The Carver Articles Read online

  Contents

  Title

  PREFACE

  Introduction

  Part 1

  Part 2

  Part 3

  The Worshipper Trilogy

  Author Link

  THE CARVER PAPERS

  by

  ALEXANDER JACKSON

  PREFACE

  DCI Jamie Carver first appears in Last Gasp, the first book in the series, and also Book One of The Worshipper Trilogy. Whilst each book in the trilogy tells a complete story in itself, they share a chronology and character development that means they are best appreciated when read in order, starting with Last Gasp, then Final Breath and finally, Out Of Air.

  The trilogy charts what happens when Jamie Carver first becomes involved in the hunt for a twisted serial killer, then finds himself caught in an ongoing game of cat and mouse that takes him from Warrington's back-streets and Cheshire's leafy environs, through the corridors of power at Westminster and on to Paris - and the twisted interests of those who like the sort of entertainments no tourist to the French capital ever gets to see.

  When we first meet Carver, he is seen to be already conflicted, burdened with feelings of guilt and regret that appear rooted in an earlier serial-killer investigation, in particular the circumstances surrounding the killer's arrest - an incident glimpsed in the prologue to Last Gasp. As the story unfolds however, it becomes clear that the events of that night are not the only source of Carver's troubles. There are reference to a series of articles published in a Sunday broadsheet magazine in the weeks following the killer's conviction. Penned by a leading journalist, Alexander Jackson, and based on research Jackson undertook following the trial, they present a highly personalised account of the police investigation of which Carver was part, as well as his particular role in it. Suffice to say, neither Carver, nor especially, some of his fellow investigators, welcomed seeing the matters Jackson wrote about appear in print.

  But more important than how they are regarded by those officers whose names appear in them, is the part the articles eventually come to play in shaping all that follows after. And while they are certainly key to the events recounted in Last Gasp - though how does not become clear until much later - their impact also carries through to the other books.

  In bringing the articles together for the first time in this single volume, my aim is to give those interested in learning more about the events that precede Last Gasp a deeper insight into Carver's character, as well as an added depth of understanding of the background to the trilogy than may be gained from just the books alone. I hope you enjoy reading it.

  Robert F Barker

  The magazine's blurb to the articles reads as follows:-

  For six weeks during the late summer of last year, the world watched, enthralled, as Edmund Hart was tried for the murders and attempt murder of eight women. Thanks to an extraordinary film aired following Hart's conviction, the story of the police' hunt for the killer, his impossibly dramatic arrest, and what happened after are already widely known. But as the trial drew to a close, journalist Andrew Jackson sensed another story, one less concerned with the murders themselves and the police's attempts to catch the killer. This story was more to do with the individuals, and one in particular, who lived through the events.

  Jamie Carver was a work-a-day Detective Inspector when someone thought his experience might be useful to the UK's biggest ever police investigation. In this three-part feature, originally published as a series of articles in a Sunday broadsheet in the weeks following the trial, Andrew Jackson tells the story of how one man turned around a floundering investigation, and brought about the arrest and conviction of one of Britain's most prolific serial killers.

  PART 1

  As courtroom drama goes, it will forever rank in my memory alongside classics such as To Kill A Mocking Bird and A Few Good Men. One moment the man in the dock is making ready to descend the steps leading to the cells, responding it seems to the judge's direction to his flanking security officers that they should, 'Take him down'. The next he turns and, shrugging through his escort's clawing hands, leans out over the dock's rail to fix a manic gaze on the man in the grey suit sitting only yards away in the benches reserved for police witnesses. Lifting his cuffed wrists, he aims a finger as if it were the barrel of a gun and, face distorted with hate and fury, yells, 'YOU'RE DEAD CARVER. YOU AND THAT OTHER BITCH. WHATEVER HAPPENS TO ME, YOU'RE BOTH DEAD.'

  Around the packed courtroom, pandemonium erupts. Those closest - the various counsel, (on both sides), court officials, even the judge himself- shrink back, faces registering the fear that the just-convicted killer may be about to jump the dock, putting them within reach of the man experts have warned is so unpredictable he is capable of anything. Even those not in immediate danger - up in the public gallery, at the back of the court - react as most do who witness sudden violence; with a mix of shock and horror. In this case thankfully, the violence is only verbal. Still, it is enough to give everyone present that day a blood-curdling insight into the character of the man who over the past eight weeks has worked hard to keep that side of himself hidden. They include myself, one of some twenty-plus journalists squeezed into the cramped confines of Chester's No 1 Crown Court's press box. And though my response to the outburst is similar to everyone's - I recall that sudden grip of fear to this day - the emotions I feel in those few short seconds are not what I will remember most. What will come to linger longest in my memory, is the response of the man at whom the hateful tirade is directed. For while everyone else reacts with shock and fear, he remains totally calm. His face stays as it had been during the minutes preceding the incident; impassive, detached, noting the closing events without comment. And I remember well the thoughts that come to me in that moment.

  He'd been expecting this would happen.

