Anything to Declare? (23 page)

Mobile surveillance meant, of course, that we had to be driving around. In Investigation, we used mobile surveillance on almost every target we had. It was either used to move footmen around, put mobile targets under surveillance, to get to a knock (a raid) or arrest someone at lightning speed. So it was to our advantage to be good drivers. Not just good in the normal sense of being safe, but good enough to drive safely at speed and to pursue suspects without imperilling anyone. To that end, myself and my colleague, Pete, were signed up for a specially tailored pursuit driving course at a police driving-school. These courses were three weeks long and concentrated on what the police instructors referred to as ‘the method’. Our major disadvantage as Customs officers was that when we drove we carried no blues-and-twos to warn everyone we were coming through.

Pete and I were the only two students in the whole school. This, we found out, was because the course finished on Christmas Eve and any police officer or Customs investigator worth their salt by then would be doing the Christmas party rounds and inhaling large amounts of liquid. Appropriately, our instructor, Clive, looked a bit like Santa Claus. But, even at fifty-nine years of age, he was still one of the best specialist driving instructors in the business. He was, basically, an elderly but extremely friendly speed nutter, and one who could change an ordinary family saloon into a racing car in the flick of the gearstick. He would have scared the bowels empty of any boy-racer one-third of his age.

Even though there was only me and Pete there, Clive delivered his opening announcement to the class as if he was addressing a full conference hall.

‘Well, gents, you are here to learn the art of “making ground” – that’s what we call it as we don’t “speed” in law enforcement! We don’t put a single member of the general public at risk; we will drive cars at the limit of their ability and then get 20 per cent more out of them. You, my young learners, will do this without the protection of blue lights or sirens and without the public ever knowing who you are and without the criminals ever seeing you!’

Pete and I resisted the urge – though it was strong – to look behind us and see who he was talking to; it felt as if the room must have filled up. But we knew we were the only ones there, so, impressed, we just looked at each other, and then straight back at Clive.

It’s no exaggeration to say that, after three weeks’ intensive training, we could shift any car like greased shit off a greased shit shovel. Clive was immense. If it wasn’t for the white beard we could have sworn he was the Stig off
Top Gear.
He showed us that most people have no idea what your average family car can really do. Because, on the course, we didn’t drive sports cars but just ordinary two-litre Ford Mondeos. People tend to think that police and Customs drive souped-up cars, but it isn’t true. They are ordinary vehicles burdened with all the extra kit that a law enforcement car has to carry, such as radios, raid kits, spare kit, etc. So the advantage we had to have could only come from how we drove. We certainly got that advantage courtesy of Clive’s skill and weeks of tearing around the track and countryside practising. For once, it was worth missing the Christmas drinks.

So, our surveillance fleet was extremely ordinary. Except for a couple of three-litre cruisers, all our cars were the bogstandard two-litre saloons. But, as our cars carried the radio kit and also our overnight bags, it was possible to leave home on Monday morning and not return for a couple of weeks. Local supermarkets used to do a brisk trade from surveillance officers on the job who had to quickly fill up their bags with new supplies of socks, pants and T-shirts.

Clive’s imparted wisdom came in handy when we got the chance to put our driving skills to the test against a professional rally driver who had, you might say, come off the tracks.

Smugglers come from all walks of life, from opportunistic amateur to the hardened professional. But behind the larger smuggling organizations, just the same as with a legal business, there is an entire company of employees keeping the whole operation afloat: packers, cutters, manufacturers, forgers, enforcers, bodyguards, moneymen, gun men and – in the case of those who needed a quick getaway – wheel men. Professional drivers.

One wheel man that we came across was one of the best drivers that I’d ever had to try to keep up with. We already knew from various sources that Todd Greene had been a rally driver when he was younger. This was a bit of a worry, but then we had an officer who was a current amateur rally driver on our team (and who got his kicks by scaring the crap out of us when we were his passengers). The difference was that we knew Todd was in his fifties so we just hoped that he would have slowed down a bit with age. And, soon enough, we’d get to find out.

