Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes (29 page)

It was decided I would go to the hospital to help with enquiries to find out exactly who the child was, and I remember muttering something to Lou about ‘I can’t cope with this’, but whether I said it or just thought it I don’t know. I remember seeing other Police officers there, just getting on with what had to be done, and wondering how they were unaffected, feeling angry that they were not feeling what I was. Then seconds later I would curse myself for feeling so incapable and want to pull myself together and revert to being a uniform, not a human being.

These sorts of feelings pulled me to and fro, but glad to have an excuse to leave the scene I got into my car and drove towards the town. After about a mile I pulled into a side road and stopped, and for several minutes broke down in uncontrollable tears. It would have made a bizarre spectacle had I been seen, but no one went past.

Mobile phones were becoming more affordable by this time, and I had bought one so that whenever I was at work I could still keep easily in touch with my family.

I have always tried to keep work and home separate, but on this occasion I let the rule slip.

I managed to calm myself a bit, then rang my home number. My wife answered.

‘Hello, it’s me,’ I said rather obviously.

My wife knows me better than anyone else, and she could tell in those few words from me that something was very wrong.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

‘I’ve just been to an accident and it’s horrible,’ I said.

I had been to loads of horrible accidents and she knew it. I had seen all manner of death and destruction and she realised that this must have struck a previously unaffected part of my soul.

‘Tell me what’s happened,’ she said quietly.

But then an inner voice stopped me. I couldn’t inflict this on her, and anyway what difference would it make? It would just upset her, I knew that, and she didn’t deserve to be upset by something from my work world.

‘It’s OK, I’ve got to go anyway,’ I said, bizarrely, and hung up.

I drove to the hospital, and within half an hour I was ‘recovered’, talking to the nurses about the details of the accident, about what bad luck it all was, but hey – shit happens after all.

I had managed to revert to ‘normal’, and got on with the job, just as we are expected to do.

The next day saw me back at work, back in the routine, yesterday had been and gone. Lou was on a day off so there was no opportunity to discuss the agonies I had suffered those few hours before.

Late that morning I got a call to go to the canal down at the bottom end of the town centre – apparently some kids had been messing about and one had fallen in. There was a report of some sort of disturbance, and could I take a look?

When I pulled up I could see a group of boys. They were with a couple of adults and seemed to be getting a telling off for messing about on an old pier that jutted out over the water. A
panda car had arrived ahead of me, and the Bobby who had arrived in it was walking from the group towards me. Then an ambulance arrived. I wondered if someone was being a bit over cautious, but it never hurt to be cautious with children and water.

The panda driver had a dull look on his face, and I couldn’t work out his mood.

I got out of the Rover and he spoke to me.

‘All accounted for bar one,’ he said.

‘So where’s the missing one?’

‘Still underwater – apparently he fell off the jetty, sank, floated up, threw up, then sank and hasn’t been seen since.’

‘How long ago are we talking?’ I asked.

He didn’t reply, and at that moment my attention was drawn to a woman who emerged from the terraced houses that backed onto the canal.

She had a haggard, unearthly expression on her face, and came directly towards me.

She spoke unsteadily.

‘Where is he? Where’s my son? They say he fell in. Have you got him out yet? Please don’t let him drown, he’s all I’ve got, I’ll do anything, anything, please help him.’

I was stuck for words, and my pause was enough for her to collapse into hopeless sobbing. She knew. I knew too. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t help him, I couldn’t help her. The sliding feeling I had had the previous day came back. For the second time in twenty four hours an irrecoverable and above all unfair tragedy had come about, and there was nothing I could do to reverse it or to make anyone feel better. The various ploys
of putting the kettle on, getting the neighbours round, giving some form of bullshit pep talk – all quite useless. The missing boy was the only son of older parents, and the father was working away on a Middle Eastern oilfield. To compound it from my point of view, the lad was the same age as my son.

Two days, two children, each the same age as one of mine. It brought the parallels to my own family too close, and broke through the barrier I had always strived so hard to keep in place, where the job never interfered with my home life.

