A retired detective sergeant from England testified yesterday that he was contacted in 2005 by then Deputy Commissioner Mark Shields to provide assistance in the murder investigation of Kemar Walters and Oliver Duncan who were abducted from a Kingston plaza in 2004.

Andrew Beat, who now works with the Telecommunications Intelligence Unit of the Metropolitan Police Service at Scotland Yard, said that in January 2005 Shields gave him seven cellular telephone numbers.

The witness said he then requested data in relation to the numbers from telecoms giant Digicel which was provided by Jim Kirk on February 11 and 17 of that year.

The records are important to the prosecution’s case. Its main witness testified that on December 23, 2004 when Walters and Duncan were allegedly abducted from the Washington Plaza and killed, he made several calls to Assistant Superintendent Victor Barrett telling him that the men had been taken away by his colleagues.

The main witness had also testified in the Home Circuit Court that Barrett called him later and told him not to take the Honda CRV to the downtown Kingston offices of the Organised Crime Investigation Division, but to leave it some place private.

Barrett — who headed the Gang Intelligence Unit of which the main witness was a member — Corporal Louis Lynch and Constable Paul Edwards are on trial for the murder of the men.

The prosecution is contending that there was a common plot between Lynch and Edwards to kill the men and that Barrett covered up the crime.

Yesterday, Beat was cross-examined by Valerie Neita-Robertson (Lynch’s lawyer), Oswest Senior Smith (for Barrett) and Deborah Martin (Edwards’ attorney).

While being examined by Martin, he said that it was his colleague David Johnson who did the actual analysis of the calling data provided by Digicel. He said he made no “assessment of the quality” of the data.

Under cross-examination from Neita-Robertson, Beat said he instructed Johnson to create user-friendly version of the data. He said Johnson did not return the completed material to him.

Questioned about why the analysis only covered the late afternoon to evening of December 23, 2004, Beat said that that was the instruction given by Superintendent Dean Taylor, the lead investigator in the case.

The witness agreed with Senior Smith that he never included his training or his experience with calling data in his statement of April 3, 2012.