The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin (9 page)

A description of the gunman was circulated on an ‘All Stations' message and the collators' indices of the surrounding stations were unsuccessfully searched for a ‘David Demain'. Although Martin had been born in Paddington, he had been out of circulation from that area for many years. In fact, many of the officers had not served at Paddington Green when Martin was active in that area; some had not even joined the police. Police informants were urged to provide information as to the gunman's identity but this was met with a conspicuous lack of success; Martin was a loner.

The police could not raid houses in their hunt for Demain, because they did not know whose houses to search. Neither could they apply for the necessary permission to intercept telephone calls or postal mail, because they were unaware of whose telephone calls or letters to monitor. They were stymied for the lack of a name and an address. In fact, Martin had fled to his luxuriously appointed rented penthouse flat, no more than half a mile from the scene of the crime.

Naturally, following the shooting, the occupier of the premises at Old Bond Street who had confronted Martin a few days previously was interviewed by police; he provided the investigators with the details of the previous tenant, Peter Sarony, a registered gun dealer with premises at 44 Harrowby Street, W1 and he too was questioned, but he knew nobody by the name of Demain.

Ten days later, though, there
was
someone who knew that name: the foreman at Pickfords' warehouse at Fulham who received a telephone call from a Mr Demain who wished to store some items in that depositary. The following day, 16 August 1982, these items were delivered and there were a lot of them: four laundry baskets, five tea-chests, a two-drawer filing cabinet and a large cardboard box, all of them full. Although the foreman was unaware of it, these receptacles contained a large amount of property stolen by Martin during the course of three of the burglaries, including shoulder holsters, security and surveillance equipment and medical items.

Of course, the police were not aware of this, and were unacquainted with the person who had deposited them. Her name was Susan Stephens, a 25-year-old former model and dancer who lived at 29 Victoria Road, Kilburn. She was also Martin's girlfriend but this intelligence had not been passed to the police, since they were also unaware of Martin's identity; in any event, Miss Stephens had identified herself to the staff at Pickfords as Miss Freeson, a name she had used as a model. Stephens had first met Martin, probably in May 1982, possibly at The Embassy Club and had occasionally gone out with him. He seemed, she would later say, ‘besotted' with her and in November, she would move into a flat at West End Lane, Hampstead. The incriminating evidence remained undisturbed at Pickfords for the next five months. Meanwhile, since Martin had unaccountably and fortuitously come into a great deal of money, he and Miss Stephens were off on a month-long holiday in Ibiza.

Almost six weeks had passed since PC Carr had been shot and the lukewarm trail had grown cold. Then, on the morning of 15 September 1982, a customer entered Armalon Ltd, the gun dealer's premises at Harrowby Street whose owner had previously been interviewed by the police, and purchased some special ‘Pachmayer' pistol grips. He also wished to purchase a 9mm magazine but since this was not immediately available, he placed an order for it. Mr Sarony politely requested contact details from the buyer and just as courteously, the customer provided a telephone number and his name, and left the shop. The name he had given, ‘Demain', instantly rang alarm bells with the dealer who promptly passed the purchaser's details and his description to Detective Constable Peter Finch at Marylebone Lane police station.

Now the police had a very promising lead. A check on the telephone number revealed that it was an ‘Aircall' number; it related to an answering machine situated in an inspection pit, at the bottom of a lift shaft in Wigmore Street, W1. From the ‘Aircall' company they obtained an address: flat no. 16 on the seventh floor of 1–3 Crawford Place, W1.

Initially, just two officers, Police Constables Steve Fletcher and Steve Lucas, were sent to the flats; neither armed. Fletcher told me:

Steve and I found the front door on the first floor at the back. We sat for a few hours, not very well concealed, nattering and smoking fags. We were later relieved by a team of four officers; I think two of them were armed. One of the armed officers was PC Peter Van-Dee, another crime squad colleague. Peter was an interesting man. He had dual nationality – United States and British. I think he had served in the Met, left and joined the police in America – Portland, Oregon, from memory – he then returned to the UK and rejoined the Met.

More officers, some of them armed, from the investigating team quickly surrounded the flat. Others were on the roof and more in the surrounding streets.

At about 9.40 that evening, Martin, who had arrived back in the United Kingdom three days earlier, turned up at the block of flats; but the officers were unaware of it. Police Constable Steven Lucas (who had earlier been relieved from duty but had now returned) and Detective Constable Peter Finch were on the seventh floor when they saw what they assumed to be a woman, carrying a black handbag walking along a long corridor. As PC Lucas would later tell an Old Bailey jury:

This person had long fair hair and a striped yellow T-shirt and was wearing trousers. The person looked effeminate. At first, we stood back, believing it to be a woman but then we approached and DC Finch said, ‘Excuse me, love …' The person was standing by the door, about to put a key in. She turned round and it was David Martin. He was holding a large black handgun and at that point, DC Finch grabbed him bodily.

As the officer struggled with Martin, he shouted, ‘I'll have you – I'll blow you away!' DC Finch shouted to the other officers who were on the roof and they were quickly joined by Detective Sergeant Tom Martin, Detective Constables Jim Francis and Fred Arnold and also Police Constable Peter Van-Dee.

Martin, who was struggling furiously, suddenly dropped the black Smith & Wesson .38 Chief Special revolver (which was loaded with five bullets and had been fitted with the Pachmayer grips, purchased earlier that day) and appeared to surrender. Instinctively, Finch relaxed his grip; it was the moment Martin was waiting for. He produced a second firearm, a silver Star 9mm self-loading pistol, loaded with fifteen rounds, with one in the chamber, ready to be fired, from his waistband and pointed it at the detective. PC Lucas shouted, ‘He's got a gun!' and PC Van-Dee, having no doubt that he was about to witness a colleague being murdered, shouted ‘Freeze, armed police!'

