Anything to Declare? (28 page)

On the other hand, judges are fun. I love them. Some are as mad as a bag of hot ferrets and others are as strict as a sergeant major. There are still many judges sitting who have no idea of the world outside their legal lives. They seem to follow the same paths in life: private school to university and then into chambers, followed by becoming a QC and then on to being a judge. No time spent with ordinary people, which is why many judges don’t understand them. The only so-called common people that they get to see are either in the dock or in the witness box, so their view of ‘the man in the street’ is very strange. And the judges certainly don’t want to live on that street, wherever it is.

We had a very simple drug-smuggling case going through one of the Home Counties courts. The judge was ancient (even by judges’ standards) and was hanging on to his job by his old fingernails. Our case depended mainly on evidence gleaned from pager messages between the smuggling gang. The judge had never heard of pagers before. To get around this, we employed an expert from a pager company to give evidence, in children’s terms, as to how the pager system worked. The poor chap was in the box for over an hour and, in the end, it was decided that we would carry out a demonstration. I passed the judge my pager, the expert then phoned the pager control centre and gave them the message; they in turn sent the message to my pager, which the judge was now holding. Within a few seconds, the pager started bleeping and vibrating. The judge put it to his ear. ‘Hello! Hello! Are you there? I can’t hear a damn thing,’ he said. Quickly, the court usher pointed out to the judge the message on the screen of the pager. ‘That’s all well and good,’ said the judge, ‘but I still can’t hear the person on the other end.’

It’s blatantly obvious to all that the one master rule for court is ‘Don’t piss off the judge’. This could also be said of magistrates. Customs is unusual in that it has a legal power that the police lack – a thing called the right of audience. This basically means that officers can appear in the magistrates’ court as solicitors for the department. I ended up doing it hundreds of times throughout my career. This form of legal work is often the making or breaking of many officers. I knew some that would feign illness to get out of doing it. But, once you have twenty or thirty appearances under your belt, it becomes quite good fun and is a great grounding for Crown court. You have to learn very quickly that the opposition’s job is to make you appear stupid and to lead you into traps. Once you know this, you will become a force to be feared in the witness box.

One of our local county judges was a real tartar. In his spare time, he was a lay preacher and during court sessions he was a natural-born bastard and I loved him. He had a soft spot for Customs officers as long as we displayed the character of a Crown-commissioned officer. I was once accused by the prosecution of planting evidence on their client. Now this was a touch hopeful as a defence because we had arrested their client with four kilos of cocaine, body-packed to his torso. I would have had to be Harry Houdini to plant that evidence on him. The judge was so incensed with the accusation that he made the prosecution barrister apologize to me in open court and in front of the jury. Suffice to say that the barrister was my nemesis from that day forth.

This judge just kept surprising us, trial after trial. He was less than complimentary when one of our top officers appeared in front of him sporting a beard, earring and ponytail. But far worse than this was when we had a young officer in the witness box who had changed religion. Our officer had caught a smuggler almost eight months earlier and then, in the time between the arrest and court, he had met a girl and fallen in love. The girl was of the Muslim faith and he loved her so much that he converted to Islam. Now in court, his witness statement had been written while he was Christian, but now he stood in the witness box as a Muslim. The judge was furious and, being a Christian man himself, he could not contemplate how this could have happened; the officer got one of the worst maulings that I have ever seen a judge give anyone. It may have been the Queen’s court but, seeing as she wasn’t there, the judge was going to have things entirely his way.

Barristers do the job because the job is there to be done. They defend the guilty and frustrate the innocent, often making them feel guilty. From what I had seen over the years, it was just a game to most of them, albeit a very well-paid one. The trouble that law enforcement has is that one week they could be working for you, prosecuting in a big case, and then the following week they could be defending against you. This means that anything they learned from you while prosecuting could then be used against you while defending. Not really fair, that.

But, out of the great possible mess that could have come from all this, we actually have a good justice system that most (but not all) of the time works.

