‘That’s because these are wide enough apart for a bullet to pass between without hitting the grille.’ He crouched further and looked under the car. ‘There it is.’ He held the camera at ground level and took some photographs.
Jane crouched down and could see a small cylindrical silver object, which she realized must be a bullet.
‘Looks like it lost velocity when it passed through the radiator, then it hit the engine block and fell to the floor.’
He got on his hands and knees and started to lower himself to the road to get to the bullet.
‘You’ll get your clothes dirty — shall I look for a stick or something to get it out with?’
He didn’t stop what he was doing as he lay on the road and reached under the car.
‘No, we never do that, or use tweezers to pick up bullets. The last thing you want to do is mark or damage them in any way.’ He picked up the bullet, then stood up and showed it to her. ‘Although it’s squashed a bit at the top it’s in reasonable condition.’ He held the bullet flat in the palm of his hand. ‘There’s marks on it left by the rifling inside the barrel of the gun.’
He pointed to some tiny linear marks and asked Jane to put on some latex gloves and hold the bullet, so he could take some close-up photographs of it.
Jane thought they looked like scratches and asked him what he meant by rifling.
‘A firearms expert would be able to explain it better, but basically every gun barrel is rifled during manufacture. The rifling process creates spiral grooves that run along the barrel and improve a bullet’s accuracy as it rotates during flight. A fired bullet goes out through the barrel and ends up with mirrored markings on it, which match the rifling on the inside of the barrel... Am I making sense?’
‘Yes, I think so. The principle sounds the same as striation marks left on bones when a body is cut up,’ she said, remembering a case she had had where a body was dismembered with a hacksaw by a dentist.
‘That’s right, if somewhat gruesome. There are several methods used in rifling a barrel, which in turn makes a revolver or semi-automatic unique in its own way...’
‘Like a sort of fingerprint?’ she asked.
He nodded, and she continued.
‘So, if we recover the gun that fired the bullet, the barrel can be examined to see if the rifling marks on the bullet are the same.’
‘Sort of, but not quite like you described. The lab will test fire the suspect gun in water, then compare the test bullet against the ones recovered from the scene of the shooting. If the markings on the test bullet match the suspect ones, then you know you have the gun that was used in the robbery. But even if we don’t recover a gun, the marks on this bullet can help identify the type and model of firearm that was used.’
‘How do they test fire in water?’ she asked, imagining someone in a swimming pool firing a gun at a target.
‘You’ll see when you come with me to the lab, so I won’t spoil it by explaining.’
He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a small round plastic container in which he placed the damaged bullet. Handing it to Jane, she put it in an exhibits bag, then signed and marked the bag JT/8. She also entered the details in the exhibits book.
‘What about the skid marks — will they be of any use for tire impressions?’ she asked.
‘I’ve already photographed them, though they won’t be a lot of use unless we find the car the robbers were in — even then it was probably a nicked or ringed motor. Ideally, we’d need evidence like their fingerprints, or fibers from their clothing inside the vehicle, to physically put them in it...’
‘A young girl I spoke to, who witnessed the incident, said the two men she saw get out of the Cortina wore masks and gloves; they were also dressed the same in donkey jackets and blue coveralls.’
‘That’s your standard outfit for an armed blagger these days. Bank robbers are often forensically aware, having been nicked before, but they’re not as bright as they like to think they are and make mistakes. You only have one crack at examining a scene like this as you can’t seal the street off for ever. If you miss anything of evidential value, no matter how small, it could hinder the investigation.’
‘What about informants? Do you get many cases where someone tells you who’s responsible for an armed robbery?’
‘Sometimes, but I don’t get involved in that side of squad work as I’m just a SOCO. As I see it, criminals grass on each other for a variety of reasons, such as money or to remove a rival. Being a police informant is a highly dangerous occupation which can get you killed.’
‘I’ve never had a registered informant, but sometimes people I arrested told me “off the record” who else was involved to get a reduction in their own sentence at court.’
‘Well, if you want to get on in the Flying Squad you’ll be expected to cultivate informants. A lot of the lads on the squad have them and their information has led to pavement arrests during the commission of armed robberies.’
‘How does the team feel about the Operation Countryman investigation?’
Jane knew some Flying Squad officers had been arrested in the investigation into police corruption in London.
‘Thankfully no one at Rigg has been arrested or interviewed on suspicion of corruption by the Sweedy—’
‘Did you say the Sweedy?’
‘Yeah, it’s what the squad guys call the officers on Countryman. They’re all from Hampshire and Dorset, which are rural forces, and the name “Sweedy” comes from the vegetable swede.’
Jane grinned. ‘I’ve heard county officers referred to as “carrot crunchers”, but never “Sweedy”.’
‘The latest I heard was the officer in charge of Countryman is alleging that the investigation is being willfully obstructed by Commissioner McNee and the Director of Public Prosecutions. McNee wants all the Countryman evidence to be passed to the Met and dealt with by its own internal investigation unit, A10.’
‘I’ve been interviewed by the “rubber heelers” myself.’
She used a police term that had come about because you can’t hear the internal investigation officers coming due to the rubber heels on their shoes.
Dabs looked surprised. ‘Have you?’
‘Not for corruption, I hasten to add. One was a case when I was a probationer and the other more recent, when a dentist who murdered four people committed suicide. Thankfully I was only given some words of advice and a slap on the wrist in both cases.’
‘I remember reading about the murders in Peckham Rye about a year ago and the press kept using the headline “Murder Mile”. I couldn’t believe a Harley Street dentist was responsible.’
‘Believe me, neither could I, and the monster evaded a life sentence by killing himself.’
The tow truck for the police car arrived and Jane watched as Juliet 1 was slowly pulled out of the rubble by a winch cable. The elderly owner of the house stood watching with a solemn expression as more bits of the bay window gave way and fell on the front of the car. Once it was safely extracted, and a safe distance from the house, they cleared the debris from the car. Dabs pointed to a bullet hole in the bonnet. He tried to open it, but was unable to due to the damage from the crash.
‘From the entry point it’s probably lodged in the air filter. Hopefully we’ll find it at the lab or in the house rubble when we sift through it.’
Part of the front windscreen, on the passenger side, was still intact but covered with fractures that looked like large spiders’ webs. Dabs pointed to a one-centimeter circular hole in the windscreen.
‘That’s a bullet hole as well.’
He got in the car to look for any bullets.
After a few minutes he came out holding the front passenger headrest and showed it to Jane. She saw some of the white headrest padding protruding from holes on either side of it. As Dabs got the car keys from the ignition, he said a bullet had penetrated the windscreen, then hit the right side of the radio operator’s head, before passing through the headrest and into the rear seat, and was probably somewhere in the boot.