CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I have this one solution to all my problems. It is a system which allows me to relax completely, to blow away any cobwebs which might be tangled up in my brain or to erase worries which encroach on my peace. It never fails.
After a year in Hong Kong I could speak a smattering of the local Cantonese dialect, I knew a northern Chinese restaurant from a Guangdong restaurant, and I had convinced myself that there was no better beer in the world than San Lik, the slang way of pronouncing San Miguel which identified you as a resident which in turn identified you as being off limits when it came to overcharging or harassing. Well, not completely off limits, it was Hong Kong after all. I had become a resident. Still a kwailo, but a resident foreigner.
At the end of three years I had become more proficient in all these areas and had also grown to two hundred and fifteen pound with a paunch that I had to haul back over my belt and jowls which Marlon Brando would have died for in his role as the Mafia Don.
I recall sitting in the office at the Post one Saturday. It was a slack period and I was reading that day’s edition of the paper. An advertisement caught my eye. I know it did, though not specifically at the time, because I was conscious of the extra pounds I was carrying and it was an advertisement for a karate association which enticed its readers in the heading to get fit and only at the bottom to learn the art of self defence.
I read it a number of times. Then I showed it to a colleague who agreed it might be fun to visit the dojo one night, watch a class, and if it did not seem too violent we would probably have a go at it. From my first night I was hooked.
The sensei was a young Japanese man called Kenichi Namikata. He taught karate as the Japanese learn it in Japan, beginning with the meaning of karate, the spiritual behind the physical, and when he moved to the self defence he carried the spiritual teachings with it so that it became an experience, a way of life, actually a process of living your life.
For the last two years of my time in Hong Kong I trained with Namikata Sensei four times a week for two hours each session. I learned much. About friendship and trust. I suffered pain and elation in competition. I also lost forty pounds. But one of the things I learnt then and which I practice today is that karate can convert into meaningless irrelevancies the events of a whole day. As soon as I put on my dogi, begin my warm up exercises which lead to forty minutes of high concentration physical power training, I lose all previous thoughts and enter the world of karate with its true teachings, and when I finish I am exhausted and totally refreshed.
I am not that tall, a fraction under six feet, and have little difficulty maintaining my ideal fighting weight of one hundred eighty pounds. I am also pretty fast and for three or four minutes can hold my own with just about anybody around. After that though, the old man syndrome kicks in and I am easily cornered. Wiles are not sustaining enough, at the end of the day proving inadequate for youth, stamina, superior speed and technique. So I confine myself to working out at home daily, or whenever I can, and forsake the pain at the dojo in Piccadilly. My system works well and I forget my troubles easily. However, even that spell can be broken as it was when a friend telephoned and insisted I switch on the television news immediately.
I had missed the intro to the story but the newsreader was just passing over to an outside broadcasting colleague who was standing facing the camera outside the Horseferry Road Magistrate’s Court. For the next forty-five seconds I listened as she recounted the events that unfolded as Rocky James was transported to the court, apparently pleaded not guilty to the charge of killing his wife, and was then escorted back to his place of remand. It was after that that she said there were unconfirmed reports, supposedly emanating from reliable police sources, that James was also to be charged with other murders, the implication being that he was the serial killer who was being hunted.
Almost unseen to the side of the screen, standing apart from the melee on the sidewalk, I noticed Detective Maguire. He was looking on, past the heads of the many other people who had gathered outside the court building to witness, or be part of, the circus surrounding the capture of the country’s most sought after criminal. I don’t know what it was but there was something about his expression. I could not put my finger on it but for some reason it struck me, he doesn’t look right, he looks questioning. Unconvinced I think was the word that popped into my head. Why that should be so I had no idea. I was probably wrong anyway. Maguire was one of the lead detectives working the case and here he was outside the court where Rocky James had appeared charged with one murder and being linked, albeit unconfirmed, with the murders he was working on. So why he should look doubtful made no sense.
As I was thinking these thoughts Maguire actually looked straight at me, or at least straight at the camera filming the reporter finishing her report and I thought for a moment he was looking through the screen at me, and then turned on his heel and walked away. The scene on my television quickly changed and returned to the anchor in the studio.
