I Am Gold

by Bill James

  There is an alarm button behind the main counter in case of trouble. It links to the police station. But I had been arranging clothes on one of the racks and could not get to it. I thought Sparks must have guessed there’d be an alarm somewhere, which was why he wanted us all in the middle of the shop where he could watch us. I was scared to make a move towards the button and, in any case, my legs felt too weak to take me there. For a couple of minutes I had to hold on to the clothes display stand for support.

  Mrs Hyde was behind the counter near the Local History Artefacts display and not far from the button and I tried to signal to her with my eyes that she should get to it and press it. But she was not looking at me, she was looking only at the man with the gun. And after a couple of moments she came out from behind the counter and joined the other two in the middle of the shop. I decided after a little while that my legs would do it and I also went into the middle of the room.

  Sparks told us to sit on the floor. He stood behind us with the gun held up across his chest. He could look out over us through the shop window to the street. He seemed to think people would come in pursuit. His breathing was noisy and fast. I could see some of the street from where I sat but there didn’t seem to be any movement out there. The man customer spoke to him – asked him what had happened, what it was all about.

  Sparks sounded in a rage when he answered. I thought the accent sounded like the Midlands or Northern. He said it was about him getting away from trouble, ‘very big trouble’. I recall those words –’very big trouble’. The male customer didn’t say anything more for a few minutes. (I now know him to be Thomas Ure.) He seemed to realize that if he kept on asking questions Sparks might get more ratty and go wild with the gun. I had an idea that what had happened had something to do with that gun. It was not a fake gun. When he said it was loaded I thought he meant it was still loaded although some shots had been fired from it. He seemed to believe we could tell what had happened earlier with the gun and might think all his ammunition was gone. I wondered if what had happened was so big and terrible that it took up nearly all his mind, and it was so dominant in his thinking that he assumed everyone else knew about it, too. Of course, that would be crazy. But he might be crazy, and crazy with a pistol.

  Thomas Ure asked what very big trouble he meant, and said we might be able to help. He said he was sure everyone here would agree with that. I said, ‘Certainly.’ And Mrs Hyde said, ‘Oh, yes.’ Veronica Susan Cleaver didn’t say anything. She was crying and most probably in shock. All Sparks said with more swearing was yes we were a help, by being hostages. He said nobody would fire into this shop while they knew he had prisoners in case of hitting them, so we’d better not try anything because we were a weapon, just as the gun was a weapon. The one weapon, his gun, would make sure the other weapon, us, didn’t try anything. What he said was ‘any fucking thing’ but I have cut out most of the swearing. That’s how some people talk when they are tense and scared and desperate – they think the swearing makes them sound hard and not easy to beat.

  Then he asked if there was a back door to the shop. I didn’t know why he asked this – whether he thought he could get out that way and disappear, or whether he feared he could be attacked from that direction. I said yes there was a back door on to a service lane. I told him I had a key to the door, of course. I hoped he would decide to get out and leave us. I wanted to make it easy for him to go.

  But just then we heard cars, a number of cars, driven very fast outside. I could see some of the street through the shop window. Most of the cars and vans were marked police vehicles, and the unmarked ones might have been police, also. I could hear other vehicles at the rear of the shop. Sparks saw and heard, too. ‘They’re here,’ he said. ‘All round me.’ I wondered then whether Mrs Hyde had been able to press the alarm, after all. But I felt pretty sure she hadn’t. There probably would not have been as big a response as this if she had. It appeared that this flock of cars and vans had come because of whatever it was had happened earlier. Sparks had been chased here. I saw a big caravan towed into place in front of the shop.

  About a quarter of an hour after this the telephone rang. It was on a shelf near the cash desk. Sparks moved backwards with the pistol pointing at us until he reached the shelf and picked up the receiver. I could tell it must be the police speaking to him. He would not tell them his real name but said to call him John.

  The statement broke off here and the interviewing officer had inserted an explanatory note. ‘The conversations between Sparks (‘John’) and the negotiator are as recorded and included in the siege log, and Mrs South’s version of the Sparks side of these exchanges has been omitted as superfluous, resuming on the final sentences.’

