‘I didn’t join the police to be weighed down by silver braid on my shoulder,’ I used to insist, when we spoke about it. I have never liked being in uniform and that’s the truth.
That’s the elephant under my arse. I will have no truck with the modern habit of making detectives wear the tunic unless they positively have to be in civvies for the purposes of the job. Beat officers have to be visible and recognisable as such, CID do not; end of story.
Jimmy would shrug at my objections, and tell me, ‘Then do it your way. Every chief puts his own stamp on his office.’
Eventually he wore me down, with the help of my third wife, Aileen, who was Scotland’s Justice Minister, and then briefly First Minister of its government in the devolved Holyrood Parliament, before Labour lost office. She made herself the exception to my inbuilt antipathy towards politicians. She came into my life at a pivotal moment. My second marriage was in a state of chaos and mutual recrimination, on the most jagged rocks you can imagine. Simultaneously something had happened at work, something up close and bloody, that I was having trouble handling on a personal level. Aileen was there for me to lean on; I came through it all. As soon as I had, before I knew it, she’d eased me into the chief constable’s office.
Mind you, I did consult my older daughter before I applied for the job. She knows me better than anyone else, and if she’d been against it, she’d have said so. As it was, Alex was neutral. ‘There’s part of me that would like you to walk away from it all now,’ she said, ‘and buy the boat that you fantasised about that time we went sailing on the Clyde. But the other part, the realist Alexis, not the romantic, would be afraid of what might happen to you if you did. Your call, Pops.’
Buy that boat or not, I’ll always be moored to Alex; I was there when she was born and she’ll be there when I die. I can’t say that with certainty about anyone else right now, no other adult, that is.
Once the decision to apply was made, and I’d been selected for the post, I took to it better than I thought I would. I kept the promise that I’d made to myself that I’d focus as much as I could on the crime-fighting and crime prevention aspects and delegate as much as I could of the public order side and the admin to my deputy, Brian Mackie, who’d been close to me for fifteen years and more. It wasn’t long before he was gone, to the chief constable post in Dundee, but I’d planned for that eventuality and was able to move Maggie Rose Steele, another of the group I think of as my ‘trusties’, into the vacancy.
It seemed that finally, after years of continuous adjustments and frequent upsets, both my professional and private lives were running smoothly; for sure, that was a first for me in almost twenty-five years. Everything seemed fine. My younger kids were settled and content, Alex seemed to have found balance in her life, and the electorate had freed my wife from the burden of executive politics, as she put it, by sending her party to the opposition benches. My golf handicap went down by a couple of shots, and Aileen even persuaded me to take up a new hobby, one that I had been planning to leave for my retirement. I wrote a memoir, and enjoyed the process so much that it will probably be the first of several.
I should have known that no millpond stays calm for ever.
I’d been happy with the aftermath of my divorce and with the agreement that Sarah, my ex, and I had reached about the children, in the light of her decision to move back to the USA. I told myself that it was a good thing for them to spend school holidays with their mother, that it would give them an understanding of the wider world, and would spare them from the unreality of being shuffled between parents every weekend. Yes, I was happy with it and I thought that Sarah was too.
I still don’t know for certain what prompted her to change her mind. She didn’t even tell me about it until the decision was made; I found out by accident from Andy Martin, who managed to stay friends with both of us. I have no doubt she’d have kept me in the dark for longer if he hadn’t let it slip. For sure, my ex-wife can hold her cards very close to her shapely chest, but I didn’t find that out until well into our marriage. Indeed, I’m still learning just how close they can be. Yes. . and I smile as I say this. . she is some machine, is Sarah.
Granted, I had not been in the best of humour since her sudden reappearance, but I don’t believe that had anything to do with the explosion with Aileen. Also, a major crisis had erupted within the force that very day, and a long-serving ranking officer had been arrested as a result. However I like to think that I’m good at leaving personnel troubles where they belong, in the office, and I’d done that, although it had been difficult. No, our confrontation would have happened regardless of anything.
I had hit the roof earlier, no two ways about that, when Mario told me what had happened with Inspector Varley. A surveillance blown by the deliberate act of a veteran officer, and with more than a hint of corruption as well, in the man Welsh’s recorded promise to the caller that he’d be ‘weighed in’. I ordered Varley’s arrest, and his niece Alice Cowan’s instant suspension. I came within a couple of words of suspending DC Montell as well, but I cooled down and decided that if pillow-talk was automatically sackable we were all gone, so I put his file in the hands of the tough but fair Maggie and told her to work out what would be best done with him in the circumstances. I had an idea, but I wanted to see whether she came up with the same solution.
That stuff was all over with; it wasn’t done and dusted, but neither was it hanging over the dinner table like a cloud that evening. However, there was one problem that I did bring home in my briefcase, and in my head. My last meeting of the afternoon had been with my fellow Scottish chief officers, a formal gathering of our association, ACPOS, in a committee room in St Andrews House, the big grey government building at the top of Waterloo Place, with Andy Martin in the chair, by rotation.
