Braver Men Walk Away Read online

  The occupants of the other cubicles had, predictably, neither seen nor heard anything. As soon as security staff had banged on their doors and told them to leave because of the presence of a suspected bomb, one had emerged from the cubicle like a sprinter off the block, running out into the store and trying to fasten his trousers at the same time. The other, however, had flushed the toilet, emerged properly dressed, closed the door, and gone to the washbasin, where he had insisted on completing his ablutions despite the urgings of the increasingly frantic chaperones. ‘Don’t you know,’ he said, ‘it’s unhygienic not to wash your hands after using the lavatory?’

  In different circumstances I would have probably smiled. At times like this people did the most peculiar things. What concerned me, however, was the disturbance caused by the flushing of toilets and the banging of doors. I didn’t know how sensitive the device was but if, for instance, the timer was stuck, then all these separate vibrations could have started it again. The bomb might be running on a one-hour timer, but sixty minutes had long passed since the time of the warning, which meant that it could go off within the next few moments. Even if there was a two-hour delay I didn’t have much time to play with.

  I parted company with Tom Brogan some twenty yards from the gents’ toilets and told him to wait outside the store. I went inside and confronted the locked door. I then discovered I’d parted company with something else: the 2p piece. Somewhere en route it must have dropped from the adhesive tape. I cursed inwardly and went back out into the furnishing department.

  The set-piece was a dinner table dressed for eight with crockery and cutlery and all the attendant glassware. It looked very inviting; it also looked strange, like a formal version of the scene aboard the Marie Celeste. I grabbed a dinner knife, went back to the cubicle, looked over the top to ensure the door wasn’t booby-trapped, and then turned the locking mechanism with the tip of the knife.

  The package and the box were less than a yard from me – a main charge and a timer and power unit, linked by wires. I moved closer, feeling an urge to expose their secrets by taking them apart with my hands. But if emotion now stirred after what had happened to Ken, it had to be under complete control.

  As I leaned forward to take a closer look, my head touched the partition wall above the device. Amplified by the cavity and the built-in toilet cistern, the tick of a Memo Park timer sounded distinctly in my ears.

  I struggled to manoeuvre the X-ray into the confined space. I wanted close, clear shots of both parts of the device, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t achieve an angle which would give me a picture of the base of the main charge. I reluctantly discarded the X-ray and stared hard at the bomb as though by sheer intensity of gaze I could somehow divine within it whatever anti-handler mechanism was waiting for me. Whatever it was that had killed Ken.

  The seconds ticked away. Unfortunately there was no chance of getting into the thing by hand. I would have to use the disrupter.

  I positioned it in such a way that the high-velocity jet would take out the main charge only. The disrupter was wedged into place with a squishy wet mass of toilet paper which I tore from all the available rolls and then soaked in the lavatory bowl. I ran the firing cable out from the gents’ toilets and into the store where I up-ended a settee to create a kind of sentry-box, hid behind it, and then fired. There was a distant thump! but no explosion.

  I returned to the toilets to discover that the disrupter had been rather too successful: it had shattered both the main charge and the separate timer/power unit. I went down on hands and knees, searching amongst the fragments, more angry now than ever before. The shock and pain of Ken Howorth’s death had yet to flood in, had yet to get past the defences that had enabled me to cope with the horror of the Wimpy Bar basement and come straight to this job. Now there was only this deep and burning anger and the furious hope that this debris, this evidence now scattered around me, would one day convict Ken’s killers.

  Finally I finished with the scene, satisfied myself everything was safe, and left. I handed the dinner knife back to the Security Manager, saying that I had borrowed it for the job. (For a few weeks after the incident the knife was on show in a special glass case bearing the legend: THIS KNIFE WAS USED TO DEFUZE AN IRA BOMB FOUND IN THIS STORE ON OCTOBER 26TH. It wasn’t strictly true, but it showed that when you invested in Debenhams’ best silverplate, you got far more than you expected at the price.)

