Dead in the Water: Murder and Fraud in the World's Most Secretive Industry

by Matthew Campbell

Veale had known Michael Conner for thirty years, since they’d begun working together in London’s Metropolitan Police. When Veale called him in late 2012, Conner was at the end of a distinguished career, serving most recently as a detective chief inspector in the small agency responsible for law enforcement in the British military. Veale asked his friend how he was. “I’m retired now, Dick,” Conner said, in a tone that suggested he was reluctant to get pulled into whatever Veale might be getting in touch about. He was sixty and recovering from an eight-hour heart operation, no doubt related to the toll of four decades pursuing gangsters, fraudsters, drug traffickers, and pedophiles. His first marriage had also fallen apart, but Conner wasn’t bitter. He considered himself fortunate to have been given the opportunity to pit himself against “arseholes,” as he described the criminals he faced. It was his life’s work, and he was exceptionally good at it. Though he stood just over five feet tall and had the deeply lined face of a man nearing pension age, Conner could still end an argument with little more than a hard stare from his glacier-blue eyes. At the Met, his colleagues called him Metal Mickey—both for the toughness of his leathery, muscular frame and his unyielding personality—and his misshapen knuckles suggested that he wasn’t someone you wanted to offend.