Cop Out - The End Of My Brilliant Career In The NZ Police (The Laughing Policeman)

by Glenn Wood

  The procession was only about five minutes away and was travelling very slowly. I checked my surroundings and decided I could follow the procession without much trouble, thus affording the Prince the benefit of my protection for the full distance. As I scanned the buildings around me Prince Charles’s vehicle came into view. A cheer went up from the large crowd. This was it. If a hit was going down it would be now. I had to get closer to the action. I edged nearer to the parapet and tailed the Prince’s car from above.

  A dilemma. I’d reached the end of the shop roof and the next rooftop was steep and wouldn’t be easy to traverse. I had two options. I could scramble down the sloped roof and lose sight of Charlie or I could walk along the top of a small concrete fronting that connected the roof I was on with the next building.

  I didn’t want to risk letting the Prince’s car out of my sight so I leapt up onto the wall and began walking along the top of it. Bad choice. I was exposed to the whole crowd. To ensure maximum embarrassment and panic ensued, a small child spotted me and yelled out at the top of his voice:

  'Look Daddy, there’s a man on that roof over there!'

  Everyone looked.

  Great. I was in plain view of the whole crowd, standing on the edge of a shop roof just above the Prince’s car. As if this wasn’t bad enough a gust of wind chose that moment to flick up my sports jacket and reveal my gun holster. In case anybody missed it, my little mate in the crowd called out again:

  'Hey Dad, that man’s got a gun!'

  Everyone was staring at me, some in panic, and at that instant I knew I was deeply in the shit. If the Prince’s bodyguards had seen a man above them with a gun on his hip God knows what would have happened. Fortunately they seemed to be the only ones who hadn’t seen me and I wasn’t going to give them a chance to. I threw myself off the roof. I hit the sloped metal with a loud clang and slid all the way down to the guttering, making a hell of a racket, bashing my shins and getting some nasty marks on Pop Goodwin’s jacket. So much for keeping a low profile.

  The message that I was a cop got through to the crowd and a serious incident was narrowly averted. The Prince carried merrily on his way, waving his royal digits in the air and smiling at the crowd with practiced indifference. He probably never knew that his presence had brought my burgeoning undercover career to a sudden and decisive halt. I was saved from more serious consequences by the fact that no-one in the top brass wanted to draw attention to this event. With some reluctance they put it down to youthful exuberance and stupidity. But my card was marked.

  My squad didn’t take it well and made some uncalled-for comments about my intellectual capacity. It was a long and chilly trip back to Palmerston North. Nothing was said on my return to the station, but a week later I saw the senior sergeant in the corridor. He walked past without looking at me or saying a word. It seemed my promotion had been cancelled.

  The Cadaver and the Spray Can

  Shortly afterwards I had to have a day off work, courtesy of Gatsby the rabbit. Lynette had temporary custody of her ex-pet while Quentin was away, so the annoying little beast was back at Carey’s house. I was there too and I was able to stay overnight as I was on a day off between late/early shifts. The work time was 1pm-9pm the first night then 5am-1pm the following morning. A day off was given before the shift started again. It was a killer.

  Being a messy bugger I had left my toilet gear strewn all over the place. This embarrassed her as her house was quite tidy (unnaturally so for a student flat), so she packed all my gear away and gave it to me when I went home. I thought nothing of it and didn’t unpack until just before I was due at work for late shift.

  As usual, I’d left getting ready for work until the last minute, which meant trying to fix lunch and have a shave at the same time. Not an easy endeavour, especially as I was having toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch (health first, as always). This required plugging both the toaster and my electric razor into a double plug socket on the stove. Halfway through shaving the toast popped, so I put my shaver on the bench to retrieve the bread. At least that was the plan. I didn’t get far because the shaver blew up in my hand, giving me an electric shock which shook my whole body and burned a hole in our stainless steel bench. When I’d stopped convulsing I switched the shaver off at the wall and examined the smoking body of my Remington. The shaver wasn’t at fault, it was the power lead. The plastic coating had been removed and exposed the bare wires. When the wires touched with the stainless steel bench, ka-bluuuueee.

