The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin (13 page)

  
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.  One young female officer, blonde and massively endowed, attended a C11 selection board only to be told, ‘Sorry, dear; there's three things against you – and one of them's your hair!'

T
he briefing by Detective Superintendent Ness took more than an hour and as Colin Hockaday said, ‘It was very full and detailed.' Detective Sergeant Paul Seabrook was in charge of the C11 team; ‘In my view,' he said, ‘it was a good briefing.' At its conclusion, the briefing was thrown open for discussion and as DC Cyril Jenner said, ‘There was ample opportunity for questions and answers, so that everyone present knew their jobs.' For the purposes of the operation, it was decided to refer to Stephens as ‘Susie', since the girl with whom she shared the flat was also named Sue; if necessary, the second girl, Susan Sykes, would be referred to either as ‘Sue' or ‘Tall Sue'.

Hockaday met Peter Finch for the first time at the meeting; his immediate impression of Finch was that he was ‘a nice, mild-mannered bloke'. These two officers duly manned the OP to keep observation on Susan Stephens's flat at West End Lane, together with two other officers. Nothing of any importance happened during the observation on that first day; Stephens simply came out of her flat with another girl and went to the Railway public house opposite. She returned at about midnight and in the early hours of the following morning, the observation was terminated.

The following day, Friday 14 January, the operation recommenced at 11.45 a.m. At West Hampstead police station, DS Seabrook briefed four new team members from C11 who had been unable to be present at the initial briefing. He had kept detailed notes from Superintendent Ness's briefing from the previous day and told the team the identities of the armed officers (the same as the previous day) as a safety measure.

This was the disposition of the surveillance team: DS Seabrook with Woman Detective Constable Sharon Collier in a Vauxhall Chevette saloon and DCs Deane and Jardine in an orange Marina van were in the vicinity of Stephens's address; DC Roy Chivers, together with DCs Peter Buddle and Robert Bruce, were in a London taxi; and DCs Ronald White and Cyril Jenner were on solo motorcycles parked at West Hampstead police station. DS Hockaday and DC Finch were again in the OP.

Communications between the various units were on channel seven on the main RT set; these were monitored through Scotland Yard and were recorded. Any discourse between the ‘D' Division officers and C11 had to be by means of this medium because only the C11 personnel and their vehicles were fitted with car-to-car radios, operating on channel one, and these were not recorded. However, channel seven was also used by a number of other Central units, Flying Squad and Regional Crime Squad to mention but two, and at that time there was also considerable interference from CB radio enthusiasts. And if that were not enough, in spite of channel one's very limited range, by sheer bad luck another completely separate Central operation on the same channel was being conducted simultaneously nearby.

The officers, including those in the OP, got what appeared to be a strong lead; they had received intelligence that Stephens was going to move to a new address. Since she was in possession of Martin's clothes and belongings, it was reasonable to assume that they would be moving into the new address together. Lester Purdy had been recently escorting Stephens, therefore it was possible that he would provide the transport and details of his green Ford Capri was provided; either that or Stephens would take a London taxi.

At 1.10 p.m., Stephens returned to her flat; in fact, Mr E. Hilton, the owner of 175 West End Lane, had wanted to speak to her but she appeared tense and nervous and replied, ‘I can't speak to you now – I'm going to Bath.' At about 4.00 p.m., the officers in the OP saw Purdy's apple-green Ford Capri arrive, which parked opposite to Stephens's flat and two men got out and entered the building.

It was at this stage that problems were experienced in the OP. The portable RT set could receive but not properly transmit (this was a common failing) and a new one had to be acquired and brought in to the OP as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible. Therefore C11 foot units, using their own covert radios, had to be deployed to provide up-to-the-minute reports and then when the new RT set arrived, information from both the main set and the covert radios were transmitted simultaneously; until this was sorted out, it added to the confusion.

Thirty-five minutes later, Stephens, wearing a fur coat, and three men – the third man had remained in the Capri – went into a fruit shop. Ten minutes after that, Stephens put a bag or a suitcase into the back of the Capri, and she and the three men got into the car and drove off. By now, the sun had set and the officers in the OP alerted C11 who immediately started following the vehicle and Hockaday and Finch left the OP, got into Finch's authorised private car – call sign ‘Delta 13' and fitted with a main RT set only – and followed the C11 operatives. Right at the end of the tail was Superintendent Ness and DS Tom Martin (the fifth officer to be armed) in a Hillman, call sign ‘Delta 56'. Although, like ‘Delta 13', this vehicle was not fitted with a small set, Ness's presence was necessary because if Martin were to be picked up and the vehicles were to leave the Metropolitan Police District it would be necessary to contact the constabulary area they had entered in order for that force to provide armed back-up.

The Capri drove down West End Lane, into Abbey Road and into Grove End Road. As the Capri turned right into St John's Wood Road, so the surveillance vehicles followed and travelled down to the junction with Maida Vale where they were held at the lights. They turned right into Maida Vale, then almost immediately left into Clifton Road and into Clifton Gardens. The Capri turned left into Warwick Avenue and reached the roundabout where it turned right on to the Harrow Road underneath the A40(M) flyover. The surveillance vehicles, often changing places, always unobtrusive, followed the target vehicle on to Lord Hill's Bridge where it turned left and took the first right into Westbourne Park Villas, which ran into Westbourne Park Road.

