Braver Men Walk Away Read online

  There had been a tremendous battle followed by a fire in the secretary’s room on the first floor. In amongst the scattering of pistols and grenades, fired ammunition and the remains of stun grenades, lay the body of one of the terrorists. There was also a case containing sunglasses, film cassette, lighter, razor, and tube of Chapstick. I looked at this, then at the body, sprawled out with a 9mm pistol at its side. I’d never have thought a hardened terrorist would worry about something as mundane as chapped lips.

  The back room contained the body of a second terrorist, badly burned by the fire caused when stun grenades set light to the curtains. Here, as everywhere else, the stench of smoke was overwhelming; charred wood and blackened plasterwork crumbled at the slightest touch.

  The second floor wasn’t immediately accessible because the staircase had almost burned away. A surveyor told us we couldn’t go there until the floor had been shored up but we got tired of waiting and found a ladder. Three bodies were in the Telex Room; they’d have to be moved but there was no way of telling what might be beneath them. They may have been shot by the SAS; then again, one of them might have been a hostage shot by the gunmen and left to lie on the floor with a booby-trap to catch the unwary.

  It was then that I slipped my hand under one of the bodies and touched the grenade. We had already found one RGD 5 behind the door. I thought quickly: it is not unusual in war time to leave a corpse lying on a grenade from which the pin has been removed; lift the body and the grenade goes off. The only thing to do if you hear the igniter strike is to drop the corpse back on to the grenade and let it shield you from the blast.

  Ken stayed well back; no point in two of us being caught out. I kept my fingers clamped on the grenade and cautiously moved it clear. It was safe. The pin had not been pulled. We both breathed easily again.

  In April 1984 I found myself back on embassy premises, this time after the murder of Woman Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher. She had been trying to control an angry crowd of demonstrators gathered outside the Peoples’ Bureau of the Socialist Peoples’ Libyan Arab Jamahiriya when she was killed by gunfire from a first-floor window.

  It was an act of vicious callousness and the Libyans refused to hand the killer over to the authorities. As a result the embassy was surrounded by police and no one allowed in or out.

  After prolonged negotiations the siege ended on 29 April. The Libyans were forced to quit both the building and the country. Their departure provoked a public uproar; a defenceless young policewoman had been shot down in the line of duty and the Libyans couldn’t have cared less. A memorial fund was launched under the chairmanship of film director Michael Winner; today a plaque marking the place where Yvonne Fletcher died says everything that needs to be said about the obscenity of State-sponsored terrorism.

  I was tasked to 5 St James’s Square on 30 April. Originally a team from the Royal Engineers was going in to search the place, but they were so hampered by army regulations that five hours after arriving at the scene they still hadn’t entered the building.

  I watched and inwardly fretted as the clock ticked on from 11.40 a.m., when the RE team arrived, to 4.40 p.m., by which time the light was fading fast and they had only managed to open the back door and remove, one at a time, more than sixty sacks of rubbish from an inner passageway. I decided to go in by myself then.

  The negotiation period prior to the Libyans’ departure had given them plenty of time to do as they wished to the building, so we could not rule out the possibility of a bomb somewhere inside – if it exploded and killed a lot of people, the Libyans would doubtless claim it was all our fault.

  A possible source of risk was the burglar alarm system, triggered by sensors fitted to the concertina-style metal window grilles. If that was linked to a bomb, then breaking in could cause an explosion. Fortunately we had tracked down the firm who had installed the system and I had obtained some sample sensors the day before the siege ended. I had found a way to neutralize them without activating the alarm.

  I decided to go in through the kitchen at the back of the building. I used a glass-cutter on the window, knocked out the sensor, waited while a Public Works team cut through the grille, then clambered in. The place was in darkness; the Libyans had closed all the curtains as well as the grilles. The room stank of cheap aftershave. I edged through the gloom, using my torch to look for trip wires and other booby traps, to where I knew the burglar alarm control panel was sited. I trod carefully on the marble edge of the flooring, determined to avoid walking on the carpet in case there were hidden pressure switches. When I finally reached the control panel I felt rather silly: the bloody thing had never been switched on.

  A thorough search of the building showed it was free of IEDs and booby-traps. It also showed how determined the Libyans had been to remove or destroy as much material as possible: the place looked as though it had been vandalized from top to bottom. Every room was in chaos, filled with upturned filing cabinets and tipped-over furniture.

  I paused by the first-floor window overlooking St James’s Square and stared down at the place where WPC Yvonne Fletcher had died. Then I bent down to examine the floor beneath the central heating radiator and found a spent 9mm cartridge. The Libyans hadn’t been as thorough as they’d thought.

  11

  The Wimpy Bar

  The Downing Street mortar attack in 1991 was one of the most brilliant terrorist operations ever carried out on the UK mainland. Though I have no sympathy with terrorism’s aims and objectives, it has to be said that those who masterminded and executed the attack did so with a precision of which the military would have been proud.

  It was, in terrorist terms, both a tactical achievement (in that they got so close to the target, and operated under the very eyes of armed police) and a propaganda and psychological victory, for the attack served to remind everyone of the terrorists’ determination and of the vulnerability of even the Prime Minister and his Cabinet to an attack in the very heart of London.

