The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin (3 page)

I didn't know Don Brown but I knew Frank Cater; he'd been my boss when I'd served on the Serious Crime Squad and as the meeting broke up he murmured to me, ‘We need to wind this up as soon as possible, Dick.' I nodded and replied absently, ‘Right, Guv,' but my mind was on other matters – from the photographs and the background I'd seen and heard of the target, I'd just realised where I knew Martin's name from. The Flying Squad hunt for David Martin was beginning right now, but my private war with Martin had started ten years previously.

  
1
.  Citizens' Band radio, a mercifully short-lived fad whereby amateur radio enthusiasts searched the airways to speak consummate gibberish to complete strangers.

  
2
.  Commissioner's Office, New Scotland Yard.

  
3
.  Piss Off Early, Tomorrow's Saturday.

Note: The correct spelling of Steven Waldorf's name is with a ‘v' despite many online resources and newspapers spelling it with ‘ph'.

B
efore I progress any further with the story of both the shooting of an innocent man and the hunt for a man who was anything but innocent, I have to introduce you to the police world of many years ago and of which I was a member.

In the early 1970s, I was appointed a detective constable of the Metropolitan Police and was posted to Forest Gate police station in the East End of London, reputedly the busiest sectional station in the Metropolitan Police. I couldn't have been happier. I'd had a successful career as an aid to CID, plus I'd scored high marks at the ten-week Initial (Junior) Course at the Detective Training School. In addition, I'd achieved the highest number of arrests on ‘K' Division and now, having successfully passed two stiff selection boards, as a fully fledged member of the Criminal Investigation Department I needed to make my bones as a detective. The whole area (it was colloquially referred to as ‘The Manor') – Forest Gate, Upton Park and Manor Park – was a hotbed of villains and villainy and I simply couldn't wait to get stuck into them.

As an aid to CID, our brief had been to get out and patrol the streets, keep observations, follow, stop and arrest suspects and cultivate informants. Now as a member of the CID proper, I investigated reported crimes and attended the Magistrates' Court practically every day; it was a kind of mini Stock Exchange, filled with the flotsam and jetsam of society, where deals were struck, promises made, informants procured, prisoners remanded and evidence presented. The rest of the time I was attending Crown Courts, meeting informants, typing reports, searching suspect premises and arresting burglars, robbers and fraudsmen. There were simply not enough hours in the day; and at this time the CID were not paid overtime. So much was going on that if I was unable to immediately arrest a local suspect, I'd leave word with their friends and relations for the culprit to surrender at the nick at a specified time, and they usually did.

Right from the start I tore through the underworld like a dervish. I arrested four tearaways wanted for grievous bodily harm, caught one of the last, great cat burglars and his receiver and broke up a highly unpleasant gang of half a dozen blackmailers. A husband-and-wife team were wanted for fraud all over the country; I received a tip that they were about to leave their hotel in the Romford Road and raced down there just in time to stop them in their car, which was loaded with swag. An Arab sheikh in full tribal regalia who was carrying out a fraudulent transaction in a bank was surprised to be seized, addressed as ‘cock' and unceremoniously bundled into my car, and when I was attacked by two young thugs whom I'd arrested for possessing offensive weapons, I was restless while on sick leave to return to duty so that I could get out to nick some more. This, as you will imagine, played havoc with my home life. It's a small miracle that Ann and I are still happily married after fifty years.

I reached for the ringing telephone in the CID office on that particular Monday morning; it was the manager of a jeweller's shop in Green Street, to tell me that a man was at the premises attempting to purchase goods by means of a stolen credit card. I slammed the phone down and, shouting at another detective constable to follow me, I raced down the stairs to the station yard where my car, a powerful Ford Corsair 2000 GT, was parked. We roared out of the yard, turned right into Finden Road and almost immediately left into Green Street. ‘You'll break our necks, the way you're driving,' sighed my companion, who was not entirely fired with enthusiasm for this investigation, as we tore south along the thoroughfare, paying only lip service to the restrictions imposed by the Road Traffic Act. ‘He won't be there,' he insisted. ‘As soon as the manager went to phone, he'll have been long gone.'