A great game we invented for criminal interviews or giving evidence in Crown court was one we called ‘word wizard’. All officers concerned would agree on a subject (for interviews) or a single word (for court). Our task was to then somehow find a way of saying the phrase or word. With interviews you had a big chance of getting lots of words in, for example, if the subject was animals: ‘It’s warm in here, don’t you think it’s getting a little otter?’ The Crown court version of word wizard may have seemed easier because you only had to get one word in, but the words chosen were usually complete bastards. For example, words that we had used include ‘Rumpelstiltskin’, ‘lawnmower’, ‘herpes’ and even ‘skid mark’. The main point, of course, was not to get caught or make yourself look like a complete numpty. Not easy when you’re trying to squeeze Rumpelstiltskin into a sentence.

The Jade/Nevin Bull court case eventually came around and was to last over three weeks. Some of the Jamaican evidence was missing and I was tasked with travelling out there to bring it back personally. But the drugs liaison officer in Kingston informed me that he’d been informed that there were a number of Yardie hitmen waiting for my arrival. I was still ready, willing and able to go out there, but my senior officer put his foot down firmly and stopped me.

The case was presided over by Judge Fox, who was widely regarded as one of the most evil judges to walk the earth. I happened to be extremely lucky as the judge knew me from other cases and I’d often heard him chuckling during my giving of evidence, especially my responses to defence questions (I never liked being backed into a corner by the defence and I usually made that clear).

Mr Adams, counsel for Nevin Bull’s defence, announced in court that I must have planted the cocaine in Mr Bull’s wallet. Mr Bull was, he said, a law-abiding citizen who had served his country in the Army. They then called the Morrison family to give character-witness evidence for Bull. First, Mrs Morrison, who tottered into the witness stand in a very short skirt and a blouse showing ample bosom.

Following her evidence, Judge Fox leaned forward and asked her to explain her profession as he hadn’t quite grasped what she did. Mrs Morrison explained that she was a rep for a company that carried out cosmetic tattooing such as permanent eye-liner and lip-lining. ‘Hmm, I see,’ said Judge Fox. ‘What an incredibly strange thing to want done to oneself.’

Mrs Morrison stated that she’d had it done herself and, as an example, smiled at the judge and opened her eyes wide. Judge Fox leaned forward a little, studied her for a few seconds and then loudly announced his judgment to the court: ‘Don’t take it too personally, Mrs Morrison, but, frankly, you look like a whore! No further questions. You may stand down.’

Mrs Morrison, who didn’t even realize she was there to be judged, didn’t so much stand down as almost keel over sideways with shock. One of the security guards stepped forward and helped her regain her balance and then quickly led her away as she started spluttering.

See, I did say he was evil.

Next up was Paul Morrison, whom we had arrested at the same time as Bull. I had discovered that he had a few Yardie connections but couldn’t tie him into the drugs operation. He was quite a strong character witness, giving credence to much of Bull’s story. All our QC had to do was destroy him in the eyes of the jury.

‘So, Mr Morrison, your wife works but you stated to the jury that you are unemployed and have been for a few years, is that correct?’ asked our QC.

Morrison, being very cocky (a foolish move in the witness box), said, ‘Yeah, that’s right. Have to do a bit of wheeling and dealing to keep a roof over our heads.’

‘I see, Mr Morrison. I’m also informed by the case officer that you have a fair-sized house with five bedrooms. Is this correct?’

‘Yeah, well, we like to call it home.’

‘I see. And, Mr Morrison, I also understand that there are only the two of you living in this
smallish mansion
.’

‘Yeah, that’s right, just me and the missus. Plenty of room for visitors like when Nevin comes over to see us.’

‘Do you drive, Mr Morrison?’

‘Yeah, been thinking of doing some cabbying but most of the time I just run about for some mates.’

‘Yes, I see. And how did you and Mrs Morrison arrive at court today?’

‘In my old banger,’ said Morrison.

Our QC flashed a quick smile at the judge, who knew exactly where this questioning was going.

‘Really? Well, Mr Morrison. I was sitting in Park Street car park this morning in
my
old banger when I noticed a brandnew red Mercedes-Benz park across from me. I should say that it was about four months old and my friend the case officer informs me that it’s worth in the order of £55,000. And who should alight from the vehicle but you and your lady wife? Your car, Mr Morrison?
Your
old banger?’

It only takes a short exchange like that to destroy a witness’s credibility in front of a jury. It was fun watching these court capers when you weren’t on the receiving end. But it could be hellish to be in the firing line when you were giving evidence.

