The Veteran

For Sandy,
who somehow still manages to put up with me

TUESDAY

IT WAS THE OWNER OF THE SMALL CONVENIENCE STORE
on the corner who saw it all. At least, he said he did.

He was inside the shop, but near the front window, rearranging his wares for better display, when he looked up and saw the man across the street. The man was quite unremarkable and the shopkeeper would have looked away but for the limp. He would testify later that there was no-one else on the street.

The day was hot beneath a skim of grey cloud, the atmosphere close and muggy. The hysterically named Paradise Way was as bleak and shabby as ever, a shopping parade in the heart of one of those graffiti-daubed, exhausted, crime-destroyed housing estates that deface the landscape between Leyton, Edmonton, Dalston and Tottenham.

When it was opened thirty years earlier with a grandiose civic ceremony, the Meadowdene Grove estate was hailed as a new style of low-budget council housing for working people.

The name alone should have given the game away. It was not a meadow, it was not a dene and it had not seen a grove since the Middle Ages. It was, in fact, a grey poured-concrete gulag commissioned by a borough council that flew the red flag of world communism above the town hall and designed by architects who, for themselves, preferred honeysuckle-twined cottages in the country.

Meadowdene Grove then went downhill faster than the Tour de France coming off the Pyrenees. By 1996 the warren of passages, underpasses and alleys that linked the grim residential blocks were crusted with filth, slick with urine and came alive only at night when gangs of local youths, unemployed and unemployable, roamed their manor to ‘score’ from the area drug peddlers.

Working-class pensioners, fiercely respectable, trying to cling to the old moralities, the comforting certainties of their own younger days, lived behind barricaded doors, fearful of the wolf packs outside.

Between the blocks, each seven storeys high, each door fronted by an open passage with greasy stairwells at either end, were patches of what had been green grass. A few rusted and abandoned cars, stripped to shells, crouched beside the inner roads that traversed the squares designed for public recreation and from which narrow passages ran through to Paradise Way.

The main shopping parade had once bustled with retail commerce, but most of the shops had finally closed, their proprietors exhausted by the struggle against pilfering, shoplifting, wilful damage, broken windows and racist abuse. More than half were now boarded up with defaced ply board or steel shutters and the few that stayed open for business tried to protect themselves with wire-mesh defences.

On the corner, Mr. Veejay Patel soldiered on. As a ten-year-old he had come with his parents from Uganda, expelled by the brutalities of Idi Amin. Britain had taken them in. He was grateful. He still loved his adopted country, abided by the law, tried to be a good citizen, puzzled by the steady degeneration of standards that characterized the Nineties.

There are parts of what London’s Metropolitan Police call the north-east quadrant where a stranger is unwise to roam. The limping man was a stranger.

He was barely fifteen yards from the corner when two men emerged from a concrete passage between two boarded shops and confronted him. Mr. Patel froze and watched. They were different, but equally menacing. He knew both types well. One of them was beefy, with a shaven skull and porcine face. Even at a distance of thirty yards, Mr. Patel could see a ring glint in the left ear lobe. He wore baggy jeans and a soiled tee shirt. A beer belly sagged over his broad leather belt. He took up station foursquare in front of the stranger, who had no choice but to stop.

The second man was slimmer, in pale drill trousers and a grey zip-fronted windcheater. Lank, greasy hair fell just below his ears. He slipped behind the victim and waited there.

The beefy one raised his right fist, close to the face of the man to be mugged. Mr. Patel saw the glint of metal on the fist.

He could not hear what was said, but he saw the beefy one’s mouth move as he spoke to the stranger. All the victim had to do was hand over his wallet, watch and any other valuables he might be carrying. With luck the muggers would grab the loot and run; the victim might survive unscathed.

He was probably silly to do what he did. He was outnumbered and outweighed. To judge from his grey hair, he was middle-aged and clearly his limp indicated he was not fully mobile. But he fought back.

Mr. Patel saw his right hand come up from his side, moving extremely fast. He seemed to sway slightly at the hips, turning his shoulders to add force to the blow. The beefy one took it full on the nose. What had been a silent mime was pierced by a shout of pain that Mr. Patel could hear even through his plate-glass window.

The beefy one staggered back, throwing both hands to his face, and Mr. Patel saw the gleam of blood between the fingers.

When he made his statement, the shopkeeper had to pause to recall clearly and in sequence what happened next. Lank Hair swept in a hard punch to the kidneys from behind, then kicked the older man in the back of his good knee. It was enough. The victim went down to the pavement.

On the Meadowdene Grove estate footwear was either trainers (for speed) or heavy boots (for kicking). Both these assailants had boots. The man on the pavement had doubled himself into the embryo position to protect his vitals, but there were four boots going for him and the beefy one, still clutching his nose one-handed, went for the head.

There were, the shopkeeper later estimated, about twenty kicks, maybe more, until the victim had ceased to twist and turn. Lank Hair bent over him, flicked open his jacket and went for the inside pocket.

Mr. Patel saw the hand come back out, a wallet held between forefinger and thumb. Then both men straightened, turned and ran back up the concrete passage to disappear in the warren of alleys that riddled the estate. Before they went, the beefy one tore his tee shirt out of his jeans and held it up to staunch the blood pouring from his nose.

The shopkeeper watched them disappear, then scuttled back behind his counter where he kept the telephone. He dialled 999 and gave his name and address to the operator, who insisted she could not summon any emergency service until she knew who was calling. When the formalities had been accomplished, Mr. Patel asked for police and an ambulance. Then he returned to the front window.

The man still lay on the opposite pavement, quite inert.

No-one tended him. This was not the sort of street where people wanted to get involved. Mr. Patel would have crossed the road to do what he could, but he knew nothing of first aid, feared to move the man and make a mistake, feared for his shop and that the muggers might come back. So he waited.

