A week in the life of a London murder detective

The number of people killed in London during 2018 was the highest figure for a decade. But what is life like for a senior detective investigating these crimes?

The Metropolitan Police’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command launched more than 130 inquiries in 2018, as well as continuing to investigate dozens of unsolved cases from previous years.

The unit is split into 18 teams, which each take their turn to be “on call” – meaning that if a suspicious death is reported, they have to respond.

Major Investigation Team 8 (MIT 8) was on 24-hour call for seven days from Tuesday 4 December.

Based in Putney, south-west London, the team consists of 21 detectives, two police constables and four police staff and is led by Det Ch Insp Noel McHugh, one of the Met’s most experienced investigators.

He has 13 “live” murder and manslaughter inquiries that he’s responsible for, each of them at different stages.

Some cases are being prepared for court, some are already in the trial process, others are long-running investigations with police searching for a breakthrough, and a smaller number are recent homicide inquiries that need intensive work.

Tuesday

From 07:00 GMT, the team is officially “on call” and is assigned one of the Met’s specialist HAT (homicide assessment team) cars, specialist police vehicles deployed by homicide teams if there’s a report of a suspicious death.

HAT cars are available 24 hours a day, with dedicated officers ready to take them to the scene as quickly as possible. The principal job of the HAT car detective is to secure the scene and assess what’s happened. The vehicle is equipped with kit such as police tape, exhibit bags and log books.

The team assembles in the Putney office to review the trial of Rahim Mohammadi, which finished the previous week at the Old Bailey.

Mohammadi had been found guilty of strangling Lea Adri-Soejoko at an allotment in north-west London in February 2017 and sentenced to life with a minimum 19-year term. He throttled the 80-year-old with a mower cable and left her body inside a locked shed.

Detectives, led by Det Ch Insp McHugh, found inconsistencies in Mohammadi’s accounts of his movements when they interviewed him as a witness. He was a plot-holder at the allotment and known by others there for his threatening, aggressive and violent behaviour.

Det Ch Insp McHugh describes him as “manipulative, volatile and evil” – but it took a retrial for him to be convicted. Several detectives from MIT 8 spent five weeks in court. “People think once someone has been charged, then it’s done,” Det Ch Insp McHugh says. “But they do so much work, case building, and then at court things come out.”

At 09:00, Det Ch Insp McHugh takes part in a “capacity meeting”, to discuss resourcing issues in the Met, before helping one of his “brilliant” detectives prepare for a job interview at another force. She gets it, which is good news for her, but not so good for Det Ch Insp McHugh, who’ll have to find a replacement, at a time when detectives are in short supply.

Later, he has discussions about Operation Torksey – the inquiry he’s leading into the murder of Marvin Couson, who was shot outside a club at Shoreditch in 2002. Mr Couson was taken to hospital with serious injuries to his heart and other organs. He was left unable to communicate or leave his bed and died from a brain injury in August 2015, aged 39.

According to Det Ch Insp McHugh, Mr Couson was the “entirely innocent victim” of a dispute between organised criminal gangs from London and Birmingham, which he had nothing to do with.

There’ve been several developments in the inquiry over the years, most recently in September 2017, when detectives questioned a prisoner about the murder. Today, Det Ch Insp McHugh is considering what further action may be needed but remains guarded about what it might be. “I was wrestling with a dilemma on a significant line of investigation,” he says.

Later in the afternoon, he manages to make it to a physiotherapy appointment before doing more work from home.

One of the other unsolved cases from 2018 that Det Ch Insp McHugh is responsible for is Operation Plana, the murder of Bulent Kabala, in Cockfosters, north London, in February.

In a “targeted hit”, the 41-year-old was shot in the head and chest as he got out of the silver Mercedes he was driving. The suspects were in a stolen blue van with Polish number plates.

Read the full article here: (BBC News)