  He was ready for it.

  Maybe - and for this I can site nothing other than my own, journalistic instincts - he even welcomes it.

  The events I describe took place on the final day of the trial that, through a good part of late summer last year, held this nation as well as many others around the world in its grip and, as far as TV News at least was concerned, relegated all but the most newsworthy items over that period to little more than a by-line or a report ushered in with the words, 'And in other news…'

  The trial was that of Edmund Hart, the man whose name will, forevermore, be synonymous with, "The Escort Killer" in the same way that Peter Sutcliffe is only ever referred to now as, "The Yorkshire Ripper", or Donald Neilson, "The Black Panther". And the man who stood there that day, unflinching in the face of a verbal assault that would have made most men or women pale - or worse - was the detective responsible for him being in the dock in the first place, Detective Inspector, as he then was, James Carver.

  Up to that time, I had met James, (he prefers Jamie), Carver some half-dozen times, though only briefly on each occasion. These were through the course of the weekly news briefings that began to feature during the second half of the three-year long investigation into the "Escort Girl Murders", as they had come to be labelled. (The official designation of the UK's largest ever serial murder investigation was actually, "Operation Ford", though the world's media tends to prefer something a little more graphic.) Coincidentally, or not, this process of briefing began shortly after Carver was first drafted onto the enquiry. Back then, he was not particularly prominent amongst the several detectives and senior officers known to the various media groupies as being associated with the case. For a long time, the 'face' of the enquiry had been that of its Deputy Senior Investigating Officer, (DSIO), Detective Superintendent Paul Slattery, the then head of Greater Manchester Police's Serious Crime Squad. It was only in the enquiry's latter half
that Slattery started to become less visible, his sometimes flamboyant and in the view of myself and several of my press colleagues, rather over-done, "I'm-a-hard-as-nails-Detective-and-don't-you-forget-it" deliveries, giving way to the wholly more measured - and factual -briefings given by the quietly-spoken but no-less informative Jamie Carver, then one of the enquiry's two Assistant SIOs. "Pressure of investigatory commitments," was the reason given for Slattery's gradual withdrawal, and no one at the time had reason to suspect otherwise. It should be mentioned that this was long before Daniel Parker's fly-on-the-wall, documentary series, 'The Investigation', had aired. Filmed over the course of the last two years' of the enquiry's duration, and shown over three consecutive nights during the week following the trial's dramatic conclusion, it would come to be as much a 'water-cooler event' as any of the gritty crime dramas that have captured the public's imagination over recent years. Being a, (mainly), print journalist, I was not party to the programme's production or any of the research that went into it. Like everyone, I was ignorant of the events that have since become the focus of so much debate - particularly those concerning the role of the young Detective Inspector whose late insertion into the enquiry came to have such an influence on its eventual outcome.

  But that day in court, witnessing Jamie Carver's reaction to Edmund Hart's verbal assault, I was intrigued. Who was this low-key figure whom Hart went out of his way to pick out from the several other detectives and senior officers present to be the sole recipient of his venom? How was it he managed to react the way he did? During the course of the trial, (I sat through every day of it bar one, my second daughter's birth), I saw and heard nothing that led me to think Carver' s role in the investigation was in any way more particularly significant than that of the half-dozen or so other senior detectives who at various stages played lead parts. We knew of course that Carver was the arresting officer. We had all listened, fascinated and appalled in equal measure, as he gave evidence describing how he had intervened - just in time - to save the life of the woman Hart had targeted as his would-be eighth victim. The description of the violent struggle during which Carver and two other detectives sought to restrain the knife-wielding Hart as he tried to fight and slash his way to freedom was as chilling as it was horrifying - especially when Carver described the injuries he and a colleague sustained during the struggle and which, but for the actions of the paramedics called to the scene could have proved life-threatening - as were those of the woman whose life Carver saved that day and who was only ever referred to in court as, "Witness A". But apart from the arrest, the evidence presented didn't point at Carver as being a key player as far as the running of the enquiry was concerned. He wasn't handed the Interview Manager Role - often an indication of the actual 'lead' investigator, as opposed to the sometimes nominal, 'Senior Investigator' role. That interviewing role fell to Carver's close colleague and fellow ASIO, Detective Chief Inspector Dave Mason - not that Hart ever answered any question during his many hours of interviews with anything other than, 'No comment'.

  It was these questions and anomalies that led me to wonder if, apart from what I'd heard in open court and the insights afforded by the TV documentary, there may be another story, a less dramatic one perhaps, but one that was equally fascinating? This story would concern the men and women who made up the enquiry team and the interplay between them. Anyone who has ever worked as part of a team under pressure to succeed at something important, knows that whatever the skills of its members, however long and hard they toil, success or failure has as much to do with the personalities, traits and characteristics of those who comprise it. How well, or not, they gel. Whether or not they work seamlessly, side-by-side and whether, beneath the surface, broil simmering tensions and conflicts others never get to see or hear. How much of all this, if any, I wondered applied to the Escort Killer enquiry? In particular, I wanted to know what Jamie Carver's story was and why, out of everyone he could have chosen, Edmund Hart singled him out as his target for vengeance. It was to these and similar questions that I needed answers. I decided to go in search of them.

