Malky McEwan

Author of Best Selling Police Stories.

Occam's razor

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best.

Within three weeks of joining the police I was drafted in as uniform support for a drugs raid on a notorious pub in our area. A family ran their drug dealing business from the pub.

A couple of days observation by the plain clothes drugs squad had netted several punters leaving the premises with personal amounts of drugs bought in the place.

Normally these punters provide statements and enough evidence to convict the dealers - whether the drugs raid results in recovery of illegal substances or not. In this case the brothers were smart. Orders were taken by phone, punters came in, went to the toilet, picked up what they ordered and left their money. Thus none of the punters could provide identification.

Undercover officers had tried to infiltrate the pub but this was a small place and every newcomer eyed with so much suspicion that they were often ousted as undercover officers within minutes and derided as they were shown the door.

When we searched the pub there were never any drugs found. The brothers laughed in the face of the police. It was a mystery. We knew that they were dealing drugs, punters were going in and coming out with personal use amounts so there must be dealer amounts in the place. They were making money, not so much that they had big houses and fancy cars but enough that the family spent all day and every day in the pub and could afford to put some big bets on at the bookies - an occasional win was their explanation for having more cash on them than they received from state benefits and was sufficient not to charge them under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Every family member, at one time or other, had been searched at home, before they entered the pub and on a couple of big raids the entire pub had been turned upside down. The brothers sat drinking their pints and smiling. We never found a single bit of evidence to tie any of them to the drugs the punters were leaving with.

The drugs squad couldn’t answer how they got the drugs into the pub in the first place and they couldn’t understand why they had never found any drugs when they carried out a raid - even with sniffer dogs.

Five years later, and not so green behind the gills, I received some information that changed everything.

I was on duty alone at two in the morning when I saw a car weaving about the road in front of me. Suspicions aroused I followed it for about fifty yards when it turned into a driveway and clipped the hedge on its way in.

I was out and at the driver’s side as he alighted from his vehicle. It was the barman from the local pub. He’d had a couple of drinks too many and shouldn’t have been driving - but he had made it home. I didn’t have corroboration with me and when he suggested a fair exchange I weighed up the pros and cons.

The information he provided was that none of the brothers drank Guinness.

I submitted an intelligence report that night.

Six weeks later the drugs squad organised another drugs raid on the pub. This time when they entered they went through the motions of a search. Half-way through one of the detectives accidentally knocked over a full pint of Guinness sitting on a table and as the liquid spilled on the floor several deals rolled onto the table - no longer hidden by the opaque liquid.

The pretence saved the source of the information.

Subsequent examination of three other pints of Guinness revealed more drugs. Fingerprint analysis of the glasses was enough to convict two of the family with drug-dealing offences.

I cultivated my source and we had enough successes over the next few years to pretty much put an end to their business.

All that time the brothers had been hiding their drugs right under our nose.