The Intel team at Stansted had expanded and we all had our own specialist skills: mine were lock-picking, outbound baggage rummage, a nose for drugs runners and, weirdly, seeming to know every Turkish smuggler south of the Humber. I was also training BAA security in concealments – that is, the smugglers’ nefarious art of hiding their contraband. This was all well and good but I guess that most people at some point reflect on their work position, and I’d got to that stage. I had an itch that needed a good scratch. I decided that I wanted another challenge in life and that challenge would be the Customs Investigation Division (ID).
The ID had always been a ghost organization to us in uniform. We were aware of their existence and we knew that they were supposed to be the elite investigation unit in UK law enforcement, but other than that we knew very little. Even a couple of months of searching for details about the ID when I was still in Intel revealed very little about them – they tended to keep themselves to themselves.
My big break came with the announcement in the department weekly orders (DWO) of an ID recruitment trawl. These were few and far between: the last one had been eighteen months before and, to my knowledge, very few people got through it. So, with nothing to lose, I sent for the application form. What I received back was more than a form; it looked like very hard work. In fact, it was so comprehensive that it took a good two weeks to complete. I even sat down with a mate (who we called Reverend G.) who was already in the ID and we went through it together. Following his good advice, I ripped it up and started again, checked it with the Revd, and then ripped it up and started yet again. Finally, off went the form with a cheery smile and I instantly forgot about it. My hopes weren’t that high.
It took a month for the ID sifting team to go through the applications. They had a few hundred applications and only a limited number of vacancies. I was lucky enough to get selected for an interview. But things in the Civil Service are never simple so it wasn’t a case of just turning up for an interview. The next step was an ID recruitment interview course, which would take a couple of days at the Customs Training Unit, Heathrow. There, we were put through mock interviews, taught how to answer questions and what questions to ask back to the panel. London Airports Collection (the overseeing Customs body for the major London airports) wanted to be known as the best region when it came to turning out officers with the right stuff for the ‘elite’ Investigation Division.
I turned up for the interview with my head near full of questions and answers, standing straight as a guardsman and dapper-suited. Most of the questions asked of me were about my experiences dealing with heroin smugglers and the weapons-of-mass-destruction case. Before I knew it, the interview was soon over and I was sitting in the nearest pub wondering how I’d done.
A month later, I was still in the Intel department and was on an intelligence course being brought up-to-speed on the latest methods. But evenings spent in the bar were actually where most of the learning was really done, chatting with your peers from around the country. Suddenly, the head of the course wandered into the bar and asked for our attention: apparently someone was in the class who had no right to be there. We all looked at each other, wondering who it was.
‘Jon Frost, if you would make your way to the bar and purchase everyone a drink,’ said the course leader. ‘It appears that this course is for Intelligence officers only, and I have just heard from your surveyor that you are now an investigator! Well done and mine’s a Scotch!’
An investigator who was on a different course walked over and put his arm around my shoulder. ‘Well, brother investigator, welcome to the fun factory. One thing to remember: when the shit hits the fan and everything is going wrong . . . you volunteered for the ID. And mine’s a pint, by the way.’
‘Charlie Hotel’ was the call sign for Custom House, London, which was the home of the Customs Investigation Division. The building, on Lower Thames Street, just past Tower Bridge and opposite HMS Belfast, was a vast, imposing Grade-I listed Portland stone building that was almost 200 years old and was originally purpose-built for HM Customs after the growth of trade, the opening of the docks and the increases in duties during the Napoleonic Wars. The interior was a rabbit warren on a number of floors and contained warehouses, cellars, over 150 offices and the famous ‘Long Room’, measuring 190 feet, hence the name. On the ground floor was the central Queen’s Warehouse, and underneath were the dark and dingy cellars (which would later house the Queen’s Warehouse), which were fireproof and were originally used to store wine and spirits seized by Customs. The building itself was like some great architectural version of a hard Customs officer rendered in stone. One look at it told you that it was built to represent a profession that didn’t muck about when it came to the carrying out of its duties.
