“My bet,” Murray said, “is that the bottom shelf contains the legally purchased stock that’s waiting to be converted into guns that will fire real ammunition. The replicas that’ve already been adapted and are ready to be sold are safely tucked away up on the top shelf, along with the ammo.”
Bull nodded. That made perfect sense. “We need to get this lot photographed before we remove any of it,” he said.
“Well, duh,” Murray responded. “I’ve already rung the photog and told him and the SOCO to hotfoot it back here with some takeaway coffees for us.”
“That’ll be lovely,” Leonard said appreciatively. “I’m freezing my bollocks off in this cold, and I could murder a hot drink.”
“I didn’t tell them to bring you anything,” Murray said. “You can sod off and get your own in a few minutes.”
Lenny looked crestfallen.
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When Tyler hung up after receiving the update from Steve Bull, he turned to Dillon and smiled like the cat who had just got the cream.
“It looks like they’ve found two firearms down at the lockup and several boxes of .22 ammunition,” he announced.
“That’s great news,” Dillon said, smiling back at him.
“It gets better,” Jack told him. “Charlie Dobson maintained a very detailed ledger outlining all the transactions he made. The last entry in the book is him selling two Brococks to a client whose initials are DG –”
“That’ll be Deontay Garston,” Dillon interrupted.
“– who test fired the guns at the lockup last Thursday.”
“I’d better let Susie know,” Dillon said. “She’s going to have to incorporate that into her advanced disclosure.”
Jack said nothing. He was too busy trying to work out how long it would take to get any useable results back from the lab. It would take the officers down at the scene a little time to package everything and get it back to the office, say another hour or two, and then Murray would have to type out the lab forms and get them approved by the CSM. That would easily take up another hour. Once all that was done, someone would have to blue light any exhibits they wanted testing up to the lab for forensic examination.
Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the police were allowed to detain a prisoner without charge for up to twenty four hours following arrest. Should the investigation require additional time, as this one was undoubtedly going to, a Superintendent not directly involved with the case could authorise an additional twelve hours detention.
Would that be sufficient time for the lab to do all the work necessary to produce the evidence that he would need to charge Dobson and his cronies? If not, Tyler would have to make an application at Magistrates court under S. 44(1) PACE for a warrant of further detention.
Tyler needed to prioritise the work he asked the FSS to undertake. Clearly, he wanted the hammer markings of all the cartridges to be run through NABIS, but that would take days to complete and would have to be done at a much later stage.
Likewise, he wanted all the casings fingerprinted and DNA swabbed. If they found either Garston or Dobson’s dabs on any of those it would be evidential dynamite. Again, the process was slow and laborious, especially as Bull had told him there were in excess of forty cartridges to get through. This would also have to be done in slow time.
The various entries in the green book would need to be examined by a handwriting expert and compared against samples provided by Dobson. Of course, the skinhead could always refuse to cooperate, but that would hurt him at court as an inference could then be drawn by the prosecution. Getting handwriting comparisons carried out was always a mega slow process, and was generally not even worth considering until post charge.
So, what did that leave?
He wanted the converted weapons fingerprinted and swabbed. The print results could potentially be back by the end of the day, and the DNA swabs within thirty six hours.
The sheets in the ledger would need to be checked for Dobson’s fingerprints, but he would need to liaise with Juliet Kennedy to see if this could realistically be achieved within the time that they had remaining on the custody clock before pushing for that.
Since its discovery by Siegfried Ruhemann in 1954, Ninhydrin treatment was the preferred method for obtaining latent fingerprints from paper or other porous surfaces. Basically, Ninhydrin is a chemical powder that is soluble in ethanol or acetone. The process works by dipping the item to be tested in a tray containing a Ninhydrin mix and then allowing it to dry off at room temperature.
The fingerprint development occurred slowly over the next twenty four to forty eight hours. Jack knew the process could theoretically be speeded up by putting treated items in an oven for twenty minutes, but he didn’t know if there were any risks associated with doing that, or if the lab would be willing to deviate from their normal practices.
He reached for his phone. Juliet would set him straight on that, one way or another. Before he could enter the digits for her mobile, his landline rang. It was Steve Bull and he seemed very excited about something.
“Boss, you’re not going to believe this,” he said breathlessly, “but we’ve just found a hidden motion activated CCTV camera clipped to the wall. We followed the wiring and found a hard drive hidden behind the filing cabinet. There’s a little monitor attached to it. Although the quality isn’t great, I think we’ve got footage of Garston and Errol Heston test firing the guns with Charlie Dobson last Thursday.”
◆◆◆
DC Colin Franklin had been given the unenviable task