The only item on the agenda was consideration of a proposal by the Scottish government that all of Scotland’s eight police forces should be merged into one. The debate had been forthright, and fierce at times. Not at all to my surprise, the pro lobby had been led by Toni Field, my recently appointed opposite number in Strathclyde. Since her force covers half of the country as it is, it was predictable that she would want to take in the rest.
I sensed also that being new on the block, having parachuted into Scotland from Birmingham, she was out to assert herself as ‘Scotland’s top cop’, as one of her Daily Mail acolytes, who thought it was all about geography, had described her. Field believed it, for sure. She’d landed the Strathclyde job on the back of a high-profile hands-on career, that had included a spell in SOCA, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the English equivalent of Andy Martin’s outfit. While she was there she’d busted a big drugs cartel with links to both Colombia and Mexico and had used it to catapult herself, over the heads of more experienced candidates, into the chief constable’s office in the West Midlands force.
I’d met her only once before that afternoon and it had taken me five minutes to realise that she had arrived in Scotland with a very simple plan. Support the unified force, then take the top post and use it as a springboard to the ultimate policing job in Britain: Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service. Good luck to her, I thought. If she was happy with reporting to a mop-headed clown elected on a populist ticket, then good for her, but she wasn’t going to do it by helping to destroy the force that I knew in Scotland, the one to which I’d dedicated my life. I believe unequivocally in local accountability in policing; maybe that comes from John Wintergreen too.
I wasn’t able to hide my antipathy to the woman, but I was careful not to invite any accusation of either sexism or racism. On Maggie Steele’s advice, I wore my uniform to the meeting, as I knew Field would, and I addressed her formally, by rank; no first-name terms, lest she accuse me of being patronising.
In the debate, the antis had lined up behind me. At the end of the day it had come down to the casting vote of the chair and Andy was opposed, so I won the day, but I knew quite well that Field would ensure it was
raised again at our next meeting, at which the chair would pass to Max Allan, the Strathclyde ACC, and it was assumed that he would side with his boss, not because he’s a toady, but because the long-serving Glasgow people are all imperialists at heart.
I wasn’t going to talk about the meeting, but Aileen asked me straight out how it had gone, as soon as I settled into my chair in the garden room. I told her what had happened, and what my prediction was for the future.
‘The First Minister’s trying to railroad ACPOS into backing the proposal,’ I said, ‘even if it’s only by one vote, so he can bang the legislation through before the next election and claim that he has our support. I like Clive Graham, but I’m not letting him get away with this one. I tell you, I’ll fight this in the Association, and in public if I have to, right up to the very end.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ my wife murmured.
I stared at her. ‘You what?’ I gasped. I thought I’d misheard her.
‘I said that I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘Eh?’ Yes, I had heard her right, but still I didn’t believe her. ‘Why the hell not?’
‘Because Labour’s going to support the government; we’re going to back the bill.’
‘You’re going to WHAT?’ I roared. I’d never raised my voice to her before; I’d never been angered by her before, and I’d never imagined that I could be. And yet. .
I worried that the children might have heard me, until I remembered that the three of them were at their mother’s place in Edinburgh. Nevertheless I made an effort to rein myself in.
‘How in God’s name,’ I asked her, as quietly as I’d been loud before, ‘can you bring yourself to do that when you know that I’m completely opposed to it? Please tell me you didn’t vote for this within your party group; tell me you were overruled.’
‘I can’t,’ she replied, ‘because I wasn’t; the decision was unanimous. My colleagues and I all believe that it’s the best option on cost grounds.’
‘Cost?’ I hissed. ‘You’re prepared to jeopardise the efficiency of the police service to save a few quid?’
‘It’s more than a few quid, Bob,’ she shot back at me. ‘And how exactly will it affect efficiency?’
‘How exactly?’ I mimicked. ‘The present structure’s bad enough; now you’re going to ask cops in Lerwick to implement policy decisions that are taken in Glasgow, by someone who most certainly won’t have a clue about local conditions.’
‘Then he’ll have to get up there and find out, won’t he? And who says the unified force will be based in Glasgow?’
‘I do,’ I snorted, ‘because that’s the way it will play out. But efficiency’s not the only issue; the big one is the concept of putting policing power in the hands of one man, the First Minister. . or one woman, if you and your lot get back in at the next election. . which you won’t if I have anything to do with it.’
Her eyes flared, angrily, like I’d never seen them do before, and she opened her mouth to rip into me, but I cut her off. ‘Think back,’ I snapped, ‘and not that far back either, to when your predecessor, that crooked little bastard Murtagh, tried to do this very thing and you shot him down in flames. The media will go for you if you turn full circle now. They’ll throw your own words back at you.’
‘And I’ll say that it won’t be the same proposal at all, that we’ll put safeguards in place. As for your political point, the senior appointments won’t be made by the First Minister but by a management board that isn’t part of government.’
‘And who’ll appoint that?’ I challenged.
‘That hasn’t been decided yet; Clive and I have to consult about it, and soon too, because you’re right about the legislation going through before the next election. There’s no need to wait. We don’t want to politicise the issue.’
