Somebody is breaking into politiican's houses and copying sensitive information. When the Office of the Chief Investigator is called in the body count starts to go up. As the investigation proceeds it becomes clear that there is more to things than just photographing files.
days left
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After a burglar has broken into the homes of mebers of the British cabinet or the Shadow Cabinet the Office of the Chief Investigator dcide to take over the investigation. They decide to work with the existing team that was investigating the matter. Things do not go well one of the police officers dies under suspicious circumstances.
When items are stolen from the Chief Secretary of the Treasury which expose her to potential criminal prosecution she panics which leads to her death in a particularly gruesome manner.
Progress is made in the investigation which leads to the unmasking of the burglar but is there more to the burglaries than at first appears?
The target audience are fans of crime thriller/political intrigue.
I was educated in state schools in London. On leaving school I went to work for a high street firm of solicitors in Kilburn before moving onto another firm in Covent Garden.
Having worked in firms of solicitors I left to study law at the University of Teesside. After graduating I joined the civil service where I worked at the Treasury Solicitor
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Chapter One
The newly appointed DC1-2 was attending her first meeting of the Investigations Co-Ordinating Committee. The committee, in addition to a Chair from the Home Office, consisted of The Office of the Chief Investigator which DCI-2 represented, The Metropolitan Police, The City of London Police and The Intelligence Services. In addition, there was rotational attendance from a representative from the provincial forces. The idea of the Committee was to make sure the various bodies did not trip over each other as they investigated matters. The Legal Attache from the US Embassy had for some reason observer status.
DCI-2, who was in full uniform, was accompanied by two aides, EA-4 who like her was attending his first meeting of the Committee having recently taken over from the previous EA-4. Also in attendance was SI-4 who had been at a few meetings before with the previous DCI-2. This allowed her to give DCI-2 a heads up. When the three arrived at the meeting room a smartly dressed man came up to her and stretching out his hand to shake her hand said.
‘Hunter Warburton the Third I am the Legal Attache at the US Embassy.’
‘I am Deputy Chief Investigator 2 representing the Office of the Chief Investigator. This is Executive Assistant 4 and my other colleague who you may have met is Senior Investigator 4.’
‘May I ask what your actual name is?’
‘You may ask but due to office policy I would not be able to answer.’
‘Anyway, I wanted a quick word on Item 3 on the agenda. I have spoken to the Met and as we have an interest in the matter we have informally agreed to collaborate on this matter. I was wondering what your views on it are.’
‘I have read the papers so am familiar with the issues. I see Sir Anthony is calling the meeting to order so we should take our seats.’
As they went to get their seats with SI-4 and EA-4 in seats against the wall SI-4 said.
‘Nice dodge.’
The meeting was dragging on with the first two items taking an hour. Then the Chair opened up discussion on item 3. EA-4 stepped forward and placed a sheet of paper in front of DCI-2. DCI-2 raised her pen to indicate that she wanted to speak. When the Chair recognised her to speak, she said.
‘I have read the papers on this matter and in accordance with the powers delegated to me under Section 1 Sub-Section 2 of the Complex Criminal Investigations Act I have made a determination under Section 2 of that Act that this matter is a complex criminal investigation within the meaning of Section 2 Sub-Section 1 of the Act. Accordingly, under Section 3 of the Act I am today notifying the Metropolitan Police that I am taking over this matter.’
Without waiting to be recognised the Legal Attache said.
‘I trust that we will be kept informed of progress in this matter as my government has an interest in the matter.’
‘Information will be provided in accordance with our Need to Know Policy.’
‘Thank you I look forward to such updates. May I ask who will have day to day responsibility for this investigation?’
‘Senior Investigator 4 who is behind me will have day to day responsibility.’
When the meeting finished DCI-2 went up to Assistant Commissioner Quintell who was talking to Hunter Warburton and spoke.
‘James, can I have a word?’
The two went to a corner where they were joined by EA-4 and SI-4. Also with them was DAC Cranington. Assistant Commissioner Quintell after everyone was seated said.
‘You do realise that no is a single word. Oh, and thanks for taking over this one our esteemed American colleague is an insufferable bore on a good day.’
‘No problem. Question is this going to be a joint investigation or do we just manage it ourselves.’
‘Your predecessor was not that good at cooperating. Come to think of it SI-4 here is the only one who likes joint investigations. That said as we have already started the investigation, and our respective Deputies get on makes sense to run it as a joint investigation.’
DCI-2 raised an eyebrow while looking at SI-4 who went red with embarrassment but kept quiet. Then said.
