais’, but they’re nobody I know.”

  “Where do we find this Qais?” I asked. I had his name; I could find him easy enough.

  “I have no address for this man.” He said this firmly. “As I told you, I just see him around. I can’t help you.”

  Roberts and I exchanged glances. For the moment we accepted what Dhelkili had said.

  “I find out you’re lying . . .” Roberts snarled at Dhelkili, turned and left the room. I thanked Dhelkili and followed him out.