One lunchtime, the case officer on a current operation wandered over to my team’s desks. He explained that he had just got info that Todd was on his way back from Spain with a large amount of cash following a successful drugs run. Apparently, he was driving up to Calais and the case officer wanted us to follow him home when he hit British soil. Although we had an address for Todd in Northampton, we had never actually seen him there, so we thought that either he had moved or that the address was just a cover.

So with six cars in our convoy (all ‘two-up’, that is, two officers in each) and a high-powered tracker car, we all sped off to Folkestone. We managed to get into place at various spots along the motorway to London by seven o’clock. Todd was due in via the Channel Tunnel at about eight, and bang on time we got a ‘ping’ on the tracker device attached to his Alfa Romeo. The tracker pinpointed him as having just left the train but it was still in the station area. But, when the signal gave the same position ten minutes later, our ground commander started to worry. There should have been some movement by now. I thought that he could have perhaps switched cars, which would have thrown us completely, but he would only do that if he thought he’d been rumbled. And if he thought he’d been identified, then why come back at all?

The tracker car was still getting a firm ping, but, on a drive-by of his supposed position, there was no one to be seen. We contacted our back-up officers who had another tracker system. They pinged our target car but now it was registering as shifting up the motorway to London and not in the station area at all. It turns out that he had passed us but we hadn’t known because the tracking signal was corrupted by the electrified overhead train lines. You could have spotted every single surveillance car in the area at that moment from the loud swearing emanating from them.

Aiming to make up for lost time, our tracker car shot off like a high-velocity missile, followed by the rest of us at quite a steady speed of about 90 mph. Five minutes later, the tracker got a lock on the target and revealed one thing – the target was certainly shifting. So, fifty-year-old former rally driver or not, Todd hadn’t lost any of his need for speed.

The ground commander came on the radio: ‘The target is doing 90 to 100 mph, so I suggest we all floor it to make up ground.’

As we started to near the M25, all our cars were screaming along at 130 to 150 mph and at last we were starting to close the gap. Then the fog came down.

To add to our woes, our tracker car was spotted speeding and pulled over by a motorway police traffic car. We heard our tracker car driver cursing black and blue over the radio – the words ‘give’, ‘me’, ‘fucking’ and ‘strength’ were heard, though not necessarily in that order (well, they
were
in that order – it’s just that one of those words in particular cropped up several times). Our chap knew he couldn’t just plough on because it would have caused even more police cars to join the pursuit. The traffic cops must have been rubbing their hands at pulling such a high-speed merchant. Just a shame, I thought, that they hadn’t pulled our target when he’d sped by!

Our tracker driver jumped out and shot back to the police car, ID in hand, and quickly explained that we were on highspeed surveillance. And then added, ‘Oh, and by the way, there’s six more of us due past soon.’ The traffic cop’s smile dropped as – right on cue – we all screamed past like a formation of low-flying rockets.

Making up the lost time was difficult, even at this speed, and we didn’t really get close to Todd until he turned off the M25 and on to the M1. We had gone from Folkestone to Northampton (slowing only for the toll) with every driver practically having his foot flat to floor. The traffic had been good to us through the night and luckily every car performed well, as did the drivers.

But did we get what we were after? Well, only just. Two of our cars caught up enough to get within visual range of Todd Greene, just as he entered Northampton, and they managed to keep with him right up to a premises that was previously unknown to us. So we did get his new address. The result of the night was humble, but important: two photographs, one with him getting out of his car with a bulging sports bag and the second of him opening his front door with a key. We had the information that we were after – the home base for a drugs runner.

But the thing that most amused us that night was the fact that it was one of our pursuit cars that got pulled by the police and not the villain’s car that had half a million pounds in cash and two pistols in it.