At any one time, the Queen’s Warehouse part of Custom House would hold more Class A and B drugs than anywhere else in London. It was lucky that the building was such a fortress as any drugs gang brave enough to carry out a smashand-grab there would have set themselves up for life. As a new Investigation officer, I was hoping to add to that impressive haul in the Queen’s Warehouse rooms.
The offices above there held the best officers that Customs Investigations had to offer. The teams were grouped into branches. These covered heroin, cocaine, cannabis, weapons of mass destruction and warfare, VAT, Excise, gold, drugs finance and all the intelligence back-up required for each one of these commodities. The south side of Custom House facing the River Thames was decorative but the north-facing roadside of the building looked relatively nondescript for something that protected society so very well. During the day, and sometimes under cover of night, there was a constant coming and going of surveillance cars and officers, and a steady hum of work being done in the offices that was essential to keeping Britain as free of drugs as it could reasonably be made. Charlie Hotel even had its own custody suite with cells and interview rooms as well as some of the best custody officers that I was to ever work with.
My first day as a trainee investigator was just like the first day at big school. You watched and listened to everything and kept your mouth shut. You may have thought you were the greatest Customs officer that the country had ever known but it meant nothing at all now, because to the ID you were just a pleb who got in the way and took up good breathing space. No new entrant could possibly know the complex makeup of the Investigation Division. I learned it would take the six months of probation just to get an idea of your own branch. Then it would take another six months before you could call yourself an investigator. If you were lucky.
I was grabbed for the heroin branch because of my prior workings against the Turkish heroin smugglers. Years of intelligence from my duties in uniform and working at Intel were stored in my mind and someone in Investigation thought that the heroin branch would profit from it. I knew the training was not going to be a walk in the park, and the initial training lasted for most of the probation period; we then moved on to specialist training such as a police surveillance driving course, followed by the general surveillance course, which would mark your ascendancy into the division. But, at all times, you had the vulture of potential failure sitting on your shoulder. Do the wrong thing and I knew you were RTU (returned to unit), which was a bit of a bugger if, like me, you’d had a large leaving party. It would be quite a humiliation to go back to the airport and say that you didn’t make the grade. But that did happen to people, and other officers just decided that the life of an investigator was not for them. In fact, if I’d known what lay ahead, I might have said that those recruits who decided to RTU of their own volition were the bravest and smartest of us all.
So it didn’t take too long before you realized what you had let yourself in for. When not on training, you joined your own team and most of the time the team would be out on the ground, somewhere in the UK. I had a rented flat in the East End of London but I didn’t see very much of it. That was the life of an investigator; how officers managed their family life on top of surveillance, I never did work out. What I also didn’t know was that working in the demanding world of investigation would change my life so much that I became consumed by the job.
Early on, I learned that for all the dedication of the investigative officers they were just like the uniform boys in one important way – any excuse for a drink. So, on the occasional days when we would have the required fire or bomb alarm test at Custom House, you would find that the test would always be carried out in the afternoon. Why? Well, your average investigator is very well educated in the ways of the world, so, once the alarm was sounded, we would grab our coats and phones and head for the exits. The exodus would then continue to the street outside, and then to the street next to that one, and then the one after that, until the distance for the safest possible evacuation was deemed to be the exact same distance to the bar of the nearest pub. Which was a huge but very pleasant coincidence. And that would also mean that the day was over. When the alarm bells stopped ringing, there were never any officers left out in the street to go back into the building. Charlie Hotel was, on those days, full of vacancies.
Royal and official visits were a regular occurrence at Custom House, especially after large drugs jobs. It was surprising that lots of MPs wanted their photo taken next to a huge pile of seized drugs when they had actually done bugger all to help us. It was almost like there was something in it for them. One day, following a very big and high-profile heroin job, we had a visit from some high-powered cabinet ministers who wanted the standard photocall. They sat on the bonnet edge of a drug dealer’s seized Mercedes, holding some of the packages of heroin and posing for the press. We watched from the offices, hoping for all we were worth that one of the drug bags would burst and cover them in the lot. ‘MPs SNORT SMACK IN PUBLIC!’ would have made a good headline. And both ministers looked very happy, sitting there in their suits and holding the drugs . . . that is, until the case officer for the heroin seizure suddenly walked out on the balcony, surveyed the scene and then shouted very loudly at the two politicians, ‘Take your fucking hands off those fucking drugs! We haven’t had them fucking fingerprinted yet!’
