We often know who did it but people are too scared to talk
Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hough led the team that identified Gun No.6.
He says: “We started to unpick the pattern. We realised that guns were being recirculated. What I then did is look at other incidents and the firearms discharged there, and where else they had been fired.
“We followed the trail and looked at 30 different shootings and developed a chart of 10 guns. One stood out – Gun No.6.”
DCI Hough admits that gun-related crime is frustrating to investigate. He adds: “You’ve got a frightened community that don’t want to talk.
“Quite often you know who is responsible but then you have to convert that into evidence that a jury can hear. No one who has ever fired Gun No.6 has talked or been identified.
“They wrap [the weapons] up in socks, put them in plastic bags, put them in a garden or a graveyard or a country hedge just on the outskirts of town.
“I suspect Gun No.6 has been chucked away in a canal or dropped in a river.” DCI Hough