PROLOGUE
0700 hours 19th June 2011
Officers were crammed into the smallest briefing room in the entire station, The Sam Waters Room, Birmingham City HQ Police Station. More officers entered the room which held an oval wooden table in the centre with 10 chairs around; for a normal tasking meeting this would be sufficient, with the 32 officers now present it was like a tin of sardines. All of the chairs were pushed under the desk tightly and everyone stood or leaned against the nearest wall or piece of furniture, trying to have individual conversations with the closest person was verging on impossible.
Luckily for people’s eardrums, Detective Chief Inspector Holland wandered in and then stood to address his troops for the forthcoming days work.
“Good Morning, getting straight on with things; gathered from recent intelligence linking Human Trafficking gangs to a number of addresses across the Birmingham South area, Operation Safeguard has been put in place to raid and secure a number of addresses...”
“….he said exactly the same bloody thing yesterday, why the f…” sitting at the back of the room chatting was probably not a good idea.
“…is there a problem PC Bradford? My fucking problem is that we are now a person down in 1:7 nominations. Get changed and meet me in my office NOW!” the usually calm persona was broken. DCI Liam Holland knew one thing no-one else did, they were going to be busy today and tomorrow, especially now, and another officer will be needed.
DCI Holland allowed the officers to murmur for a moment and then cracked on with the evidence presentation; this contained a map of the addresses to be raided, pictures of the suspects and video footage of some exchanges made with the suspects.
After a moment of composure, “Everyone else, good luck for today, remember you are all working towards my promotion from DCI” He chuckled to himself as he walked back to his office, recently his fast track promotion had come to a slow halt.
4 addresses were raided on the Operation Safeguard that morning, there was series of arrests for numerous offences from human trafficking, prostitution, drug possession and cultivation and evidence bags were filled from all the locations. All the addresses held links with a local gang who have targeted the quiet suburbs of Birmingham for their operation.
DCI Holland had no interest in any of these addresses; all he wanted to learn about when he called Operational Support Unit Sergeant Thompson was from 65 Winding Lane, where the intelligence was led to believe that it was a storage house for the larger cultivation plants related to the rest of the raid. DCI Holland had been using an intelligence source that had been giving information since Liam Holland was a beat sergeant on the local policing team. The source was meant to be at 65 Winding Lane and to be arrested for some minor offences.
“Address was checked, there were no signs of life in the premises. Had been lived in but not for at least a month. Following from the intelligence from the premises, we seized approximately 5 VHS recordable tapes from the living room area.”
“Good, very good. The Intel was very strong then, your team did well today with the whole series. Scene from 65 Winding Lane has been secured and forensics requested?”
“Yes, Yes, Sir, I don’t see the requirement for forensics at the address and it was not in the original notes for the address...”
“…the requirement is there, please just go along with the request and update me with the results. Thank you, Sergeant Thompson.”
DCI Holland had found from a number of the addresses checked one further residential property kept popping up and the interview conducted gave more details. This was the one address to check and this would be completed tomorrow, the address check would be completed by his team with him leading, he knew that this was going to be the big one, but he didn’t expect to find what was in store for him.
