The head of the squad, DS Don Welch, started to get curious. Surely they would have heard if an old lady had been attacked in her own home. There was no way a theft of this magnitude could have slipped under the radar.
There is little that angers cops more than crimes that target the elderly and vulnerable. Roy Grace is typical in his hatred of that genre of villain, never more so than towards those who attacked Aileen McWhirter in Dead Man’s Time. Little did he know that was the work of another wealthy boy turned bad: her own great-nephew.
In the 1990s, a search of the crime records meant just that. No clicking of a few keys in the hope that the answer would immediately flash up on the screen. No neatly indexed database that could be analysed from the comfort of the office. In those days, searching records meant donning boiler suits and risking life and limb going down the perilous stone stairway into the dark of the grimy, dusty, rat-infested police station basement. There, it could take days to sift through the dozens of racks of long-forgotten files hoping that whoever had catalogued them had done so carefully, in case one day someone just might want to retrieve them.
Having unsuccessfully searched the recent crime reports, more conveniently held on the same floor as his office, Don grabbed Nigel and together they reluctantly descended into the bowels of the station. After a mere three hours, they struck gold. Nestled between dozens of other unsolved robberies they found the scrunched-up buff crime report they were looking for. Old lady, robbery, own home, four men, yellow diamond — it was all there. So why were the Squad not aware of it when it happened a few months ago? Why had it not been splashed all over the local paper, the Argus? Why was it lying here forgotten and uninvestigated?
On reading it, Don realized that the officers who had been sent on the day had decided the robbery had probably not happened. They thought the old lady, Alice, was not quite with it. She was losing her marbles. She was confused. She must have imagined it. Their justification for ‘sleeving’ this evil crime was shameful.
Don decided to pay her a visit.
She was confused for sure. There was a good reason for that; she was terrified. She explained what had happened.
A few months ago she had met four nice young men at the Co-op supermarket round the corner. They were so kind in offering to carry her shopping home. Chatting freely with them, her faith in the youth of today had been restored, especially when they helped her open her front door and asked if she would like a hand indoors with her bags. Then, out of the blue, these nice young men hurled her to the floor, held her down, threatened her with all kinds of harm and then wrenched her beautiful sapphire and yellow diamond rings off her frail wrinkled fingers before making off.
Don realized that Alice had been targeted by a novel yet callous method. Her grip on the supermarket trolley showcased her glistening rings for all to see.
She may have been duped but this old lady was no shrinking violet. Don decided that his team would pick up where their colleagues had left off. First of all, he wanted to find out a bit more about this plucky victim.
Alice and her husband had lived most of their lives in colonial southern Africa, moving around Commonwealth countries enjoying a very comfortable yet discreet lifestyle. She was used to having staff at her beck and call. She was to the manor born.
Don established that her yellow diamond ring had been a gift from her late husband and its sentimental value greatly surpassed its monetary worth. Alice gave a detailed description, backed up by a crystal-clear photograph on the mantelpiece depicting her wearing it. If only the previous officers had bothered to look.
Don and Nigel grew very fond of Alice and she was delighted that those lovely people at the police station had sent that nice sergeant and constable to help her.
A few days after that first visit, they dropped back round to tie up some loose ends. No sooner had they wiped their feet on the doormat than it became apparent that the class system was alive and kicking in central Brighton.
‘Yes, I know you have to talk to me about all this nonsense with my rings but, Mr Welch, be a dear and pop to the shops to fetch me a few things. Here, take this list, it’s all there and hurry back now,’ she commanded.
Another day, the request was, ‘DS Welch. My car needs one of those wretched MOT tests. Be a good chap and pop it to the garage for me. I’ve told them to expect you.’
How could they refuse?
Having given way to her eccentric demands, Don and Nigel worked hard to get to the bottom of this intriguing case. Rumours were reaching them that young Charlie Bloomstein had flown out to Switzerland with a yellow diamond. Bona fide dealers require a certificate of authenticity to accompany high-value stones. At the time, these could only be obtained in New York, Amsterdam or Switzerland. Eager to find out what had happened, Don flew out to Geneva and confirmed that Charlie had indeed made the trip. At any other time, it would have been an unremarkable visit but now it raised the stakes.
Accepting that confronting Charlie with this information or even obtaining search warrants would serve little purpose other than spooking him and pushing him and the elusive diamond further underground, Don opted for a more covert approach.
This seemed like the job of a lifetime for the surveillance unit. They were used to being given good quality intelligence packages from the Antiques Squad — after all Don had once served with them — so they knew what bait the undercover boys would go for.
This job had it all. A rich playboy, high-value jewellery and, if they were lucky, trips abroad. Clearly, with the timely trip to Switzerland, Charlie was up to something, but exactly what was still a mystery. Twenty-four-hour surveillance on him started to fill in the gaps.
The emerging association between Bloomstein, Aldridge, Barratt and Bishop astounded Don. They had never predicted such an alliance nor the incredibly suspicious behaviour they were observing on a daily basis.
One of the first signs that gangs are plotting a crime is their obsessive use of counter-surveillance tactics. Driving 360 degrees round a roundabout to see who did the same, heading down dead ends and driving at excessive speeds are all ways by which the guilty try to identify or shake off a tail. This quartet thought they were masters at it. The cops, thankfully, had seen it all before.
In fairness, these were the days when technical surveillance was in its infancy. Naively the gang assumed that covert policing was limited to cops tearing around in unmarked cars, watching from a neighbour’s window and staying ten paces behind the target on a busy shopping street.
One of the challenges for Don was that all four suspects lived in different towns and used various means of travel. Despite the huge number of officers Don had at his disposal, there was a limit to how thin they could be spread before they started to be recognized. The same car containing the same two dark-haired, thirty-something blokes parked outside the same house each morning was eventually going to stand out. The police needed to up their game.
Through the use of various covert technical tactics, such as tapping into their message pagers, and bugging their houses, it became apparent that the gang were meeting up on a regular basis and in a variety of places. They used predictable venues, such as Aldridge’s house in nearby Peacehaven and Charlie’s luxury pad at the Marina. But, thinking they were being clever, at the drop of a hat they would arrange to meet at randomly coded rendezvous points paged to all members of the group.