With the assistance of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch it was quickly discovered that a David Bentley had flown on a Boeing 747 flight from Heathrow to Miami Airport on the Sunday evening. The British Overseas Airways Corporation ticket was one way and had cost him £150. The FBI were informed and said the chances of finding him now were slim as he had not stayed at the hotel he had shown on his landing card and could now be anywhere in Florida or the East Coast of America. DCS Metcalf considered sending a team to the States to look for him, but decided against it. He knew that where families like the Bentleys were concerned blood was thicker than water and David had spent many years being cared for by his mother Renee. One day he would return to Hackney, and when he did they’d arrest and charge him with conspiracy to rob the TSB.
In the days that followed, Jane felt Kath’s presence daily, often hearing her voice and laugh, and was grateful Kath had taught her how to handle discrimination and have the strength to stand up for herself. Jane had even put a couple of dents in the roller towel herself at times of frustration, but she had come to learn that the nature of a police officer’s work was often to remember but move on, so no one really talked much about Kath or Bradfield’s deaths, or how much they were missed. Any reference to Bradfield was quietly dealt with, but she knew she was not the only one to feel a dark sadness that he was gone and no longer storming out of his office, barking orders. A new DCI was sent to Hackney to take over the day-to-day running of the CID and Kath Morgan was replaced by another officer waiting to be made detective.
There was some light relief after all the tragedy. It was discovered that the officers who had already paid for and received their suits from Mannie Charles were all wearing hot property. They weren’t in fact ‘off the rail’, but classy suits that had been stolen from Aquascutum in Regent Street by the Horne Brothers warehouse manager and Mannie’s wife had removed the labels and substituted them with their own. DS Gibbs had been tipped off by a mate who worked in the CID office at West End Central and arrested the Horne manager and Mannie whilst investigating the break-in. It had everyone laughing and wondering if they should return the suits or keep quiet, until Gibbs brought in the suit ordered by Bradfield that was still hanging in his office in a plastic wrapper. As Bradfield had been six foot four there were few men it would fit, or who would want it. With gallows humour one detective lightened the gloom by suggesting he might like to be buried in it, but many couldn’t hide just how much Bradfield was missed.
Jane found that sinking herself into her daily work helped keep her emotions in check. It was only at night, in the privacy of her room at the section house, that she found the horror overwhelming. She would constantly remember Kath, and sometimes break down in tears. Other times she would fall into an exhausted sleep and wake with the nightmare of the explosion, and then it was Bradfield who dominated her every thought. Had he tried to protect Kath? She was certain that he would have, but then the thought of him left her bereft and unable even to cry.
Daniel Mitcham was finally arrested when he tried to use a false passport when boarding a P & O Ferry at Dover destined for Boulogne in France, from where he intended to make his way to Spain. Although he had changed his appearance by cutting his hair and wearing glasses and a cap, it was the burn to the nape of his neck that made one of the Customs officers suspicious. When the holdall he was carrying was searched it was found to contain a false bottom. Hidden inside was £10,000, mostly in soon to be unusable £5 notes, a quantity of valuable jewellery and a large stash of drugs.
The police had been intercepting and checking any mail to his home address. As a result they had discovered the cash and jewellery he had sent to his wife to enable her to join him in Spain when he found a place to live. The police had let the mail through and his wife hadn’t declared she’d received stolen goods so they had arrested her. Mitcham was promised that the charges against his wife would be dropped, his kids wouldn’t end up in care, and he would get a reduced sentence if he co-operated. It was an offer he was in no position to refuse.
Danny told them the full story, and also agreed to give Queen’s Evidence against Clifford Bentley, who had so far refused to say anything.
After the bodies and body parts had been removed from the bank, DS Lawrence and his forensic team had spent days at the location trying to ascertain exactly what had caused the explosion. They knew from the hole in the steel vault floor that the suspects must have been using an oxyacetylene torch, but as it was not in the café it was likely that it had been blown to pieces and become mixed up with all the other debris from the vault. Every piece of metal was eventually gathered up in dustbins and it was a painstaking task at the lab sifting through it all and putting the oxygen and acetylene tanks back together. The answer came after Paul Lawrence had meticulously rebuilt the remains of the acetylene tank pressure gauge and discovered the dial was stuck on 30psi. He knew that the gauge must have been on 30psi at the moment of explosion, and that acetylene, being an extremely unstable gas, was dangerously explosive at pressures above 15psi. Lawrence concluded that John Bentley naively thought that turning up the pressure would increase the heat intensity and speed up cutting the safe open. The explosion was inevitable and unavoidable, and tragically happened at exactly the wrong moment for the officers who, as a result, were killed or injured.
Due to the intense political and press interest concerning the deaths of two police officers, and the severe injuries to others including the bank manager, the rubber heelers from A10 were called in as a matter of course to carry out an internal investigation. They had been told to look at all the information DCI Bradfield had acted on, and decide whether it was reliable and correct. The big question was whether he could have reasonably foreseen that dangerous and volatile cutting equipment needed to be used to get into the vault, in which case the suspects should have been arrested as soon as they broke into the vault.
For once it was an investigation that the A10 officers did not relish and they deliberately cut corners, especially as there was not one officer on the team who did not stand by the decisions made by the deceased DCI Leonard Bradfield, whose actions had also been given the green light and were supported by DCS Metcalf. Everyone knew that it would be wrong to tarnish the good name of a highly respected and much admired man like Bradfield, who had acted in good faith and done what he believed to be right at the time. Even the Commissioner himself recognized this fact by later recommending both DCI Bradfield and WPC Morgan for a posthumously awarded Queen’s Police Medal for an ‘exhibition of conspicuous devotion to duty’.
Jane was working on the front desk when Harris came in and told her that Metcalf wanted to see her.