right?’
Kerr nodded. The six-storey concrete and glass building looked like a seventies police station, but there was no sign on the front. There was no wheelchair access either, which was virtually compulsory in the politically correct twenty-first century. It wasn’t a regular police station, that was for sure. Two police cars, white with orange strips down the middle, were parked in the road. Jam butties, they called them in Manchester. In the corners of the windscreens there were yellow dots the size of a saucer. Kerr knew what they meant: the cars were armed- response vehicles, so the cops inside the building carried guns, which meant they were SO19, the SWAT-type units that went up against armed criminals. Why would they use an armed policeman to work undercover? It didn’t make sense. ‘Okay, let’s go home. We know where to find him now.’ He called McEvoy and the Wallace brothers and told them to go back to Manchester. He’d deal with Tony Nelson in due course, but first he was going to sort out his wife.
Shepherd and the men on Amber team filed into the briefing room. Yellow team were already there. One of the Yellows was a woman, her face devoid of makeup and her hair cropped short. She was chewing gum, her Glock in a holster high on her hip. Shepherd was surprised to see an armed woman, not because they were less capable than men, but because most of the women he knew would have hated the idea of carrying a weapon.
A man in plain clothes was standing next to Ken Swift at the front of the room. On a table behind them were a television and a video-recorder.
Swift waited until the last man was in before he raised his hand. ‘Okay, guys,’ he said, then nodded at the female officer. ‘And girl.’
She flashed Swift a humourless smile.
‘This is DS Nick Wright of the British Transport Police. He’s running Operation Wingman,’said Swift. ‘He’s going to fill you in on the details, but basically we’ve got a gang of armed thugs running riot on the tube. BTP want us to provide armed back-up so it’ll be a joint operation. The big problem is that Met radios don’t work down the tube. When we go in, each group will have to be shadowed by a BTP officer.’ There were several groans. ‘I thought you’d like the sound of that.’
Wright was in his late thirties with dark hair, greying at the temples. He was wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, dark brown trousers, a grey flannel shirt and a featureless brown tie. To Shepherd he looked like a uniformed cop trying to dress like an accountant on his day off.
‘It’s something we’re stuck with, I’m afraid,’ said Wright.
‘You’re saying that our guy up top has to talk to one of your guys, who relays the message to your guy underground, who tells our guys?’The question had come from a sergeant standing by the door.
Wright shrugged apologetically. ‘We think it’s as crazy as you do,’ he said.
‘Bloody madness, is what it is,’ said the sergeant.
‘It’s a budget issue, I’m told. The Met thinks London Underground should pay for the upgrade to the system. My bosses want the Met to pay. It’s going to cost millions so God knows when it’ll be resolved. Until then, one of our guys has to shadow you wherever you go.’
‘And what happens if shots are fired?’ said Swift. ‘I can’t have my people looking over their shoulders worrying if there’s a BTP officer about to get his balls shot off.’
‘We can issue them with protective vests,’ said Wright, ‘and they’ll be told to keep out of the way.’
‘It’s a recipe for disaster,’ said Swift.
Wright didn’t respond. Shepherd felt sorry for the guy. He’d turned up to give a briefing and ended up taking the flak for departmental budgeting constraints.
Wright took a deep breath. ‘I’ve got some CCTV footage of the suspects.’ He pressed play and the screen flickered into life. A group of youngsters was huddled on a tube station platform, casually dressed in cargo pants, football shirts and flashy trainers. The oldest was barely out of his teens.
‘This is the leader of the group,’ said Wright, tapping a girl in a combat jacket whose hair was tied in a ponytail and fed through the back of a baseball cap. ‘IC One female, five six or seven, blue eyes. She usually wears her mobile phone on a camouflage strap around her neck.’ He grinned at the assembled armed officers. ‘The less politically correct of our officers refer to her as Snow White, and her gang as the Seven Dwarfs. Sometimes there are seven, but there have been as many as two dozen in some of the attacks. To date, she’s the only female involved. She’s been at each incident we’ve looked at.’
