Detective Chief Inspector Martin Brunning is a wonderful man. He and his officers have been very supportive to us. They all work very, very hard. We will never come to terms with what our daughter has done. It is the way it is.

KATHLEEN DENNEHY, TO THE AUTHOR, WEDNESDAY, 28 MAY 2014

Making good multi-agency operational commonsense, the Bedfordshire, Cambridge and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit was formed in 2012 during an amalgamation of highly experienced detective police officers and technical specialists drawn from three counties, together into two operational ‘hubs’. One of these centres is based at the Hex Building, Cambridgeshire Constabulary HQ, Hinchingbrooke Park, Huntingdon. The other is at the Hertfordshire Police HQ, Welwyn Garden City. The Major Crime Unit’s brief is to investigate all serious crimes, to include robberies, stranger rapes [where attackers and victim are unknown to each other] and homicides. Martin Brunning joined the police in 1995 and he is now the boss of Team (3).

After signing in at the front desk of the Cambridgeshire Police HQ, and having the obligatory photograph taken and details of my ID logged, DCI Martin Brunning, his Detective Sergeant Andy Crocker and Media Relations Officer David Old invited me into ‘The Hub’ at the Hex Building – an airy, expansive set-up with state-of-the-art systems and state-of-the-art investigators busy as bees. Martin ushered me into his office. Previously he had emailed me saying this was the first ‘dedicated’ office he’d had.

Taking me briefly me through the triple murder inquiry as it had developed (and Brunning does not appreciate being interrupted when he has something to say, adding, ‘It is all a bit complicated so ask your questions when I am finished’), he first explained that when Kevin Lee didn’t return home he was initially treated as a possible missing person. He added that such missing person cases are not within the remit of the Major Crime Unit. However, all this soon changed when Lee’s blue Ford Mondeo was found ablaze close to a railway bridge in Great Drove, Yaxley, where, coincidentally, Julie Gibbons was now living. A quick check of the registration number of the burning vehicle on the Police National Computer revealed that it belonged to a Kevin Lee, who had been reported as missing.

Early the following morning sixty-eight-year-old Terry Walker was walking his dog in the rural parish of Newborough when he spotted a body face down in a dyke by the side of Middle Road. The corpse was dressed in a black sequined dress, pulled up to expose the buttocks. An ‘object’ had been pushed into the anus. ‘This was a degrading act of post-death humiliation. The body had been posed,’ DCI Brunning explained to me during our interview. In fact, photos of the corpse were so unsettling they were later ‘sanitised’ before the trial jury could view them.

‘At first, I thought it was a dummy,’ Walker recalled. ‘But then I noticed blood on the sleeves and it dawned on me that this was a crime scene, so I decided to call the police. The location is very isolated. Only dog walkers like myself come up here, it’s really out of the way.’

Some time later that day, police went to 11 Rolleston Garth with a locksmith in attendance. Near to the kitchen units crime scene technicians found blood spatter – later proved to be that of Lukasz Slaboszewski. His blood was also found close to the inside of the front door – perhaps indicating this contamination was caused when his corpse was removed from the premises by Dennehy and Stretch to be placed in the wheelie bin.

On a sofa, Scenes of Crime Officers (SOCO) found more blood, which proved be that of Kevin Lee. Impressions from two sets of footwear, later proved to belong to Dennehy and Stretch, were also discovered.

Despite a half-hearted attempt by Stretch and Dennehy to clean the place up, detectives also found that blood had dripped onto the carpet, indicating the men’s bodies had been moved after their deaths. The trainers Stretch was wearing when he was later arrested in Herefordshire were contaminated with Slaboszewski’s blood. Another pair of trainers found at Stretch’s home bore evidence of Lee’s blood.

‘Operation Darcy’ was now launched to find Kevin’s killer. The code names for police operations are not selected by the police agency concerned, they are randomly selected from a central law enforcement database and now every UK police force was alerted to ‘Wanted for Murder’. Even at the time of writing the full cost of catching Dennehy and Stretch still has to be established. With Operation Darcy one is looking at – even on the light side – a cost to the taxpayer of £300K, more likely £1 million when the meter eventually stops running. However, the cost to human life and the tragedy brought to the victims and their next of kin by these cowardly lowlifes is incalculable. The cost to the public purse in keeping Dennehy, Stretch, Layton and Moore in prison will send the final tab into orbit.

And this is where a tri-county police agency really makes sense, especially for the Police and Crime Commissioners who watch their individual budgets like hawks, for the bill for investigations such as Operation Darcy is no longer picked up by a single county. Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire would cover the costs between them.