However, through painstaking detective work and a process of elimination, Don and the team were able to crack the code. They were now on the front foot and there was little the gang could do without the cops knowing. At home or at large their every movement was being tracked and their every conversation eavesdropped on. The police were building a cast-iron case of association to deflect any future defence of being arrested at a ‘chance meeting’.
It was not long before the gang started to boast of their villainy. They thought they could take on the world. In their minds they were invincible. They felt they had the perfect combination of inside information and an inclination to inflict extreme violence on anyone who dared resist.
Most of the detailed plotting took place in either Aldridge’s or Charlie’s home. Even though they assumed they hadn’t been rumbled, they still used code words for most of their planning. Intelligence indicated that one of their tricks was to dress in police uniforms, follow people home and flash forged search warrants to force their way in. Once inside, they would tie the unfortunate victim to a radiator and, with the persuasive power of guns and knives, elicit the whereabouts of their most valuable possessions. The uniforms themselves were coded the ‘Armani suits’.
More and more Don’s team heard them talk about a forthcoming robbery, referring to it as the ‘Tom job’. They didn’t give away much more to narrow it down. However the team assumed it probably involved jewellery, or ‘Tom Foolery’ in rhyming slang. But there were hundreds of jewellers. Which one?
As the weeks went on it became clear that the ‘Tom job’ was clearly a big one. It was to involve the Armani suits, handcuffs and, terrifyingly, firearms. But where was it? Who was the target? Unusually, none of the codes the police had cracked previously were now being used. It was causing Don a real headache.
As with any investigation, motivation and energy ebbed and flowed. As the senior officer he needed to keep the whole team motivated — but it was a struggle. The gang weren’t doing much and the surveillance was becoming tedious.
‘Barratt keeps walking past Magpie Jewellers,’ came a crackled radio message from the surveillance officer watching the gang meandering around the narrow confines of The Lanes one morning. ‘Might be nothing but he’s paying a lot of attention to it.’
‘That’s Tommy Preisler’s shop,’ Nigel reflected. ‘He’s a good friend of Michael Bloomstein.’
It hit him like a bolt of lightning. Grace’s love of Occam’s Razor, the simplest solution usually being the right one, would prove true yet again.
‘We’ve got this all wrong. Get me the logs from the listening devices!’ Nigel demanded.
He grabbed them from Carol, the dutiful Antiques Squad administrator. Scouring the pages in a wild frenzy as his incredulous colleagues watched on.
‘Yes, that’s it. I’ve got it,’ he shrieked.
‘Got what?’ asked Don.
‘The “Tom job”. We’ve been looking at it all wrong. We’ve over-complicated it. It’s not slang at all. It’s not jewellery. Tom is a person, Tommy Preisler. Read the conversations from the log and it’s clear. They are talking about Tommy Preisler.’
Shell-shocked and red-faced they realized that they had been looking in the wrong place. Don grabbed the logs, determined to see for himself.
‘Bloody hell, you’re right. They are using Charlie to select the targets. It’s going to be Preisler.’
Now with an identified victim to protect, Don felt he still owed it to Alice to find her jewellery. The squad had a tip-off that a yellow diamond had been sold by Charlie Bloomstein to a dealer in Bond Street, London.
Unlike popping into a local high street jeweller, Don and Nigel had to pre-arrange their visit, provide descriptions of themselves, set out their enquiry and, of course, arrive with bundles of identification. The henchmen outside made up for in muscle what they lacked in social graces. Eventually the two detectives persuaded the monosyllabic guards that they were who they said they were.
Whisked off the street, they were prodded down a darkened stairway into a musty strongroom beneath ground level. The room, similar in appearance to where Gavin Daly emasculated Eamonn Pollack with his ninety-year-old handgun in Dead Man’s Time, took their breath away. The walls were almost entirely made up of Perspex cases containing hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of priceless watches and diamonds.
A portly, gracious gentleman, who was the antithesis of the goons who provided his front of house service, emerged from a door they had not spotted.
‘Officers, I am Edwin Hanson, how can I help you?’ he enquired softly.
‘Well, as we said on the phone, this needs to be in the strictest confidence,’ explained Don.
‘Of course, of course,’ Hanson reassured them. ‘Discretion is my middle name.’
‘Thank you. We believe a dealer by the name of Bloomstein from Brighton sold you a yellow diamond we are interested in,’ continued Don.
‘I see. Interested in what way?’ replied Hanson, feigning genuine concern.
‘Well, stolen,’ interjected Nigel, ‘but you wouldn’t have known that of course.’
‘Of course,’ confirmed Hanson, clearly grateful for the get-out clause Nigel had suggested. ‘Yes, I do remember being sold a yellow diamond by a chap from Brighton. I am quite a specialist in these rare stones, you know.’
‘Do you still have it by chance?’ asked Nigel, more in hope than expectation.
‘Yes, of course, I am collecting yellow diamonds to make a bracelet for a particularly affluent Saudi gentleman,’ he boasted.
‘That’s fabulous,’ said Don, in a rare display of excitement. They were on the verge of tying Bloomstein into the robbery and Alice was going to get her heirloom back.
Hanson moved to the corner of the room and unlocked a small wall safe. He stepped back to the table carrying a tiny chamois pouch in his right hand.
‘Now, let me see,’ muttered the jeweller, building up to something.
Like a magician fanning a deck of cards, Hanson flicked the bag. From it, the most stunning and blinding array of yellow stones sprayed across the baize table top.
‘Gentlemen. Just tell me which of these is the stone you are after and it’s yours to take away,’ he promised with a glibness that revealed why he had been so helpful. They all knew that there was no hope of picking out the right gem from this glittering pile.
Dejected and empty-handed they were gently escorted from the subterranean goldmine. Don and Nigel knew there was now no hope of finding Alice’s treasured diamond but were even more determined than ever to see her robbers locked up.
The big ‘Tom job’ was getting closer and closer. Almost daily, cars were turning up at the house in Arundel Road, Peacehaven, that doubled as Aldridge’s home and robbery HQ. Number plates would be switched and the cars driven off. They were being hidden in various anonymous car parks and streets in central Brighton, readied for a complex getaway.
The Armani suits had been sorted, a fake search warrant prepared, pistols sourced, and restraints all in place. A very good friend of Charlie’s family was about to realize that, in the world of crime and greed, there is no such thing as friendship, only opportunities.
As happened in those days, when the arrests drew closer an investigative team were briefed to take the job over. This was to be led by a long-standing colleague and good friend of mine, DS Russ Whitfield. Russ was a dyed-in-the-wool detective, who had graduated from policing Whitehawk into CID and then been promoted.
We had been made Detective Sergeant at the same time but our paths then diverged. He had been given the job of setting up the first Divisional Intelligence Unit in the city while I moved to Child Protection. Not long after, however, I had transferred again to lead a team of detectives in nearby Haywards Heath CID. While rural policing had its own challenges, lack of staff being one of them, I still looked longingly at what was going on in Brighton. Six months of crime and excitement in Haywards Heath could be crammed into a week in the city I loved.