The first half of 2016 was huge for Jeff Riley and his team.
The decision to work alongside the Crown Prosecution Service from the outset was inspired. Not only did their knowledge, expertise and inherent caution help guide the investigation, it ensured that they were preparing for the application to interview Bishop from day one.
In the end, the consent itself came quite readily on 5 April 2016. Clearly, as Jeff’s investigation ran its course, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, had absorbed the whole case from October 1986 to now in great detail. It was fortunate that, in her previous role as Chief Crown Prosecutor of London, she had overseen a similar application to her predecessor Sir Keir Starmer QC for the Stephen Lawrence retrial.
Now armed with the permission for the next steps, Riley and the team were faced with planning for the big day when they would arrest Bishop. He was still in prison for his attack on Claire but it was not just a case of rocking up at the prison gates, rapping on the door and demanding to interview him.
Being a double jeopardy investigation, the police needed to obtain an arrest warrant from a district judge as other powers of arrest could not be used. This meant another confidentiality agreement and going through what would have been an alien procedure for them. Then came the problem of transporting a Category A prisoner to a police station.
Those who come under Category A, the highest security regime imposed on an inmate, are defined as prisoners ‘whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public, or the police or the security of the State, and for whom the aim must be to make escape impossible.’
Around one per cent of inmates are this category, and for them, life is pretty grim. They are housed in one of the UK’s highest security prisons, their movements are severely restricted and they are transferred around the prison estate in the utmost secrecy to keep them from forming dangerous liaisons. Such high-risk prisoners are rarely, if ever, transferred to police stations for interview. The logistics, the staffing and the security requirements are too eye-watering to consider. The police normally have to come to them.
Those blessed with never having seen the inside of a police cell block are fortunate in not knowing quite how variable they are. Some are in the basement of decrepit Victorian police stations while others are state-of-the-art purpose-built quasi-penitentiaries miles away from civilization. The one common denominator is that all of them are unremittingly forbidding. Only the most impregnable of police custody blocks are cleared to house Category A prisoners, with permission needed from the highest echelons of the Prison Service.
The planning was intense. Jeff and his team spent hours briefing the team at Frankland, the prison in County Durham where Bishop was currently being held, the accredited police station and senior officers in both forces. Bishop’s production had to be seamless but, for security reasons, Jeff could only tell the northern police force they were to expect a Category A prisoner. Not who. Not for what.
On 10 May 2016, for the 9,592nd time, Bishop would have woken behind a locked closed door with the tedium of another day in Frankland maximum security prison lying ahead. The cycle of eat and sleep was only broken by trips to the gym and rare time mixing with other inmates. His hope of parole applications had ebbed away. While he had finally admitted to probation officers that he had attacked Claire, he still denied attempting to kill her or any sexual motive.
To reduce the chance of Category A prisoners being sprung, unless travelling to court, the first they know of being moved is when a team of prison officers fill their cell doorway barking the order: ‘Pack your stuff. You’re on the move.’ Bishop had heard these words before as he zig-zagged his way across the country, enjoying the delights of another super-max jail. On that May morning he would have assumed this was another leg of HM Prisons’ Mystery Tour.
Nothing about the yellow and green overalls he was told to slip on over his baggy blue T-shirt and beige trousers would have piqued his suspicions either. That was de rigeur for all journeys. Neither would the multiple handcuffs and guards seem out of the ordinary. He knew the score. He would have sat back as the key turned in his mobile cell, the only one occupied in the armoured prison van, switching his mind to neutral for however long he would be cooped up. One thing prisoners excel at is patience. He did not need much that day.
After just four miles, he would have been curious as he felt the driver slow and the truck manoeuvre in a tight circle. Peering out of the shatterproof polycarbonate porthole at the line of marked police cars and vans, he would have had the first inkling that after nearly thirty years his past was catching up with him.
Durham Police Station is one of the few accredited for Category A prisoners but the tiny custody reception area the five prison officers shuffled Bishop into was at odds with its fortress-like protection. At 9.37 a.m., as the entourage crammed into the small space, joining Jeff, two other Sussex detectives and two Durham custody officers, DC Allan Smith uttered the words Bishop had only heard in his darkest nightmares.
‘I’m Detective Constable Smith of Sussex and Surrey Major Crime Team and I have a warrant for your arrest. The warrant has been obtained under the provisions of Section 87 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and is signed by a district judge. I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway on or around Thursday 9 October 1986. The grounds for arresting you are that there is fresh evidence linking you to the murders of both Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway and it is necessary to interview you and take forensic samples from you. I’ve got to caution you, as I’ve arrested you, and that caution is, you do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand that, Russell?’
Bishop could only manage a quivering, ‘Yes, no reply though. Can I contact my lawyer please?’ in response.
From that point on he was treated as any other suspect arrested for a serious offence. His solicitor was called and an appropriate adult – someone to help him understand what was happening – was summoned too.
Relief washed through Jeff. Four years of covert planning, the painstaking dedication of his team and the faith of his bosses had finally paid off.
Bishop was in his custody.
There had been a moment that morning, however, when he wondered whether he would be facing the long drive south with egg on his face. The prison transport was late and they had sent no words of reassurance they were on their way. He anxiously peered out of the windows, hoping to glimpse the white prison van pull up at the station gates. He knew a call to the prison would be fruitless – they were hardly likely to tell someone, who for all they knew could be some random guy on the phone, they were about to leave with a Category A prisoner.
He also grew impatient fielding calls from the CPS, understandably waiting for news. At least now he could reassure them the deed was done.
Since Bishop was last arrested, a significant addition had been made to the caution: ‘. . . but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court’ was added by the 1994 Criminal Justice Act which, some say, swept away the centuries’ old convention that defendants are protected from incriminating themselves.
What it actually did was inject a little common sense into the system which previously allowed defendants to keep quiet during interviews before conjuring up elaborate explanations at trial which, if they had revealed in an interview, the police would have had a chance to check. Now, in certain circumstances, a jury can draw adverse inferences should the person come up with explanations at their trial which they could have but did not raise after arrest.
This is not all one way. The police now have to provide enough information to the suspect or their solicitor for them to know the bones of an allegation and if the adverse inferences may apply. They also have to give a ‘special warning’ should the person not answer a question that might invoke some of those provisions.
All of this would have been new to Bishop but not his solicitor, Mr Styles. However, Bishop was not overly blessed with humility and, despite the advice Styles clearly gave him, he just could not help himself. To sidestep the 1994 provisions, most solicitors advise their clients to make a prepared statement at the outset, then say nothing. That statement is normally a deft balance between providing sufficient detail to ward off any adverse inferences but not enough to incriminate themselves. Once the statement is read, sometimes by the solicitor, the plan is for the suspect to keep quiet or, at most, answer ‘no comment’ on all questions.
The police will often only disclose just enough information and almost always hold back key facts. If and when those are revealed the solicitor is entitled to have another chat with their client. In fact, this chat is essential for the police as if the suspect does not have the chance to receive advice on the key questions, adverse inferences cannot be drawn.
Of course, all this only helps the suspect if he actually keeps to the script.
Thankfully Bishop had been in regular contact with a firm of solicitors over the years and it was these people he wanted by his side. That made life easier for Jeff and the interviewers. Had Bishop opted for the local duty solicitor, bringing them up to speed on a thirty-year investigation would have taken some doing.
The murders themselves were complicated enough but at least these solicitors would have considered a double jeopardy investigation at some time and prepared, at least a little, for this day.
Jeff and the team could finally crack on.