Police 'confident' of catching Birmingham gun massacre culprits

The Chief Constable of West Midlands Police has told The Rockall Times he is confident the gunmen who killed two teenage girls in Aston last Thursday will be caught, despite the wall of silence confronting officers.

Charlene Ellis, 18, and her 17-year-old cousin Latisha Shakespear died in a deadly hail of lead outside a party. Although there has been widespread revulsion at the atrocity, police admit they have an uphill task without the co-operation of the communities closest to those carrying out late-night acts of random violence.

"They look after their own," admitted one exasperated officer. "It's like the Mafia's code of omertà. We pulled in Terry Venables and grilled him for three hours but he refused to point the finger. He said he had no idea where Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer were last Thursday, and wouldn't tell us if he did. It's the same story with Chelsea's Claudio Ranieri. According to him, Jody Morris and John Terry were at bible class at the time of the shooting."

Police are, however, confident of ultimate success. "An £85,000 reward for information might prove too tempting for a team-mate who is plagued by his conscience or needs the cash to pay his coke dealer," one grim-faced TV pundit told us. "Either way, someone will talk."

Experts have, nevertheless, predicted that even the arrest of the culprits with bloodstained Uzis stuffed down their trousers is no guarantee of a successful conviction. "Professional footballers are classed as exempt from the normal process of law," confirmed a High Court judge, "since they provide a vital role-model for the nation's youth and are key to the success of the replica kit export market. In this case, the worse they could expect is 100 hours community service."

Meanwhile, home secretary David Blunkett has reacted to the massacre outrage by announcing the fast-track introduction of compulsory identity cards to every man, woman and child in the UK and up to 1,000 years in prison for anyone who merely shakes hands with someone who once owned an a replica air rifle. "I intend to fight gun crime in the only way I know," he intoned. "And that's by microchipping every individual in the country and deporting all Jamaicans while I run around like a headless chicken and make pronouncements on the need for rigorous emergency legislation to fight this terrorist threat and defend our democracy from those who would kill our children and rape our way of life in an unlit side alley behind the industrial estate," he added to thunderous applause and vigorous jerking of knees from the assembled and tearful tabloid hacks.