Bonded by Blood (30 page)

According to Nicholls, Tate, Tucker and Rolfe died at approximately 7 p.m. However the CCRC discovered that several factors pointed to a much later time of death. The following morning when it was discovered, the Range Rover was untouched by snow or ice, despite standing out on a freezing night. Two local witnesses thought they heard shots between 10 p.m. and midnight, while a third who walked his dog along the murder lane at 7.30 p.m. was adamant that the Range Rover was not there.

On the night of the murders between 8.30 p.m. and 8.45 p.m., a man was driving his white van towards the Rettendon roundabout. Pulling up alongside him was a dark-blue Range Rover, carrying four men. The van driver immediately recognised the hulking figure in the back seat was Pat Tate – one of the most well-known men in that part of Essex.

According to Nicholls, he had already been dead for more than 90 minutes. The van driver also saw a second passenger. The man cut a striking figure: tall and thin, wearing what looked like a black trench coat, with shoulder-length blond hair. The Range Rover accelerated up Rettendon Hill, but a moment later the white van was forced to swerve violently to avoid being hit after the Ranger Rover U-turned and headed towards the murder scene.

There was a secondary point of interest in the van driver’s story. Nicholls had told police that as he drove Whomes and Steele away from the murder scene, his shock caused him to almost crash into a white van. In fact, it was the blue Range Rover that had had the near-miss, again with a white van, in the same location Nicholls described. Pure coincidence? Or had Nicholls witnessed the first near-crash and used it to embroider his own story?

As the CCRC delved deeper and deeper into Nicholls’s story, the evidence against Whomes and Steele began to get weaker. As the case against Whomes and Steele started to crumble, the CCRC announced it had asked Hertfordshire Police to launch a special re-investigation into the way the original case had been handled by Essex Police. Detective Superintendent Steve Read, one of the force’s most senior investigating officers, was to lead the inquiry. The move followed past reviews of the case by both Norfolk Police and the Metropolitan Police, who were asked by Essex Police to double-check that procedure had been followed.

‘It is something we do not do very often, but we will if there are significant issues to be investigated,’ a CCRC spokesman said. ‘We have got certain expertise, but we do sometimes appoint an officer or force to carry out an inquiry for us. In this case, that has been done.’

Everybody involved in the campaign to free Steele and Whomes was delighted with the news, but the jubilation was short-lived, as shocking news from HMP Whitemoor came through: somebody in prison had attempted to murder Jack Whomes.

Jack had been taking a shower when another inmate had accused him of breaking wind. ‘Dirty bastard,’ the man had snarled.

Jack denied he had done any such thing but added, ‘Surely everyone is entitled to break wind, mate, especially after eating the slop they serve us in here.’ The man stormed off without replying and returned moments later, brandishing a large kitchen knife.

Jack, who had his back to the man, continued showering, unaware of the impending danger. When he became aware of the man, it was too late. He suffered three stab wounds to the abdomen in quick succession. Fearing for his life, Jack grabbed the man and pulled him to the floor while trying to disarm him. As the two struggled, prison officers alerted by the commotion ran into the room and overpowered the knife man. Jack knew he had been lucky to escape with his life. Pam Whomes later told the media that she was worried her son would be ‘carried out of prison in a box’ rather than walk free.

‘My son’s done remarkably well, but when he was stabbed, it terrified him, he really couldn’t get over it,’ she said. ‘It’s affected him mentally, too. He has spent the last eight years worrying and fighting to prove his innocence and now this happens. We want the CCRC to hurry up with their investigation so my boy can come home. We are all worried sick about him.’

In order to maintain public interest in the case, Martin Moore would collect any newspaper cuttings, photographs or documents relevant to the Rettendon case and upload them to the website he had created for others to view. While surfing the Internet for new material one day, Martin came across a document detailing the full Court of Appeal judgment concerning Nicholls and the injunction he had imposed on the BBC in order to prevent the screening of the Inside Story programme.

At first glance, it appeared to be a pretty boring document full of legal jargon, but as Martin began to read it, he realised that it held the key to unravelling the web of lies Nicholls had told since his arrest. Throughout Nicholls’s cross-examination during the trial, he had been repeatedly asked what had motivated him to commit a crime and then inform on his fellow criminals.