Privately I too thought that this might be the case but while a possibility of catching a fraudsman red-handed existed, I wanted to give it my best shot. Pulling up outside the jewellers, I ran towards the shop entrance and as I did so, a young man started to leave. There was absolutely nothing about him to attract suspicion; he was extremely smartly dressed in a pinstripe ‘company director' style suit, slim, about five feet nine, dark blond hair, a slight tan, aged in his mid-twenties and looked entirely unconcerned as he courteously stepped to one side to let me enter the jewellers. He then began unhurriedly scrutinising the wares in the shop window in the same way that any discerning customer who had yet to make up his mind might do.

I rushed up to the manager. ‘Right, where is he?' I demanded and given what was to happen, I now realise that a courteous, more structured approach might have been called for.

The manager raised his eyebrows. ‘To whom are you referring?'

‘The bloke with the stolen credit card,' I testily replied.

‘And you are?' he enquired.

‘Police from Forest Gate,' I replied, and I was getting quite irritated because by now, it was obvious that the suspect had departed before our arrival and this was the manager's way of putting me in my place for not getting there sooner.

Nodding thoughtfully, the manager asked, ‘Have you any – er – identification?'

I snatched out my warrant card which the manager ostentatiously examined before nodding his approval. ‘Right – now was it you I spoke to on the phone at Forest Gate police station about five minutes ago?' I asked. He conceded that this was so.

‘And did you tell me there was someone in the shop trying to buy goods with a stolen credit card?' Again, with pursed lips, he nodded in agreement.

‘So how long ago was it that he left?' I asked.

The manager languidly waved in the general direction of the door. ‘He went out,' he replied, ‘just as you came in!'

‘You wanker!' I roared, turned and rushed out of the shop, looked left, then right, just in time to see a pair of well-tailored trouser legs disappear round the corner into Plashet Grove.

As I dashed up to the junction, I heard the roar of a powerful car engine starting up. Turning the corner, there facing me was a Jaguar XJ-12 with the fraudsman behind the wheel. As I ran towards the car, I noticed that the car's front passenger window was open, so I plunged in, hoping to grab the ignition key. With that, the driver slammed the car's automatic transmission into ‘drive' and drove off fast, with me half-in and half-out of the vehicle.

I said afterwards that I'd be able to recognise him again because of the imprint that my knuckles made on the side of his face, but don't you believe it. As pugilists reading this are aware, to effectively deliver a straight right, you need the transference of power, driving off the ball of the right foot and turning the hip and shoulder in the direction of your opponent. You try it when you're lying horizontally, clinging on to a speeding car with one hand! Yes, I gave him a dig but what with the lack of force of the punch, plus the rush of adrenaline he must have been experiencing, it had little or no effect.

As he reached the junction with Green Street, he braked sharply and I was thrown from the car. I rolled over in the roadway a couple of times and as I got to my feet, I heard the furious sounding of car horns and saw the Jaguar swerving crazily across the junction with Green Street and then swing left into Plashet Road. I dashed across the junction but by the time I got to Plashet Road, the car had vanished. It was only later that I discovered that the Jaguar – which had been reported stolen from the Paddington area – had been abandoned in Lucas Avenue, the fourth turning on the left. It was thought that the driver – who had discarded his jacket, to prevent recognition – might have escaped by turning left out of Lucas Avenue into Harold Road and thence the short distance into Upton Park Underground station.

I was furious – furious with the manager of the shop, furious with the fraudsman who could have caused me serious injury and furious with myself for failing to arrest him, by not being quicker off the mark. Matters were not improved when I limped back to the police station where, with a commendable lack of tact and concern for my well-being, the first-class sergeant scoffed, ‘Huh! Couldn't catch a bleedin' cold!' Doc Lazarus MBE, the Divisional Surgeon (who would later say that he thought that I was his best customer), tut-tutted as he examined my lumps and bumps from being thrown off the car, diagnosed strained chest muscles from hanging on to it, prescribed paracetamol and told me to ‘get on with it'.

