Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes

by Tom Ratcliffe

  ‘What d’you reckon would happen if you held this carrier bag out of the window at 100 miles an hour?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s one way to find out,’ I replied, changed down a gear and started to push the car up to the proposed speed. With the speedometer being calibrated we could be sure that if it said 100, then you really were doing 100, at which exact speed Lou opened the window and, one hand on each bag handle, held it out into the airflow. The result was quite utterly predictable as the flimsy bag expired with a feeble ‘pop’, but the intoxication of tiredness and boredom made the whole experiment seem incredibly funny. When the very childish laughter had stopped we were quiet again, but Lou’s mind was at work. After a minute he pondered aloud.

  ‘I wonder what would happen if we did the same thing with a bin liner? You know, a proper big black plastic one.’

  ‘You’d either lose the bin liner or it would rip your arms out of their sockets I reckon,’ was my reply.

  It was an interesting thought, but proposals of silly experiments faded as a job came over the radio and real life interrupted an amusing diversion.

  The next night was basically more of the same – an accident, a couple of speeders, a bit of hunting, and another ten bags of crisps. For no other reason than ‘because it was there’, that night’s carier bag was subjected to the same fate as the first one. Same speed, same result, same laughter. Then came the surprise. Lou reached into his coat pocket and with delighted pride produced an enormous heavy duty bin liner.

  ‘I kept waking up during the day,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t sleep for wondering what really would happen...’

  This was so daft and pointless that it was just too good to pass up.

  Like the two little kids that we had effectively become, I drove to the start of the dual carriageway system and set off, building up speed steadily. Lou composed himself for his magnum opus. As we passed the 90 mile an hour mark he opened the window and took as firm a grip as he could on the edges of the bin liner. It had no handles so was a more formidable proposition than its lightweight predecessors, and at 100 miles an hour he braced his feet in the footwell and in one swift movement offered the open end of the bag to the outside world. He was instantly engaged in a titanic struggle as the bag fought for its life with the wind which threatened to tear it apart, and the two forces conspired to drag Lou out of the car. For a few brief seconds this ludicrous battle raged, before once again the plastic gave out, but this time with an almighty explosion, followed by hysterical laughter from the pair of us in what must be one of the most useless scientific experiments ever carried out in a moving Police car.

  We never repeated the bin liner project, but there was one final act of ‘out of the window’ lunacy the following night. Bored with bags, Lou pondered the effect of slipstreams once more.

  ‘What do you think would happen,’ came the familiar line, ‘if I stuck my head out at 120 miles an hour and opened my eyes?’

  I didn’t reply, just changed down two gears and floored it. While the car could get to 120 quite happily, it would still need a couple of miles of clear road to conduct this experiment, but we managed it. 120 on the clock, seat belt off and holding recklessly onto the window frame, Lou cast caution to the wind in the interests of science and thrust his head and shoulders out of the car, facing the oncoming gale like an airborne King Canute.

  After a few seconds he flopped back into his seat, laughing uncontrollably.

  ‘That was amazing!’ he panted. ‘My eyeballs dried out in about a billionth of a second! Incredible!’

  ‘And the experience seems to have restyled your hair into a passable impression of Albert Einstein,’ I added as I took in his new ‘startled rabbit’ look.

  When it was Lou’s turn to drive I declined his kind offer to repeat the experiment for myself. I was by this time losing some of my hair and didn’t feel like accelerating the process, however much of a thrill I might be passing over.

  Prior to his unexpected departure from the Police to run a scrap yard, and when not performing strange high-speed stunts, Lou and I also had some entertaining successes in the job we were actually meant to do. Late one evening we heard over the radio of a car involved in the theft of a laptop computer. Weighing up its last known direction with the address to which the car was registered, we sat at a chosen point and waited as the traffic passed, but time ticked by and after more than half an hour we had almost given up hope of seeing it when to our delight it came past right in front of us.

