The convoy was heading west towards Emsworth Bridge on the border of Sussex and Hampshire. Trying to keep up with the commentary and updates became impossible when Hampshire units started to butt in. As we were about to enter their jurisdiction, they would have a say how this chase would continue.
When we arrived at the bridge, I saw the whole carriageway saturated in orange and white light shimmering with strobing blue beacons. It had the appearance of a movie set. I could just make out in centre stage a small red saloon, alien amid the surrounding fleet of high-performance squad cars. A ring of black-clad officers had their rifles trained on the rundown Sunbeam. Even as a rookie I knew the stand-off was on a knife edge. Any decision to force an ending would depend entirely on the safety of the hostages.
The Ops 1 Inspector ordered everyone just to keep watch and no unarmed units were to move closer to the car. The silence across the airwaves was deafening, contrasting sharply to the clamour that had been the soundtrack to the chase just moments ago.
In frustration the inspector demanded, ‘Any unit close to the target vehicle able to provide an update?’
Silence.
‘Any unit?’ repeated Ops 1.
To my horror, his imploring was answered by that unmistakable Buxton accent.
‘Tango one seven one. Well. There’s lots of men with lots of guns. I’m only a cadet and I don’t know what else to say.’
Unbeknown to most of us, and certainly to Jim and Micky (who’d made the mistake of leaving the cadet alone in the car for that moment), the Chief Constable was at Petworth Police Station listening to the manhunt unfold.
‘Who is that on the radio?’ he demanded to know.
Feet shuffled and throats were cleared as a local inspector standing at the Chief’s side divulged, ‘Er, that is, er, that’s. Well, that’s Cadet Sharpe, sir.’
‘Cadet? Did you say cadet?’ bellowed the boss. ‘What the bloody hell is a cadet doing in the car directly behind two men who clearly want to kill police officers?’
Nothing could be done now but some serious explaining would be required when all this was over.
The order came that only armed units and traffic cars would be allowed to enter Hampshire if the target moved off. Suddenly there was a roar of engines as the Sunbeam darted forward and accelerated away. Jim was rudely ejected from Tango one seven one as four heavily armed officers from the Special Operations Group launched themselves inside a split second before Micky joined the pursuing pack.
We waited for about five minutes before we were all instructed to head back to base. We had done our bit. We now had to leave it in the hands of our neighbours and the specialists lucky enough to be allowed to continue.
The last thing I remember as we turned to make our way back to Bognor was seeing a disgruntled Cadet Jim Sharpe shuffling up to departing police cars trying to hitch a lift back.
We learned that on the bridge, while a brave Hampshire officer, PC George Summers, had tried to negotiate with the gunmen one of them twice threatened to shoot a hostage and George himself. In the interests of safety, they had to be allowed through the road block. As the pursuit continued they ended up on the main A3 road where they tried to hijack a lorry. As they did so, one of the kidnappers held a hostage as a human shield. Miraculously, PC Summers was able to fire off one shot, hitting the gunman in the arm. This gave time for the men to be rushed, cuffed and arrested.
Intelligence suggested they may have been en route to confront a local drug dealer — a plan that Tim and Bob seemed to have thwarted. The gunmen, Robert Dew and Rudolf Cooke, received eighteen- and ten-year prison sentences and thankfully Tim was able to return to work and managed two promotions before his retirement. Bob, Tim and George Summers were awarded Queen’s Gallantry Medals.
While these events are thankfully rare and Brighton is neither Dallas nor LA, it has had its fair share of shootings and grudge killings over the years.
In 1976, my uncle Gordon was the first officer at the scene of a shooting in the car park of Grace and Branson’s favourite pub, the Black Lion, on the outskirts of Brighton. Barbara Gaul, the socialite and fourth wife of millionaire property developer John, had been gunned down in cold blood while she was visiting her three-year-old daughter. Gordon had been unarmed and, completely against the safety and forensic conventions of today, had been sent from the scene to the address of a potential suspect. It was almost universally believed that John Gaul was behind the killing. Even some of those who were convicted, as well as Barbara in her dying words, pointed the finger at him.
Another apparent crime of passion involved twenty-four-year-old jailbird Mark Ryder who, in 1993, stalked the sprawling streets of Whitehawk hunting Stuart McCue.
Whitehawk is Brighton’s other large council estate. Sitting in the shadow of the hilltop race course, its transition from being the traditional home of the city’s roughest and most violent criminals, as so accurately described in Dead Man’s Footsteps, to a cohesive proud community was complete by the early 1990s. Ryder eventually found McCue outside the Valley Social Club, a community centre crucial to the regeneration of this once run-down area of east Brighton.
Ryder was on the run at the time, having escaped two years earlier during a boat trip organized by Lewes Prison. He had a history of this; he had previously escaped from a Young Offenders Institute in Kent.
While both Ryder and McCue were in prison, they had fallen out over a girl they shared a love interest in, Emma Devoy. Mark was scared of Stuart and therefore spent much of his time in hiding in New Milton, Hampshire. He would only venture into Brighton armed.
That Saturday afternoon, he and two ‘minders’ cruised the city’s streets. Despite claiming to be frightened of him, it was obvious that Ryder was on the lookout for McCue. Spotting him among a crowd outside the club he calmly stepped from the car and blasted him four times with a sawn-off shotgun. As McCue tried to crawl away Ryder fired his final shot. All this in full view of his victim’s new partner, his young nephew and nieces and several other shocked bystanders.
Ryder leapt back into the car and, at terrifying speed, wheel-spun off the estate, followed soon by a fleet of police cars. He drove recklessly into the city centre, racing the wrong way round a major one-way system close to the Royal Pavilion and eventually crashing through a car park barrier just as crowds of shoppers were heading back to their vehicles. He and his minders abandoned the car in the multistorey and managed to evade the search that followed.
As a DC by now awaiting promotion, I was called to help in the hunt. One of my tasks was to interview the girl at the centre of it all.
Emma came from a lovely family and was a delightful young lady herself. She was clearly torn between the two rogues and had dearly loved them both at different times. Over a twelve-hour period we had to coax all the painful background from her. It was a long, hard slog and we had to tread carefully. I really felt for her; her twenty-five pages of statement showed that none of this was her fault, only that she had been caught in the middle. We treated her well, shopping for her so that she could have a change of clothes, letting her freshen up and giving her something decent to eat.
Painstaking investigations eventually located Ryder and his cronies. Mark himself was caught days later, holed up in a squat in London. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Twelve years later, he won further national infamy by escaping from prison for the third time in his delinquent career, eventually being caught in Malaga, Spain.
Each of these incidents serves as a reminder that with an unarmed police force, it is the courageous thin blue line who risk happening upon tooled-up villains willing to kill in the name of freedom or revenge.