The squad car was first and it took less than four minutes. The two police constables inside had by chance been less than half a mile away on the Upper High Road when they took the call. Both knew the estate and the location of Paradise Way.

Both had been on duty during the spring race riots.

As the car screeched to a halt and the wail of the siren died away, one of the PCs emerged from the passenger door and ran over to the figure on the pavement. The other remained at the wheel and used the radio to confirm that an ambulance was on its way. Mr. Patel could see both officers looking across the street towards his shop, checking the address source of the 999 call, but neither of them came over to him. That could wait.

The officers’ gaze turned away as the ambulance, lights flashing and siren wailing, came round the corner. A few gawpers had congregated up and down Paradise Way, but they kept their distance. The police would later try to interview them for witnesses, but merely waste their time. On Meadowdene Grove you watched for fun, but you did not help the fuzz.

There were two paramedics, skilled and experienced men.

For them, as for the police, procedures are procedures and must be followed to the letter.

“It looks like a mugging and a kicking,” the constable kneeling beside the body remarked. “Possibly a bad one.” The paramedics nodded and went to work. There was no blood flow to staunch, so the first priority was to stabilize the neck. Victims of crash and beating trauma can be finished off there and then if the cervical vertebrae have already been damaged and are then abused even more by unskilled manhandling.

The two men quickly fitted a semi-rigid collar to prevent the neck from wobbling side to side.

The next procedure was to get him onto a spine board to immobilize both neck and back. That was done right there on the pavement. Only then could the man be lifted onto a gurney and hefted into the back of the ambulance. The paramedics were quick and efficient. Within five minutes of swerving into the kerbside they were ready to roll.

“I’ll have to come with you,” said the constable on the pavement, “he might make a statement.” Professionals in the emergency services know pretty exactly who does what and why. It saves time. The paramedic nodded.

The ambulance was his territory and he was in charge, but the police had a job to do, too. He already knew that the chances of the injured man uttering a word were out of the window, so he just muttered, “Stay out of the way. This is a bad one.” The constable clambered aboard and sat well up forward, close to the bulkhead of the driving compartment; the driver slammed the doors and ran to his cab. His partner bent over the man on the gurney. Two seconds later the ambulance was racing down Paradise Way, past the staring onlookers, its high-pitched siren scream clearing a path as it swerved into the traffic-choked High Road. The constable clung on and watched another pro at work.

Airway, always clear the airway. A blockage of blood and mucus in the windpipe can choke a patient to death almost as fast as a bullet. The paramedic used a suction pump which yielded a small amount of mucus, the sort a smoker might contain, but little blood. Air passage free, breathing shallow but sufficient to sustain life. To be safe, the paramedic clamped an oxygen mask with attached reservoir bag over the swollen face. It was the rapid swelling that worried him; he knew the sign too well.

Pulse check: regular but already too fast, another possible sign of cerebral trauma. The Glasgow Coma Scale measures the alertness of the human brain on a scale of fifteen. Fully awake and completely alert gives fifteen over fifteen. A test showed the patient was eleven over fifteen and falling. A figure of three is deep coma, under that—death.

“Royal London,” he shouted over the wail of the siren. “A and E plus neuro.” The driver nodded, went through a major crossroads against the lights as cars and trucks pulled over, then changed tack towards Whitechapel. The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel Road has an advanced neurosurgical unit; one nearer to the ambulance’s position did not, but if ‘neuro’ were needed, the extra few driving minutes would pay dividends.

The driver was talking to his Control, giving his exact position in south Tottenham, estimated time of arrival at the Royal London, and asking for a complete Accident and Emergency trauma team to be ready and waiting.

The paramedic in the back was right. One of the possible call signs of major head injury, particularly after an assault, is that the soft tissue of the entire face and head swells rapidly to a great, bloated, unrecognizable gargoyle. The face of the injured man had begun swelling back on the pavement; by the time the ambulance swerved into the A and E bay at the Royal, the face was like a football. The doors crashed open; the gurney was lowered into the care of the trauma team. There were three doctors under the command of the consultant, Mr. Carl Bateman; these were an anaesthetist and two juniors; there were also three nurses.

They enveloped the gurney, lifted the patient (still on the spine board) onto one of their own trolleys and wheeled him away. “I’ll need my spine board back,” shouted the paramedic, but no-one heard him. He would have to collect it the next day. The policeman scrambled out.

“Where do I go?” he asked.

“In there,” said the paramedic, “but don’t get in the way.” The constable nodded obediently and trotted through the swing doors, still hoping for a statement. The only one he got was from a senior staff nurse.

“Sit there,” she said, “and don’t get in the way.” Within half an hour Paradise Way was a buzz of activity. A uniformed inspector from the Dover Street police station, known simply in those parts as the Dover ‘nick’, had taken charge. The street up and down from the attack site had been cordoned off with striped tape. A dozen officers were quartering the area, concentrating on the shops along the parade and the six floors of flats that stood above them. The apartments across the road from the scene of the crime were of particular interest, for anyone looking out and down might well have seen it all. But it was uphill work. Reactions varied from genuine apology through bovine denial to outright abuse. The door-knocking went on.

The inspector had quickly called for a fellow-rank officer from CID, for it was clear this was a job for detectives. At the Dover nick D I Jack Burns had been summoned from a half-drunk and much-treasured cup of tea in the canteen to the presence of Detective Superintendent Alan Parfitt to be told to take over the Paradise Way mugging. He protested that he was handling a chain of car thefts, a hit-and-run and was due in court the next morning. To no avail. Shortage of staff, he was told. August, bloody August, he growled as he left.