‘Money was important in your life, was it not?’ Mr Lederman, QC for Jack Whomes, asked Nicholls.

‘It’s important in everyone’s life,’ Nicholls replied.

‘More important in some people’s lives than other people’s, I suggest.’

‘I suppose for people who have got money, yes, it’s less important.’

‘You were obsessed with money, were you not?’

‘No. I liked earning money.’

Mr Lederman then went on to describe some of the ways in which Nicholls had ‘liked’ earning his money: the plot to rob drug couriers taking £150,000 abroad and the £400 reward he had been given when he set up two innocent men for the drugs he had dumped in the gravel pit lake; the plan to manufacture amphetamines and dish them out like sweets to the people of Braintree.

Despite the fact that Nicholls was being exposed as a man who would do practically anything for money, he was adamant that he had not benefited financially from giving evidence against Whomes and Steele. Mr Lederman reminded Nicholls that he had once told DC Bird that he would not supply him with information unless he was paid ‘up front’.

‘Money first, before you inform. That is your philosophy, is it not?’ Mr Lederman asked.

Nicholls stared straight back at Mr Lederman and with a smirk on his face replied, ‘Yes.’

Mr Lederman then asked Nicholls, ‘In connection with money, if the price is right, you’ll do it?’

Once again, Nicholls smirked. ‘Yes,’ he replied.

As Nicholls gave his evidence, John Whomes later told me that he couldn’t help but feel he wasn’t quite telling the whole truth about money he had received for assisting the police. ‘He squirmed and couldn’t look the barrister in the eye,’ John had said. ‘I just had a feeling there was more he was holding back.’

At Steele and Whomes’s trial, Nicholls had without doubt rather dubious credentials as a witness of truth, so Justice Hidden had warned the jury to treat Nicholls’s evidence with caution before they retired to consider their verdict. ‘So much of the case hinges on the evidence of one person, it is important that you look at that person and see his evidence from every angle,’ he said. ‘It is important that you look at the character of the person giving that evidence. Darren Nicholls is a convicted criminal and has served a term of imprisonment. He is a person who was himself engaged in the serious criminality involved in importing drugs of abuse into this country. You will bear in mind that in giving evidence to the prosecution he may well have an interest of his own to serve in seeking to obtain some lesser sentence than would otherwise be the case.

‘He was involved in the criminal activities about which you have heard. Further, when he was told by Superintendent Barrington the importance of telling the truth in everything he said from then on, he nonetheless in his third interview did not tell the complete truth and attempted to reduce or minimise the extent of his activity in the overall drug importation matters of criminality.

‘You may consider, and I would advise you to do so, that because of these matters you should look at the evidence of Darren Nicholls with great caution before acting on it.’

What the defence, judge and jury did not know was that Darren Nicholls was profiting financially from giving evidence on behalf of the police, and had been for some time. The BBC injunction document revealed that within weeks of being arrested Nicholls had telephoned a journalist named Tony Thompson at
Time Out
magazine. Nicholls asked Thompson if he would write a book about his life and the Rettendon murders because he was going to be the principal prosecution witness at the trial. Thompson knew at once that such a high-profile case would not only make a lucrative book, but also there were possibilities for any such book to be made into an even more lucrative film.

Nicholls had been granted bail after Whomes and Steele had been charged with murder, but a condition of that bail was that he remain in police custody for his own protection. However, his police handlers would take him out on an almost daily basis to shops, fast-food restaurants, theme parks, pubs and anywhere else that took Nicholls’s fancy. Because he was technically a free man, the police gave him access to telephones and he was rarely locked in his cell, which was fitted out with all the creature comforts of home. (This allowed Nicholls to have the freedom he needed to contact Thompson without the police becoming aware of what he was up to.)

Fewer than eight weeks after being arrested for murder and importing drugs, Nicholls was able to instruct Thompson to contact his agent, Caroline Dawnay, about the book they had agreed to write together.

On Thursday, 1 August 1996, Nicholls was being held at Colchester police station, but somehow he was able to attend a meeting with Thompson and Dawnay almost 40 miles away at Two Brydges Place, an exclusive members’ club in the West End of London. The custody record at Colchester police station for that day was left blank, which was a breach of police rules and regulations. Every officer who had any responsibility for Nicholls throughout his time in police custody denies they took him to London that day.