Sometimes a story requires a great deal of research. Something happens and your job is to follow it through with new angles, further and deeper probing, or move off at a tangent to get an extended take on it. This can take a long time and involve a great deal of effort. But the results can be very rewarding, very satisfying.
Other times the story sells itself. It is an event, a happening, that allows the words to flow freely and result in an interesting read. It might not be as fulfilling as investigative reporting but it can nevertheless be interesting, even entertaining, to put together.
Then there is the story that you think might be there. You are not certain, but your gut sends a message to your brain that says have a look at this, there might be something in it, it could lead to something pretty worthwhile. Detective Maguire slotted into that category. I had no reason to know that he could have a story for me. The story was already out there and every other journalist had it. Rocky James had been arrested and charged with one murder and would be charged it was said with the others. Every journalist would have access to that. So what was it about Maguire that gave me the idea he could be a story? My gut. That’s all it was. My gut and the expression I thought I saw on his face outside the Horseferry Road court. He looked unconvinced. And that for some reason convinced me I should follow my gut instinct and see where it led me.
From my office to the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, or New Scotland Yard, in Broadway around the corner from St James’s Park underground station and close to Victoria Street it took me less than ten minutes to walk. The original New Scotland Yard was located less than a mile away on Victoria Embankment. Then it was a red and white brick Gothic structure and was specially built as the new headquarters for the British police force. Actually the building was the site of the notorious Whitehall Mystery. The Yard museum reports that the Whitehall Mystery of 1888 involved a woman’s torso being concealed in the cellar by night as the building itself was under construction.
There’s a link. Another woman who was murdered.
That was by no means though the most famous case for New Scotland Yard. There was the wonderfully named Brides of The Bath Murders that involved three murdered women all found in their baths, the famous Dr Crippen, not to mention Jack the Ripper, and more recently the Kray Gang. New Scotland Yard had earned its global reputation for solving deadly crimes.
Of course the present New Scotland Yard building which replaced the Victoria Embankment headquarters around the mid nineteen sixties is very different and is a plain stainless steel clad office block. The thing that distinguished it from other similar edifices around that part of the capital is the famous revolving sign outside which announces it is the home of New Scotland Yard. It is said the sign revolves no fewer than fourteen thousand times each and every day.
The Metropolitan Police Service, or The Met as it is known, is now the largest force in London and was founded by Sir Robert Peel in 1829 when its contingent was just one thousand officers. Today it employs more than thirty-two thousand and almost fifteen thousand staff. Its head is not a Commissioner. Right now it is an Acting Commissioner because the Commissioner was forced to resign following the revelations involving alleged police association with the media phone hacking scandal. Not that this tentative hiccup involving the leadership of the Met would have had a major effect on Detective David Maguire. He was too professional, too experienced, too single minded to be diverted by that. He was also too involved in the current series of cases to be distracted.
Yet distracted he looked as he walked up Broadway towards the main entrance to New Scotland Yard. He did not notice me straight away standing outside a few meters from the revolving sign above my head. When he did he stopped, shook his head slowly from side to side and I could see him mouth what I took to be a four letter curse.
“Detective Maguire,” I said as he approached me. “How goes the investigation? Or should I ask what new one you will be handed now that Rocky James is in custody?”
“Piss off Tighe,” he said and went to move past me. Then he stopped and added: “I am not as well mannered as my wife so I hope I don’t have to repeat myself too often. Piss off.”
He stated to walk off again. “What makes you unhappy about James’ arrest Detective?”
He stopped and turned. “Jesus Tighe, what is it with you reporters? Why do you go around making things up? I have never understood that. Surely there is enough news in the world without you having to invent it. Is it just for the headline? Are you on a bonus for the best lies you can come up with? Why on earth would you ask me that? Why am I unhappy about the arrest of a serial killer? Why would it make me unhappy to have a scum of the earth murderer taken off the streets? Tell me that.”
“I saw you outside the court,” I said. “You know something. Or you suspect something is not right. Or unfinished. You’re a good copper but not a good poker player.”
Maguire stared at me and then turned his back. “Piss off,” he called over his shoulder.
That’s when my gut sent me another message. Maguire didn’t deny my accusation a second time. There’s something there Zack my boy. Go dig it up.
