The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin (19 page)

The following day, Detective Constable Gordon Harrison was on reserve in the Flying Squad office where one of the ‘For police eyes only' Martin wanted posters was pasted on the wall. The deeply detested Deputy Assistant Commissioner David Powis OBE, QPM – one of Sir Robert Mark's myrmidons – entered the office, removed the poster and took it away, roaring in his usual bellicose manner, ‘Too inflammatory!'

And of course the day following the shooting, the newspaper headlines were full of the incident.
The Guardian
rather predictably stated, ‘The idea that police shoot first and ask questions later should be entirely foreign to our way of life.' ‘Police shoot wrong man in rush hour' were the
Daily Mail
's
headlines. Stephens's flatmate Sue Sykes was quoted as angrily saying, ‘Even if it was Dave in the car, the police shouldn't just shoot him like that.'
The Sunday Times
told their readers that the shooting was ‘a disaster waiting to happen'. Mrs Marilyn Brown was taking her baby into St Stephen's Hospital when she saw Stephens brought in in handcuffs and heard her say, ‘I don't know why they had to shoot him.' That, said the
Daily Mail
, was the question to which everyone wanted an answer.

The Monday edition of that newspaper attempted to provide those answers when in an exclusive interview Sue Stephens's version of her relationship with Martin and her account of the shooting were published; ‘Who have we shot?' were the headlines: ‘Girl in the Mini tells first full story: ‘‘Police were exultant, then it was all just horror and fright''' and it continued into the Tuesday edition. Much of that edition was given to Stephens's peripatetic lifestyle plus details of the film stars, singers and other glitterati she had encountered along the way. She was keen to stress that Martin was not a transvestite; photos of him dressed as a woman, she said, ‘were taken at a fancy dress drag party'. Stephens had also informed the
Daily Mail
's readers that Martin had made his escape from the cell at Great Marlborough Street court by using a key which he had made himself. ‘He's been in the cell before and seen the jailer using the key,' she said. ‘He's only got to see something once and he can copy it from memory. He's incredible. He can open handcuffs with his fingernails. It's a game he plays with the authorities.'

Not only was this nationwide news, it was covered worldwide, with an account of the shooting in the US State of Maine's newspaper the
Lewiston Daily Sun
, and also Pennsylvania's
Observer-Reporter
who informed their readers that ‘On Friday, police leapt from a truck and opened fire on the car Waldorf had just rented' and furthermore, ‘The shootout has raised allegations from opposition legislators that the police were evidently “determined to kill” Martin.'

Monday's headlines of the
Daily Express
were conciliatory: ‘This Tragic Mistake'; ‘The police and Steven Waldorf – a case of mistaken identity' and carried photographs of both Waldorf and Martin. However, the opinion page contained in the Scottish edition of the newspaper said, in part: ‘The policemen involved in the Kensington shoot-out ought to be severely punished. They deserve no less for what they apparently did was unforgivable …' and Waldorf's parents agreed. ‘We can't forgive the police for this,' they said. ‘It may be a mistake to them, but it is a tragedy for us.'

The
Daily Mirror
was far more accusing. ‘WHY,' it thundered, ‘didn't police try bloodless arrest moments earlier?' Lester Purdy provided what could have been the answer to this rhetorical question: ‘Steven had waited on the pavement for ten minutes while I was inside the building, arranging to hire the car.'

‘HOW,' further demanded the
Mirror
, ‘could they mistake the two men?' Film director Tony Parker, a former colleague of Steven Waldorf's, dismissively supplied his opinion to that conundrum: ‘It would be like mistaking Ronnie Corbett for Ronnie Barker,' although as one police officer sourly commented, ‘Waldorf looked more like Martin than Martin.' This sentiment was echoed by Robert Darby who coincidentally several years later, while on holiday in the Mediterranean, saw Waldorf, who was talking about the incident and showed the listeners the scars from his bullet wounds. Darby had not seen Waldorf before, whereas Martin he had seen on several occasions. ‘If I had been Finch when he went up to that Mini,' he told me, ‘I would have taken exactly the same action as he did. Waldorf and Martin were
doppelgängers
.'

Two separate enquiries were ordered; and in the House, the Shadow Home Secretary Roy Hattersley PC, MP, FRSL (later Baron Hattersley) asked the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw KT, CH, MC, PC, DL (later 1st Viscount Whitelaw):

To understand that the nationwide concern that has been expressed about last Friday's tragedy involves not only the shooting of one innocent man but the practices and procedures that made that tragedy possible? I therefore ask the Home Secretary to understand that the House, like the country, expects an inquiry into the regulations governing the use of firearms to police officers and … that he must tell us how he … proposes to remedy the problems that allowed it to happen in the first place?

The Home Secretary announced that a full report would be sent to the Police Complaints Department and the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Thomas Hetherington KCB, CBE, QC, TD, telling the members, ‘All steps will be taken to ensure no such incident should ever happen again.' A bristling Paul Boateng PC, MP (later Lord Boateng), never the most enthusiastic supporter of the police despite being a member of the Greater London Council's Police Committee, stated that the incident raised serious questions regarding police orders governing firearms. The Commissioner, Sir Kenneth Leslie Newman GBE, QPM, KSTJ, LLB, CIMGT, who had just taken up the post a few months previously, mentioned that there might be a close review of police gun controls; he was right.

All these accusations and condemnations were aired on Monday 17 January and there would be far more to come. There was immense public sympathy for Steven Waldorf – again, rightly so. However, within rank-and-file police circles there was enormous concern for the two officers, where the old maxim ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I' was freely utilised. American police officers have an even more prescient saying: ‘Better to be judged by twelve, than carried by six.'

