‘ I do not want my wife to be involved in any of this,’ Barney Gillrow said firmly.
Neither Henry nor Danny responded. They were going to make no guarantees.
Gillrow’s face tightened. ‘You’re a pair of bastards.’
Henry raised an eyebrow, acknowledging the compliment. ‘Get on with it,’ he said.
There was a dictaphone on the table, whirring quietly.
‘ You were right,’ Gillrow told Danny. ‘Malcolm Pitch was one of my informants. I recruited him in the early eighties after I got him convicted on a couple of conspiracy charges. He was nothing but a shit-bag, really, on the periphery of big stuff. But he knew lots and lots of people. I used him successfully on numerous occasions.’
‘ Even though you didn’t keep any records,’ Danny pointed out.
He shrugged. ‘No one did in those days.’
‘ And that made it right?’ She was incredulous.
‘ No.’ He leaned towards her with a sneer. ‘But it was the system, the culture. Every fucker did it, even down to sharing informants’ pay-outs.’
‘ Did you?’ Henry asked.
Gillrow considered the question. He was deep enough in the mire as it was without having to admit to something else. ‘No — I did not.’
Henry allowed himself a little inward smile. He knew there was no chance of Gillrow blabbing out everything in this sweep. It was doubtful whether he would ever reveal the whole picture of his corruption — and Henry was under no illusions here: Gillrow had been a very bent cop — so for the moment at least, he did not feel a need to push the issue. Later, it would be a very different matter.
‘ Tell us about Fitch and Crane.’
‘ Like I’ve already said, Fitch was on the periphery of things, but not above trying his best to get deeply involved with some pretty heavy people, amongst whom was Billy Crane. Fitch had been grassing for me long before Crane came into the frame. I was really pushing him to flash himself around the East Lancashire criminal fraternity and he gave me some bloody good stuff, but some of it was close to the edge too.’
‘ How do you mean?’ Danny asked.
‘ Fitch was a participating informant, for a start. He took part in jobs and didn’t get prosecuted for them for one reason or another — usually on a technicality that I dreamed up, or got some evidence misplaced, whatever.’
Henry shook his head in disbelief. Handling participating informants — PIs as they are known — is a minefield of legal complexity. An informant can only be allowed to participate so far in the commission of a crime — usually at the very early stages of planning it — and then they have to be removed in a way which doesn’t alert the other criminals involved. It sounded like Gillrow had allowed Fitch to go all the way to the commission of crimes. Very bad practice, to say the least. Henry knew it happened a lot in the 1970s and 1980s — which is one of the reasons the rules were tightened up.
‘ But he was also an agent provocateur,’ Gillrow said, ‘always pushing others to do things, giving them ideas and drawing them in, so eventually they’d get caught by me.’
Simply because there was a tape running, Henry bit his tongue. Agent provocateur — another big no, no. Informants must never — ever — set a crime in motion. Yet here was an ex-DI blandly admitting allowing one to do just that. No wonder the police service was in the state it was in. Bastards like Gillrow, Henry thought, are the ones who’ve spoiled it for us today.
‘ And no one knew about this, I take it?’ Danny said.
Gillrow shook his head.
‘ Your bosses? Colleagues?’
Another headshake. ‘Strictly between me and him.’
‘ Idiot,’ Danny said under her breath.
‘ Some of the stunts me and him put together would make your toes curl,’ Gillrow said proudly. ‘We just went ahead and did it. It was the only sure way of getting bad guys caught and locked away. I got credit and Fitch got cash. I was only doing my job — a bloody good job at that,’ he concluded defensively.
‘ By breaking the rules?’ Danny sneered.
‘ Listen, love — it was the only way. I put some right toe-rags away. They have all the advantages and the cops don’t have anything but red tape and bureaucratic shite. I got results and the guilty got sent down.’
‘ All well and good,’ Henry remarked. ‘But you say Fitch got paid from the fund. Surely some of your managers must have known what was happening, must’ve authorised payments…’ Henry’s voice trailed off and he made the connection as Fitch smiled. ‘You managed the informants’ fund, didn’t you?’
‘ Controlled it. Authorised payments. Balanced the books. Piss easy.’
‘ Idiot,’ Danny whispered again, beginning to hate Gillrow.
‘ What happened with Crane, then?’
Gillrow shifted uncomfortably at this question, something Henry was pleased to see. ‘It was just that one or two things came together for me at that time, personal things.’ He sighed and looked deflated now, shaking his head sadly. ‘No excuse, I suppose — but the wife ran up some horrendous debts on the Visa and Access cards. I had no chance of paying them off. I had some gambling debts, too. The usual shite, I suppose. I put in for promotion for the extra money and didn’t get it.’
‘ So you went completely bent?’ Danny could not prevent herself from blurting out unprofessionally.
‘ You can say what you like, you bitch. I had my reasons.’
Danny was about to lash back. Henry put up a hand to quell her.
‘ So along comes Malcolm Fitch and tells me he’s fallen in cohorts with Billy Crane and Don Smith — both excellent blaggers and safe-crackers. He said they were planning to do a Building Society in Blackburn. I saw a window of opportunity to wipe off a few debts, so I went to see Crane. I told him I had enough to pull him there and then on conspiracy — and gave him an alternative, which he took.’
‘ Which was?’ Henry and Danny said in unison.
‘ To go ahead and do the job and split the take with me, fifty-fifty. Thirty grand each. I told him I’d do a proper official job on it, on the face of it, but I’d make sure he got away so long as he gave me half, as well as a prisoner — Don Smith — which is just what happened.’
‘ Why not Malcolm Fitch as the prisoner?’ Henry asked.
‘ Because I had to deal with him, too. I’d ensure he got away and then got paid some informants money. I wanted a conviction out of it. Guess I was just an old-fashioned jack at heart. I liked seeing people behind bars.’
‘ So neither one of them knew you were dealing with the other?’ Henry queried, trying to get his head around this. ‘Fitch didn’t know you were two-timing him with Crane; Crane didn’t know you were dealing with Fitch.’
‘ Not initially, no. Crane eventually found out that Fitch had snouted on him because I think he opened his big gob once too often in a pub and the wrong people heard him. It got back to Crane, who was in prison by then, and I heard he promised he would kill Fitch for it one day — which he did.’
Henry guffawed. ‘And yet he was happy to drop his mate Smith in it,’ he said incredulously. ‘Honour amongst thieves, my buttocks!’ He took a breath. ‘Let me get this straight. The deal was, you fixed it for Crane to get away from the scene of the crime.’
‘ Yes.’
‘ Then you allowed Fitch to do a runner when you were transferring him back to the police station?’
‘ Yes.’
‘ And Don Smith got caught and convicted.’
‘ Yes.’
‘ So Fitch got his informants money, Crane got thirty grand, so did you, and Don Smith got a prison sentence…?’
‘ That’s what should have happened — except it went belly-up on the night.’
‘ How? Why?’
‘ OK,’ he swallowed, ‘they all three break into the Building Society. The safe gets blown. I’m next door in a greengrocer’s, watching all this on a monitor. I’ve set up the police operation and told everybody that the information is that all three offenders will come out of the back of the shop next door, which was an insurance broker’s.
