Derek Creighton "Bertie" Smalls (12 June 1935 – 31 January 2008) was considered by many as Britain's first supergrass. Although there have been informers throughout history – the Kray twins were partly convicted two years before Smalls on evidence given by Leslie Payne – the Smalls case was significant for three reasons: the first informer to give the police volume names of his associates and provide the evidence that would send dozens of them to prison to serve long sentences; the first criminal informer to strike a written deal with the Director of Public Prosecutions; the only criminal informer to serve no time for his crime in return for providing Queen's evidence. Background In 1972, Sir Robert Mark became Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. That year, the annual total of armed robberies in the Metropolitan district was 380 – partly because the culture was rife with bribe-taking, sharing in the proceeds of crime and "verballing", or fabricating evidence against suspects. Sir Robert felt compelled to remind his detectives which side of the law they were supposed to be on, he told them in his inaugural address: "A good police force is one that catches more criminals than it employs." At the centre of Sir Robert's focus was Criminal Investigation Department, and its pinnacle the Flying Squad – Ken Drury, commander of the Flying Squad and one of his inspectors, Alistair Ingram, later went to prison for corruption. Sir Robert pushed such investigation – of names such as Mehmet Arif, George Davis, Ronnie Knight, Freddie Foreman, Micky McAvoy – out to the suburban regions, who needed to employ new tactics to catch the bigger criminals they were now faced with. Bertie Smalls Derek Creighton "Bertie" Smalls was born in the East End of London and was a career criminal. Barclays On 9 February 1970 Smalls led a team of robbers from The Wembley Mob, including Mickey Green, on an insider-led raid on a branch of Barclays Bank at 144 High Road, Ilford. The gang got away with £237,736 – a record at the time. Most of the team left England via various routes – Smalls via ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe, train to Paris and then flight to Torremolinos – for the Costa del Sol, where they read the English newspapers for updates on the police search for them. After making an early breakthrough where an informant provided the names of