Some weeks after Lou’s outburst to the Inspector we were on nights and found ourselves yet again waiting around at the scene of a fatal. In these circumstances we would normally pass the time by talking about all manner of things. A regular source of contemplation would be the different routes we had taken to reach the point where we ended up working together. Lou had left school at an early opportunity, joined the forces for a few years, then drove trucks, dug ditches and generally led a hardworking outdoor sort of life.
I on the other hand had spent many years at school and subsequently University. I had been assured that there were many benefits in an academic lifestyle, and the longer spent in further education the greater the potential rewards. Standing at the scene of this latest fatal accident I had plenty of time to ponder on these rewards, or perhaps more correctly to try to identify what they actually were.
It was dark, and the single occupant of the now mangled car had been driving along one of the Division’s dual carriageways when a sudden torrential downpour had most likely disoriented him and instead of following the gentle curve of the road, he had travelled in a straight line and stopped abruptly when he met a tree. As was usual in this sort of accident the tree won and the man died. Ironically the rainstorm lasted only minutes, and the skies cleared not long after we arrived.
With the scene being relatively discreet away from the side of the carriageway there was no need to close the road to traffic, but it hardly mattered as by this time it was well beyond midnight on a weekday night and the roads were more or less deserted.
Passing the time at this accident was much easier than at many others however, as the crashed car happened to contain probably the largest portable collection of pornography either Lou or I had ever seen. Quite why this man felt it necessary to load his car with a shop’s worth of filth we didn’t know, but we weren’t complaining. The normally dull cold wait was alleviated by comparisons of pictures of various young ladies and gentlemen disporting themselves in quite adventurous ways. We were duly joined by a number of colleagues from the block who seemed to have developed a far greater interest in accident investigation than was normally evident.
After some while I became aware of an articulated lorry slowing to a halt on the hard shoulder nearby. Written on its side was the name of a large company whose factory was about ten miles further down the road, so it was not difficult to guess where it was going. The truck’s start point was also easily divined as it was left-hand drive and bore French number plates. The driver got out of his cab, and I walked across to him to avoid him getting too close a look at the deceased pornographer in the mangled car.
‘Ça va?’ I began, in my finest French.
‘Oui, merci. Ça va bien. Je cherche l’usine,’ he replied, jerking his thumb at the logo on the truck.
The conversation continued in really quite fluent if unsophisticated French as I gave the driver directions to cover the last few miles of his journey. He thanked me, and just before he turned to climb back into his cab he nodded towards my left hand and smiled, saying,‘C’est jolie, n’est-ce pas?’
As he got back in his truck I looked towards my hand and with some embarrassment saw I was still holding a colourful magazine with a large centre spread of a luxuriant woman and a muscular man who appeared very fond of each other as they enjoyed an act of unashamed procreative hedonism.
The truck driver drove off with a cheery wave, and I realised that if nothing else, I had at last found a use for my time at school and university – a total of thirteen years of studying French, and I had succeeded in giving flawless directions to a truck driver.
Perhaps it was normal by French standards for a policeman to be guarding a crashed car while perusing hardcore pornography, but it dawned on me how surreal the scene must have been – a copper, a corpse, a crash, a deserted road and a porn mag, and more than that a copper in the middle of a declining industrial town who could conduct an entire encounter in a foreign language. How strange life – and death – can be.
A little later, once we had done the investigation side of things and the body was taken away, we found another dilemma. The dead man had been married, and in the normal course of events all property is naturally returned to the family. In his case it would include a lifetime’s collection of smut, and it was a reasonable bet that his now widow would not have been party to his rather personal hobby. If we then presented her with his traveling library it would make an already traumatic event even more memorable than it was going to be, so eventually we decided that we would not mention his literary interests and the collection was removed to the Police station. If the widow actually did enquire then the property would be made available to her, if she said nothing then it could ultimately be disposed of.
In the interests of security the Inspector decided it was best kept in his office, which from then on remained locked at all times.
Even when the Inspector was in it.
Twenty-Seven
Day shifts tended to be more predictable – rush hours, speeders, run-of-the-mill accidents and other bits and pieces, but nights always brought out the unpredictable side of our townspeople. They drank, they drove, they fought, they provided endless hours of variety and fun.
Lou was never scared to pitch in, nor did he make any real compromise to subtlety, but we were always careful to be as diplomatic as possible towards everyone we encountered. He had lost his cool with the Inspector, and could hold his own in a fight, but his patience in dealing with the public was often commendable. Only when all avenues were exhausted did violence ensue, and then it had its limits. A return to calm sanity was always preferable, safer and less career-threatening. While we all knew this, it was more evident in some than others. Another man I had partnered briefly, Chris Dutton, lacked the ability to express himself as Lou or I would do in some form of diplomatic preamble when hostility loomed. He had a worrying tendency to stay quiet and bottle up his frustrations instead. Any aggressor would often misjudge this, thinking simply that they were either being ignored or were not having the desired irritating effect which so many sought to inflict. Chris would ultimately explode in near-uncontrollable violence, the aggressor then bitterly regretting his actions and realising that they had overstepped the mark by way too much, but by then it was all too late and tended to get messy.