‘I think we can let them run the investigation then if everything remains professional. I assume we will be using OCI policy.’
‘No objections from me.’
On that note everyone went back to their offices with SI-4 and DAC Cranington agreeing to meet the following day to go over the current position on the case.
______________________
That evening around 7pm a man about six foot five inches tall, dressed head to toe in black was walking down a side road in Belgravia. When he arrived at a detached house, he slipped down the side to the back entrance. As he was expecting the back door had two locks. Out of his right trouser pocket he took out a bunch of keys and selected two keys with which he opened the door. On entering the house, the alarm went off the man went to the alarm panel and put in a four-digit code silencing the alarm.
The man went down the corridor to the third door on the left. This was a home/office setup with two desks and a printer. Each desk had a computer and a desktop filing system. The man knew that there was a secondary alarm system in the room. Before entering the room, he cut the telephone line to prevent the silent alarm going off. When he went into the room, he scanned the room and then taking a small timer, he set it for 30 minutes and turned it on. He had to be out by 8pm.
There were four paintings in the room none were originals. Going first to the Stubbs he examined the painting closely. The painting was set flat against the wall. He then went to the Rubens followed by the Vouet and finally the Hilliard. Having examined all the paintings, he went back to the Rubens and taking an index card out of his pocket he ran it between the wall and the painting. The card caught against something that was between the wall and the painting. He had found what he was looking for. Taking a small wafer-thin magnet placed it where the obstruction was before pulling the painting towards him to reveal a 5 x 5 safe. The safe had a digital combination lock. The man inputted a four-digit code and the safe opened.
From his pocket the man took out a small digital camera before removing one of the files in the safe and started photographing the file; He did the same with all the files in the safe and had just finished when the timer went off. Putting everything back where they were found.
making sure that they were in the same order. Then left the same way he had come.
__________________
When the owner of the house in Belgravia arrived home at 10pm he told his chauffer.
‘Put the red boxes in my office I will take the briefcase I want to do some reading before retiring.’
The chauffer said nothing putting the boxes where he was told. He did not ask when the boxes would get read.
Chapter Two
The following morning DAC Cranington in full uniform arrived at the offices of the Office of the Chief Investigator and asked for SI-4. SI-4 kept him waiting for half an hour before collecting him. When she did finally arrive, she gave him a perfunctory apology before giving him a visitors pass saying.
‘This will get you in and out of the building. It is coded so that you can use it on more than just one day. I think it is valid for a year.’
When they arrived at SI-4’s office DAC Cranington noticed a young attractive blond lady waiting for them who said.
‘Do you want me to take your coat sir?’
‘Thanks.’
SI-4 waited for the lady to come back. When she did, she was carrying a tablet. SI-4 introduced her.
‘DAC Cranington this is Investigator 23 she is my operations manager.’
‘The papers that were provided to yesterday’s meeting were of necessity circumspect as this is a sensitive issue. As you are aware from the meeting papers several burglaries are being investigated. An unusual feature of these burglaries is that the owners were able to live in the house for some time before realising that they had been the victim of a burglary.’
‘How is this possible?’
‘The burglar is very professional and appears to have been well informed as he is able to defeat the burglar alarm and calmly go about his business. But that is not the worse of it.’
‘What is? Investigator 23 asked with trepidation.
‘All the victims have been Government Ministers or members of the Shadow Cabinet. Just to make matters worse the burglar has a sense of humour. He sends copies of the documents back to the owners of the house with comments on the policy documents he had obtained.’
‘Are we talking about original documents and what kind of classification is on them.’
‘They were copies because the original documents were still in the possession of the relevant Minister or Shadow Minister, and they are all Secret or above. In a couple of cases, we are talking about Strap 1 documents.’
‘Do we have any ideas on who or why?’
‘No.’
‘Right, we will need your files or at any rate copies of them. Forensics is out of the question. Can we at least have a period when they could have been acquired?’
‘As far as we can tell they are acquired within a two-week period before there return.’
‘Commonality?’
‘Working on it or I was going to be doing that today.’
‘How many officers do you have working on this investigation?’
‘Six’
SI-4 looked at I-23 and raised an eyebrow.
‘I can fit them in secure room 2 on this floor. I will also arrange temporary passes for them. As they are Police Officers, they will not need restaurant access as everyone knows Police Officers do not eat.’
SI-4 not realising that she was joking said.
‘You will give them restaurant access.’ Turning to DAC Cranington said. ‘If you can provide I-23 with their names she can organise everything they need to work from here which will make things easier.’