  Towards evening I saw a man emerge suddenly from the police caravan and begin to run up the road towards the shop. He wore civilian clothes. Veronica Cleaver was also looking from the window and when she saw the man she gave a little scream of shock. She said, ‘Oh, God, it’s Gary. Oh, God, sorry, sorry, sorry, Gary.’ They are the sort of words that stick in the mind. I didn’t understand them properly. What did she mean – ‘sorry’? She did not sound well, but that could have been just the trauma and fear. Very shortly afterwards another man, but in police uniform, came from the caravan and began to pursue the civilian. He ran much faster than ‘Gary’ and about halfway to the shop caught up with him and threw himself on Gary from behind, the way a buzzard might come down on a rabbit. They both lay there still. It looked to me as though Gary had been knocked unconscious when he hit the ground with the policeman’s weight on top of him.

  The policeman’s uniform didn’t look like an ordinary policeman’s, but of superior material. I learned later that this was Assistant Chief Constable Iles. It was unusual to see an Assistant Chief Constable chasing someone in the street and flinging himself on to him – Gary James Dodd, as I later discovered. In the shop, Sparks had seen these two men running towards us and he seemed to get very agitated and worried. He was shouting over the telephone about these men being a decoy. He kept on about that.

  He yelled at Veronica Cleaver, ‘Gary? Who’s Gary? Is he police?’ He seemed to think that what had happened in the street was to get his attention while other people attacked from the back of the shop. He turned to look that way, swung his gun that way, the phone in his other hand. I believe it was the first time he had pointed the gun away from us. He was standing near Mrs Hyde and she suddenly stood up and hit him on the head with something, a real swinging blow. At first I couldn’t see what it was she used.

  The blow made him stagger and she hit him again. He dropped the phone and half steadied himself. But Thomas Ure and I both stood and tried to grapple with him and get the gun out of his hand. We had to fight him. Mrs Hyde hit again with the thing in her hand, this time to his jaw. I saw she had picked up from the Local History Artefacts display an old-style, plainclothes officer’s pocket truncheon made of lead with a heavy rounded tip and a wrist strap. It was thought to have been used to deal with a street riot during a factory strike in 1901. I felt Sparks go weak but he would not let go of the gun. We still tried to get it free and Veronica Cleaver joined us now.

  We must have struggled with him for more than a minute. Mrs Hyde kept striking him and as he tried to twist away from us the gun went off, the sound muffled by clothes, his and ours, but very clearly a gunshot. All strength went from his body and he slid out of our grips towards the ground. Mrs Hyde hit him once more as he fell, in the genitals this time, but I think he was already dead. She didn’t seem to believe this, though, and moved around so she could get at his head again.

  When Mrs Hyde stood up she had accidentally pushed one of the full, wheeled display stands and it rolled forward and into the front window bringing it down. Very shortly after this, and the struggle and gunshot, Assistant Chief Constable Iles and other police arrived from the front and back of the shop. Veronica Cleaver ran from the front door towards Gary James Dodd who still lay unmoving on the ground. Coming i
n the other direction – that is, towards us – I saw four people, a male and a female police officer, a man and a young girl. I now know the man to be Mr Mansel Shale and the girl, his daughter, Matilda. Mr Shale’s name is, of course, well known in the city owing to the type of business he runs, but I wasn’t certain I had ever seen him before. Matilda was crying. She held Shale’s arm as they walked. He himself looked very distressed, though at the time I did not know why. As well as his name being familiar, I thought I recognized Mr Shale as someone who had recently donated some Pre-Raphaelite posters, but, as I’ve said, I wasn’t certain.

  They passed Veronica Cleaver and Dodd. I saw a crowd of watchers behind police tape near what seemed to be the caravan incident room. Another man ducked under the tape and ran to talk to Veronica Cleaver. She seemed embarrassed or angry with him. Two paramedics came with a stretcher and took Dodd away to an ambulance. Veronica Cleaver went with them. The other man returned to the crowd and I lost sight of him.

