Wannabe in My Gang? (34 page)

At nearby Bexleyheath police station where Courtney’s handler DC Austin Warnes was stationed, more mundane, less exciting police work was being carried out. Detective Inspector Michael Latham was the officer at Bexleyheath who was responsible for ‘controlling informants and the informants register’.

On 24 May 1999, DI Latham had sent an email to all ‘handlers of police informants’ in Bexleyheath. DI Latham had asked the officers if they could obtain information from their informants about burglars and those that handle their stolen goods because the police were launching Operation Bumblebee, which they hoped was going to reduce the numbers of these types of offences in the area.

One of the police handlers who received an email from DI Latham was DC Warnes. His read:

‘Tommy Mack’

Re: The above source;

Please contact him or her, to task with obtaining intelligence information on burglaries and handlers for a forthcoming Bumblebee. All replies, positive or negative, to me by 7 June.

Whilst DI Latham, DC Warnes and Dave ‘Tommy Mack’ Courtney were busy trying to snare the burglars of Bexleyheath, the CIB3 surveillance operation continued to reap rewards against bent policemen and their criminal associates.

On 25 May 1999, into their trap fell a serving police officer called DC Tom Kingston, who was with the elite South East Regional Crime Squad. At that time he was suspended, awaiting trial with other corrupt officers over the theft of two kilos of amphetamine powder from a drug dealer. Later found guilty, he was sent to prison.

Kingston was recorded in Jonathon Rees’s offices talking about a Scotland Yard contact who was keeping ‘his eyes and ears open’ for information. He boasted that this officer could do vehicle checks for him on the police national computer.

The death of TV presenter Jill Dando was discussed by Rees in a phone call which was recorded on 4 June. Rees said he knew how one newspaper was obtaining information about the police investigation into her murder and explained that he was trying to do the same.

There’s big stories . . . nearly every day with good information on the Jill Dando murder. We found out one of our bestest friends is also on that fucking murder squad, but he ain’t told us nothing.

We only found out yesterday after that torrent of abuse we initially gave him. He’s going to phone us today.

Kim James was an attractive, likeable young mother, who, like many ‘ordinary’ people, was oblivious to the double dealing, corruption and criminality which went on amongst some members of the police force. Kim, a former model, who had been dated by the likes of soccer star Stan Collymore, should on the face of things have had everything going for her, but she had been enduring a pretty miserable time of late. She had met her husband Simon James in 1994, married him in June 1995 and divorced him in April 1999 when their son was aged two. The couple then became embroiled in a bitter custody battle. Simon had decided to discredit his ex-wife prior to any court proceedings, so she would lose custody of her child.

Initially, Simon had asked private investigator Jonathon Rees for help in obtaining damaging evidence against his wife. Unknown to Simon or Rees, their conversation was being recorded by the devices left by CIB3 in Rees’s office. Officers heard Simon James describe Kim as a drug dealer, a loose woman and an unfit mother. The truth was, Kim James was a very hard-working mother, employed as an aerobics and nursery teacher. Kim had no blemish on her character whatsoever, in fact the only mistake she had made in her life was when she married her twisted husband.

Rees agreed to help Simon, but at their second meeting, the CIB3 officers who were monitoring the conversation recorded Rees saying:

One of our surveillance team is a police motorcyclist on the drugs squad, and he works for us on the side. It’s a couple of years before he retires from the squad. He did a check on her, but there’s nothing on the files. She doesn’t come up associated with any drugs dealers.

Undeterred by the fact his ex-wife had nothing to do with drugs, Simon agreed to pay Rees £8,000 after he offered to plant 15 wraps of cocaine in Kim’s car.

Rees was in no doubt that once he had ensured the police had been made aware of the drugs and they had been found, Kim would be sent to prison and Simon would win the custody battle.

Rees recruited DC Austin Warnes to do this dirty work.

CIB3 officers, realising they now had hard evidence of Rees conspiring to commit a very serious crime, employed extra resources to monitor not only Rees, but Simon James, Austin Warnes and anybody else who may be involved in the conspiracy.