So that’s what I resolved to do. Find out what it was about the arrest of Rocky James that bothered the experienced and highly professional Detective David Maguire and see where it led.
*
But first I had a column to write for my Hong Kong newspaper, the South China Morning Post. Back in my office flat I sat in front of the PC cogitating. The subject I decided had to be on the phone hacking. There was nothing for it. The story would simply not go away and was causing increasing trouble for the Prime Minister who had hired a former editor of the newspaper at the centre of the scandal, Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, as his No 10 Downing Street spin doctor. He had already been arrested for allegedly being involved, had quit his government role while denying any wrong doing, but now was back in the limelight following further unpleasant revelations.
So I couldn’t get away from the timeliness and news value of the subject. And even if it meant writing harsh things about my own profession and the media in the town where I worked, I had no alternative. So first I had to double check the sequence of events, the key element, leading up to the latest shock news.
It had its origins in a manner of speaking more than a decade before when the attractive Rebekah Brooks was appointed editor and led a campaign to name and shame paedophiles and seeking public access to the Sex Offenders Register which was now known as Sarah’s Law. Then two years later, in 2002, schoolgirl Milly Dowler was snatched and killed, her body being found six months later. This girl would feature terribly again many years later at the height of the hacking scandal when it was found that her very mobile had been hacked while she was still missing.
In 2003 Brooks took over editorship of The Sun newspaper and was replaced at the News of the World by the man who would later become the spin doctor for the Prime Minister, Andy Coulson.
Over the next two years, up to 2007, various claims were made by high profile personalities, not the least of whom was the Queen’s grandson and hugely popular prince William, that their private mobile phones had been hacked. Stories began appearing in print that could not have been obtained any other way it was said, and the upshot was that a private investigator was arrested, convicted and jailed for conspiring to intercept communications as well as actually intercepting voicemail messages.
Between then and 2009 there were a number of developments but nothing earth-shattering or worthy of banner headlines. Then suddenly it became known that News of the World reporters did hack into mobile phones of celebrities and politicians while Coulson was editor back between 2003 and 2007.
Parliament and police launched investigations. In 2010 Coulson headed up the government’s media operation at No 10. Early the following year he resigned. More News of the World staff were arrested. The police investigation, that in the past had downplayed the extent of the hacking scandal, was stepped up as it was realised just how widespread and serious the scandal really was.
Major developments quickly followed. Coulson was arrested, Brooks resigned as CEO of News Corporation, a popular Assistant Commissioner of the Met resigned, the Commissioner himself resigned, and new evidence reportedly surfaced leading to further parliamentary probing.
The entire series of events revealed the most unsavoury side of British journalism, if not as a whole then certainly in part. And I am part of that world. Fortunately not News of the World which was shut down. An unbelievable penultimate end to the saga.
And that was roughly where I planned to end my column. But then as a last thought I decided to add something completely different, off the wall.
I wrote:
There can be no doubt that the reputation and credibility of the British media, so highly respected for generations around world, has been badly tarnished. It will take a long time indeed to rebuild itself.
There can also be no doubt that the reputation and credibility of the Metropolitan Police, so highly respected for generations around world, has been badly tarnished by this scandal. They have also done themselves a disservice for mishandling the early stages of the recent street riots that saw parts of the capital city as well as Birmingham, Manchester and other cities set alight and looted by roving gangs of hoodlums.
But let’s not tarnish every single policeman and woman – or journalist for that matter – with the same accusations. There are good police offices as there are good honest reporters.
We are probably witnessing that positive side of the police as this article is being written. There have been a series of horror murders committed that have shocked the nation. But a man has been arrested and charged in court with one murder, and if unconfirmed reports turn out to be accurate, he will be charged with others.
Having said that, these are unconfirmed reports. It is not certain the man charged will indeed be charged further, if he is responsible for the other killings. Perhaps he will, and women up and down the land will be able to rest easily again.
But it has to be said not everyone is convinced the serial killer is in custody. This reporter for one thinks even some police have their doubts. If not many, then at least one experienced, professional detective who is close to the case.
As we say in the hopeful world of the press: “Watch this space”.