A royal visit was something else entirely. Like anywhere else in the rest of the UK, Custom House was freshly painted for the visit but only in the places where royalty would actually see, or might see (so I suppose someone gave a fresh lick of paint to the loo, just in case). Billy Connolly once said that the Queen thinks the whole world smells of paint because wherever she goes there’s always some guy about twenty feet in front of her frantically painting away. After the announcement of the royal visit came the expected news that those in power thought it better if the royal personage didn’t bump into any of us unkempt investigators. Senior Investigation officers were told in no uncertain terms to get their teams out of Custom House, and it didn’t matter where they went. Charming: nice to be appreciated! So we were either put on unneeded exercises or pointless surveillance gigs. And those teams that were already operational on jobs suddenly got unexpected troops added to their numbers, while nice towns like Bath were flooded by surveillance cars on exercise. Blimey, I thought, you wouldn’t think we were Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise officers, would you? The general consensus was that, if the royal family had put up with Prince Philip for all those years, then we were sure they could have stomached us.
Living in London and working all hours meant that I didn’t get to see my parents as often as they were used to. Mothers worry about their kids, no matter how old, ugly or nasty you are. Mine was no different. It’s just that the phone calls of a mother to her son can be a little, shall we say, inconvenient when the son is working surveillance duty.
I had just finished training but still had another four months to go before I was a fully operational investigator. Prior to getting my police driving certificate and my surveillance ticket, I knew I was destined to spend a lot of time on my feet. There is nothing wrong in being on foot surveillance – it’s the most important part of surveillance and the aspect that requires the fastest thinking; it was our tradecraft. And after years in uniform in the airports, and also the months of investigative training, it was great to be out on the streets and finally putting theory into practice.
On this particular day, the team I’d been assigned to were in the King’s Cross area of London. We had the railway station ‘plotted up’ – that is, covered and observed – which is no mean feat considering there are so many exits and so many people using them. We were there because we had learned that there was a moneyman coming down from the north with a bag full of drugs cash that would, of course, be classed as proceeds from crime. He was going to launder his cash in a nearby money exchange then head straight back home. I knew it should be a dead simple job for us that should not take up too much time, but the problem was that it was now heading towards rush hour. Our one help was that there was a local officer on the train of the target (codename: Tango 16) so he could give us the heads-up when his train pulled into King’s Cross.
I drew the short straw and had a plot position on the main front doors. Still being quite new to central London, I didn’t know the area very well and had my mini London A–Z in my pocket. For about the next half-an-hour, I was quite happy with my surveillance position as all these local women kept coming up and chatting to me in a very friendly manner. Must be my good looks, charm and charisma, I thought. That was until the voice of Mick, our senior officer, came down our radio earpieces:
‘All footmen, listen up. New update: Tango 16 due to arrive in ten minutes, so we’re on standby. Oh, and one more thing – Jon, please stop chatting to the local prostitutes!’
Ten minutes later, we had identified our target, Tango 16. He was in no hurry and decided to stretch his legs with a nice walk, or maybe he was more canny than he appeared and was trying to shake any possible surveillance. But this was great for us as the surveillance system we used was made for this form of pursuit; we used a rolling system of interchangeable pursuers who would take over from each other, like baton runners in a relay race.
Tango 16 headed west on the Euston Road and I found a good position on the other side of the street. There was no need for me to make a 91-call (meaning ‘heading in the direction of’) on the target as he was covered from behind, but I was in a good position to take over the second anyone lost sight of him or he turned a corner. We had officers to the side of him and more officers being placed ahead of him. This was excellent tradecraft according to the surveillance handbook: keep at a distance safe enough to be invisible, but within close enough proximity to act.