‘Sure, they will be over at 2pm,’
__________________
At 2pm Investigator 23 was called down to reception when the six officers arrived. The team consisted of four men and two women. Leading the team was Detective Inspector Gwen Fawcett. The two Sergeants were Detective Sergeant Thomas Sellington and Detective Sergeant James Craftman. The three Detective Constables were not introduced. Once introductions were made I-23 said.
‘If you would take these passes and follow me, I will show you where you will be working from. Because of the nature of your investigation, you are in a secure room.’
Investigator 23 while showing them up stopped on the third floor which housed the restaurant and staff room in which there was a competition size snooker table. They then went to the seventh floor which housed General Investigation Team Three. Following several retirements some of the teams had been amalgamated so General Investigation Team 3 was merged with Computer Security and Investigations. Secure Room 2 occupied the entire southern end of the floor. It contained seating for twenty people plus computers and printers. In an extreme case the entire Command could operate from the secure room. The team from the Met were impressed they were expecting to be stuck in a cubbyhole in some corner.
Pointing to a door in the bottom right corner of the room I-23 said.
‘Through that door you will find toilets and a small tea area if you do not want to go to the canteen. If you need me, I am on extension 5478, Senior Investigator 4 is on extension 5525. Anything else I can help with?’
‘When would I be able to speak to Senior Investigator 4?’ DI Fawcett asked.
‘How about now?’ SI-4 said as she entered the room. ‘Inspector, do you want to join me in my office.’
The two women left the others in the secure room as they started to set up the room to continue the investigation. SI-4 took the Detective Inspector on a tour of the seventh and eighth floors ending up at her office on the eighth floor. As she went to enter her office SI-4’s secretary passed her a note causing SI-4 to let out an exasperated sigh before saying.
‘Please ring him back and tell him that I have had a medical emergency and had to leave for the rest of the day.’
When they entered SI-4’s office a confused DI Fawcett asked what that was about. SI-4 simply passed the sheet of paper that SI-4 had been given. This elicited a groan from the DI. Directing the DI to a soft seating area opposite her desk SI-4 asked.
‘Do you want a coffee?’ SI-4 asked holding up a coffee percolator. DI Fawcett refused the offer. After making herself a cup SI-4 joined DI Fawcett in the seating area. When DI Fawcett got out her notebook SI-4 waived it away saying.
‘I will email you a copy of the transcript of our conversation.’
DI Fawcett did a quick discreet scan but could not see any listening devices although there must be some for a transcript to be made DI Fawcett asked.
‘What did that prick from the US Embassy want?’
‘Probably wants an update on how the investigation is going on and to offer his advice. Before my boss decided to take over this investigation the Assistant Commissioner had agreed to cooperate with him on the investigation. At the meeting yesterday my Boss assured him that we will keep everyone on the committee informed in line with our need to know policy.’
‘Do not tell me he thought that meant you will tell anyone anything.’
‘Apparently so. Anyway, can you fill me in on where you have got to.’
‘To date we have seven linked cases under investigation by my team. So far, we have four government ministers and three shadow ministers. Somehow somebody has been able to enter their homes and make copies of highly confidential files and leave without leaving any clues. He is even kind enough to reset the alarms. The first that the victims know is when copies are returned with comments on the policies that were in the files.’
SI-4 contemplated for a while before going to her desk and retrieved her laptop. DI Fawcett observed with fascination as SI-4 used a key card to start her laptop she had heard that this used to be used as an access control method for government computers but had never seen it used. DI Fawcett was surprised when SI-4 then entered a password as well. Talk about overkill DI Fawcett thought. When SI-4 finished logging in to the system she pulled up a form before saying.
‘I am just doing tasking orders for our forensics team. When you get your next incident make sure to call out Senior Forensics Examiner 4, he will send out a team of Forensic Examiners to conduct these tasks. The tasking orders are designed to collect information which might have gone unnoticed.’
_________________
While SI-4 and DI Fawcett were having their meeting The Man was in his home office going over the prints of the photos taken at the Belgravia property. He selected three random photos then took two copies of them. Taking out a laptop he sent one copy written in French to the Middle East Desk at the Guardian newspaper. The second one which he wrote in Spanish he sent to the Defence and Security Correspondent at the Times Newspaper in London. He wanted to make sure everyone knew that documents had gone missing. Also, that they were not any old documents but sensitive documents. To cause even more problems he emailed other documents to the Liberal Democrats Defence Spokesman and said there were more documents available.
