Police find 'contract killer's kit' in lock-up garages

A haul of guns and silencers, described by the police as a "contract killer's kit", has been seized in a raid by Scotland Yard.

With the arsenal of weapons discovered in lock-up garages in west London were a high-powered motorcycle, balaclavas, handcuffs and boiler suits. The Metropolitan Police's SO7 serious and organised crime group believes the cache of firearms was destined for use by a hitman and might have already been used in murders. Officers believe the motorcycle could have been used for a "drive-by" shooting.

In the past few years criminals have been increasingly prepared to resort to murder: the number of contract killings and violent kidnappings has risen sharply.

In the police raid on Wednesday, made after a tip-off, officers discovered a Beretta 9mm automatic pistol, a Walther PPK with silencer, an Ingram sub-machine pistol with silencer, a Colt.25 pistol and about 100 rounds of ammunition. The Ingram sub- machine pistol is capable of firing 1,000 rounds a minute and is worth £2,000, police say.

Ballistic testing is under way to find out if the weapons have been used in shootings.

Other items seized from the garages in Hillingdon included a 600cc Honda motorcycle stolen last year, handcuffs, at least three balaclavas, ski-masks, two black boiler suits, a hammer and canvas bags.

A police spokesman would only say that the raid followed a tip-off and that additional intelligence indicated that the weapons were intended for use by a hired killer or killers.

Detective Superintendent Mark Shields, who is leading the inquiry, described the haul as "a contract killer's kit". He said: "Everything there has all the hallmarks of a contract killer, someone who wants to do harm to someone else. Such high-velocity weapons can only be used for one thing, to kill people."

Det Supt Shields continued: "The seizure was part of an ongoing intelligence-led operation on organised crime in London in which we searched a number of properties on that day and found an amount of weapons we would describe as a significant find."

The Metropolitan Police believes that about 20 contract killers are operating in the south-east of England.

The professional contact killers used by big-league criminals charge about £20,000 a job. Their ranks are supplemented by part-time killers whose main source of income is from violent crimes such as robbery. These part-timers would get about £10,000 for a killing. At the bottom end of the scale are the murderers who work for drug gangs, often selling crack cocaine. They can be paid as little as £200 to shoot a rival.

Police specialists have drawn up four main categories of "hits": disputes over the payments of debts or financial dealings; disputes over drugs; domestic arguments between former lovers; and fighting between rival organised crime groups.

Victims of unsolved hits

David Roads, an underworld armourer, was shot twice in the head in an alley in Kingston-upon-Thames, south-west London, in April last year.

Alan Decabral, the key prosecution witness in the Kenneth Noye murder trial, was killed six months later, in October 2000, with a single shot to the head as he parked outside a Halfords store at Ashford, Kent.

In May last year two Turkish men were murdered as they drove through east London. Hasan Mamali, 23, was shot in the back of the head and Sama Mustafa, 26, was hit in the back, chest and skull as he tried to run away.

Leonard Naylor, 46, a convicted drug dealer, was shot dead by a hit man wearing a balaclava on the drive of his home in the village of Istead Rise, near Gravesend, Kent, in April 2001.

The badly burnt bodies of George Price, 34, and his friend, Mark Thompson, 30, were found face down in a field in Ince Blundell, near Crosby, Merseyside, in April 2001. Both men had been stabbed and slashed with a knife and shot through the head.

Jonny Bristow, a 39-year- old builder from Chatham, Kent, was killed by a shot to the head in August 2000.His body was dumped in the Medway near the north Kent coast.

Solly Nahome, 48, a Hatton Garden jeweller and a money launderer for the notorious Adams family, was shot dead outside his home in Finchley, north London, in November 1998 by a gunman who fled on a motorcycle.