Part of my Crime Fiction Experts series
If TV is to be believed, murders get solved by one lone genius who never sleeps and never files a report (if only!). The reality is far more organised and Jim Smith, who ran homicide investigations across Scotland, is here to show you how.
Ask Jim what a Senior Investigating Officer is there for in the first hours of a murder inquiry and he puts it plainly: “we set about to bring order and focus to a usually chaotic event that’s had tragic outcomes.”
If you’ve not come across the term, the SIO is the senior detective in charge of a major investigation, guiding what Jim calls “a large team of specialist investigators.”
Jim joined Tayside Police as a constable in 1990 and worked up through CID to Detective Superintendent, finishing in a post that made him responsible for leading homicide investigations across Scotland. Within Police Scotland he also held portfolios that included HOLMES, the system used to run serious and complex investigations, and two emergency procedures that rely on it.
What does an SIO do first?
Once the known facts are pulled together, the SIO sets the strategic direction of the investigation, using a Policy File to address the themes Jim says are always present: family liaison, crime scene management, media, resources, intelligence, digital media, CCTV, house-to-house and briefings. With those in place, “some order starts to appear in the direction of the investigation and priorities are set accordingly.”
He’s frank that this probably wouldn’t make exciting television because it’s deliberate and measured, but “we only have one chance to get things right, so it needs to be done properly.”
What is HOLMES? The police’s electronic filing cabinet
HOLMES stands for Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. Jim explains that it grew out of the Peter Sutcliffe murders, when chances to link him to inquiries running at the same time in different forces were missed because the forces weren’t connected. HOLMES is UK-wide, so incidents can be linked and data shared, and in Jim’s view someone like Sutcliffe would now be flagged much earlier.
In his words, “In essence HOLMES is really an electronic filing cabinet, where data is held, read, assessed, and Actions raised to do things that are in line with the direction of the SIO and their Strategies and Policy Decisions.” An Action is a task, raised on the system.
How an incident room actually works
Jim’s incident room is a sequence of rooms rather than one big space with a whiteboard. The SIO has a room alongside the deputy SIO, and the HOLMES room is run by an Office Manager. The detectives on the enquiry team work from a separate room, as does the Intelligence Cell.
At an agreed time they all come together for a briefing led by the SIO, where everyone involved gives an update. For Jim, that sharing is what moves an investigation on: “No one person has all the answers, collectively as a team, the answers eventually start to become clear.”
The briefing can also be intimidating for less experienced officers and staff. “There’s many examples of people sitting with key information, but they are fearful of speaking up in case they look stupid or whatever.”
We could probably make more of this in fiction: the junior officer at the back of the room who knows something important and can’t bring themselves to say it. Jim is clear that dealing with that mindset quickly is part of the SIO’s job.
The mistake that makes him wince most in fiction is the SIO doing everything rather than setting tasks for the team, which regular readers will have heard from my experts before. Jim adds that “Scotland is known to have the best investigators out there.” As a Sussex man, I’ll let that one pass!
Why family liaison officers matter
When an inquiry was moving fast, Jim relied on experienced Family Liaison Officers to speak up, so that any decision affecting the family was properly thought through and the family was briefed. “If you lose a family in any investigation, it’s very difficult to gain their trust again, so my number one priority was always to make sure that didn’t happen.”
Casualty Bureau: when the phones won’t stop
Casualty Bureau is something most people only hear about after a disaster. Jim describes it as a way to “request and receive a vast amount of information from the public” and turn it into Actions that help identify victims and support the families affected. It runs on HOLMES, and because HOLMES is UK-wide, forces anywhere in the country can take calls through mutual aid when one force would be swamped.
The people doing it are trained over and above their day job, and the system and staff are tested so a bureau can be set up quickly when it’s needed. Jim is clear that working against the clock while staying accurate and showing empathy “does take a toll on those involved,” which is why the training covers support for them too.
Child Rescue Alert is also HOLMES-based and, thankfully, very rare. It’s considered when a child is believed to be at imminent risk of significant harm and the police have accurate details, like time and location, that the public might help with. Even then, Jim calls it “a huge step to take, given the heightened risk it might add to a missing person investigation, and the effect on the public.” Once an alert goes out, the team’s job is to triage the calls for genuinely positive lines of enquiry and get them to the SIO as quickly as possible, with the child’s safe return as the aim.
If you’re writing an abduction, Jim’s priority is that the evidence is captured properly so those responsible can be brought to justice. Time matters, but so does avoiding a procedural slip that damages the outcome. As he puts it, “Attention to detail at all times is a mantra that has followed me throughout my career, and stands the test of time, every time.”
How Scottish murder investigations differ
For Jim, the starting point in any Scottish death investigation is “proving that a crime has occurred,” which can be obvious or “frustratingly difficult to achieve.”
The terminology differs too. In Scotland the offences are murder and culpable homicide, where England has murder and manslaughter. Jim notes that families can find it hard to understand why a conviction is for culpable homicide rather than murder. If your story ends in a Scottish court, that’s worth getting right.
None of this should put you off. Jim recently finished a trilogy of Scotland-based crime novels, and some of the issues he’s raised here turned up in all three. They didn’t stop him enjoying what he calls excellent stories, and in each one the baddie was caught and brought to justice.
Jim Smith off duty
Jim started playing the bagpipes at nine and is now back playing and teaching youngsters. On the golf course, getting out of bunkers is his weak spot: “I’m remarkably inefficient at that particular skill.”
Over the years he reckons he was asked just about every question imaginable, some of them “so off the scale bizarre that I would sometimes wonder what was actually going through people’s minds at times.” He had a standard response: “Suffice to say I was always polite, and usually answered with ‘no comment’.”
If your next book has a major inquiry at its centre, in Scotland or anywhere else, and you want the incident room to ring true, get in touch. Jim and I offer one-to-one advice and manuscript reads, and you’ll find my crime-writing courses on the website.
Jim Smith joined Tayside Police in 1990 and worked through uniformed and detective roles, retiring as a Detective Superintendent with Police Scotland, where he led homicide investigations across the country. He held Police Scotland portfolios for HOLMES, Casualty Bureau and Child Rescue Alert, and was a trained events commander. He’s now one of my Crime Fiction Experts. Jim brings the detail that helps a murder inquiry hold up on the page, from the SIO’s first decisions to the way the incident room runs. You’ll find him on my website here.
Image Credit: The photograph used for this article (here) is by Chris Robert on Unsplash.