_____________
Chapter Three
Two days later The Honourable Member for Bassetlaw West tabled an Urgent Question for answer by the Home Secretary. Being the Liberal Democrat Defence Spokesman, he had received some documents from an anonymous source. The documents appeared to be random policy papers. His question as it appeared in Hansard asked. ‘To ask the Secretary of State if he is aware of any investigation into any missing documents that pertain to the documents that I have provided him with.’
The Times and Guardian ran stories about how sensitive position papers have been leaked to foreign governments and published the attached letters in their original languages. Neither paper realised that the documents had been sent from a UK national and had never been seen by any government.
Victoria Swelton was in the unfortunate position of being the duty minister and as such had to appear on all the morning TV shows and cover government policy. To add to her problem, she was a junior Transport Minister so had no clue about the underlying policies mentioned in the documents. The only information that she could give was that the Office of the Chief Investigator was being asked to investigate the matter. This caused the media to groan with disappointment. The OCI was known to not tell their press office anything of importance for fear that they would tell the press. As a result, no media organisation bothered to ask the OCI for a comment.
Deputy Chief Investigator 2 decided that she would annoy the press more than usual so sought and was given permission to make the investigation a Schedule 1 investigation. As a result, the press was forbidden from discussing or writing about the matter for six months for the OCI investigation to proceed. While technically it also prevented politicians from doing the same, they would use Parliamentary Privilege to do so. DI Fawcett and Senior Investigator 4 accompanied DCI-2 to an urgently convened meeting of the Investigations Co-Ordinating Committee.
When the meeting started Hunter Warburton the Third gave the Home Office official that was chairing the meeting barely enough time to call the meeting to order before laying into DCI-2.
‘Why was I not informed about these documents going missing until this morning when I was informed about this meeting.’
‘We are in the initial stages of this investigation, and we need to establish if the recent events are linked to what we are already investigating. There are some discrepancies which we need to examine.’
‘I am authorised to make the services of the FBI available to you to assist in your investigation.’
‘Thank you I will bear that in mind but at present as this matter is proceeding as a joint Schedule 1 investigation with the Metropolitan Police, we have all the resources we need.’
The Chair sensing an eruption said.
‘DCI-2 as I believe you must brief the Home Secretary; we will not detain you and your colleagues.’
That afternoon the Home Secretary stood up in the chamber of the House of Commons and spoke.
Mr Speaker, I thank the Honourable Member for giving me advance notice of his urgent question. The matter he raises is subject to an investigation by the Office of the Chief Investigator under Schedule 1 to the Complex Criminal Investigations Act as such I am currently unable to provide any information on the matter. As soon as I can, I will place the report under Paragraph 15 of Schedule 1 in the Library of the House.'
After forty-five minutes of various MPs trying to get any information beyond what was in the original statement Mr Speaker rose to bring the discussion to a close and move on to the next matter on the Order Paper.
The Man listened to the discussion with interest the news that the OCI was conducting the investigation caused him a bit of a worry. He knew that they had the statutory power to take over any investigation. He will sniff around to see what he can find out.
_______________
Having obtained copies of the documents that had been sent to the two newspapers and the Liberal Democrat Defence spokesperson the first order of business was to get official notarised translations of the letters. This required consulting with the FCDO and getting them to agree to do the translations. A feat that took three hours and escalation to DCI-2.
SI-4, DI Fawcett, and I-23 were discussing the two letters.
‘How do we know that the two letters were not both sent by the same person who is just playing head games with us’ I-23 asked.
‘We do not know for sure. But the more important question is is he the same person that did the other burglaries. In all the other cases he returned them to the homeowner with his comments.’ DI Fawcett responded.
‘Right how do we find out the answer to these questions?’ SI-4 asked.
‘It would help if we knew where they were obtained from any clues.’ DI Fawcett asked in response.
‘No, not at present, because the pages are not consecutively numbered so obviously, they were randomly selected. However, the Computer Security and Investigation Team are working on it.’ I-23 said.
‘The first order of business is to determine how the burglar is obtaining his information. To be certain that the homeowner will not arrive back while he is copying the information the burglar would need exceptionally good information. This would seem to imply that he has more than one source of information as details of when the homeowner will be out would require access to both his official and private diary.’ SI-4 said.
‘I am not sure that is correct for all the victims. It will be the case for the shadow ministers but for the government ministers you will only need to access the diary kept by his diary secretary.’ I-23 responded before continuing ‘Computer Security and Investigations are looking into whether they can do a phrase search to see if they can find where the documents were taken from.’
‘Right let us call it a day and pick up again tomorrow.’
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