  The search at Bourne and Hollingsworth had been temporarily suspended in case the alleged bomb was operating on a two-hour timer. The crowds still waited behind the cordons, rank after rank of bobbing white faces, the rooflines of stationary cars and taxis almost hidden in the mêlée. I waited with the search team until the two-hour mark had elapsed, then returned to the Wimpy Bar and went back down into the Pit.

  The body was still lying where I had found it; a doctor had arrived but attendance was merely for the record. Officers from the Anti-Terrorist Squad were also there so I briefed them on the scene, then began the clear-up, supervising the work as we painstakingly picked our way through the stinking semi-darkness.

  Bourne’s was now being searched again, and that meant I needed to be there: the probability was still high that a third bomb was waiting somewhere in the store. So for the rest of that afternoon and evening I alternated between the Wimpy Bar and Bourne’s, where sniffer dogs and their handlers worked slowly and methodically through every floor and every item of goods.

  I found myself being quietly escorted by the dog-handlers, people who knew how close Ken and I had been and seemed to understand that at this time it would be best if I wasn’t left alone. They never said as much, but their expressions and their voices were comforting and I was grateful.

  By the time the clock struck midnight I had spent more than eight hours in perpetual motion between Bourne’s and Debenhams and the Wimpy Bar, also dealing with other suspect devices in the vicinity: three briefcases, eight shopping bags, five packages, one sack, one pot plant, and one paperweight. All turned out to be innocuous.

  Shortly before the search of Bourne and Hollingsworth was called off I was outside on the pavement, having just trudged back from dealing with yet another suspect device around the corner. It had again turned out to be harmless.

  Tiredness had not yet hit me, but I knew I needed a moment or two to wind down from this latest suspect IED incident before going back into Bourne’s. A senior Metropolitan Police officer suddenly appeared – a man almost certainly under as great a strain as the rest of us and who knew what had happened in Oxford Street that day. He smiled at me but seemed to have difficulty in finding something to say. Finally he managed a brisk pleasantry: ‘You had a busy day, Mr Gurney?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come on in a hurry, did you?’

  ‘I did, actually.’

  ‘I thought so.’ He paused. ‘It’s normal for you to wear a suit, isn’t it?’

  Even as he said the words, I suspected he regretted them. Yes, it was true I usually wore a suit. And yes, I wasn’t wearing one now, there hadn’t been time. I was standing outside Bourne and Hollingsworth in flannel trousers and tie-less shirt and bomber jacket under my flak jacket and I was also covered in blood and shit and dirt and very probably stinking to high Heaven.

  He had been trying to make a joke, I could tell; trying with cumbersome, heavy-handed humour to say something which reflected the mood and the speed of recent hours. I couldn’t believe that an officer of that calibre had actually meant what he’d said; you would have had to be certifiable to want to conduct a sartorial inspection at the height of a terrorist outrage. Give him the benefit of the doubt, I told myself.

  But then one of the dog-handlers stepped forward and confronted a man who was very much his senior in rank. Slowly and deliberately the dog-handler said: ‘D’you want to fucking hit him, Peter, or shall 1?’

  The moment seemed to freeze: me, the dog-handler, and one of the Met’s top-ranking police officers, the three of us at almo
st midnight in a near-deserted Oxford Street, three people at the end of a day none of us would ever forget.

  It could have gone either way. But then the senior officer took a step back. ‘I didn’t mean anything,’ he said. And it was over. His footsteps echoed on the pavement; slowly exhaled breath hung on the night air.

  I turned to my companion, my police constable friend. He would have done it, I thought, and thrown away his entire career. I didn’t say anything but offered up a silent prayer of thanks that the officer had summed up the situation, realized his gaffe, and been man enough to ignore the blatant disrespect of his rank.

  Eventually I made it back to the Bungalow and poured myself a stiff drink. The place was packed; everyone seemed to be on duty, so I slept on the floor of the Operations Room, still wearing my flak jacket because I was too tired to take it off.