  I began by requesting an interview with Carver through the Greater Manchester Police's media people. (Although Carver's home force was Cheshire Police, Operation Ford was run under the overall direction of the Manchester force.) It was, I thought, a simple request. I was wrong. It prompted an email-avalanche of questions. What was my interest? Why was I asking to interview one of the ASIOs to the enquiry, rather than the SIO himself, (then Detective Chief Superintendent, now Assistant Chief Constable, Clive Robinson). What sort of information was I looking for? What could I possibly hope to discover that was not revealed in the evidence given in court, or shown in the TV documentary? (Precisely!) A few days later I received a late-night call from a long-standing senior police officer acquaintance-and-occasional-source. After exchanging pleasantries, he referred to my enquiry and I was more than a little taken aback when he asked, 'What is it you're really after?' It was followed by, 'What do you already know?' It was right then I knew. There was a story, but for some, yet-to-be explained reason, those close to the top of the Police hierarchy were wary about it coming out. I played it straight and explained that I was researching an article about the running of a major crime enquiry, but told from the perspective of the ordinary men and women involved in it. Not untruthfully, I explained that Jamie Carver was merely to be my starting point, and that from him I would move on to others, maybe some of the lower ranking detectives and support staff. It seemed to do the trick.

  A few days later I found myself repeating my rationale to a lady from the force's Media Relations Department. (As regards ethics, I told her no untruths.). After listening to what I had to say, she told me she would liaise with Carver's home force, Cheshire, and, 'see what they could do.' True to her word, three days later she contacted me to say she'd set things up, and gave me the number of someone in Cheshire Police's HQ who would help me arrange things. The impression I got at the time was that I might look forward to meeting with Jamie Carver within the next week or so. So far, so good.

  It didn't happen.

  It would serve no purpose here to catalogue the series of phone calls, (made and unreturned), emails, (ditto), arranged-then-cancelled appointments, that followed from this point. Suffice to say that during the course of the next three months I began to wonder if there really was such a person as Detective Inspector Jamie Carver. I once wrote a piece about a former undercover MI6 agent who had worked in some of the Middle East's hottest hot-spots. It is no exaggeration to say I had less trouble arranging an interview with him. At one point - after two days of telephone calls and speaking to people who clearly knew Carver, had worked with him, and seemed genuinely eager to assist me in my mission, ( at least by passing a message if nothing else) - I entertained, quite seriously, the theory that, (a) He had died and no one wanted to admit it, or, (b) No one, and I mean no one, working within the force actually knew where he was, or what he was doing. He was, to all intents and purposes, a ghost.

  This time wasn't wholly wasted however. Between trying to get hold of Carver himself, I did get to speak with several of the detectives and support staff who had worked on Operation Ford. And in the absence of the man himself, I found what they had to say interesting and, as I would come to realise, absolutely pertinent to the story that would eventually unfold. In fact it probably served my purpose better that I spoke with them before I did Carver, as will become clear.

  Before Edmund Hart's arrest I had, (or thought I had), a fairly clear impression of the way the investigation into the Escort Girl Murders was proceeding, how it was being managed. This was based upon the insights I gleaned as a reporter following events and having regular contact with some of those involved in the investigation. Apart from a couple of reportedly minor mis-communications that had raised eyebrows amongst the media reps at the time but appeared to have no particular significance, my impression was of a well-organised and effectively-run enquiry that was following all th
e established principles and protocols for an enquiry of that nature. (They are not hard to find. All are freely available on-line either via individual force's websites, or the Home Office.). True, Operation Ford was yet to achieve its purpose - to identify and arrest the person responsible for the awful series of murders it was investigating. But given the scale of the enquiry - covering five police force areas, seven, almost eight, victims by the final tally, over four thousand logged witness statements, and close to twenty thousand completed 'Actions' - there was nothing that gave me or any of my media colleagues cause to believe that this was in any way the result of or connected to any sort of organisational failure. As my series of interviews progressed however, I began to realise that those assumptions may be misplaced.

  The first hint that all may not have been as it appeared at the time, came from a relatively junior detective whom I shall refer to as, 'Alice', (not her real name, for reasons which will become obvious.) Alice worked within the Operation Ford Murder Incident Room , the hub of the investigation, and had done from the enquiry's inception. These days, all major crime enquiries in the UK are managed and run using the long-established, HOLMES 2, (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System; 2nd generation), system. It is designed to be run and operated by a team of specially-trained detectives and support staff, the detectives gathering, sifting and prioritising data, often in the form of witness statements, with the mainly-civilian support staff inputting, indexing, analysing, and running regular cross-checks and system diagnostics designed to make sure everything is running as it is supposed to. What I learned speaking to 'Alice' was that far from the system operating as per its specifications, it was dogged almost from the beginning by technical and staffing problems.