  It did not, however, alter the fact that true and enduring achievement belongs not to the terrorists but to ordinary people in Northern Ireland and mainland Britain and in every country in the world where there is a determination not to give in. As for the victory, that also belongs to ordinary people – particularly to those who, in sacrificing their own lives so that others may live, become the most special people of all.

  Monday 26 October 1981 was a typical autumn day in the capital, brisk, fresh, and sunlit. The events of that day began shortly before I arrived on duty, with a radio message to PC David Wallace and PC Damian Manning as they patrolled ‘C’ Division in their area car. They had received a message from Control at 3.05 p.m. saying, ‘Bomb threat at the Wimpy Bar between Debenhams and Bourne and Hollingsworth, Oxford Street, W.I.’

  Using the car’s two-tone horns, they made a high-speed dash to the scene, arriving within a few minutes of receiving the message. They alerted the manager to the threat and began a search of the ground-floor dining area, moving quickly but without unnecessary dramatics: Oxford Street was, as ever, thronged with shoppers and tourists and the Wimpy Bar was still busy in mid-afternoon. It was important not to provoke an uncontrolled rush to the exit.

  The preliminary search yielded nothing, and PC Wallace returned to the car to talk to Control. He was told that a second message had just been received which not only confirmed the first but indicated that the bomb had been placed downstairs in the basement area toilets.

  Wallace, Manning and the manager went to investigate; while Wallace and the manager checked the ladies’ toilets, Manning entered the gents and discovered what he later described as ‘a parcel and a box’ underneath the twin sinks. By Manning’s estimate at the time, the parcel had rounded edges and was 9 inches by 6 inches by 1½ inches. It was wrapped in brown sticky tape about 2 inches wide and was approximately 2 to 3 inches from the box. The box reminded Manning of ‘a school pencil box’, although it was smaller: about 5 inches by 3 inches by 1½ inches.

  P
C Wallace came in to confirm the presence of the packages and then the two officers and the manager evacuated everyone from the premises. Wallace asked Control to send an explosives officer to the scene.

  I arrived at the Bungalow at about 3.40 p.m., twenty minutes before the start of my shift. This was standard Expo practice; you needed time to familiarize yourself with the events of the day, read incoming messages and check your equipment. However, it rapidly became clear that time was in very short supply. The Bungalow was at the centre of a major alert: according to Control, an anonymous telephone call had been received by the Reuters News Agency warning that the IRA had planted three bombs in Oxford Street, one in Bourne and Hollingsworth, one in Debenhams, and one in the Wimpy Bar at 142–144 Oxford Street.

  I was further told that a search of the three locations had been made and two outwardly identical suspect explosive devices located, one in the Wimpy Bar and the other in Debenhams. The duty Expo had been tasked to the Wimpy Bar at 3.35 p.m., just a few minutes before I had arrived at the Bungalow. Even while this briefing was going on, events in Oxford Street were rapidly progressing.

  Police officers were combing Bourne and Hollingsworth as customers emptied out on to the pavement, joining the hundreds of others continuing to emerge from surrounding shops and stores. Like a bewildered army in colourful and uncomprehending disarray, the crowds were marshalled away to safety beyond the cordons. All around, traffic came to a standstill as central London plunged into a noisy paralysis of sirens and car horns, as more Metropolitan Police vehicles moved in to secure both ends of the no-go area.

  Meanwhile, at the Wimpy Bar, the Expo had arrived. He was briefed by PCs Wallace and Manning and helped into his flak jacket. He then went into the empty premises and disappeared into the basement. The two police officers waited outside, standing now in the middle of the wide, deserted thoroughfare. In the space of less than thirty minutes, a large section of one of the most famous streets in the world had been stilled. Only the squawk and static of police radios and emergency vehicles broke the silence. The unreality of it all made each second tick by with aching slowness. And then the explosion came.

  Muffled rather than loud, distant rather than near, the sound registered only for an instant before the Wimpy Bar’s frontage dissolved in a cloud of grey-brown smoke. Glass and wood spewed outwards in a whirling storm and a section of concrete pavement disintegrated as it hurtled across Oxford Street. The smoke blossomed and billowed, and a dense dark column climbed skywards even as the last pieces of debris thudded and tinkled on to the asphalt.

  News of the blast came while I was still being briefed. Even before the news came through I had decided that we had a serious situation on our hands because the exact location of the bomb had been given. Experience told me that the IRA were never that helpful, never that specific. It was as though they were encouraging an Expo to get to the scene and daring him to deal with the device. Whatever had been placed there had to be very nasty indeed, and the seemingly identical Debenhams device very likely posed a similar threat.

  As for the Expo, no one appeared to know whether he was alive or dead, whether he had been injured or had been well away from the bomb when it went off. I grabbed my kit and told the Controller I was going to the Wimpy Bar and then on to Debenhams. All of us, not just me, had to know what had happened in that basement.

  I couldn’t find anyone who had actually been into the basement after the explosion. Though it was possible the police at the other end of the street knew more, those I met at my arrival point could only say that yes, an explosives officer had entered the premises and gone downstairs.