‘Pete [Van-Dee] later told me that, convinced Martin was going to shoot, he drew his service revolver, placed the barrel against Martin's head, looked aside and pulled the trigger,' Steve Fletcher told me. ‘He told me, everything froze for a split second. He looked back, expecting to see ‘‘strawberry jam'' (Pete's words) where Martin's head had been. Not so. He resumed his struggle, slightly less ferociously than before as his collar bone was broken. It transpired that the bullet that Pete fired pierced Martin's scalp, then travelled down between skin and bone, down to his shoulder, fracturing the collar bone.'

Both Martin and Finch crashed to the floor, with Finch on top, but still Martin continued to kick out and at the same time, with his right hand, tried to grab one of the two handguns. Finch, by now almost exhausted, drew his gun and hit Martin in the face with it. DS Martin, who had also drawn his revolver, ran up and swept the two handguns away. Apparently, Finch was initially annoyed at Van-Dee for firing his revolver, thinking that he too could have been shot, but in the circumstances there was little else that the officer could have done. As Finch told me, ‘Peter [Van-Dee] told me afterwards that the end of the barrel was close to my head and that's why he fired his gun.'

In spite of being shot, Martin continued to fight ferociously, even after being handcuffed, telling the officers, ‘I could have killed the lot of you, I could have had you all! Why don't you just finish me off?' And then, as Fred Arnold recalled, he looked the officers in the eyes and said, very calmly, ‘You cunts can't do anything right. Come on, give me another one.'

Other officers who had been in nearby Macready House, a police section house, rushed to the incident, including the then Police Constable 532 ‘D' Martin Power, attached to the crime squad. As a crew member of ‘Q' Car, ‘Delta One-one', he had been one of the first on the scene when PC Carr had been shot. The sight that confronted him now was that of David Martin, with blood pouring from him, with officers trying to restrain him. ‘My DS appeared and told me to get a first-aid kit,' recalled Power. ‘I ran down as the area car, ‘Delta-one' turned up and grabbed the kit; when I got the kit up to Martin, the DS tied his legs together with a bandage!' Martin's legs needed restraining; he had kicked DC Arnold in the face and chest, causing him to fall awkwardly, resulting in injuries to his back, rear ribs, spine and shoulder which later required surgery.

A resident on the same floor offered Finch a large scotch; ‘Greatly appreciated!' he told me and a couple emerged from a nearby flat and offered the use of their telephone; an ambulance was called and DC Jim Francis telephoned Inspector John Devine, Marylebone's duty officer, who arrived and saw Peter Finch. ‘I could see he was covered in blood spatters and not really ‘‘with it'',' recalled Devine and arranged for Finch to be taken back to the police station. Finch had acted commendably. In justifiably hitting Martin in the face with his revolver, he made no secret of it and included this incident in his notes and later his statement. However, during the next twelve months, and through no fault of his own, things were to go badly wrong for Finch and this incident would be the subject of profound criticism at Martin's trial.

Detective Sergeant Roger Clements had been part of the inquiry ever since PC Carr had been shot. He had been night-duty CID at the time, but following that tour of duty, he recommenced running the Crime Squad at Marylebone Lane police station and took some of his forty-two young charges to hunt for PC Carr's attacker. Now, he accompanied Martin to St Mary's Hospital, Paddington.

By now, Martin was raving. ‘I could have shot them all,' he exclaimed. ‘I made a mess of it. I could have had four or five of them!' However, raving or not, because of the amount of blood covering Martin, Clements began administering a ‘Dying Declaration', a statement only to be taken when a person is in imminent danger of dying, beginning with the ominous words:

I, (name) having the fear of death before me and being without hope of recovery make the following statement …

But then Clements looked up to see a doctor, standing behind Martin, shaking his head. ‘He's not going to die,' said the doctor. Clements took possession of Martin's clothing; underneath the trousers and the T-shirt, he was wearing stockings and women's underwear. When questioned about it, he replied, ‘It's my scene.'

If Martin was not by now actually kicking, he was certainly alive and before he went into surgery, he demanded to know, ‘Why didn't you finish me of? Looking at it logically, with four armed coppers in those circumstances, I should be dead. Unfortunately, you didn't do your job properly and I am not dead – you fucked up!' But PC Van-Dee had not ‘fucked up' at all. He had reacted precisely as he had been trained. Let's pause to consider gun statistics at that time.

During 1981, police had been issued with firearms on 4,983 occasions and had drawn their revolvers 106 times, firing just six times during two incidents where no one had been hit. Criminals, on the other hand, had used firearms on 1,168 occasions. But gun crime was worsening; now in 1982 criminals had used firearms 2,069 times and police had been issued with firearms on 6,635 occasions and drawn them from their holsters 118 times; during that period, police had opened fire six times, injuring three people. Martin was one of those casualties and, given the circumstances, no one was going to blame PC Van-Dee for his actions. Indeed, his feat had been praiseworthy in the same way that Finch's achievement had been commendable. In addition, Martin had also been in possession of a clip containing a further fifteen rounds for the Star pistol, plus ten more rounds for the revolver. Martin's response was nothing more than an extension of his enormous ego. Before he had admonished security guards for failing to discharge their duties; now he was castigating Peter Van-Dee for neglecting to kill him. With Martin, he was always right; it was everybody else who was in the wrong.