On 9 June, DC Warnes filled out an informant contact sheet which stated that his informant ‘Tommy Mack’ had told him in a telephone conversation on 8 June that Kim James and another girl named Lauren Manning were dealing in cocaine.

The address of Kim James was given and the make, type and registration of her car. DC Warnes also wrote that ‘Tommy Mack’ had told him: ‘Kim deals on Fridays and Saturdays with her friend Lauren Manning, she is due to receive a large consignment of cocaine and would be dealing this Saturday.’

On Thursday, 10 June, DI Latham found an envelope on his desk which DC Warnes had left. The envelope was addressed to DI Latham and contained two police 5020D forms – records of police officers’ contacts with their registered informants.

The 5020D forms said that Kim James and Lauren Manning were ‘going up to London on Fridays and Saturdays and dealing in cocaine’.

The forms also stated that not only were the women drug dealers, but they were currently in possession of a large quantity of cocaine.

DI Latham, who was at this stage unaware of any wrongdoing, contacted DC Warnes about the information concerning the two women and asked him to ‘input it onto the police criminal intelligence system’, which is a computer system for information management. That afternoon, Detective Superintendent Quick of CIB3 contacted DI Latham and briefed him about the conspiracy concerning DC Warnes, Jonathon Rees, Kim James and Lauren Manning.

A few days later Rees contacted a friend of his named James Cook, who was given the task of breaking into Kim’s car and ‘planting the gear’. Unfortunately for him and his co-conspirators, officers from CIB3, already had Kim’s car under surveillance. They filmed Cook breaking into the vehicle and planting ‘the gear’. Having allowed Cook to ‘escape’, officers broke into Kim’s car themselves and replaced the wraps of cocaine with wraps of harmless white powder.

The wraps Cook had planted were then sent off for analysis to see if they were indeed cocaine. Pretending to ‘act’ on the information which DC Warnes had said had come from ‘Tommy Mack’, police officers attended Kim James’s home on 15 June. After ‘searching’ the property and her car, police ‘discovered’ the packages and Kim was arrested and taken to Wimbledon police station.

Nobody was allowed to tell the terrified young woman that they knew she was totally innocent. Senior officers had agreed to allow her to be arrested and accused of being a drug dealer to guarantee they could gather all of the evidence they needed to prosecute the scum who were involved in such a disgraceful plot.

On 16 June 1999, the unsuspecting DC Warnes made himself busy putting the paperwork in order that he hoped would condemn an innocent mother to several years’ imprisonment. Another informant contact sheet was completed by DC Warnes which said that ‘Tommy Mack’ had told him in a telephone conversation on Sunday, 13 June, that Kim James and Lauren Manning were now in possession of a quantity of cocaine and would be dealing all week. ‘Kim may have it in her silver Punto motor vehicle.’

On 17 June, DI Latham found another envelope on his desk from DC Warnes which contained information relating to the fact that search warrants had been used to search the home of Kim James. The same day DC Warnes, undoubtedly pleased by his vile handiwork, treated himself to a holiday and jetted off to Portugal. Simon James, meanwhile, informed social services of his wife’s arrest and was recorded by CIB3 officers agreeing to make a final payment to Rees for a job well done.

Before the payment could be made, Simon discovered that his wife had not been charged with any offence and the police wanted to talk to him as she was claiming that he had set her up. In a blind panic, Simon fled to Wales with his son, but he was soon apprehended.

Courtney says that at that time he was trying to distance himself from DC Warnes because he believed DC Warnes was going to set him up, but for what, he fails to mention.

I would have thought a corrupt, cocaine-snorting, sexual deviant in the Metropolitan Police would have had great difficulty in pointing the finger at his informant and friend, but if Courtney claims it’s true, then it must be true.