There was another ten seconds of footage from the cameras on the platform, then the viewpoint changed. This time it was footage from a camera in a busy shopping centre. It was obviously taken on a different day because the blonde girl was wearing a pink top now. ‘They gather at the Trocadero in Piccadilly Circus, then head for one of the tube stations. They’ve been seen going into Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road. That gives them direct access to the Piccadilly, Bakerloo and the Northern Lines. We don’t have video of them in action because they only strike on trains.’
On the screen the teenagers were working purposefully towards the exit. The picture jumped to a viewpoint from a camera in Piccadilly Circus, the statue of Eros in the background. Dozens of tourists, mostly backpackers, were sitting on the steps at the base of the statue, munching fast food from Burger King and KFC. The picture jumped again, and now the group were hurrying down the steps into the tube station, elbowing an elderly couple out of the way.
There was a view of a platform. The group was gathered together at the far end, close to the tunnel entrance. Wright froze the picture. ‘This is them at Leicester Square.’ He tapped the screen with his pencil. ‘Here’s Snow White. This is a Bangladeshi guy. These three are IC Threes who are always with her. This is a twelve or thirteen-year-old of mixed race. The IC One male has been involved in at least half a dozen robberies and is always wearing an Arsenal shirt. These two are also of mixed race and have been identified at several robberies. The two IC Threes here have been involved in at least two steamings. Ten minutes after this was taken they boarded a southbound train. Between Leicester Square and Charing Cross they attacked two girls, stole their mobiles and bags. One girl was slashed across the face with a Stanley knife, the other was punched repeatedly in the face and almost lost an eye. That’s what makes this so bloody nasty. It’s not about theft– they get a few quid out of the bags but next to nothing for the phones – they get their kicks from terrorising people. And they’ve been getting progressively more violent. We think they’ve been responsible for fifteen separate attacks over the past month.’
He ran the video for a few seconds. The view changed to a different platform and a different group of youngsters, although the blonde girl was still at the centre. Wright tapped the face of a tubby young man in a light blue hooded jacket. ‘He’s been involved in several incidents and we believe he has a gun.’ He froze the picture. ‘We haven’t seen anything on video, but three of the victims say he had one. A woman who was robbed ended up with a broken jaw and says she was pistol-whipped. We’ve no idea if it’s a real gun or a replica.’
He pressed play again and the video showed the group getting on to a train. Another station. Another group of youngsters. ‘There’s Snow White again,’ said Wright. He paused the video and tapped the girl’s face. ‘Their attacks start in different ways. If there’s a large group they steam along a train, terrorising everyone, shouting, screaming and grabbing what they can. Sometimes they target individuals. One ploy is for this young lad to start a conversation with the victim.’ He tapped the face of a young mixed-race boy. ‘While he’s distracting them, the rest pile in. They put an American tourist in hospital last week – beat him to a pulp and didn’t even steal anything. A lot of the time it’s not about theft, it’s about humiliation. They slash clothing, slap and punch.’
Wright faced the SO19 team. ‘We don’t know where they’ll strike – that’s our main problem. They don’t seem to have a game plan. Snow White is their focus, but she doesn’t give orders. They act like a pack of hyenas. We’ll have an undercover team in the Trocadero so we’ll be able to follow them down into the system,then we can track them with CCTV. We’ll know which train they board, but it’s a question of getting our guys on to the same train and calling it in once they attack. That’s when we’ll be needing SO19 assistance. We’ll stop the train between stations and crack on there’s a mechanical problem, just long enough to get you guys in position at the next station. Then we let the train roll and arrest them.’
Wright opened a briefcase and handed out a stack of sheets of photocopied stills taken from the CCTV footage. ‘These are the fifteen guys we’ve seen with Snow White. Two already have criminal records for assault and theft, Foday Gbonda and Leeroy Tavenier. They are the only two we can identify by name.’
The SO19 officers passed round the sheets.
‘We plan to start this afternoon in the Trocadero. We have six male officers and three females on standby. They’ll follow the group if and when they leave and notify our control room which station they go to. We’d like two
