Not long after the robbery, the police discovered that the team had pulled the plugs on the panic alarms, and they backtracked through the coal chute to the warehouse base. It was two in the morning when they broke in with a search warrant. Now they had their next big lead. There, rotting in acid, was one of the Daimlers used in the heist. Fingerprint experts and twenty officers were shipped in to examine the warehouse inch by inch. They were also trying to find out who had rented the place, but it was a further five hours before they got the man’s name: Philip Simmons.
The day after the robbery, Her Majesty made an unprecedented broadcast, asking for the public’s assistance in apprehending the thieves who had taken the precious items of British heritage. The interview was followed by a documentary about the Crown Jewels, watched by 10 million viewers. That led to another breakthrough. An elderly man believed the Daimlers used in the robbery might have been the ones he’d sold in Leicester. He informed the police there had been two, and a chap had bought the lease on his garage more than six months previously. When questioned, he gave the best description of Wilcox his memory afforded him. The police matched the garage owner’s description to that of the driver Maureen had given.
They had also discovered that Philip Simmons had rented the Aldersgate warehouse. After questioning the estate agents who had negotiated the transaction, they had yet another description of the man they now believed had led the gang. It was confusing, though. Most of the negotiations for the warehouse had been done by telephone, but the agent who had shown de Jersey the property was unable to verify that he had red hair as he had worn a hat. As far as he could recall, he had no mustache. Although the description was sketchy, he confirmed that the man was tall and well built, and spoke with an upper-class accent.
Operation Crown’s initial hype was starting to fade. The description of Pamela had yielded no response. The police knew their biggest card would be the capture of Westbrook. The inquiry now fielded a force of over a thousand officers, all sifting through statements and calls from the public. Fifty telephone operators were working round the clock.
There had been hundreds of sightings of Westbrook on the day of the robbery and after the event. Some were at Heathrow Airport, some at the ferry in Dover, and others at various railway stations in the south. One caller said she was sure she had seen him on a train going to Plymouth with a blond woman. She also said he looked drunk or sick. As it had not been disclosed to the public that Westbrook had cancer, this was a valuable piece of information that might lead to the discovery of the lady-in-waiting too.
Two days after the robbery, the police gained their next vital clue. The three boys out sailing who had watched a crate being dropped into the sea off Brighton had subsequently told their father, who reported the incident to the coast guard. He thought that although it might not have been connected with the robbery of the Crown Jewels, it was an unusual event and should be reported anyway.
The coast guard felt the incident warranted reporting to the police. Anything that sniffed of drugs was treated seriously. The local police interviewed the boys, then contacted Scotland Yard. Operation Crown officers traveled to Brighton.
The boys had only the first part of the yacht’s name, Hortensia. but told police that it had been flying the French flag. British customs were alerted, but there had been no further sightings of the vessel in any harbors along the coast. No customs officials had boarded her to ask why she was anchored off the Sussex coast.
The boys’ report added fuel to theories about the robbers’ possible getaway. The police had numerous helicopter sightings and were still checking with all the heliports on which helicopters had been used at the time of the robbery. When all the data were cross-referenced, they ascertained that four helicopters had been hired to coincide with the robbery. They had all had instructions to collect passengers from around the City of London, but the pickups had made no contact. What spurred the team up a notch was that the helicopters had been hired by Philip Simmons, who had now taken over from Westbrook as the most hunted man in Britain. His description and police identikit drawings were in every newspaper, and a computerized headshot of him frequently appeared on the daily television news coverage.
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The police hunt was further aided by a much calmer Maureen Stanley. She was taken over and over through the details of the day of the robbery.
Meanwhile, the forensic experts working in the warehouse had not found a single fingerprint. The debris left by the robbers was so minuscule that it was of no use. The acid had burned the clothes and articles Wilcox had placed in the bin. The remnants, however, were taken to the lab. The acid cans were checked out. Yet again Philip Simmons emerged as the purchaser. The company from which he had bought the acid in bulk gave the police his credit-card number, which threw up an address in Kilburn. When the police arrived at the Kilburn flat, the landlord told them he had never met the occupant. All details had been given over the Internet.
As one team of officers drove across London with search warrants for Simmons’s flat, a second team was trying to figure out how the robbers had been able to break into Buckingham Palace security and tap the phones of both Scotland Yard and the safe house. They knew whoever had done it had had access to the telephone exchange, so all employees were being questioned. One man with sufficient knowledge and authority had gone on holiday the day of the robbery. His name was Raymond Marsh. The second team headed for Marsh’s house in Clapham. Those in charge of Operation Crown were confident that arrests would soon be made.
As the squad cars pulled up outside the house, they were greeted by a For Sale notice with a sold sticker across it. Lined up in the hall were crates to be shipped to Marsh in South America. All were tagged and carefully packed but with only a poste restante address.
The estate agent was unable to provide an address for Marsh and said the proceeds from the sale of the property were to be deposited in his bank account. She did not know anything about the crates. Marsh had said that a friend would collect them and any bits of furniture the new owners did not want.
“Do you have this friend’s name?”
“No, I’m afraid not. As I said, we were just instructed to sell the property with the furniture. I presume whoever it is must have a key.”
Robbie Richards did have the key, but he didn’t have anywhere to store the boxes, so he had not got round to picking them up. He was supposed to have moved them on the night of the robbery and, in return for helping Marsh, take whatever furniture he wanted.
He was scared to death when he drove into Marsh’s street to see the house cordoned off by squad cars and cops wandering around like bluebottles. He turned his borrowed van and moved off fast. He would not have been able to assist the police in the heist inquiry, but he would have been able to give a lot of details about Marsh’s other illegal activities, such as the hacking and the credit-card skimming.
A team of officers broke into the Kilburn flat, but the occupant had long since departed. The damaged computer was taken away for tests, but it was deemed useless; the acid had burned through the plastic controls.
Maureen Stanley, after hours of questioning, ultimately proved unable to add to the array of sketches already drawn by the police artists. They had transferred the drawings to a computer-graphics program, layering in coloring and features to assist her, but this confused her even more. She constantly repeated that during the time before they left the warehouse she had been in a state of shock, frightened for herself and for her captive husband. She did say that Lord Westbrook was kind and considerate, and that the woman acting as her lady-in-waiting was called Pamela, or possibly Pauline.