Courtney says that he had a rather unusual visit from DC Warnes at 3 a.m. He says that he heard a noise outside and when he went to investigate he found DC Warnes skulking about. When Courtney asked the detective what he was up to, DC Warnes is alleged to have said that he was looking at a mural on the side of Courtney’s house. (A three-storey-high tacky painting of Courtney on horseback, supposedly looking like King Arthur with his partner Jenny as Guinevere.) Courtney says he feared he would upset DC Warnes if he challenged his explanation, so he chose instead to pretend to believe him. The dodgy one says that when DC Warnes left he suspected he was being set up, so he decided he would have to find some form of insurance policy against him. That opportunity, according to Courtney, presented itself when Detective Constable Warnes returned from his holiday in Portugal.

Whilst DC Warnes had been lounging in the sun, his police colleagues were busy gathering evidence against him. DI Latham was contacted by officers from CIB3 who asked him to arrange a meeting with DC Warnes and his informant ‘Tommy Mack’.

DI Latham rang DC Warnes and said: ‘Right, the lady who has been arrested has really been kicking up a stink, saying the stuff that was found by the tactical support group in the car was something that was not hers. It was her husband’s. It has all been planted because it’s due . . . it is all over a custody argument with the kid. There has been a couple of High Court cases already this week up at the Strand in front of the judge to try and get the kid back. I am going to have to do a Public Interest Immunity hearing on the source of the information.’

DI Latham said he needed to speak to ‘Tommy Mack’ directly so that he could ‘ascertain his knowledge of the information’ and so be in a position to answer any questions asked of him by the judge presiding over the custody battle in the High Court.

Unknown to DC Warnes, officers from CIB3 had planted listening devices in his car whilst it had been parked at the airport when he had gone on holiday to Portugal; everything DC Warnes was saying was being recorded.

Some time later, DC Warnes telephoned DI Latham and said, ‘Hello, it is Austin, Governor. I needed time. I saw him this morning. He is ever so nervous about meeting but, I mean, he said . . . I mean, he has got no choice but to meet you, but I said that I cleared with you a time and then arranged to meet. We can do it anywhere really as long as it is not the nick. Yeah, Plumstead Comminish. Right. Do you want to meet me first and then we will drive to it? Is that a big job to do then? Right. OK. Well, I will get him to come to us, if you would like. That will probably be easier out of his own area. So, if you want to meet down the Jacobean, we can meet down there.’

DI Latham suggested to DC Warnes that they meet up at about midday and DC Warnes replied, ‘Have you got that form he needs to sign?’

The form DC Warnes referred to was part of a contract between the police and their informants which had recently come into existence. Its purpose was to assure informants that the police would discontinue criminal cases which had arisen from informants’ tip-offs rather than reveal who their source of information was.

Courtney had never been given such assurances before because as DI Latham explained later, ‘“Tommy Mack” had been registered for quite some time and there had not been an opportunity to do it since they were introduced.’

DC Warnes telephoned Courtney in a blind panic and pleaded with Courtney to meet him as soon as possible. The pair met at 10 a.m. on Plumstead Common, just up the road from Courtney’s house. DC Warnes wrote on his informant contact sheet that this meeting was to discuss ‘signature of terms and conditions regarding information concerning Kim James’.

DC Warnes explained to Courtney that he had been crediting information to ‘Tommy Mack’, which was in fact false. Because Courtney had been registered as his informant for some time, DC Warnes didn’t think the reliability of any information received from him would be questioned. Now that it had, DC Warnes said DI Latham wanted to meet Courtney to check how he had come across the information so he could tell the judge presiding over Simon and Kim’s custody battle that procedure had been followed and everything appeared to be above board. Courtney was understandably furious – DC Warnes was putting him in danger of being exposed as a police informant. Courtney knew that if he didn’t agree to say he had given DC Warnes the information, DC Warnes would be charged with corruption and he would be dragged into a court case that would undoubtedly reveal his double life. If he met DI Latham, agreed the information was genuine and agreed it had come from him, the judge in the custody battle would believe the police and Kim James would lose her son and her liberty, but then things could carry on as normal. Unfortunately for him and DC Warnes, the police knew Kim had been set up and were just trying to find out who was involved in the conspiracy.

Courtney agreed to meet DI Latham and confirm the information had come from him. Because Courtney knew it was false information, he told DC Warnes he would only go through with it if he had some form of insurance policy.