  I couldn’t work out how this had happened. I hadn’t arrested enough people to have a criminal vendetta against me. A few members of my section wanted me dead sure, but they were having too much fun tormenting me to kill me so soon. It was a mystery.

  I found out what had happened later that day when I phoned Carey to tell her about my electrocution. There was an embarrassed silence before she told me who the culprit was. I had been almost killed by a rabbit.

  Gatsby was going through a stage of chewing anything she could get her nasty little teeth around. Apparently there had already been a hairdryer malfunction at Carey’s flat due to chewed wires though no-one had been hurt. That particular honour fell to me and I was still unable to close my tingling fingers several hours later. I was worried and called work to tell them I was on my way to Accident and Emergency. They laughed (miserable bastards) and told me to file a report when I returned to duty.

  This wasn’t good. My accident and illness file already surpassed the case notes for the Arthur Allen Thomas trial and it was beginning to attract attention. So far my medical record held tragic tales of sprained joints and pulled muscles from various rugby games and the odd ‘accident’ at home. Now added to my list of medical misadventures was ‘electric shock caused by rabbit chewing on shaver wires’. The evidence against Constable Wood was growing.

  Had I not received personal injury, I’d have been impressed by my shaver’s pyrotechnics display. I'm a pyromaniac from way back and have a love of explosions. It's not my fault, I was born on Guy Fawkes Day, so what hope was there for me? My parents always put on a big celebration for my birthday and it usually involved huge fireworks demonstrations and birthday cakes emerging from the kitchen glittering and twinkling with sparklers instead of candles. I loved it.

  Of course that was back in the days when fireworks were still capable of removing a limb. Even their names sent a ripple of fear through the faint-hearted: the Thunder Banger with all the destructive power of a small stick of dynamite (A friend of mine tried to blow up a wooden lamppost with one and coming close to succeeding); the Mighty Cannon, able to send rival gangs diving for cover with a single lob; Double Happys, the mainstay of any explosive display. They were inexpensive, portable, unpredictable and powerful - everything I was looking for in a firework. Perfect for taking out ants' nests, dolls, sandcastles, Airfix Models and neighbours. Then there were Tom Thumbs - small, fun and surprisingly loud; Jumping Jacks, Skyrockets, Mini Skyrockets, and a plethora of other incendiary devices capable of overthrowing a small pacific island.

  But the undisputed heavy weight champion of firecrackers was the Kwan Lung Bunger. Undiscovered by the majority of firework users, this power packed blasting stick had to be seen to be believed. Quentin found a box of these deadly explosives in a small Chinese fruiterers shop owned by a small Chinese fruiterer. The fireworks must have been illegal because anything that much fun usually is.

  The Kwan Lung Bunger was about the size of a Double Happy and was covered with a green decorative wrapper. Each Bunger contained twice the blasting power of a Thunder Banger and was nearly four times as loud. The first time we ignited one it bloody near deafened us and left a huge crater in the earth. We smiled. Quentin’s box contained twenty five of them. When our friends saw the Bunger’s awesome power we immediately rose to the top of the firework tree. We were a team to be feared: Quentin with the Kwan Lung Bungers and me with the matches and the reckless stupidity. I miss those days.

  As you’d expect I ha
ve many firework disaster stories. Too many to go into here, so I’ll just leave you with a few important lessons learned from those heady days.

  · Bees and fireworks do not mix.

  · It says ‘do not hold in hand’ on the label for a reason.

  · Apparently girls do not understand that having a small explosive device thrown down their top is a sign of affection.

  · The frog trick is not as much fun as you’d think, especially for the frog.

  · Never keep your entire firework collection in one container - or if you do, keep it well away from naked flames.

  · It’s not out.

  Follow these simple rules and you’ll be fine. Mind you, successive fun-sucking governments have made it difficult to maim yourself and your close friends these days by banning any firework that looks remotely interesting. Bring back the bangers I say. Are a few frightened pets, the loss of bodily parts, potential blindness, indiscriminate burnings, scar tissue and the occasional house fire, really good enough reasons to stop the fun?