  I clambered over the ruptured pavement and through the wrecked frontage. A carpet of glass and splintered wood lay underfoot. I went down the spiral ornamental iron staircase into a place I would forever afterwards remember as ‘the Pit’.

  Daylight filtered in from the hole above, through a dense curtain woven from a shifting texture of smoke, steam and dust. The light played weakly on the wreckage of walls and partitions blasted from the front of the building to the rear. A nauseating, choking stench filled my nose and lungs: the smell of shattered plasterwork, of burnt explosive, of excrement from the demolished toilets area, of around 500 pounds of mince that had been waiting to be turned into beefburgers. Darkest of all was the distinctive odour of shattered body tissue.

  Water had flooded in from the wrecked plumbing and still dripped somewhere in the noisome gloom. I carefully picked my way through the debris into the heart of what was left of the Wimpy Bar. The body was at my feet.

  Though on the brief, blurred journey to Oxford Street I had been praying that this was not what I would find, a deeper certainty had refused to be dislodged. In the confusion of radio messages and absence of details, a faint possibility remained that the duty Expo had somehow escaped the blast. No one had known for sure what had happened – no one in the Control Room, no one even here at the scene. I had kept telling myself that there was still a chance, not only because of all the uncertainty but also because I knew this man, the duty Expo. I knew him like a brother, knew how he thought and worked and acted. It seemed inconceivable that a professional of his calibre could have died here.

  It lay half-covered with debris. The injuries were massive; death would have occurred instantly.

  I glanced away to adjust my eyes to the gloom. White steam eddied wraith-like above and around the wreckage. Sounds registered with painful clarity: the hissing of broken pipes, the bubbling of liquid, the muted creak and crash of debris as it went through another phase of settlement.

  I looked at the body again, knowing what it had been, but knowing, too, that at this moment all emotion had to be suspended. An identical device was waiting for me at Debenhams. What had happened here could tell me what I would very soon have to face there.

  Body tissue is remarkably resilient; it has to be very close to a bomb if the blast is to destroy it. That was obviously the case here; even though the body was lying about nine yards from the seat of the explosion, the type and extent of injury indicated that the deceased had been looking at the bomb, his face close to it, probably touching something when the explosion occurred. But I needed to be sure.

  Slowly, carefully, I ran my hands down the sides of the body, sensing rather than seeing its mutilated shape. The action confirmed what I had half-expected: both arms had been blown off by the explosion. This meant he had been handling or working on the bomb at the time it went off. It also meant the device probably had a particularly nasty booby-trap mechanism. The Debenhams bomb could well be the same.

  I stayed alone in the smoking, stinking gloom of that basement for only a few minutes, for only as long as it took to confirm that a death had occurred and learn whatever lessons that death could impart. I did not relate the death to the name or the name to the man – not while I was checking the body nor when I began a hasty search of the wreckage, only too well aware that there were only a few moments in which to seek out a clue to the nature of the device, some fragment of a component which would tell its own story. A live bomb was waiting for me.

  Then my fingers closed on something soft, something about the size of my hand. It drew together and crumpled in my grip. At first I didn’t recognize it. I had to look closely, sensing its significance before understanding its meaning: a piece of cardigan – that old cardigan Ken always wore. The connections were coming too fast, were hooking up at a speed that if allowed to go unchecked would forge link after link after link, each more binding, each more painful, and each more immobilizing than the one before.

  I went quickly up the spiral staircase before the connections could be complete. Every emotion was back in place – apart from the anger.

  It took only a minute to get out of the building, into the Range Rover and down Oxford Street to Debenhams. Sidestreets and corners were packed with police and pedestrians, fire engines and ambulances, taxis bumper to bumper behind bright red London Transport double-decker buses. In different c
ircumstances, those moments would have been fuelled by tension and adrenalin. Now something altogether blacker had threaded its way through.

  I wanted that bomb. I wanted to get into Debenhams and find the thing and take it apart piece by piece and bit by bit so that we would have every last clue to the identity of those who had made it and planted it, every last microscopic fragment of forensic evidence which would help to nail the bastards who had just killed my best friend.

  Tom Brogan, Debenhams’ Security Manager, was waiting for me, a lone figure in an eerily empty store. All the lights were on, all the counters stocked and waiting, even the faces of the cash registers glowing.

  ‘Have you been to the one up the road?’ Brogan asked me.

  I nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve heard a man’s been killed … ?’

  ‘Yes. But we don’t know the circumstances.’ I didn’t want to talk about it.

  He led me through the store, helpfully explaining that the device had been discovered by the Floor Manager who had checked the gents’ toilets on the first floor and found three of the cubicle doors closed with the engaged signs showing. He had looked underneath two and seen the occupants’ feet; as the third seemed empty he had opened the door and found the packages resting close together on top of the boxed-in cistern: two packages, just like the Wimpy Bar.

  After the Security Manager had confirmed the situation, the cubicle door had been closed and the lock turned; there was no exterior handle to open it again so I would have to insert something to turn the lock. I fumbled in my pockets as we walked along, found a 2p piece and stuck it to my hand with adhesive tape – better to do it now than have to fiddle around at the scene.