An agonisingly long time later a Police diving team arrived, and shortly afterwards one of them emerged from the water, carrying a small corpse in a makeshift shroud, in a scene of almost Dickensian pathos. By now I was emotionally a bit numb, and finished off whatever it was I had to do, and went home.

The following day I was given the task of getting a statement from one of the other boys who had been with the group when his friend had fallen into the water. The house was very odd, the curtains all drawn, a few dim lights on, and everywhere there were religious symbols and pictures – cheery stuff like Christ nailed to the cross, and a couple of weeping Madonnas here and there. Just what a seven year old needs to recover from the death of a friend. The atmosphere didn’t do anything for me, so what it did to the boy, goodness knows. Half way through the very sombre process, the lad looked at me and asked,‘He will have gone to Heaven, won’t he?’

A wave of anger swept over me – how on earth was I to know?

Typical member of the public, anything you want to know,
ask a Policeman, he’ll tell you. Everything from the late night chemist to eternal life, ring your local nick for a definitive reply. When I had joined the Police I expected to be asked the time, but not to be consulted on matters concerning the hereafter.

But this boy was well on the way to being a religious weirdo, so it seemed unfair to compound it by saying ‘don’t ask me, ask your vicar’, or ‘no he’s probably burning in hell.’

I settled for a reassurance that his late friend was beyond any doubt right up there with a bunch of cheery cherubs as we spoke, and have never viewed religion in quite the same light since.

Life goes on.

Life on traffic, or what passed for it went on with Lou as my partner, and he probably saved my sanity in many ways. On paper we were complete opposites – me from a ‘Middle England’ sort of background, him from a very rough inner city. Most of my associates from school went to University and became lawyers, accountants and teachers. Most of his associates from school had become convicts or murder victims; sometimes both. If anyone had an excuse for becoming a criminal and bleating about how society had let him down, it was Lou. But instead he set an extreme example of getting off one’s backside and making progress through sheer hard work. It was for this reason that he despised criminals, and also held the local benefits culture in such low esteem.

We took an instant liking to each other, and over a period of about 18 months we shared some of the most memorable experiences of our careers.

Lou was initially put with me as a secondee, his advanced course was in the offing but he spent some time in my company
to see what he was letting himself in for. Everything he did he did enthusiastically, with a single-minded determination which was to see him achieve much, albeit at the cost of an acrimonious divorce.

His lust for success was not borne out of arrogance, and I liked him enormously, but when he left to do his advanced course I could feel a practical joke coming on, as I felt he had to be brought down maybe a peg or two. For his own good, of course.

I have always been a hoarder of things, and hidden in the back of my briefcase was the letter I had been sent telling me how wonderful my move of division was – the ‘put up and shut up’ letter for the now long-forgotten four divisions.

At this time there was a shortage of volunteers to go into the local Community Department, in particular to police the roughest estates in the town. These posts were a hiding to nothing, and involved little more than being the focus of a thousand unemployed voices who all wanted the Police to sort out their problems, most of which were of their own making but they were too idle to acknowledge or deal with. They were ultimately filled with probationers, seconded there for a few months at a time under the guise of ‘development and training’.

I drafted an updated version of the letter, the first page again being a load of flattering twaddle about ‘career opportunities’ and ‘areas that may not be an obvious career choice’. I had heard enough ‘management-speak’ over the years to imitate it convincingly.

The second page gave the brusque news of a move to the most undesirable foot beat on the most undesirable estate, and then wished success in offhand, cheery terms.

I persuaded the typists to write it up on proper headed notepaper, correctly spaced, and then signed it with a passable approximation of the newly arrived Chief Inspector’s signature.

I put the completed item in a large envelope marked ‘Confidential’, and added it to the pile of paperwork that awaited Lou on his inevitably successful return.

I primed a few selected people of the plan – the patrol Sergeant, some older members of the block, and the Inspector, who was within weeks of his retirement and was happy to go along with almost anything.