So I did. Simmering quietly, I put the details in the crime book, circulated details of the fraudsman and the details of the card he'd been using and cracked on with a fresh inquiry.

Months later, I received notification that the fraudsman had been arrested somewhere else in London and had been charged with a whole series of offences; when he appeared at court, he had been sentenced to a long term of imprisonment.

I looked at his name. Martin. David Ralph Martin. Aged 26 and born in Paddington. Never heard of him. And he wasn't a local lad. So how did he know about Lucas Avenue and the close proximity to a secondary getaway route via Upton Park station? Had he taken the trouble to plot an alternative escape, prior to going into the jewellers, just in case he got tumbled? And what was more, I couldn't get out of my mind the slick way in which he'd strolled out of the shop; that took a lot of nerve.

Then I shrugged my shoulders and forgot about him.

I might have thought that I was cock-o'-the-walk in the CID office at Forest Gate but I still had a lot to learn about criminal behaviour and psychology in general, and crooks like Martin in particular. Slick? Christ, I didn't know the meaning of the word.

F
rom undistinguished beginnings, David Martin's life can only be described as extraordinary. He was born in Paddington on 25 February 1947 and was brought up in a council flat in Finsbury Park, the only child to Ralph and Joan Martin. For all of his life and whatever he did, right or wrong, his father defended, made excuses for and idolised him. Father and son had a common predisposition: both of them hated the police.

In common with the majority of law-breakers, Martin's criminal career commenced during his formative years. He first appeared at North London Juvenile Court on 19 April 1963 where, for unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle and associated offences, he was fined a total of £4 and was disqualified from driving for twelve months. Less than three months later he was back at the same court, for stealing petrol from a car. On this occasion, he was fined £5 and his father was bound over in the sum of £15 for twelve months to ensure his son's good behaviour. And it appeared to work. Two years went by and the twelve months, both for Martin's disqualification from driving and his father's recognisance, passed without incident.

But this changed in June 1965 when he appeared at Bow Street Magistrates' Court. For threatening behaviour and assaulting a police officer outside a club ‘without realising who he was', as he would later say, he was sentenced to three months in a detention centre.

Martin was not well educated but he was highly intelligent and he had a natural ability to turn his hand to anything electrical or mechanical; following his release from detention in September 1965, he trained as a motor mechanic. It did not last long; within five months he appeared at Highgate Magistrates' Court, where for stealing items from his employer, he was placed on probation for two years. And that was the end of any pretence of honest work for a thoroughly dishonest employee; he ignored the counsel of his probation officer and from then on, Martin would channel his expertise into matters purely criminal, especially stealing cars.

It caught up with him in July 1967 when at the Middlesex Area Sessions, for obtaining property by false pretences, three cases of larceny, two cases of storebreaking and stealing a car – and requesting twenty-one other cases to be taken into consideration – he was sentenced to Borstal Training and disqualified from driving for five years.

During 1968, 1,425 inmates escaped from Borstal; Martin was one of them. He sprang a lock, scaled the boundary wall and was away. It was some time before he was caught and during his unofficial parole, he had been busy. He had taken a car without the owner's consent and that, plus dangerous driving, driving while disqualified and stealing items, including a .22 starting pistol which he put to good use by producing it with intent to resist arrest, resulted in him being returned to Borstal Training when he appeared at the Inner London Quarter Sessions in November 1968. He also asked for a further twelve other offences to be taken into consideration from while he was on the run.

To those unaware of the term, the now redundant Borstal Training was a period of incarceration of between six months to two years awarded to young offenders in the often forlorn hope that they would receive reformative training. Martin was one of that forsaken number; he served the full two years.