Death Comes Knocking – Policing Roy Graces Brighton – Peter James

The temptation must be to urge them to plead guilty. However, there is always another way. If the evidence is damning then the only hope remains in trying to find chinks in the way it was gathered. The Crown Prosecution Service instructed John Tanzer, now a respected judge, as prosecuting counsel. This was a smart move given that he was more than capable of handling a major conspiracy such as this.

However, faced with a leading and junior barrister per defendant, he, the police and the CPS were quickly swamped with the multifarious demands for additional information and evidence all designed to overwhelm them. During the six weeks of legal argument and voir dire – a trial without the jury to determine the admissibility of evidence – the prosecution found that they could not even say that an officer was on duty on a particular day without being challenged. The defence demanded independent proof of the fact.

Despite the hundreds of hours spent observing the defendants, each surveillance officer had to prove the identity of the person they had been watching. Barratt’s counsel relied heavily on the stunning similarity his client bore to his equally errant brother. One cop became so confused that even the judge wondered whether he was telling the truth and warned him accordingly.

Russ had to arrange for the voices heard through the surveillance bugs to be forensically compared with samples of the defendants’ voices. They even had to prove that a dustcart that coincidentally arrived at one of the places being watched wasn’t staffed by undercover cops. The days in court were the easy bit.

However, once the judge rose, Russ and the team would burn the midnight oil dealing with the multitude of bizarre defence requests. He recalls, to this day, sitting at his dining-room table late into one evening, using his daughter’s crayons to create multicoloured analytical charts showing the defendants’ phone calls, to head off another off-the-wall demand. Finally, a full two years after the arrests and with all the legal issues settled, Bloomstein and Aldridge unexpectedly pleaded guilty and, after a trial, Barratt and Bishop were found guilty by a jury at Lewes Crown Court.

Don and Russ finally felt vindicated. Their hard work had paid off. Their professionalism had defeated the shenanigans the defence had engaged in. Despite those attacks on police integrity, justice had prevailed. Now they waited to revel in the length of the sentences. It was a stunning victory when the judge sent the four to prison for a total of forty-three years. No-one had expected them to get this long.

Nigel couldn’t resist the temptation to turn to the dock to savour the moment the defendants were led away to serve their time.

For many years my ‘real life’ Roy Grace, Detective Chief Superintendent David Gaylor, was my principal contact in Sussex Police, working closely with me on the planning of my stories and introducing me to any officers he felt would be helpful to my research on each successive Roy Grace novel, to lend my books the authenticity I try hard to maintain. When he retired, I was immensely fortunate to have that baton taken on by his good friend, Chief Superintendent Graham Bartlett, himself a former senior homicide detective, who then became Commander of Brighton and Hove Police.

Graham and I instantly hit it off and he was an invaluable help to me for several years – also becoming a very good friend. When he was coming up to retirement, at the almost ridicuously young age of forty-eight, he again ensured that I had a wide number of officers, at all levels, who would continue to give me all the access and research help that I would need, because he felt that the books gave the public an accurate and informative insight into what is really involved in policing.

He also told me that he harboured ambitions to become a published author, and sent me examples of blogs he had written over the years, for me to judge his penmanship skills. I was very impressed by his writing style, which was clear, lucid, very readable and, most importantly of all, highly engaging. He told me he would like to write a book in his retirement, and asked if I would be willing to offer some guidance.

I agreed and arranged to meet up with him for a bite of lunch. Then I had a true light bulb moment. Many people had been suggesting to me, over the years, that I should write a non-fiction book about my research with the police. As I neared the country pub where we were meeting, the idea crystalized in my head and I became increasingly excited.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: c0557d9f4d95345c
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 17,086,976 bytes (16.295 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 288
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 496.42 minutes
• Total Words: 99,284
• Total Characters: 563,803
• Average Words per Page: 344.74
• Average Characters per Page: 1957.65

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