  With the demise of decent fireworks I have had to turn to other methods of getting my combustible kicks.

  I first discovered the joys of compressed gas containers such as air fresheners and hairspray by accident. I was working at Jim’s Foodtown at the time. It was rubbish burning day and I had a fire roaring away on some bare ground nearby. I was enjoying myself immensely and kept the fire burning by feeding it cardboard boxes. The last one I picked up had an old air freshener container rolling around in the bottom. Thinking nothing of it I threw the box on the fire and stood rooted to the spot, hypnotised by the flames. The explosion was huge - the can must not have been empty - it burst out of the fire like a rocket, shooting high into the air in a ball of flame. The blast left me with a burn on my arm and a ringing in my ears that lasted several days. I was so impressed by the explosion that I looked around for another canister, pausing only to put out the fire on my arm. Sadly I was unable to find one and the moment was ruined by Jim rushing out of the supermarket to see what I’d destroyed now.

  Aside from blowing up cans of baked beans at YMCA camps I had forgotten the pure destructive pleasure of pressurised cans. Then suddenly they were back in my life in two separate and wildly different ways.

  The first incident involved Quentin, but only in a roundabout way. I was visiting his flat late one afternoon and I was bored. We were supposed to be going out for the afternoon and, as usual, I was waiting for Quentin to get ready. Quentin works on ‘Bright Standard Time’ (Bright being his last name) which is a time scale that exists half an hour behind the rest of the world. I calculate that I’ve spent almost four months of my life waiting for either Quentin or my wife. Four months! I could have travelled around Europe in that time. Instead I spent it pacing in hallways or mumbling darkly to myself in the car.

  Anyway, there I was waiting, again. I slouched around on the sofa for about ten minutes, got sick of that and as Quentin wasn’t showing any signs of emerging from the bathroom, I decided to wait outside. The back yard was unlike other student gardens: it was tidy and organised. This was due to the landlord having recently completed renovations on the house. He had replaced the old wooden roof with shiny new Decromastic tiles and had just finished painting the exterior of the house. He was a tidy man and all that remained of the work was a large pile of sand heaped by the back fence. This made for slim pickings when it came to boredom relief and I entered the garage for a snoop around. It was much messier and therefore far more interesting.

  The first things that caught my eye were an eeling spear and a can of pink spray paint. The spear belonged to Quentin’s roommate and consisted of a long wooden handle attached to a triple pronged metal base. The prongs were extremely sharp and had barbs cut out of the metal so once they pierced something they were extremely hard to remove. The can of spray paint was half full and the nozzle was encrusted with residue. It obviously hadn’t been used for some time. This meant it fell into the category of redundant and was therefore able to be destroyed. From the deposit around the lid I noted that the paint wasn’t just pink, it was fluorescent hot pink. Not a colour any self-respecting bloke should have in his shed, so I decided to help out by getting rid of it. Now, how would I go about that? Mmmmm, let’s see, I have an extremely sharp eeling spear in one hand and a highly pressurised can of spray paint in the other. What to do?

  Even I wouldn’t be so rude as to dispose of anything without the owner’s permission, so I leaned my head around the door of the flat and yelled:

  'Is it okay if I throw the eeling spear at the can of spray paint?'

  There was a mumbled reply from behind the bathroom door which I couldn’t make out. I took it as a yes and set up my target.

  I placed the can half way up the pile of sand and retreated to a safe throwing distance. I had given no thought as to what would happen when the spear hit the can; it just seemed to be a cool thing to be doing.

  It took four throws before I hit it. Then the left hand prong punctured the can about two centimetres from the bottom. The result was spectacular.

  The can and the spear flew through the air in a bizarre spiralling dance, pink paint spurting from the puncture hole like blood from a severed artery. The combined objects flew at speeds I’d never imagined and soared to heights I could only marvel at. I stood and watched their twisted aerobatics with quiet awe. The wonder rapidly turned to horror as I realised the spluttering projectiles were about to spew hot pink paint all over the brand new roof.

