Chapter 12

Andrew was outside the Empress Building 20 minutes early so walked the neighbourhood for 15 minutes before going to reception. Mr. Craig, the dour security officer from his first year, came down promptly at 9.30 and led him went through a much shorter briefing. Andrew was reminded he was still bound by the Official Secrets Act and was out of there in an hour. The next hour was form filling with Personnel but at 11.30 he was taken up to the Major Investigation Unit, the MIU, his assignment for the next 10 weeks. The man from Personnel reintroduced Andrew to Susan Yorke and left him with her.

“Welcome back. They told me you would be returning. As you can see there are a few more computers around the place than last year.”

Susan lowered her voice.

“Still not being used much mind. Get yourself set up over there, that desk is empty and then I will give you a quick lay of the land before lunch. You are meeting the Superintendent straight after lunch.”

It took him less than five minutes to get sorted at the desk and then he was back sitting beside her desk.

“There have been a bunch of promotions since you were here in September. The two that you will know are Vestie was promoted to Inspector, and it was quite unexpected. He is young to be an Inspector and judging by the look of shock on his face when he came out of Lester’s office I don’t think he was expecting it either. The other one is Inspector Brodie still gets to shout at him because he made Chief Inspector. Despite having a terrible temper he is good at his job. And as you can see there are more computers here. A lot of us have been sent on courses but no investigation has been impacted by computers yet. The closest we have come so far is the one last year that you were on. But everyone is constantly going on about computers. So as the office’s designated computer expert, I think you will be busy.”

She winked at him and although she said it in a joking tone, there was an undercurrent of truth to the statement.

“Do you have any idea what they are going to do with me?”

“No not at all. I know that having you work with Vestie last year was helpful, we are always spread thin in the summer with holidays, even more so this year. Maybe it will be something like that, although it won’t be with Vestie. Who else did you work with?”

“Er, Splash and Taff. I mean Sergeant Drinkwater and Constable Thomas.”

“I know who you meant. They are both around so you may end up working with one of them. There is a lot of change happening at the moment, lots of training and lots of extra deployments. I am sure they will keep you busy.”

After a sandwich for lunch Andrew knocked on Superintendent Lester’s door right at 2.00. He called for Andrew to come in but was standing walking towards the door when he opened it and Andrew followed him out of his office and down the corridor to a meeting room. Inspector Noel Vestergaard, Vestie to everyone who knew him, was waiting there. Andrew shook his hand, it was good to see another familiar face.

“Welcome back McLeod. It is good that you chose to come back here this year. You had several conversations last year with Inspector Jamieson and the then Sergeant Vestergaard over computers. Jamieson had those notes typed up and they have proved to be uncomfortably accurate. Particularly around the value of training and the government getting it into their head that the armed forces should have more computers. Lots of different parts of the services are getting computers.”

Lester stopped for a second.

“80% plus of all our officers are involved in guarding military installations with concentrations in all the obvious and key facilities. The ongoing protests at Greenham Common and now Molesworth have stretched us thin. The staff based here cover the rest of the tasks, as well as being available for emergency back-up. One of our responsibilities is fraud and corruption. If, as in last year’s exercise, it appears to be espionage related then half a dozen other organisations all stick their oar in. But pure fraud and corruption that is ours. Well nothing of course is that simple. We also work with the SIBs if they are serving members of the forces.”

The SIBs were the Special Investigation Branches of the three services. The detective investigation part of the Military Police.

“Who exactly has jurisdiction if a Captain in the Guards commits fraud has never been resolved. Both of us apparently. That is the Chief Constable’s worry not ours. The reason I am giving you this little background rundown is because computerisation is coming to the forces. You will have seen several of them in the incident room. I got called to a meeting last week where I was briefed on the American’s experiences so far with computerisation. There was a significant spike in large errors and mistakes. Not all of them were accidental. And worryingly not all of them were caught immediately. This was mentioned as an aside at a recent NATO meeting. I am sure someone is working on getting details for us but at present all we have been told is that computerisation was used as a cover for several attempted frauds.”

Andrew looked over at Vestie with a questioning look on his face. Vestie ignored him and kept focus on Lester.

“I can see you are wondering what this means for you. A busy summer is what it means. You are going on a training course, as an OTC cadet at Worthy Down. Vestergaard here is going to brief you on what that means. We will talk more later.”

And with that Lester left the two of them alone. Andrew was surprised when Vestie let out as loud a sigh of relief as him.

“This is all your fault you know.”

As a greeting it lacked a certain something.