Some targets took a lot of working on because they had antisurveillance techniques and were very vigilant. It would have obviously been the most elementary mistake, on our part, for a target to spot us. So we used whatever vehicles fitted into an operational area. When working in north London in the Green Lanes area (one of our major stomping grounds for Turkish heroin gangs), we would blend in with the locals by using either BMWs or Mercedes-Benz. If our target was a City man and spent much of his time in central London, then we would sign out a private hire car and a couple of white vans and use those as tracking vehicles. If the target lived in the countryside, we would use Land Rovers, Subarus and motorbikes. The biggest advantage of using motorbikes was that they could make up ground at tremendous speed, a definite boon when you happened to lose sight of the target. We’d often position the bike at the rear of our convoy of tracking vehicles. The life of the biker was not an easy one as they often had to be out in all weathers.

The other position in the convoy that most officers wished to avoid was that of the surveillance or ‘obs’ (observation) van. It was often slow and ponderous to drive and had very little in the way of passenger comforts. Guys in the tracker cars usually had to leave the van behind during high-speed surveillance, only to see it again hours after we had stopped. When using an obs van, the driver would attempt to place it in the best possible position for the observation of the target. Sometimes this would mean a surveillance driver going out in the early hours of the morning in one of our cars to take up the required position and keep the parking space until the van arrived. Once in position, the obs-van driver would lock up the vehicle and abandon it for a much more comfortable surveillance car. But in the back of the van there would remain a second and often a third officer who were tasked with the surveillance. The rear windows were one-way glass. Within the van we would have a powerful radio link and cameras (both still and video); if you were very lucky, there might even be a portable toilet. A winter assignment in the van was often only survivable if you packed up some warm clothes to take with you. The real killer time to be in the van was during the summer. The summer sun had a habit of turning the van into a slow cooker. A very hot day would result in such a loss of body fluids that later on they had to be immediately replaced in the pub.

The use of the van was twofold. First, it could be used as an early-warning device for the rest of the surveillance team, giving updates as to the position and possible movement of the target. Second, and most importantly, the van was there to enable an officer to take evidential photographs and films of targets, cars, premises and even meetings.

One July morning, I was given the prestigious job of van officer on a large Excise job. The job had been handled by one of the Excise investigation teams until one of the suspect lorry drivers was involved in a shooting. The bad guys weren’t after the driver but the load of booze that he was carrying in the lorry. Unfortunately, the driver fought back and the gang took a dislike to this attempted ‘have a go hero’ and tried to blow his head off with a shotgun. He was lucky to get away with his life. So things had definitely turned dirty and heavy, and the Excise team needed officers who didn’t mind the risks. As such, myself and my colleagues on the cocaine and heroin teams were brought into the operation.

The sun was already hot at 7 a.m. when I clambered into the back of the Transit van. I had with me, in my kit bag, two towels and at least six litres of water. The day before, I had seen the van officer fall out of the rear of the van after duty: he was barely conscious and so dehydrated he was whisked away to hospital. By 8 a.m., the van had been put into position covering the entrance to a large cash-and-carry drinks warehouse. We knew that lorries loaded full of duty-free booze that were supposed to be heading for Europe were in fact being diverted into the home market. This was no Robin Hood crime: the organizers didn’t reduce the price of the drinks but charged full whack and pocketed the difference. As a large percentage of the booze price is tax and duty, you can guess how much the gang were making per bottle. And where there are large criminal profits there are usually large criminals desperate to hang on to them.

By 10 a.m., the inside of the van was hotter than Satan’s jockstrap. I had both a stills camera and a video camera set up on tripods and focused on the entrance of the warehouse. Lorries had started to arrive and I had to photograph their number plates then radio the lorries’ details back to base. The same thing was happening at a bonded warehouse in the City of London. The case officer collated the information from the observation positions at the bonded warehouse and combined it with the information he was getting from four dirty cash-and-carry warehouses.