  Shale and the policeman entered the shop. Shale’s daughter waited outside in the street with the woman police sergeant. I think Shale had been brought there to see whether he could identify the gunman – Lance Stanley Sparks. He still lay where he had fallen, face down. Assistant Chief Constable Iles bent and took a handful of Sparks’ hair so as to pull his head back and make his face visible. Shale bent forward and looked at it very briefly. He said: ‘No.’ Assistant Chief Constable Iles asked him whether he was sure and Shale straightened up and turned away. He said he’d never seen the man before.

  2. Mrs Maureen Hyde, aged seventy-nine, of 23A Frame Street, widow.

  Luckily I had read my horoscope for the day before going to the shop. I don’t remember all the words exactly but I know it warned me of a possibly unexpected ‘and not necessarily or entirely pleasant’ interruption to the normal course of things. Therefore, I tried to remain close to the Local History Artefacts tray where a small truncheon made of lead was on show as well as a knuckle-duster, both of which were apparently used by the police during a riot at the beginning of last century. We have had trouble in the shop previously from openly defiant thieves and rough, misbehaving child gangs, and I wondered if the horoscope referred to such intrusions. I thought it would be irresponsible if I did not prepare myself to deal with troublemakers, because, this being a charity shop, its good work for unfortunates should be protected in every available fashion.

  I felt that since the truncheon and knuckle-duster had not been bought yet and were therefore present, they had, as it were, been allocated by Destiny, as foreseen in the horoscope, to deal with the interruption mentioned. I had decided that if either the truncheon or the knuckle-duster became bloodied during some incident, they could easily be washed under a cold tap and then returned to the Local History Artefacts tray for sale utterly unstained. During the 1950s I was in the Women’s Royal Army Corps and we learned some unarmed combat, such as the weak spots on an attacker’s body if male, particularly the temple and genitals. I met my future husband in the army.

  When the man I now know to be L.S. Sparks came into the shop, with the woman I now know to be Veronica Susan Cleaver, I felt no fear because I saw at once that his arrival had been foreseen in my horoscope and I realized I would be able to deal with him, owing to mental preparedness and physical preparedness also – that is, my nearness to the truncheon and knuckle-duster. He was shouting and screaming the fuck, bastards and cunt words, as would be expected in this type of crisis, and I could tell it was all based on weakness.

  These are words that do have meanings, but they are not used for their meanings in this type of occasion, only to frighten and abuse. I had the idea even then that the gunman had done something terrible before reaching the shop and he knew he would soon be called to account for it. Of course, I know now what he had done. I thought of the Bible verse, ‘Be sure your sins will find you out’, and I picked up the truncheon and hid it in the sleeve of my woolly, with the strap around my wrist. I did not take the knuckle-duster because it would have been too obvious, and I was not trained in the WRAC to give upper-cuts, which is the best punch with a knuckle-duster.

  It was important for me to keep the truncheon hidden because he told us all to get into the middle of the shop away from the counters. I think he realized there might be an alarm bell there. In fact, there was an alarm bell there, but I thought it best not to go for it because he would have noticed and maybe shot at me, so that having the truncheon would have been useless. I also thought that if I pressed the bell the police station might send someone around when they could, but it would be only one or two officers and unarmed. That’s what usually happened when we have rung the bell previously. This would be no good against a man with a gun or guns. Occasionally, they didn’t even have anyone at all to send around at once and we would have to wait as much as an hour.

  Although Mrs South was trying to give me an eye signal to press the bell, I ignored her and considered it best to hang on until Sparks was distracted somehow and then really wham him with the cosh. In the WRAC we were trained to sum up all aspects of a situation and then arrive at a plan, with the objective very clear. Here the objective would be to flatten Sparks as soon as there was a chance. So I went out from behind the counter and joined the others in the middle of the shop. Veronica Cleaver looked very, very bad.