On his return, justifiably very proud of his new advanced driving qualification, Lou took his seat in the parade room. As the Sergeant gave out the duties and other matters, I sat a little way off to one side and waited. It didn’t take long. I heard the envelope being torn open, and a few moments later the papers were slammed down on the desk.

The Sergeant looked at him enquiringly.

‘Problems?’ he asked.

‘I’m not having that,’ said Lou, flushed and visibly shaken.

‘What’s that? said the Sergeant.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘They spend thousands of pounds training me to drive, and then send me this! They’re putting me on Community Beat! They can’t, they just can’t.’

‘I knew there were some moves afoot, but I didn’t know you’d been picked,’ said the Sergeant. ‘When do you start?’

Lou shuffled through the papers again and looked up in horror.

‘Today! They’re putting me on it today!’

The Sergeant could have stopped it there, but it was going
well. He added a little more fuel to the fire. ‘Well, so much for your traffic career. Sorry I can’t help. I’ll leave it with you.’

With that he left the room.

Thinking that this spared others from becoming pressed men, there was considerable interest from the rest of the block. Some of it was genuine concern, some feigned to steer him in the right direction.

Eventually Lou was persuaded not to go straight in to the Chief Inspector and kill him, but to take the matter up with the Inspector instead.

He headed along the corridor and banged on the door.

‘Come in,’ came a relaxed and carefree call.

Lou went in, ready for battle. Unseen by him, the rest of the block followed at a distance and gathered silently in the corridor outside.

Lou threw the papers on the desk. ‘Did you know about this?’ he shouted.

‘Yes,’ came the honest reply ‘I did.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you wait for me to find out today?’

‘I thought it best to leave you to concentrate on your course and get a good result there, rather than give you unwelcome news half way through it which might distract you,’ he lied calmly.

Lou was incensed. He had well and truly ‘lost it’, his dreams and career plans apparently shattered. He fired his full arsenal.

‘The only reason you didn’t tell me earlier was because you’re a spineless bastard and you hadn’t got the balls to tell me to my face,’ he roared.

This was dangerous territory, and he was on the thinnest of ice, even if the move were true.

‘That’s how you feel is it?’ said the Inspector.

‘Yes I do,’ said Lou, resolute. He had reached a point of no return.

For a moment there was a tense silence, and then the Inspector said: ‘You’d better have this then.’

He handed over a very small envelope.

Lou had been expecting a long, loud, stand-up shouting match, so the envelope caught him unprepared. With some difficulty he tore it open. The contents took his legs from beneath him. Inside was a small piece of paper, on which was written “I bet that got you going, you wanker”.

It was unmistakeably in my handwriting.

He sat back on his chair, deflated and horrified at what he had done, how he had reacted, and most of all at the fact he had been taken in hook, line and sinker. He emerged into the corridor to find an uproar of laughter from the assembled block, now all suitably briefed. To be fair he took it very well in the end, and didn’t hit me very hard at all, everything considered.

We got our equipment from the office and I threw him some keys.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and bag a few peasants.’

His revenge was less subtle, but sustained. The cars were equipped with the sort of extras that befitted their so-called ‘executive’ status, and this included heated seats and a cigarette lighter in a socket. Lou’s revenge was to wait until I was out of
the car talking to one of our ‘clients’ while he did the usual checks on the radio. When I got back to the car I put it in gear and drove off, releasing the handbrake as part of the process. At this point I discovered that he had spent the last few minutes applying the hot end of the cigarette lighter to the metal button on the handbrake lever, resulting in an audible hiss and one very sore thumb for me.

The trouble was that next time I returned to the car after another stop-check, he just looked at me impassively. I refused to release the handbrake, naturally fearing more burnt flesh. Eventually he said ‘don’t be such a poof – joke’s over’, and released the brake himself. Reassured he had had his revenge, I lowered my guard, and at the next stop I got burnt again. For the next six months I suffered an endless succession of blisters on my thumb, interspersed with long pauses before we set off after any occasion where I had had to get out of the car, even for a few moments.