As Hockaday reached the area of Notting Hill, he heard one of the C11 officers say on the radio, ‘They're in a different vehicle.' They were. At 4.57 p.m., the Capri had stopped in Kensington Park Road, close to the junction with Westbourne Park Road. WDC Collier got out on foot, strolled towards the Capri and walked up the outside staircase of a block of flats in order to keep observation on the vehicle; DC Deane, meanwhile, was keeping observation from a bus stop, behind the Capri. Stephens and Purdy had gone into the Portobello Mini Hire Ltd at 317 Westbourne Park Road, W11 and as Seabrook would later say, ‘There was a lot of coming and going.' Stephens later went into a branch of Bodyshop and at 5.30 p.m., the Capri left; it was driven by Peter Enter, who had been the third man in the car. The other man, a friend of Purdy's named Lewis Muslin, left on foot – he would play no part in the subsequent events.

Some six or seven minutes later, a yellow Mini, registration number GYF 117W, was driven from around the corner by a man not known to the surveillance team. Wearing a bomber jacket, he was slim with long fair hair; he got out, Purdy got into the driver's seat, Stephens got into the back of the car and lay down and the unknown man, into the front passenger seat, and the car drove off.

Seabrook alerted the rest of the team and in the darkness, the Mini was followed by the surveillance vehicles, the motorcycles, taxi, van and cars. Upon being asked by Seabrook – driving the Vauxhall Chevette saloon, call sign ‘Central 411' – who the passenger in the Mini was, WDC Collier in the front passenger seat replied, ‘I don't know where he came from, but he's very slim and has similar hair to Martin.' Seabrook asked the opinion of other members of the team and DC Chivers, driving a black London taxi, call sign ‘Central 422', replied, ‘He doesn't look to be five feet ten to me.'

The Mini drove along Ladbroke Grove and into Holland Park Avenue and threaded its way through London's home-going traffic, followed unobtrusively by the surveillance team. As it reached the Shepherd's Bush roundabout, WDC Collier asked DC Deane for a repeat of a message he had transmitted previously about the passenger's nose and hair. ‘The nose is a good likeness and so is the hair,' replied Deane, ‘especially in the photograph of him dressed as a woman.' Seabrook asked if Deane could confirm whether or not this was a positive identification; Deane, in the orange Marina van, call sign ‘Central 415', driven by Jardine, replied, ‘Not.'

The Mini turned left into Holland Road, towards Earls Court which was where the Boat Show was being held and the traffic was exceptionally heavy. It turned east into Pembroke Road, a one-way street with three lanes of traffic and as it approached the junction with Earls Court Road, behind a lorry, traffic came to a standstill.

Seabrook informed Ness on the radio, ‘He may, I stress,
may
be the wanted man' and Ness replied, ‘Received, mind how you go.' Hockaday told Seabrook, ‘Received, we'll stay behind you for now,' and Ness told the crew of ‘Delta 13', ‘Stay back, stay back, leave it to the Central units, over,' but shortly afterwards Ness called Seabrook, saying, ‘The only way to resolve it is for one of the crew of ‘Delta 13' who know him, to look, over.' This had to be Finch; he was the only officer present who could make a positive identification, since the other officers had to rely purely on photographs.

This transmission was received and then Ness said, ‘411, we'll wait for a suitable opportunity and maybe in heavy traffic is the best time, over.' There was discussion over the radio as to the location of the Mini and Seabrook said, ‘Now's as good a time as any, one of you, I suggest – as soon as they see the white Volkswagen van towing a generator, it's the target vehicle immediately in front of it, over.' The CB interference was worse than ever, and Hockaday replied, ‘Received, has he got through the lights?' Seabrook replied that the pedestrians were moving faster than the cars.

The vehicle containing Finch and Hockaday was probably 100 to 150 yards behind the Mini and the other watchers heard the transmission from Hockaday, ‘Peter's going on foot, Peter's going on foot, to look at the car', and these messages were often repeated, in case the first words were lost in transmission. ‘Tell him to be very careful, we don't want to alarm our man, over,' radioed Ness.

At that moment, as Seabrook had said, the Mini was in front of a Volkswagen van towing a trailer with machinery on board, which Seabrook was using as ‘cover'; the three vehicles were on the nearside of the road. Seabrook passed the position of the vehicles but then cancelled the transmission because the traffic began to move. Seconds later, the traffic stopped once more with the vehicles in the same formation. The van, containing Jardine and Deane, was behind Seabrook's Chevette.

To confuse matters in an already tense situation, these were the transmissions being broadcast on channel seven at that time:

Yeah, thousand unit from seven, ten seven one, over.

… ended up being R5 and started off being R2, MP over …

(Unintelligible)

Yeah, very intermittent now, acknowledged, MP out.

Ten seven one from ten eight five, receiving, over.

Ten eight five from ten seven one, we're in Brixton Road – er – can you give us? (interference).

Seven one, ten seven one, there's Gough Brothers off-licence (interference).

Yeah, ten eight five from ten seven one, you broke up completely, can you repeat please, over.

(Interference)

… seven, MP over.

… sierra five seven five seven from six, are you receiving, six, over.

(Interference)

Seven from six – er – are you returning to five zero, six, over.

Yeah, six from five seven, yes, yes, yes, over.

Can you give me your ETA, please, thanks a lot.

… from five seven, do you receive that, over.

… seven from … over.

One five minutes, fifteen minutes, over.

Received, six, out.

The person has made off with no money and he was hit back, so he may be injured, over.

It was therefore amazing that any coherent messages got through to anybody, whether connected with the hunt for Martin or not.

However, a chain of events had already been set in motion which would result in tragedy. As the seventeeth-century poet James Shirley said, ‘There is no armour against fate,' because at precisely 5.57 p.m. and ten seconds, Finch was now on foot in Pembroke Road, approaching the Mini, gun in hand.

D
ue to the traffic conditions, the Mini was now stationary outside 2A Pembroke Road. DC Cyril Jenner pulled up on his motorcycle, call sign ‘Central 414', by the front nearside door of the C11 Chevette saloon and as Seabrook was about to re-advise the units of the Mini's position, WDC Collier exclaimed, ‘He's got his gun out!'