Eventually, we tracked him to a bureau de change. We plotted up on the money shop and Mick went in to cover whatever might happen inside. Thirty minutes later, nothing had happened; no one had come out. Mick obviously couldn’t alert us to anything using his radio for fear of being overheard. We were getting increasingly tense outside, wondering why things were taking so long. Finally, our target emerged with £500,000 exchanged – or, more accurately, laundered – and stuffed into a shabby old sports bag. He headed back to the Euston Road towards Euston Station. If any mugger or bag thief had at that moment chosen to rob him, they would have had the most unexpected pay-day of their lives. (And they would have been rich for about ten seconds – which is how long it would have taken an angry scrum of investigative Customs officers to jump out of hiding and rugby-tackle the bag thief to the ground.)
Once again, we picked up Tango 16 and from there it was an easy follow to the station. Once inside, he purchased a ticket back up north and then made himself comfortable in the station bar, which was perfect for me as I had already chosen the bar for my surveillance position. On the basis of ‘when in Rome’, I grabbed a pint of cider. Sitting directly across the room from the target, I was able to give the team a full update; they were happy that I had him fully covered and they all moved back away from the pub.
Still being relatively new to all this, I was a touch nervous about now being the only one of the team that was closely observing our target. Everyone else was now relying on my information and decisions. I was very conscious of trying to keep that perfect balance between observation and vigilance and anonymity and distance. One look too many in his direction and he might notice and get spooked; too few looks and he might slip out into the crowds before I had a chance to follow. Keeping all this in mind and at the same time trying to relax and seem to be just another disinterested, bored passenger wasn’t made any easier when suddenly my mobile phone rang loudly. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I answered the phone quickly and said sharply, ‘What?’ There was a pause at the other end. And then I heard, ‘Excuse me, that’s no way to speak to your mother.’
‘It’s not really the best time to talk right now, Mother,’ I said. I saw Tango 16 raise an eyebrow and look in my direction. I was pretty sure that he couldn’t hear me but I wasn’t absolutely certain that that was the case. I thought that if I hung up straight away it might look a bit odd, and too much like I was trying not to bring attention to myself.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ she continued. ‘I ring you at your flat and you’re never in; I ring you on your mobile thing and it’s not the right time. At least you could say that it’s nice to hear from me.’
‘It is lovely to hear from you, Mum, it’s just that I’m a touch on the busy side at the moment.’
‘Too busy? It’s seven o’clock, you can’t still be working. Are you going to be home for Sunday lunch? I only ask because I need to know if I need to get a joint in.’
I noticed Tango 16 was still looking at me. ‘Yes to all that, Mother. Look, I’m going to have to go now, OK?’ My radio earpiece started blaring in my other ear – it was Mick wanting an update. ‘Got to go now, Mum, love you.’ I hung up just in time as Tango 16 got up and headed towards the toilets, which were directly behind me. As he got closer, I could sense that without a doubt he had noticed me and he was going to react. That’s it, I thought, my cover’s blown, the job’s screwed, my investigative career is over before it’s really begun. As he passed, Tango 16 looked at me and smiled. ‘Mothers, eh?’
When I met up with my mother on Sunday, I explained what the situation had been when she phoned. She was totally unfazed. ‘Well, I’m sorry, love, but how was I supposed to know? But you said you got your Tango Orange chap so it all worked out all right. Anyway, it probably made you look more natural. Cup of tea?’
Now that I was out of the airports, going to work in the mornings was a sheer pleasure. I had rented a studio flat in Tobacco Dock, which was a mile away from Custom House. The walk took me past Wapping Steps, under Tower Bridge and through the Tower of London. I even got on nodding terms with the Yeoman warders. The walk back from work was even better with three good pubs that just happened to be on my route. The worst problem with Custom House was that, as it was sitting on Lower Thames Street, we had the embankment in one direction and the Tower Bridge crossroads in the other. So, no matter what time of day it was, the traffic on Thames Street was like slow-moving treacle, which was no good when some port or airport Customs had discovered a large drugs importation and we had to try to get to them ASAP.