Chris and I worked as a double-manned car for a little while, and we were often asked to help bring in prisoners if they were a bit unruly. To this end we went to yet another ‘domestic’ where the usual wife-beating contest had had ‘time’ called by the arrival of several panda cars.
The arrested husband promptly changed from invincible caveman to helpless victim, insisting that he be handled gently, he needed time to move, he couldn’t walk well you know. Then he needed his walking stick (he had finished using it to beat his wife and kids with by now), and of course his bottles of pills. The comment ‘I’m disabled I am’ was repeated regularly to minimal avail, and he was placed in the rear of our car. Once comfortably settled in the car he began cursing and swearing at the way he had been arrested – one of the Bobbies had had the temerity to hit him with a truncheon – ‘there was no need for that, me being disabled and all.’
And drunk.
And violent.
We drove along the ring road system, and I gave the man the ‘we’ve no axe to grind, just look on us as a free taxi’ speech. It worked surprisingly well, but I could see Chris was rapidly reaching the point of no return.
After a few moments’ quiet, the man suddenly erupted in a renewed volley of abuse, and leaned forward as he did so. ‘And you’re no better than the rest of them you bast…’ was as far as he got. Chris hit the brakes, forcing the odious man into the back of the headrest, stopping the tirade in its tracks. Before we had come to a complete halt he yanked the handbrake on and opened his door, got out and went to the rear door next to our passenger, opened it and delivered two or three brisk punches.
His rage was total as he shower
ed the man with his frustration –
‘Don’t give me all that you f—-ing low life – you’re a big man at home aren’t you, knock your family about and expect them to admire you, then give us a load of grief for nothing. Well how d’you like it when you get a beating off someone bigger than you, you verminous cripple? Eh?’
Chris now had his hands round the man’s throat, and I was a little unnerved by the unhealthy colour he had become. But Chris was big framed, and there was no way I could have separated them, even if I had been able to get past him as he filled the rear passenger doorway. I looked round, wondering if there was a suitable spot to dump the body if it all went wrong. At this point Chris released his grip on the man, who had just enough breath to utter the words ‘My pills,’ in a hoarse voice.
This set Chris off again.
‘Your pills?! Your pills?!’ He bellowed. ‘Here’s what you can do with your bloody pills,’ and he grabbed them from the back of the car and stamped them into the hard shoulder before getting back in the driver’s seat, ramming the car into gear and setting off again, grim faced, to the Police station. I was so relieved he had joined the Police and not opted for a life of crime. He would have been a terrifying adversary.
Various instructions from on high had exhorted officers to address people in terms they could understand, and he had obviously taken this very much to heart.
There were never any more calls to the address, and it would seem his roadside caution had a salutary effect.
On another occasion as we drove up the High Street late one evening we were flagged down by a scrawny woman who ran almost in front of the car, waving her arms frantically, apparently in distress. There was no other traffic around, and I stopped our huge Vauxhall Senator in the middle of the road. The woman went to the passenger window which Chris had wound down.
‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘Are you going to the Police station?’ she asked, her breath heavy with alcoholic vapours.
‘Later on yeah. Why?’ asked Chris.
‘Well you can give us a lift there then. I’ve got no money for a taxi.’ Her words were almost an order, and there was certainly no hint of a polite request. The Police station was all of a mile away, and it was laziness rather than concern for her own safety that had made her ask.
Chris, as ever, was direct.
‘Get lost you cheeky bitch,’ he said, addressing her in easy-to-understand terms she could cope with.
‘You’re going there anyway, give me a lift and stop being tight,’ came the reply.
‘Sod off you bloody parasite. It’s not even as if you’re good-looking.’
I think he was trying to introduce a hint of humour into the situation, but it failed and the whole thing was rapidly turning sour.
I put the car in gear and made ready to move off as the woman shouted her reply: ‘You pigs are all the same, you don’t give a shit, you can piss off if you think I’ll ever help you again.’
It was as well I had started to drive off when I did. Chris had again reached exploding point.
‘You? Help us? Don’t make me laugh,’ he started. By the time we were fifty yards up the road he was half out of the window shouting back at the drunk, ‘F—- off and grow some tits you skinny slag,’ as she in turn raged and screamed abuse at us.
I drove on and we went back to the station for our break.
We were sitting in the rest room when Tim Eden the patrol Sergeant came in. A large but gentle man, he looked flustered.
‘Some people can be so ungrateful,’ he said, sounding hurt. ‘I came across a woman in High Street a few minutes ago, she was standing in the middle of the road looking a bit lost. I gave a toot on the horn just to ask her to move, and she turned round and gave me five minutes of non-stop foul language. I don’t know what had happened to her, but she had a real downer on the Police.’
It must have been a comical scene – Tim trying to be helpful and cooperative, and the woman venting her spleen on him for the treatment she had received from the previous Police car. We didn’t bother to enlighten him.