“I made Inspector for figuring out that training exercise last year. Which we both know you had a lot to do with. Well that brought me to the attention of the brass and suddenly I am up for Inspector. Look it is good to see you Jock but there is a lot to talk through. I remember that meeting you had with Jamieson, where you talked about the limitations of computers. You did nothing but piss on the them for 20 minutes. I remember ‘shit in, shit out’, you even talked about them not being squaddie-proof. Everyone who ends up in here has been out of school for at least 10 years, often a lot longer. Most of us did not go to university and there is very little experience with computers. There are a lot of coppers looking over their shoulders worrying that they are going to fuck up or get found out when they have to use them. And as you predicted the government thinks that using computers will make us more efficient and so they are coming to the forces. We are real thin on anyone who is competent with computers. Sure a bunch of us have been on courses but there is book learning and then there is applying it on a case. So bear that in mind. There is an edge to the place. A lot of unknowns.

“As Lester said more than 80% of the blokes are out at bases, more than a quarter of the total strength is permanently assigned to the nukes. Aldermaston, Burghfield, Faslane, Coulport, Derby, Dounreay, plus a few other places. And then there is the fucking CND at Greenham Common and Molesworth.”

He sighed.

“Fuck what a sob story. The whole force is busy. A bunch of guys from here have done extra duty out at Greenham dealing with the protestors trying to cut the fence and stuff. So even here we are feeling the effect. I have asked around and nobody can remember the last time we dealt with a fraud case. It is either small potatoes and caught by the red caps or it is a major scandal and the Met takes the lead.

“Think about it, Lester meets you on the first day? They are expecting trouble, I think the chat from the Americans has made them think about how we would deal with something similar. We are playing catch up on computers.”

Vestie stopped and Andrew looked at him, profoundly skeptical.

“Okay, I hear what you are saying, everyone is stretched thin and if something similar to what happened to the Americans happens over here everyone feels undertrained to deal with it. I get all that. But Vestie I am a student, gone in less than 10 weeks. This is a summer job and as far as I can see I am one of very few civilians in this place. I don’t know anything about police work, evidence, procedures. You remember last year. We met because you got told to watch ‘the kid’ and make sure I didn’t fuck up some evidence. What am I missing?”

“Computers Jock, computers. Brodie and Lester are all over the Chief Constable for us to get proper computer support but it has not been approved yet. Maybe not as young as you but people who understand computers and can assist on investigations. There is not anyone at the moment. Everyone starts out in the field, like I did. Most of us joined up straight out of school and there are a sizeable number of the rest who joined after serving.”

It started to sink in. Ouch.

“What about asking the Met for help. Can they not send some guys over?”

“Politics. I think the Chief would rather fuck up an investigation than ask the Met for help.”

“Vestie, I can’t be the Ministry of Defence Police’s computer expert. That is bonkers.”

It was a scary silence that filled the room. Andrew’s head was full of swearwords.

“What is Worthy Down? Where is it? What is that all about?”

“The Army Pay Corp are based there. Outside Winchester. The plan is for you to go on a two week course, just the same as several of us have done already. They want you to do the training and think about how the computers are being used.”

“Sure, I can attend training. But I know nothing about Army pay regulations so I am not sure how it will help.”

“That is why they are sending you in your OTC uniform. You don’t need to know anything, everyone knows that the OTC is full of wankers who are a waste of oxygen.”

Vestie was trying not to laugh.

“Up yours. It is not wrong but up yours.”

“Seriously everyone is going to ask why you are there and you are going to tell them you have no idea. This is where they sent you. You don’t know why you are there any more than they do. You are going to be playing into their prejudices and they are all going to ignore you for the rest of the course. I think Lester is being too smart for his own good. He also doesn’t want anyone to find out that we have sent a computer expert on the course. If you turned up, even as a civilian employee of the Police, there would have been endless whispers, a lot of questions and the rumours would have started flying. Think of it as hiding in plain sight.”

“I am not a spy!”

“I know, I know. But going as an OTC cadet will stop all the questions. Ignore that just now. Look when any of the blokes here went on this course we had a separate day at the end of the training where we talked to a group of guys, Sergeants and a couple of Lieutenants, about the checks and controls that they run to try and catch fuck-ups, errors or fraud. Several of us have been on this course and we all got the same material, but we all also took notes from the conversations and answers to our questions. I think there are four different sets of notes. I want you to spend the next couple of days going through all this stuff and then we will talk again.”

Andrew walked back to his desk and although he ostensibly looked at the material for the rest of the afternoon, in reality he was thinking about this whole situation. When your main role is guarding bases, making sure no one gets in and nothing gets out, then some of it actually made sense. They were policemen, but in a lot of instances they were armed guards for bases, weapons and convoys. As an actual investigative police force, they had limited numbers and resources. So not having a competent computer expert, while scary as hell, was not unexpected. That they were so bloody pleased to see him was not comforting at all. But as Susan had said, there had been no case where computers had played any kind of role. At the end of the day Andrew locked away the files and headed home. His thoughts on the Tube were what he was going to say to Freya when she asked him about his day. Lester knew that Andrew had stayed with her last year, was talking about this to him a way for him to pass the message on, while everyone could deny any official request. Hmmm.