Some jobs involved tracking someone through the city, like the Tango 16 one, which were exciting because of the challenges they posed; these jobs called for a certain kind of surveillance work. First, there was the Underground to contend with. Over the years, there had been lots of films made showing people doing surveillance on the tube, but it was all mostly bollocks. For one thing, underground our radios became totally ineffective when it came to contacting our car team above ground, and so they were always trying to second-guess where you might be heading. One way around this was to sacrifice an officer. They would watch the team and target disappear on to a train then leg it to the surface to radio the cars. The cars would then attempt to race the train to the next station. It was usually utter madness. Then there was the question of radio usage between the officers on the tube. This was next to useless as the electrified lines played merry hell with our earpieces, so it ended up sounding like someone dragging their fingernails down a blackboard, at high volume, right in the middle of your head. The only sure-fire way to keep your team together was to make sure that everybody could see each other, which was just impossible at rush hour.
The next problem was security – both the police and store guards. Places like Harrods had metal detectors at the entrance doors and security officers to do rub downs and searches. This was somewhat of a bugger when you were either wearing your radio in a body rig or, like I did, on your leg; both places being areas where bombers would strap their explosives. None of us wanted to risk being mistakenly shot as a suicide bomber. Getting shot would kind of ruin your day. Especially if you were shot dead. That’s always the worst kind. So, to avoid this possibility, if I followed someone into a store, it would usually involve a bit of whispering out of the corner of my mouth and a very brief flash of my badge to the security guards to prevent having my head jumped up and down on for being a suspected terrorist.
The other national security matter that pissed us off was the so-called ‘ring of steel’ – this was the name for the security and surveillance cordon around the City of London. It was originally installed to deter the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign when they started targeting the capital. (In fact, ‘ring of steel’ was the phrase used in Northern Ireland during the Troubles to describe a fortified circle around the centre of Belfast.) In the British version set up by the Metropolitan Police, roads entering central London were narrowed into small chicanes that made drivers slow down and also enabled them to be filmed by CCTV cameras. The roads also had a concrete median barrier with a sentry box and, to begin with, they were manned by armed police.
Our surveillance cars would spin through the ring of steel without any problems but our observation vans often got stopped. There would then be lots of flashing of badges and bad-tempered police officers demanding that we open up the rear of the van. This always had the same result: the copper would open the back of the van to find a couple of surveillance officers with headsets on, surrounded by technical kit and who, within two seconds of the doors being opened, would start shouting at the police officer, ‘Shut the fucking door, you twat!’ (Seeing this particular scene played out firsthand was priceless. Especially the looks on the faces of any members of the public passing by who would just see a police officer open the back door of a van and then from the depths of the vehicle immediately hear ‘Shut the fucking door, you twat!’ I often wondered who they thought must be in there to get away with speaking like that to the police . . . the Duke of Edinburgh, perhaps.)
One day while at Charlie Hotel, I was surprised to get a visit from one of our Queen’s Warehouse officers from below stairs. These non-investigators rarely seemed to emerge out from their underground lair and, if they did, it was usually to bollock an officer for getting his paperwork wrong or for having the affront to fill up his nice clean warehouse with dirty drugs. But this time it was different, the Queen’s Warehouse officer wanted to be fully briefed on a job that I had been involved in a week before, a nice little job in which 30 kg of heroin had been picked up. It was all now sitting underground with all the other mountains of powders and pills in the cellars of the Queen’s Warehouse.
I was curious. ‘So why do you want a briefing from me?’ I asked.
The officer looked a bit sheepish. ‘Well, I need to know everything about the job,’ he said, ‘so that I can brief a visiting VIP we’re expecting.’
What a bloody cheek, I thought: it was my job and yet some Custom House admin cave-dweller was going to try to get the kudos for all my team’s hard work. I looked over to my senior officer who had been listening in, and he looked as surprised and disgusted as I was.
‘OK,’ I said to the Queen’s Warehouse officer, ‘take this down – G.F.Y.S. That’s gee eff why ess.’
The officer grabbed his notepad and pen, thinking that this was the start of the briefing. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘and what does that mean?’
Before I could say anymore, the senior officer leaned over and very slowly and very clearly enunciated, ‘Go. Fuck. Your. Self. And, if I were you, sunshine, I’d leave while you can still walk out of here without a boot toecap parked in your arse.’
Welcome to the fun factory, indeed.