  There had been no time to dwell on anything other than the events of the moment. I didn’t want to think, anyway, because I had already assimilated Ken’s death. Even when I glanced at his desk and saw his coffee mug and his pens, it was all right; I was reconciled to the way in which little things would sometimes spark off a memory.

  The next day the search resumed at Bourne and Hollingsworth, a task the like of which I had never before witnessed. It was London’s largest department store, an unimaginably vast acreage of floors, and the bomb could be anywhere. The tension never let up, nor the thought that something could happen to someone at any second. It could be a man on the floor above or below, or the man next to you. It might be you.

  There were thirteen of us, six handlers with their dogs, six police constables, and myself. It was fortunate none of us were superstitious.

  From time to time I checked to see how the police constables were managing. Of course the public never sees this kind of operation and the critics remain unaware of the bravery routinely displayed on their behalf. There were young policemen here who had little thought that morning that an armchair or a sofa would be viewed with terror. Knowing what might lie hidden, they had to lift those cushions and probe with trembling fingers. I watched them, and respected them, and got on with my own search. The dog-handlers stayed close.

  Then, for the second time in twenty-four hours, I had cause to be grateful to these redoubtable companions. Aware of the need to ease the pressure and provide some brief distraction, the dog-handlers took it upon themselves to stage … a fashion show.

  Dog-handlers are, in the main, built on rather generous lines – it is unusual for them to be anything less than 6 feet tall and 16 stone. As officers of the Law, they are invaluable; as fashion models, eccentric. Three of them provided the impromptu display in the third-floor ladies’ lingerie department; dressed in exotic underwear chosen from the rails and display cases, they paraded in everything from basques to French knickers (with their dogs in matching ensembles). Applause and laughter echoed around the vast empty building; there was something surreal about the scene and the circumstances. Obviously, such behaviour was against all regulations but breaking the rules was as nought compared to breaking the tension.

  The search resumed with morale higher than it had ever been, with spirits lifted and a renewed determination to seek out the hidden bomb regardless of the threat it posed.

  But in the end no bomb was ever found; the store was handed back to its management. The decision to do so was not taken lightly, but in the absence of evidence there was no other course of action. It seemed that the IRA had pursued a standard terrorist tactic: to strain our resources to the utmost by planting two bombs and then making a hoax call to divert and distract us still further.

  Meanwhile a forensic examination was being undertaken of the bomb that had killed Ken and the bomb I had disrupted at Debenhams. The report came through some time later. The Wimpy Bar bomb had indeed incorporated a particular type of anti-handling device. Curiously enough, mine had not.

  The funeral service was held in the chapel at Chelsea Barracks. All the Met’s explosives officers, past and present, were there. Afterwards, a private service was held at a crematorium not far from Ken’s Berkshire home. Like the chapel service, this passed in a kind of blur, very little filtering through except for an awareness of how brave they were in their grief: Anne, Ken’s widow, their son Steven, then twenty-one, and daughter Sue, still in her early teens. For myself, I knew that the pain and the sense of loss was too great to invite consideration at that time.

  So many memories of my own life were bound up with Ken, with the jobs we had done together, with the places we had visited, with the bad and fun times: the night we frightened them all with the mock Ansaphone message, the day we worked our way through the wreckage of the Iranian Embassy, the evenings the three of us spent at the Bungalow, sipping our whiskies, Roger making his point and Ken saluting back.

  But Roger was gone, and now Ken. I knew the names of other friends would come too – friends who, it had seemed, would always be around at the end of the day. But they were gone, and only memories remained; like Alan Brahmer that day on our parachute training when he hauled himself back up to talk about Geronimo. Alan, killed in Northern Ireland.

  I knew instinctively that the floodgates must not be allowed to open then, in the aftermath of Ken’s death. Ken Howorth hadn’t died just so his best friend could fall apart. The living have an obligation to the dead as well as to themselves. So I worked on, blocking out yesterday, dealing only with today, as I had done that day at the Wimpy Bar.

  It was only that piece of cardigan, a ragged patch of wool, torn and shredded and singed by the fireball, which got through my defences.

