The next day Julie and I were guests at a lavish wedding in one of the most affluent villages in rural Surrey. Our good friends were tying the knot in a beautiful church on the green and we were to celebrate afterwards at a stunning country manor hidden miles from the beaten track. The wedding saw the usual nerves, tears, compromised guest lists and a pushy photographer who always wanted ‘just one more’ to keep us from our drinks.
Arriving at the reception something triggered the memories, emotions and feelings of seeing that little boy, naked and cold, on the slab. Every piece of china reminded me of his delicate skin; every child playing led me to reflect how he would never do that; the cutlery, to me, became the pathologist’s tools of disfigurement.
I needed to get away but was trapped, forced to join in the celebrations and pretend to be happy. I sought solace in the help at hand: beer, red wine, white wine, anything to blot out my nightmare. I don’t remember the speeches, I was there only in body — but finally the baby under the knife, and everything else, had been blotted out in a haze of alcohol. The next thing I remember it was dark, I was cold and I was being violently shaken. Somehow I had found my way to the car and sunk into a drunken stupor in the passenger seat. Julie was shouting at me.
‘Where the hell have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere, everyone has for hours.’ She threw herself into the driving seat and we sped off into the night. Our journey home was silent and, from what I can remember of it, mainly involved me dropping off to sleep and only stirring when the car was thrown around a roundabout or as we ground to a halt at traffic lights.
The second post mortem within forty-eight hours was my own.
The next morning Julie demanded, and deserved, answers, despite me suffering the hangover from hell. For the first time all my weaknesses and insecurities poured out. I told her about my fears for our future, my terror of losing my professionalism, my helplessness with the family, the horror of the post mortem. Everything. She was furious that I hadn’t opened up to her before, hadn’t told her everything, hadn’t allowed her to hold me and help my pain subside. She hugged me. I wept.
Normally we cope. The training kicks in and we switch on the work filter. But sometimes, that filter is not strong enough and everything comes crashing through. I was lucky, I picked myself up and many of my ex-colleagues still don’t know this story.
Policing is hard. The physical traumas can be dreadful but so too can those inside your mind, the ones that no-one can see. Not until they erupt, leaving your loved ones to pick up the pieces. My rock, Julie, did that time and time again and to her I owe everything.
8: Walls Have Ears
‘Respect your elders’, they would have been told. ‘Don’t shit on your own doorstep’ would be another code ingrained into them from their formative years. Well, life moves on. That sentimental nonsense counts for nothing any more.
In late 1995 the name of Bloomstein was synonymous with the highly respected jewellery trade that jostled for primacy with the shady knocker boys who shared The Lanes in Brighton.
Michael Bloomstein was a proud professional. His reputation was everything and his bank balance illustrated his success. He knew that he was not going to live forever so he prepared his young son, Charles, from an early age to take over the family business when the time came. Privately educated at the outstanding Brighton College, young Charlie had it all.
Nothing was too much for the apple of Michael’s eye. He ensured that Charlie was looked after, nurtured and educated so that soon he would have the skills, the passion and the savvy to become a worthy heir.
Charlie, though, had different ideas. The money, the flash cars and his waterside bachelor flat at Brighton Marina gave him status. He had the kudos, the girls, and the respect; at barely twenty-one, he had the world at his feet.
Mal, the father of the tragic Caitlin in Dead Tomorrow, considers Brighton as a fusion of city and village, big and bustling but not somewhere to keep a secret — everyone knows each other’s business. So Charlie’s flamboyant lifestyle and wealthy friends soon drew the attention of a band of thugs who saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get very rich, very quick.
Daryl Aldridge, Justin Bishop and Andrew Barratt were sadistic, brutal and greedy as well as scheming and highly professional. They were like early-day Terry Biglows who, in Dead Like You, Grace recalls had his heyday when adversaries were branded with razors or acid. They could also, in the blink of an eye, turn on the charm when needed. And with Charlie they knew a subtle approach was required.
They made it their business to befriend him, and Charlie quite liked the attention. He was attracted to their edginess. He knew they had criminal records going back years but they were cool and dangerous, not like the cultured types he had endured at school. He rather enjoyed the world they introduced him to. His three new friends were clearly bad boys but, hey, didn’t everyone have a dark side? What is more, they obviously liked him. Loved his flat, flirted with his girls, laughed at his jokes. Charlie revelled in their tales of night-time raids on the wealthy and the quick bucks made from drug deals. He matched their boasts with some of his own. He waxed lyrical about who he knew, how rich they were and how well he was trusted.
He was sleepwalking into their trap.
Charlie was being made to believe these three men just wanted to be friends, just loved being around him. After all, they told him all their murky secrets. That’s what only true friends do.
It had not occurred to him that he was being targeted for a reason. Charlie knew people. He was liked and trusted. Unbeknown to him, he was being set up as the inside man for one of the most wicked and violent robberies that Sussex had ever seen. In Charlie Bloomstein, Aldridge, Bishop and Barratt had found an important but as yet unwitting ally.
Sometimes, when a piece of intelligence comes to the police, the first reaction is a sceptical ‘Really? I don’t think so!’ People tell the police all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. To curry favour, to wreak revenge, to distract the Old Bill; all are motivations for criminals to break their so-called sacred code of silence. The police, therefore, have to make a judgement. Why are we being told this? How does it fit in with what else we know? How reliable has this person been before? Also plain gut feeling can’t be ignored. Does this seem right?
Many informants, like Darren Spicer in Not Dead Yet, straddle the line between good and bad. Like Darren, most only give tip-offs if there is something in it for them, not out of some deep altruistic streak.
In the years after apartheid ended in South Africa, it was rare to come across any examples of that country’s coveted and rare yellow diamonds in the UK. In 1995 wealth did not move freely between the Rainbow Nation and Europe. Word that such a gem was being offered around the dealers of Brighton was therefore taken with more than a pinch of salt. Surely this was just another chancer trying to big himself up in the eyes of the police.
Expertise on diamonds in general was in short supply within police circles so, to learn more, DC Nigel Kelly from the Antiques Squad visited a well-known diamond expert. He revealed to Nigel that he too had heard tales of such a gem being touted and that, if it was as described, it was worth tens of thousands of pounds. On this basis, Nigel started to get interested, but not yet excited.
It wasn’t until other intelligence started to drip in that the Antiques Squad gave the tip-off more credence. People were saying that an old lady had been robbed of a yellow diamond right there in Brighton. Word was that it was the hottest property around and it was in high demand.