The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin by Dick Kirby Page B

secret of it and included this incident in his notes and later his statement. However, during the next twelve months, and through no fault of his own, things were to go badly wrong for Finch and this incident would be the subject of profound criticism at Martin’s trial.

    Detective Sergeant Roger Clements had been part of the inquiry ever since PC Carr had been shot. He had been night-duty CID at the time, but following that tour of duty, he recommenced running the Crime Squad at Marylebone Lane police station and took some of his forty-two young charges to hunt for PC Carr’s attacker. Now, he accompanied Martin to St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington.
    By now, Martin was raving. ‘I could have shot them all,’ he exclaimed. ‘I made a mess of it. I could have had four or five of them!’ However, raving or not, because of the amount of blood covering Martin, Clements began administering a ‘Dying Declaration’, a statement only to be taken when a person is in imminent danger of dying, beginning with the ominous words:

    I, (name) having the fear of death before me and being without hope of recovery make the following statement …

    But then Clements looked up to see a doctor, standing behind Martin, shaking his head. ‘He’s not going to die,’ said the doctor. Clements took possession of Martin’s clothing; underneath the trousers and the T-shirt, he was wearing stockings and women’s underwear. When questioned about it, he replied, ‘It’s my scene.’
    If Martin was not by now actually kicking, he was certainly alive and before he went into surgery, he demanded to know, ‘Why didn’t you finish me of? Looking at it logically, with four armed coppers in those circumstances, I should be dead. Unfortunately, you didn’t do your job properly and I am not dead – you fucked up!’ But PC Van-Dee had not ‘fucked up’ at all. He had reacted precisely as he had been trained. Let’s pause to consider gun statistics at that time.
    During 1981, police had been issued with firearms on 4,983 occasions and had drawn their revolvers 106 times, firing just six times during two incidents where no one had been hit. Criminals, on the other hand, had used firearms on 1,168 occasions. But gun crime was worsening; now in 1982 criminals had used firearms 2,069 times and police had been issued with firearms on 6,635 occasions and drawn them from their holsters 118 times; during that period, police had opened fire six times, injuring three people. Martin was one of those casualties and, given the circumstances, no one was going to blame PC Van-Dee for his actions. Indeed, his feat had been praiseworthy in the same way that Finch’s achievement had been commendable. In addition, Martin had also been in possession of a clip containing a further fifteen rounds for the Star pistol, plus ten more rounds for the revolver. Martin’s response was nothing more than an extension of his enormous ego. Before he had admonished security guards for failing to discharge their duties; now he was castigating Peter Van-Dee for neglecting to kill him. With Martin, he was always right; it was everybody else who was in the wrong.
    According to a later newspaper interview, Sue Stephens had arrived outside Martin’s flat, only to see a police officer outside. ‘I knew something was wrong,’ she accurately stated. ‘I just legged it.’ Even though Martin had been shot from the closest possible range and had lost a considerable amount of blood, he made no mention of pain or indeed any discomfort. The consultant surgeon was astonished that Martin was not suffering from any form of trauma, and concluded that Martin had not been seriously injured and the doctors agreed that he was fit to be interviewed by police. Shortly after Martin’s admission to hospital, he was interviewed by Detective Superintendent Ness and Detective Inspector Bob Cook. Martin declined to have legal representation present while he was questioned and refused to answer any