‘The gun was booked out of the lab in early 1977 by the then Detective Inspector Murphy. He said he needed it for the interview of a suspect believed to have been involved in the Express robbery. The suspect was never charged and the gun was never returned to the lab. I believe Murphy threatened the man he arrested and said he’d fit him up unless he got a cut of the proceeds. From information I’ve received, I think Murphy then provided his suspect with what he thought was a now untraceable gun, which was then used in the September 1977 Williams & Glyn’s Bank payroll robbery and the Daily Mirror robbery in 1978.’

A stunned Jane nearly dropped the milk bottle as she removed it from the fridge. ‘Oh my God, a security guard was shot dead during the Daily Mirror robbery.’

‘That’s right, and when Dabs comes back I think we’ll discover the bullet that killed the guard was fired from the same gun and will match a bullet recovered from a wooden door frame at the Williams & Glyn’s robbery.’

‘But shouldn’t the recovered bullets from different robberies have been compared and cross-checked?’ Jane asked.

‘Comparisons are only made if specifically requested by the investigating officer to link a particular gang to a series of crimes. The investigating officer in the three cases I just mentioned was . . . ’

‘Murphy. But how did the gun end up back here at the lab?’

‘It was down to you, actually. Remember the stash of hidden guns you uncovered at George Ripley’s garage?’

Jane nodded. ‘I thought that Smith & Wesson pistol Dabs just test-fired looked familiar. It was one of a number of guns we found with the money from the Shoreditch job hidden behind a fake wall in the vehicle inspection pit. But how did the gun end up in the Ripleys’ hands?’

‘Dabs, as you know, worked with Murphy at Rigg Approach. He had this niggling feeling Murphy might be corrupt, but he had no evidence to prove it.’

‘Was this before or after I was on the squad?’ Jane asked, wondering why Dabs had never said anything to her.

‘It sort of started after you found the gun at the Ripley garage. The squad DI, Stuart Kingston, told Dabs to take all the guns straight up to the lab for examination and cross-check against any recent unsolved armed robberies where bullets were fired. When Murphy saw the garage scene photos, he asked Dabs where the guns had gone and went nuts when he found Dabs had taken them up to the lab without his “personal” authority. And yet he never yelled at Kingston.’

‘He obviously got panicky about the Smith & Wesson being the one he’d stolen.’