  This time, Harpur skimmed the central parts of Maureen Hyde’s statement. He knew they chimed pretty well with Beatrice South’s version, except that Mrs Hyde claimed to have been going for Sparks’ temple, not his jaw, with one of her hits, and said that launching the display stand against the window had been deliberate, not an accident. Her army training had told her to maximize chaos in this kind of set-to, so as to further confuse the enemy, ‘like the fireships at Cadiz,’ she said. In none of the statements –South’s, Hyde’s, Ure’s or Cleaver’s – was it clear how Sparks’ pistol had gone off. Nobody mentioned getting a finger on the trigger. Would Mrs Hyde have been trained to go for the enemy’s gun, as well as to clobber him thoroughly at the temple and balls? Her right hand would probably have been wielding the cosh. And her left? She didn’t mention it. And none of the others spoke of getting a hand on the gun, either. So, did Sparks do himself, maybe unintentionally in the struggle, maybe not? At the end of her statement, Mrs Hyde described Veronica Cleaver’s rush towards Dodd, still prone on the ground.

  This seemed to show true worry and love for him. She had cried out strangely when he first began running from the police caravan, speaking his name, Gary, saying she was sorry. She said it several times. I didn’t know what she meant. While she was attending to Dodd on the ground another man seemed to ignore the cordon tape and come to talk to her. But she looked as though she really didn’t want this, whoever he was. I had seen something like this when I was in the WRAC. A man was hurt during an exercise on Salisbury Plain and his girlfriend, who was also in the exercise, came running to see if he was all right. Then another soldier came and tried to pull her away from the one on the ground. He got up, although hurt, and there was a sort of fight, the three of them, until an officer came. This didn’t happen with Veronica Cleaver, because the man on the ground didn’t recover. But she looked as though she wanted the other man to get lost. And he did. In both these episodes it was like the woman had been carrying on a bit, and suddenly there’s too many men around. But I don’t suppose this is relevant to the siege and so on.

  No.

  3. Thomas Ure, fifty-two, of The Old Water Mill, Kaletree, private means.

  I visit charity shops from time to time in order to ascertain whether what I would regard as unsuitable material is on sale there, with particular reference to books, CDs and DVDs. By ‘unsuitable’ I mean of a sexual, violent or perverted kind. I know very well that I cannot prevent the sale of such material in commercial emporia, but I feel that for shops devoted to charitable work some sort of protest should be made. If I come across examples of this kind of degraded and degrading work, I draw the attention of the shop m
anageress to it. I do not in any respect damage the items on the spot, but, having spoken to the manageress, I offer to pay for the offending articles as long as I can have an assurance that they will be withdrawn and possibly destroyed. I certainly do not wish to take such dubious goods with me.

  I do not care to think of folk in, say, the poorer areas of Ethiopia, receiving benefits from a charity shop which have in fact been paid for by the sale of improper stock. On the morning of 3rd June I had come across in the charity shop a copy of a book called Torch by someone called David Craig which, on a quick perusal, I deemed not to be right for purchase here. I was about to take the book to the manageress, who was attending to clothes on hangers, when the door was very abruptly thrust open from outside and a man holding a gun came in, dragging after him a protesting woman.

  The man was shouting words which indicated, I thought, an uncommon degree of stress for a customer in a charity shop, such as ‘fuck’, ‘twats’, ‘cunt’ and ‘bastards’. This sudden event seemed to mirror some of the speech in books, CDs, and DVDs, which I consider not altogether right for a charity shop’s shelves. But this was a man actually using these terms as parlance and I could not at first see how to deal with it. This was acutely different from words on a page or spoken via electronic means by actors. I wanted to help him and said so.

  Ure’s description of what followed also tallied with Mrs South’s and Mrs Hyde’s, and Harpur skipped again. At the end, Ure’s statement said:

  Although it was comparatively easy in charity shops to complain about unsavoury exhibits for sale, I came to see that someone uttering gross language and with a gun in his hand –this, I think, was the important matter, I mean the gun in his hand – in those circumstances I decided that physical remedy was probably necessary and I was content to help the manageress and the lady with the truncheon in restraining the intruder, though death seemed excessive. This is often the trouble with guns. They go off.