Earlier in the trial, we had put Jade in the box. She looked small and defenceless as she told the jury the story. Some of the women in the court cried, I assume at her naive love for Nevin Bull. Judge Fox, who had already seen her full statement, seemed to take her to his black heart and shielded her from most of the defence’s harder attacks. She did really well, explaining that she knew what she had done was wrong and was expecting to be punished for her part in it. I could see how that went down well with the jury because it made it look as if she was not just giving evidence to save herself. Although it wasn’t a lie on her part – she really did expect to get sent down.

After three weeks, the jury was sent out. They were back after thirty minutes with a clear guilty finding on Bull. Jade had already pleaded guilty five months earlier. The judge then did a strange thing and broke for lunch before sentencing. Meanwhile, I was over the moon, another one for my 100 per cent guilty record of drugs-case convictions. The court usher caught our QC and me just as we were making off for lunch. ‘Judge Fox will see you in his chambers now, gentlemen, if you please.’

We arrived in chambers to watch the judge tucking into his lunch of two hard-boiled eggs and a glass of red wine. He looked up with a well-practised scowl. ‘Well, gentlemen, where are Mr Nevin Bull’s pre-cons?’

I explained to the judge that regarding the pre-cons (previous convictions), I had been in contact with the Royal Military Police (RMP) early in the investigation and they had told me that Bull did have a military record but the details were kept in Germany and as such they had no access to them. Only a UK judge could get the details.

‘Well,’ said Judge Fox, ‘I’m a judge, so make your phone call.’

I hurriedly phoned RMP Berlin and I was speaking to the duty officer, explaining the request (which he remembered), when the judge grabbed the phone from me. ‘Hello. This is Judge Fox, I want to speak to your commanding officer.’

The CO was on the phone within minutes only to get a dressing down by the judge for not supplying me with the case details. As a result, we had the fax of Nevin Bull’s courts martial details within ten minutes. He had been found guilty of running prostitutes and drugs while serving in Germany. Which neatly put paid to the defence’s ‘Army hero’ line.

At sentencing, the judge was more than happy to hand Bell a twenty-nine-year sentence. As for Jade, she was sentenced to the time that she had already spent in prison. And that same afternoon, the supergrass boys from Scotland Yard whipped her away to God knows where to start a new life under a new name.

And so concluded my very first cocaine case.

As with any job, if you do it long enough, you get to see strange things occur and working in Investigations was no different. There was one strange, reoccurring thing that was also very spooky, even though I’m sure that there was a technical answer to it. It happened while we were working on the heath in Blackheath, south London. It was rumoured that the large open heathland was used as a mass burial pit during the Black Death in the Middle Ages. Although many trenches had been dug in the past, no mass graves have ever been found . . . yet. But the myth still exists and when we were doing surveillance work there the heath had a very strange effect on us. Our technical kit and radios were state of the art but they instantly stopped working. Our car tracking devices would go dead and our radios wouldn’t transmit or receive. The second we reached the far side of the heath, everything came to life again. And it wasn’t just a one-off occurrence: it happened every time we crossed the heath. If any of the targets that we were tracking had learned this information, they would have just needed to head for the heath to make it easier for them to lose us.

It was also strange how being in the wrong place at the wrong time could sometimes provide unexpected results.

One of our car crews had been deployed on surveillance in the centre of Liverpool. They were attempting to make ground on their target’s car but they were approaching a zebra crossing when an old lady unexpectedly stepped out from the pavement. Our driver slammed on the brakes and the car’s ABS cut in, juddering the car to a halt just in time. But, as they came to a halt, there was a large bang at the back of the car, the sound of shattering glass very close at hand and glass flying around inside the car. Our car had been hit in the boot by a motorbike. The bike hit at such speed that the rider was flung over the handlebars, over the car’s boot and straight through the rear window. His helmeted head ended up well and truly wedged between the two rear head restraints. Strangely, the biker seemed unhurt, not even a cut or a bruise, but he was trapped. He was trying frantically to free himself, but his head just would not move – which was unlucky for him because the next vehicle to arrive at the scene was the police car that had been chasing him after he had stolen the motorcycle. So, Customs lost its own target but had the small compensation of acting as an inadvertent roadblock for the police to catch a bike thief.