  In midsummer 1983 I learned that, in recognition of our work in October 1981, Ken had been posthumously awarded a George Medal and I had been awarded a Bar to go with the George Medal I’d already won in Northern Ireland.

  The presentation was made by the Queen at Buckingham Palace. For a very long time, it seemed, she talked to me, remembering my previous George Medal and MBE for gallantry. We discussed the events and the jobs I had dealt with in London, and then she said that, earlier that day, she had had a private investiture of the George Medal to Mr Howorth’s widow. ‘Did you know him at all?’ she asked.

  Surprised, I said, ‘Of course I knew him. He was my closest friend for twenty-five years, Ma’am.’

  ‘But you went in and examined the body –’ The Queen stopped in mid-sentence, as if picturing the scene in her mind. There was no mistaking the sorrow on her face as the silence seemed to run on endlessly between us.

  After she had hooked my little Bar with its small piece of ribbon to my chest, I went out into a Palace anteroom to collect the box. I knew Honours boxes could be very impressive; I couldn’t wait to see what they had come up with this time – Moroccan red leather, or maybe tiny quilts of velvet. A gentleman in a morning suit consulted his list while I stared at the table between us. It was stacked with boxes, all of them as dignified as that which they were intended to accommodate.

  ‘Mr Gurney?’ said the man with the boxes. ‘Bar to the George Medal?’ He rummaged around under the table and handed me a very small self-seal plastic bag.

  I stared from him to the bag and back again. ‘There isn’t a box?’

  ‘No,’ he said cheerfully. ‘That’s it.’

  That night at Cannon Row Police Station the Expos staged a celebration party. The centrepiece of the room was a table on which they had placed a velvet cushion with my Bar resting in the middle and an enormous desktop magnifying glass, used for forensic examination, set above that.

  Also on the cushion was the resealable plastic bag and a note saying: PLEASE RETURN TO BUCKINGHAM PALACE AFTER USE. I still have happy memories of the night. And, naturally, I still have the plastic bag.

  I also remember thinking at the time how much Ken would have enjoyed it all.

  By 1984 it was becoming increasingly obvious that, like any other organization, the Metropolitan Police Explosives Office needed a formal structure. Until then, all explosives offic
ers were considered equal; being the type of people they were, Expos were not concerned with conventional preoccupations like rank or status or promotion because when you’re out on the street facing the challenge of a bomb your performance is measured by rather different criteria than apply elsewhere.

  Even so, some form of leadership seemed desirable. Though we managed the functions of the office in such a way that duties were shared out amongst ourselves – for instance, one Expo would be responsible for admin, another for ongoing training, another for looking after the secret library – the vagaries of the shift system meant you could go for long periods without ever seeing a particular colleague.

  A point, a person, to whom all Expos could go and all outsiders contact made sense. But who? When the idea was first mooted by the Met, it was suggested that someone be brought in to head up the office. In a rare gesture of unanimity (it was one of the few occasions when all Expos agreed with each other) the notion was rejected: we took the view that not only were we the most competent and experienced at this kind of EOD work, we didn’t feel any outsider would be technically qualified or know enough about our working methods and conditions to run the team.

  And so the ball was bounced back into our court: who, we were asked, do you think should do the job? The answer was a collective jab of the thumb in my direction: ‘him’.

  Thus it was that on 21 October 1985 I became head of the Metropolitan Police Explosives Office. I was pleased, not a little flattered, and delighted not so much that I’d been given the job as given the trust of friends and colleagues. The most important thing of all was that this collection of pretty unique individuals were comfortable with the thought that yes, they could rely on me, that I knew what the job was like, the problems, the frustrations, the challenges. That I knew and understood their fears in a way no outsider ever could.

  It did not of course mean that the working atmosphere suddenly changed: logically, the head of an office is the chief officer, but a title of that nature didn’t fit the group’s sense of humour. Chief Explosives Officer was not a term to conjure with, whereas Senior Explosives Officer … that was much better. SEXPO.