  I made a vain attempt to halt the inevitable by leaping at the can but it was too late. My Frankenstein-like creation settled in the middle of the roof. The can gave a death spurt and managed to spray the few tiles that had remained un-speckled. The main body of paint formed a slow pink river that trickled toward the edge of the house above the front door. The only edge with no new guttering.

  The stream of paint poured over the side at the exact moment that Quentin emerged, half naked from the shower, to see what all the noise was about.

  He stood on the veranda with pink paint trickling down his nose and splattering on his shoulder. I could tell he wasn’t happy. Being a policeman I was trained to pick up the little nuances that betray people’s feelings. The shaking and the yelling were a clue, as was the hyperventilating as he explained that the landlord was coming back the following day to finish the guttering. Quentin failed to accept my view that his landlord may take one look at the new colour scheme, shrug his shoulders and proclaim ‘vive la difference’. Instead he handed me a bottle of white spirits, a cloth and a ladder before stomping back inside to start his shower all over again.

  I discovered that white spirits melt Decromastic tiles. But the paint was oil based and couldn’t be removed with water, in fact it only seemed to come off when I scrubbed so hard that I removed the coating from the tiles.

  It took me the rest of the afternoon before the last trace of pink had been expunged. Four hours of bloody hard work under the boiling sun. It was not the way I had planned to spend my afternoon off. Quentin did appear once with a beer in his hand, which he drank as he pointed out bits I’d missed.

  I got the last laugh when the winter rains arrived. The coating I’d scrubbed off the tiles was the waterproofing. Shame.

  My next experience with a pressurised spray can came in the line of duty.

  I was on late shift (1pm - 9pm) with the hell bitch. She’d started the shift in her usual miserable fashion by rolling her eyes when she found out she was teamed up with me and then refused to let me drive. Another fun-filled day in the Palmerston North Police beckoned. We were in the Mobile Beat car, which as the name suggests required us to drive around the central city beat areas in a car. Mobile Beat was also a back-up for the I-car (incident car) and we would cover their jobs if they were busy. After six hours of driving around in silence and attending a few minor incidents, throughout which she ignored me, we were finally called to attend a sudden death.

  A perfect end to a perfect day
. It would be just me, a wizened up corpse and the poor person who had just died.

  When we got to the address it didn’t look like a typical sudden death scene. Usually there are a lot of people hovering around, most there to comfort the bereaved, and a few having a nosey. This house was almost deserted. A single neighbour stood on the front lawn. He was as white as a sheet and very distressed. As I tried to calm him down he told us he hadn’t seen his neighbour for several weeks and thought he’d better check on her. She was an elderly lady who lived by herself. She was something of a loner and seldom had visitors. All of her family was either away on holiday or living in other cities. He added guiltily that he had meant to check on her sooner but he and his wife had also been away.

  He made a strangulated noise in the back of his throat and told us she was in the bedroom. This didn’t bode well. My partner suggested she look after the distressed neighbour (icon of sensitivity that she was) while I go inside and check out the house.

  'Good oh, I’ll do the shit jobs as well as be ignored' I muttered darkly as I entered the gloomy dwelling.

  I knew I’d find a body and judging from the state of the neighbour it wasn’t going to be pretty. The old lady’s corpse was in the bedroom, where it had been for some time. I couldn’t see very well at first because the curtains were drawn. I opened them to let in more light and immediately wished I hadn’t. From the state of the woman I’d say she’d died several weeks earlier. That wasn’t the worst part. She’d been dead all that time, in bed with the electric blanket on. So, not only was she in the first stages of decomposition but she was also partially cooked. And yes, that is as bad as it sounds. Her skin was black and moldy in some parts and red and blistery in others. But the most shocking thing was her face. Her mouth was twisted into a macabre grimace and one of her eyes had seeped out of its socket and slid down the rotten flesh of her cheek until it nestled just above her jaw.