Brent sidled up to him the moment he rejoined his colleagues. “Look at you, fraternising with the head suits,” he said, nudging Beach’s arm playfully. “And I think you’re in there, son – with the Hattie Jacques lookalike I mean, not the DCI.”
Tyler’s voice boomed out, stopping all conversation in the room. “Right, ladies and gentlemen, can you all be seated as we’re ready to start the briefing.”
There was confusion and chaos as everyone scrambled to get to their preferred spot, either at the front or the back or in the middle with their mates, before someone else nabbed it. It was like watching a game of musical chairs without the audio. Tyler waited patiently until they had all sorted themselves out and were sitting quietly in the three rows of plastic chairs that had been set out for them.
“Thank you all for coming at such short notice,” he began, looking around the room. There were fourteen TSG officers, four uniforms from Newham Borough, and eight detectives from the murder squad.
“For those of you who don’t know me, I’m DCI Jack Tyler from AMIP. Tonight’s operation is connected to the murder of PC Stanley Morrison, which occurred at the Royal London Hospital on Monday afternoon. He and two colleagues were performing a hospital watch on a drug dealing pimp called Claude Winston, who had been taken to hospital for emergency surgery after collapsing at Forest Gate police station last week with peritonitis. Ironically, Winston was due to be escorted back to Pentonville that afternoon, but before his escorts arrived, a gang of armed suspects burst in and broke him out.”
As he spoke, Steve Bull was walking around the room, handing out briefing packs.
“Of the four people involved in the breakout, one was arrested at the scene, while another was fatally shot by SO19 during the escape. That leaves two suspects outstanding. Tonight, we’re going after the only female in the gang, an IC3 called Angela Marley. Her photograph is in the briefing pack that DS Bull is currently distributing and I would be grateful if you could all study it carefully.”
There was a rustle of paper as virtually everyone started flicking through the document to find the most recent custody image of Marley.
“The information we have is that at approximately eight-fifteen last night, Angela Marley returned to the squat in Vicarage lane, E15 where she has resided for the past few months. The info comes from two officers who are currently conducting surveillance on the venue and is, therefore, reliable. Marley arrived alone, and to the best of our knowledge, she is still inside. The intention is to arrest Marley and search the premises for evidence relating to PC Morrison’s murder. The method will be for the TSG to gain rapid entry into these premises, secure them and everyone inside, and then call the enquiry team forward to search the address in slow time. We have a multi-occupancy Section 8 PACE warrant authorising us to do this. The warrant is with DI Dillon, the big gorilla sitting to my immediate left, and you are all very welcome to have a gander at it before we leave.”
It had become customary to make the warrant available for officers to inspect during briefings so that they could, hand on heart, say that they’d had sight of it before being deployed, should they ever be cross-examined about this at court.
“Before we started the briefing, DI Dillon and PS Brent from 3 Area TSG sat down and discussed tactics regarding the entry. I don’t intend to cover what came out of that here. Suffice to say that PS Brent will conduct a separate briefing for his TSG colleagues before deployment to fine-tune their individual roles and responsibilities.”
Jack walked over to a whiteboard and stared at Susie Sergeant’s handiwork in bewilderment. The road lines were wonky, the junction names were illegible, and a five-year-old with a crayon could have done a better job at drawing the houses.
He glanced down at her and raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t,” she warned.
Tyler turned to face his audience, smiling devilishly. “Now I appreciate that some of you may be looking at this –” he tapped the board “—in confusion and wondering if it’s a work of surrealist impressionism.” A few people chuckled. “Others may have understandably assumed that we left a care in the community patient alone in here, and the drawings on the board are the doodles of a badly disturbed mind.”
Several officers, mainly the detectives who knew Susie, were openly laughing now. Even Susie was giggling.
“Neither of those very reasonable suppositions would be correct,” Tyler continued. “In fact, this strange tangle of lines is actually just a very badly drawn roadmap.”
“I think a care in the community outpatient might have actually done a better job,” Tony Dillon suggested, generating more chuckling.
“Anyway, rather than us being reliant on the board, can I invite you all to turn to page four in your briefing pack, where you will see the actual ordinance survey map this is meant to represent.”
There were more rustles as pages were turned.
Holding the briefing package map up for comparison against what was drawn on the board spawned quite a few more giggles.
“I think we’d better book DS Sergeant an urgent appointment with the force optician,” Steve Bull said in between bouts of laughter.
Susie held up her middle finger and pulled a face at him. “I’ll have you know that it’s not as easy as it sounds to recreate a perfect street map,” she said cattily, but there was no malice in her voice.
The jibes flew in thick and fast after that, but they were all said in good humour.
“Should’ve waited till you were sober to draw it, sarge…”
“I didn’t know you had Parkinson’s…”
“So, I’m guessing you didn’t get an A level in art…?”
Jack allowed them a moment more of laughter and then waved them all to silence.
“Okay,” he said. “As we can just about make out from this