The officers had had to make a split-second decision – something their pompous, postulating critics never have to do – and in that blinking of an eye, with no time to issue a regulation police warning, had made a terrible and catastrophic mistake.

‘What bad luck for Peter,' Bob Cook told me thirty years later. ‘He was a fine, brave cop who loved his work and, because of David Martin, his life was damaged completely.' Also referring to Peter Finch, Steve Fletcher said to me, ‘He struck me as being an undemonstrative, conscientious detective. A good copper.'

John Devine agreed. ‘I felt really sorry for him,' he remarked. ‘He was a lovely individual and a true gentleman,' and with regards to Finch going forward on foot to try to identify Martin in Pembroke Road, he opined, ‘which in my view was a big mistake,' feeling that ‘he was placed in an invidious position'.

‘I knew John Jardine from ‘X' Division,' Colin Hockaday told me. ‘I also knew him from combined operations between the Flying Squad and C11. My opinion of him was that he was very level-headed, was good at what he did, with a good sense of humour; there wasn't an ounce of malice in him.'

Matters had reached a state of almost militant resentment when a meeting was held at Elliot House, a police section house for unmarried officers. Feeling that Finch had been shabbily treated, the mood among the assembled officers was that firearms officers should hand in their authorisations. An officer of commander rank arrived, apprehensively asked if members of the press were present and having established there were not, gave the assembled officers a pep talk, to the effect that if they were to do so, it would be putting their colleagues at risk from the growing culture of gun crime. Growling mutinously, the officers dispersed without any authorisations being surrendered; but as the Iron Duke might have mentioned on that occasion, as he did at Waterloo, ‘It has been a damned nice thing – the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life …'

Anthony Blok, Martin's solicitor, appealed to his client to contact him, in order that he could arrange ‘safe custody' for him. ‘He has just cause to be afraid for his life,' said Mr Blok, but if Martin heard this impassioned plea, he ignored it.

He might have been in the seaside town of Paignton, Devon; that was where an off-duty detective believed that he saw him on Tuesday 18 January. The alarm was raised but as darkness fell, by the end of a six-hour operation, which included armed police officers, the operation was stood down. A spokesman for the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary stated, ‘There is a possibility that Martin could be in the area and we are still keeping an eye open for him; after all, his girlfriend came from close by.'

By 19 January, Waldorf had been able to breathe for about an hour a day without the support of a ventilator. A hospital spokesman stated: ‘Although still in a serious condition, he has had a comfortable and stable day and his progress has been maintained.'

The second of the inquiries was to appoint the Flying Squad to lead the hunt for David Martin.

T
he Flying Squad had been formed in 1919 as a new mobile unit to combat the sudden upsurge in crime following the end of the First World War. For the first time, detectives were able to travel rapidly from one hotspot of crime in London to another. Within ten years, they had become a household name. Whatever they did became headline news and with their fast cars – Bentleys, Lagondas and Invictas – their use of informants and knowledge of the underworld, they quickly became established as the Metropolitan Police's premier crime-busting department. Tough and uncompromising, and said by their critics to be unorthodox, they took on the toughest gangs and won.

These included the raid at London's newly opened Heathrow Airport in 1948 – it became known as ‘The Battle of Heathrow' – when an attempt was made to steal gold bullion and other commodities valued at £487,900. It resulted in commendations for the Sweeney and a total of seventy-one years' penal servitude for the eight-strong gang. The squad struck again fifteen years later; the seventeen persons convicted for their parts in the massive £2,631,684 Great Train Robbery were awarded a total of a staggering 369 years' imprisonment.

The use of informants was put to the test when the highly secretive post-war Ghost Squad was formed in 1946 by four members of the Flying Squad. In less than four years, the rings of black marketeers, lorry hijackers and warehousebreakers were smashed, with 727 arrests carried out and property valued by today's standards at £10 million being recovered.

The squad were particularly adroit at arresting escapees from custody; in 1940, Charles ‘Ruby' Sparks was arrested after a record-breaking absence of six months from Dartmoor prison and when master safe-breaker Alfie Hinds escaped from Nottingham prison while serving twelve years' preventative detention, the Flying Squad brought him back. Train robber Charlie Wilson made a spectacular escape from Winson Green prison; once again it was the Sweeney who traced him to Canada and arrested him.

The Squad had always been in the public eye; when the television series
The Sweeney
, starring John Thaw and Dennis Waterman, was first shown in 1975, it was so popular that it ran for four series and spawned two films. And when the Channel Four programme
Flying Squad
, in which a camera crew accompanied Flying Squad officers on operations, was broadcast in 1989, it attracted an audience of 12 million viewers.

If anyone was going to bring David Martin to book, it was going to be the Flying Squad.

Nowadays, when I look back at those halcyon days of the Flying Squad at the Yard – the happiest days of my police service – I suppose I could be accused of viewing them through rose-tinted spectacles. It's an understandable accusation, but like many other indictments levelled against me, it's untrue. Because when I recall my Squad contemporaries, the vast majority were the finest comrades a detective could ask for. Tough, shrewd, brave and knowledgeable in the ways of the underworld, they were relentless in their pursuit of criminals and contemptuous of them and their lawyers, of whom only a law degree often separated them from their clients.

Never once, when we bashed in doors, never fully sure of what we were going to find on the other side, was I apprehensive. Never once, when the superlative Class I trained drivers drove us across London at gasp-producing speeds, did I flinch. I was in the company of men, rascals some of them, but who would never let me down and whom I could, and often did, trust with my life.