‘No, you want a fucking stitch-up, the pair of you,’ I growled.
‘Damn it, Bob!’ It was Aileen’s turn to shout. ‘Why are you being so difficult?’
‘Because I’m dead against it! Dress it up any way you like, it’s political policing. If you can do this you can do anything. You’ll have us all carrying sidearms next.’
‘Who knows?’ God, she was sneering at me: I realised that I didn’t know this woman, this version of my wife. ‘We might, so live with it! We are elected, after all; it’s called democracy, a quirky little system, but it works. And by the way, what did you mean, about you having anything to do with it?’
‘Work it out, love,’ I snapped. ‘I’ve told you. I will oppose this, as loudly and as publicly as I can.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ she protested, ‘you can’t. You’re a serving chief constable; you can’t involve yourself in political debate.’
‘Watch me.’
‘Bob, I won’t allow it, Clive won’t allow it. ACPOS won’t back you; they’ll support us once the bill’s published, you know that.’
‘Don’t you be so sure about that. The Association is split down the middle at the moment, but once my colleagues see that you’re getting into bed with Clive Graham and that it’s all been carved up, you may find that quite a few move behind me. And what the hell do you mean “allow”? What’s the new political Couple of the Month going to do about it?’
Her eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened. ‘You could be suspended,’ she snapped. ‘Clive could do that if he thought you were trying to interfere with the political process.’
‘Define interference,’ I countered. ‘Usually with you crowd it means not agreeing with you. And what the fuck was that meeting about this afternoon if it wasn’t interference with the ACPOS process? We were offered a committee room by the First Minister, so that we could gather to discuss the proposal, specifically. I’ll bet you he assumed he could rely on Toni Field and her Strathclyde contingent to carry it through. He was wrong; we voted against. . democratically. Now you’re telling me the whole exercise was a sham.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Of course you did.’ I didn’t even try to keep my scorn from my voice. ‘You and your new Nationalist best friend, you’ll join hands and push your bill through the Scottish parliament without giving the people a chance to consider what’s at stake, and that is the potential to create a police state.’
‘Aww! Listen to yourself,’ she mocked. ‘A police state.’
‘I said, the potential to do it. Look, the more you centralise the police service, the more remote you make it. People don’t know who their local cops are any more. When I was born, my home town had its own burgh police force, and its own chief constable. The local people knew him, and they knew their cops. Okay, it wasn’t perfect, especially if you’d gone to the wrong school, but it made for good policing. When my wee force was merged with Lanarkshire, something was lost, but it was still socially acceptable. Personally I’d have kept it at that level. In my view Strathclyde’s a monster, and even my own force is too big. Create a single police force? I’d create three new ones.’
‘What about Andy’s agency?’ she argued. ‘The SCDEA. That’s national.’
‘You said it: it’s an agency, and it co-ordinates investigations against serious crime, working with local forces.’
‘Are you sure you’ve never served in the mounted division?’ she laughed, with mockery, not humour. ‘For you’re really on your high horse now.’
I was having none of it. ‘You know what they do in France?’ I challenged. ‘If they have a major public gathering. . let’s say an anti-war march, or students demonstrating over the issue of the day. . they will have the riot squad, the CRS, on hand. But those officers won’t be local. If the demo’s in Paris, they’ll have been brought up from Marseille, or vice versa, so they can kick the shit out of the troublemakers without the chance that they might be beating up their nearest and dearest. That’s the model you’re about to import into Scotland.’ No kidding, I was fuming.
‘Okay!’ she yelled. ‘You’ve said your piece. But it won’t change anything. We will put this legis
lation forward and parliament will vote it through.’
‘I am sure you’re right,’ I told her, ‘but it will do so in the face of my determined and public opposition.’
‘And then you will look like a complete idiot when you’re chosen to head the new force.’ She stepped right up to me, this little street fighter I’d never met before, leaning over my chair, right in my face. ‘This is really about Toni Field, isn’t it? You’re like all your brother. . and I use the word deliberately. . officers. You cannot stand the thought of this force being set up and its first chief constable, or commissioner or whatever the hell we decide to call the commander, being a woman. That’s why you’re so upset.’
I couldn’t believe that. ‘Is that what you think of me?’ I gasped. ‘That I’m your classic Chauvinist pig? I must tell my deputy; it’ll come as news to her, and she’s known me a fucking sight longer than you have. Aileen, you have known how I feel about a national force since I wrote a paper for you on the subject during my sabbatical. I’ve studied it, I’ve looked at models in other countries, and I’m against it.’
‘In that case you’re going to look ridiculous when the force is set up, because I don’t know a single person who expects Toni Field to head it, other than Toni Field herself. Clive and I have already agreed that the First Minister will be taken out of the decision process on the new supervising authority. Why? So that if I’m back in office after the election, I won’t be compromised. Everybody assumes that the job will be yours, man. So please don’t make it any more difficult for me than it is already. State your objections in ACPOS, then when the legislation is through you can draw a line under it and take the top job without being labelled a hypocrite.’
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