These breaks on nights were usually taken in the night kitchen – there were facilities for cooking, but most of us either brought sandwiches or scrounged a takeaway from one of the many dubious establishments in the area. On earlies there was a proper canteen, entirely managed and run by one very harassed man. Most of the admin staff came on duty around 8.30, and by 9 o’clock they were filling their faces with toast and coffee for an hour or so. We would queue with them, hoping to get served quickly from the range of ‘English Breakfast’ food on offer. There was a good selection of eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes, beans, hash browns, fried bread, toast and mushrooms, but the ultimate choice was governed unconsciously by Bob, the cook. Whatever the season, he suffered a permanently runny nose. As he went from one container of food to the next, you had to watch the drip on the end of his nose and judge whether or not it would be ready to drop when it reached your chosen item.
‘D’you want some mushrooms?’ he would ask.
‘Errrm’ (drip) ‘No thanks. Some beans please’ (watch for the next one appearing) ‘and some sausage’ (drip) ‘no make it bacon instead. And a few tomatoes’ (drip) ‘on second thoughts some fried bread’.
Watching the nose rather than the food, the trick was to hesitate at the stuff you didn’t fancy, then give a decisive order just after the most recent drip. On a bad day you could end up with just a couple of pieces of toast, but time it right and an unadulterated breakfast could be had.
Of course there must have been other drips that went into the food which we never saw, but what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.
Nor, it would appear, does the digestive system struggle with.
Chris’s explosion of anger at the wife-beating man and the woman who had accosted us was partly due to his very direct character, but it was also a means of releasing the pent-up frustrations that the job built up in each individual. If enough pressure builds up in something, then it has to escape somewhere. Chris was one of those who could direct his frustrations at a deserving target, and move on with his stress suitably diminished. Others found other ways of managing these things, some by drink, some by exercise, and some in religion.
I worked for some time with the appropriately named Matthew, a deeply religious man and devout churchgoer, who had a genuine calmness about him. Unlike many a zealous Bible-basher he never once pushed his religious beliefs on anyone, but his approach to life and the way he treated others was a more powerful advertisement for his faith than any direct approach could ever have been. But sometimes even the best prop will fail.
We got into a chase one night, a stolen car with four youths in it took off at high speed and we went after it. Through the town it went up a narrow street with terraced houses on either side, and straight through a red traffic light at the crossroads at the end of the road. It was gone three o’clock in the morning, but Matthew still prudently slowed as we came to the red light. As we got to the junction he accelerated again to take us through. Any car approaching would have seen the stolen one moments earlier, and our blue lights were reflecting off the buildings to give a clear if indirect warning of our presence. It was a reasonable gamble that we could carry on safely, but as we emerged into the junction I looked to my left and saw a white car about a foot from my door and still moving at some speed. It was too late to do anything, and we ended up with a badly damaged car and no chase. We were in the wrong, but the driver of the other car kept apologising for having stopped us, which was very sporting of him. The whole affair was very good-natured but ultimately frustrating. Matthew had his driving authority taken off him pending a rubber-stamp from an office somewhere, so I drove for the remaining three nights to complete that run of shifts.
We finished for a couple of days off on the Monday morning, and I thought little of the fact Matthew had been quiet as I did all the driving. I would have been the same in those circumstances.
/> During the days off I suffered terrible back pain as a delayed result of the impact. Matthew went home and took a huge paracetamol overdose. Not a cry for help, but an organised, well thought-out attempt to kill himself. By sheer chance his wife came back from work mid-morning after forgetting something she needed, and found him. Without this coincidental intervention he would have died.
He suffered a complete mental breakdown – some said a week of working nights with me would do the same to anyone – and spent almost two years off work. He was sighted a few times being driven round in the car by his wife, and on one occasion I spoke to him, but what I spoke to was a shell, an empty body that looked like Matthew, but so tired and haggard and unresponsive.
He did eventually return to work, but after a few more years was pensioned out early. By chance I bumped into him a couple of years after that and was delighted to see that the empty body was now decidedly refilled better than ever, at ease with the world and very much as he deserved to be.
His problem had been one of going to minor tragedy after minor tragedy, none of them unbearable in isolation, and having to cope with each one in turn. But for every job he dealt with, each one left a small residue, and after more than 20 years he simply caved in. Losing a chase and damaging a car is something that any Police driver would normally get over in a short while, but in his case it was that one upset too many, just that little bit more than even he could bear.
Whatever the longer-term upset caused by emotional conflicts, physically I think everybody was affected one way or another by working shifts that basically don’t agree with the body. Some couldn’t sleep in the daytime, others had digestive upsets or relentless headaches. Strangely, in my case night shifts would create a near insatiable desire to eat crisps. Working back with Lou it became a regular event at the town’s 24-hour petrol station that we would turn up about one o’clock in the morning for a brew and leave ten minutes later with a carrier bag holding perhaps ten packets of e-number and fat-saturated potato snacks. Sometimes Lou would drive for a while as I munched packet after packet, on other occasions it would be my turn to drive and he would pass me whatever was next out of the carrier bag and I would shovel the contents down like a kid at a party. Inevitably by about 4 o’clock the bag would be empty, and while normally we would break local tradition and dispose of it in a litter bin, one night Lou had an odd idea as we meandered along the empty and endless dual carriageways.
Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes Page 24