At the end of the meeting, Dawnay was happy that Nicholls had sufficient material for a book and that they had a reasonable chance of finding a publisher. On 8 August 1996, she drew up a terms of business letter for Nicholls that authorised her company, Peters Fraser & Dunlop – PFD – to act as his agent. On 17 August, Nicholls signed a collaboration agreement between himself and Tony Thompson. This contract set out who owned the copyright to the book and how the proceeds would be divided. Nicholls was to receive 50 per cent of the first £10,000 received and then 75 per cent of any subsequent payments.

Two days later, the publishing company Little, Brown sent a contract to Nicholls’s agent offering to publish his story. Nicholls signed the contract shortly afterwards. Between them, Nicholls and Thompson received £20,000 as an advance payment for their book.

Thompson then began visiting Nicholls in police custody so that they could work on the manuscript together. This was achieved without the police having any knowledge that Thompson was a journalist.

In
Bloggs 19
, the book they eventually wrote together, Thompson claims that his initial meeting with Nicholls took place at a McDonald’s in Romford and that Nicholls was accompanied by his minders, who had tailed Thompson’s car. Both Thompson and Nicholls have since agreed that this was made up and the idea for this version of the meeting came from a gangster book called
Wise Guy
.

When defence barristers had trawled through Nicholls’s statements, it became evident that he had encountered similar difficulty in getting right the story that had led to Whomes and Steele being charged. During his police interviews, Nicholls had changed the account he was giving after visits to his cell during ‘rest breaks’ from DC Winstone and DC Brown, the same two detectives he was being interviewed by: a practice totally against police procedure. On Nicholls’s custody record, these encounters were recorded as ‘welfare visits’, even though Nicholls already had an appointed welfare officer, Detective Sergeant Crayling.

The custody record shows that on one occasion Nicholls spent 25 minutes with DS Crayling, then shortly afterwards he had spent an hour and a half with DC Brown. It reveals that there were numerous other occasions when Nicholls had received excessive visits concerning his welfare. For instance, DS Crayling is recorded as visiting Nicholls for 55 minutes and then DC Winstone spent 1 hour and 55 minutes with him. On another occasion, DS Crayling visited Nicholls for 35 minutes. This was followed by a visit from DC Winstone for 2 hours and 20 minutes.

When cross-examined at trial, Winstone and Brown said they could not recall what was discussed. Nicholls denied the case was discussed and told the jury the officers had only visited him to ‘cheer him up’. Indeed there is no evidence of any impropriety in these visits. Winstone and Brown did admit that they provided Nicholls with a writing desk, pens and paper so that he could ‘make notes’ about anything he may have remembered about his evidence.

The defence suggested that these visits had a far more sinister purpose. It was suggested that they were to remind Nicholls of a ‘version of events’ that would fit in with the mobile phone and other circumstantial evidence. Only Nicholls, Winstone and Brown know what was discussed, but it cannot be argued that Nicholls kept getting the story wrong and after each break would miraculously remember details and correct his mistakes.

During one interview, Nicholls had told police that on the day of the murders he had received a message on his answering machine to telephone Steele. When he returned Steele’s call, Nicholls said he was asked by Steele to meet him at a motorbike shop called Ron Parkinson’s at Marks Tey near Colchester. Nicholls said he remembered the meeting because while he was waiting for Steele he had purchased a new battery for his van. DC Winstone and DC Brown quite rightly thought this was an important piece of evidence because they could now visit the shop and check the sales for that day – if there was a record of a battery being sold, then it would support Nicholls’s story. A few days later, Winstone and Brown had to explain to Nicholls that they had visited the motorbike shop and there was no record of him or anybody else purchasing a battery that day. In the next interview, Nicholls said that he had thought about the battery and he now remembered that he had in fact purchased a bulb for his motorcycle but had fitted it to the Land Rover that he was driving because the interior light had gone and it used the same type of bulb as his motorcycle. Unwittingly, Nicholls had not only changed his story about the battery which had been proven to be untrue, he had changed his story from travelling to meet Steele in his van to now travelling to meet Steele in his Land Rover.