The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin Read Online Free Page A

car’s automatic transmission into ‘drive’ and drove off fast, with me half-in and half-out of the vehicle.
    I said afterwards that I’d be able to recognise him again because of the imprint that my knuckles made on the side of his face, but don’t you believe it. As pugilists reading this are aware, to effectively deliver a straight right, you need the transference of power, driving off the ball of the right foot and turning the hip and shoulder in the direction of your opponent. You try it when you’re lying horizontally, clinging on to a speeding car with one hand! Yes, I gave him a dig but what with the lack of force of the punch, plus the rush of adrenaline he must have been experiencing, it had little or no effect.
    As he reached the junction with Green Street, he braked sharply and I was thrown from the car. I rolled over in the roadway a couple of times and as I got to my feet, I heard the furious sounding of car horns and saw the Jaguar swerving crazily across the junction with Green Street and then swing left into Plashet Road. I dashed across the junction but by the time I got to Plashet Road, the car had vanished. It was only later that I discovered that the Jaguar – which had been reported stolen from the Paddington area – had been abandoned in Lucas Avenue, the fourth turning on the left. It was thought that the driver – who had discarded his jacket, to prevent recognition – might have escaped by turning left out of Lucas Avenue into Harold Road and thence the short distance into Upton Park Underground station.
    I was furious – furious with the manager of the shop, furious with the fraudsman who could have caused me serious injury and furious with myself for failing to arrest him, by not being quicker off the mark. Matters were not improved when I limped back to the police station where, with a commendable lack of tact and concern for my well-being, the first-class sergeant scoffed, ‘Huh! Couldn’t catch a bleedin’ cold!’ Doc Lazarus MBE, the Divisional Surgeon (who would later say that he thought that I was his best customer), tut-tutted as he examined my lumps and bumps from being thrown off the car, diagnosed strained chest muscles from hanging on to it, prescribed paracetamol and told me to ‘get on with it’.
    So I did. Simmering quietly, I put the details in the crime book, circulated details of the fraudsman and the details of the card he’d been using and cracked on with a fresh inquiry.
    Months later, I received notification that the fraudsman had been arrested somewhere else in London and had been charged with a whole series of offences; when he appeared at court, he had been sentenced to a long term of imprisonment.
    I looked at his name. Martin. David Ralph Martin. Aged 26 and born in Paddington. Never heard of him. And he wasn’t a local lad. So how did he know about Lucas Avenue and the close proximity to a secondary getaway route via Upton Park station? Had he taken the trouble to plot an alternative escape, prior to going into the jewellers, just in case he got tumbled? And what was more, I couldn’t get out of my mind the slick way in which he’d strolled out of the shop; that took a lot of nerve.
    Then I shrugged my shoulders and forgot about him.
    I might have thought that I was cock-o’-the-walk in the CID office at Forest Gate but I still had a lot to learn about criminal behaviour and psychology in general, and crooks like Martin in particular. Slick? Christ, I didn’t know the meaning of the word.

Fraudsman
    F rom undistinguished beginnings, David Martin’s life can only be described as extraordinary. He was born in Paddington on 25 February 1947 and was brought up in a council flat in Finsbury Park, the only child to Ralph and Joan Martin. For all of his life and whatever he did, right or wrong, his father defended, made excuses for and idolised him. Father and son had a common predisposition: both of them hated the police.
    In common with the majority of