  From near-despondency to ‘battle-stations’ in an instant, I pulled out to follow it and we discussed how we would do the ‘stop’. There was a man driving and a teenage girl in the front passenger seat, and we guessed that they would try to play it cool, so a chase was unlikely. As we followed, Lou could see the girl moving about in her seat, as if she was putting some items down the front of her top. This was a reasonable ploy from her point of view, as if it really was a routine check, any loose incriminating items would be well out of sight.

  Lou pressed the buttons to light up the ‘Police’ and ‘Stop’ signs, and the car stopped in response to our request.

  I got out and walked to the driver’s window which opened to greet me.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ came the very predictable question.

  ‘Just a stop check,’ I said, giving the hoped-for and suspicion-reducing answer.

  My plan was to get the ignition keys as quickly as I could, and as I started my familiar ‘stop check’ patter, I suddenly reached in and grabbed the keys, turning the engine off in the process. A moment later, Lou opened the passenger door, and had decided that in order to recover whatever the girl might have secreted in her top, he would yank her upper clothing upwards, just enough to let anything within fall out.

  He put his plan into action and in one movement put a hand either side of the girl and pulled.

  Hard.

  It was designed to be an upward yank of about four to six inches, very abrupt and very firm. To Lou’s surprise and despite the force he used, the clothing stayed resolutely in place while the girl’s eyes popped slightly, and she gave a shriek. It turned out she was wearing an all-in-one ‘body’, which was firmly joined in an area which was promptly and intimately invaded by what was only meant to cover it.

  Lou’s observation was ultimately proved correct however, and although the laptop had obviously been disposed of en route, we eventually recovered several hundred pounds in cash, four mobile phones, five stolen driving licences and a dozen or more stolen credit cards; a good haul with an entertaining twist – at least for us. More significant for me was the revelation that the girl was not just a thief, she also turned out to be a ‘lady of the night’ – a prostitute.

  Something from long ago stirred in the dim recesses of my mind, and I felt myself drawn back to the words of my instructor during my initial training – ‘There are lots of things out there that will get you sacked, but the three most dangerous are prisoners, property and prostitutes’. I pondered the responsibility as at last I found myself taking charge of property from a prostitute prisoner, and was pleased that the advice from years before had been given to be heeded. I also reflected that during the intervening years I could have done with the same warning in respect of many other things beginning with ‘P’, such as paperwork, publicans, piss artists and on at least one occasion promotion-seeking policemen to name a few.

  But for now, with the two prisoners secure we turned round and headed back towards the Police station. It was odd to see that although it had only felt like a short distance between seeing the car and stopping it, it was actually several miles. The distance had been covered while we had discussed our options and turned a raw plan into action, and this concentration had somehow reduced our perception of how much ground we had covered.

  On reflection, the same sort of effect had happened to me since I had joined the Police. I did not feel I had changed very much over the years of my service, but if I retraced my steps to look b
ack at the point at which I had started, I had covered a huge amount of ground. The experiences I had gone through, the sights I had seen, and the way my view of humanity had altered by seeing it from the unusual, almost privileged standpoint of a Policeman was fantastic. It was something of which I had been barely aware while it was actually happening, but I was a long way down a road which had left me very different to how I had been as a penniless student on the day I filled in my application form.

  Had I been able to look ahead on the day I joined, and see how I would end up, how the journey was going to be, I wondered if I would have embarked on it. After a moment’s reflection the answer came – of course I would. I might not have enjoyed it all, but I could never have had those experiences both painful and pleasurable anywhere else.

  If anyone tried to tell me some of the things that go on largely unseen in this crazy world, I would never have believed them if I hadn’t seen them for myself. My career choice may have been more or less accidental, but what an accident!

  The next night was the last of our ‘nights’ week and the first part of the shift passed without incident, for which we were grateful. We spent a couple of hours driving round, stopping the occasional car and listening to our personal radios for any call we might be sent to, but none came. It looked set to be a nice quiet end to the week.

  A few miles to our north an unnamed man was finishing a pint in his local pub. He made to leave, and decided to buy a portion of chips to eat on the way home.

  A few miles to our south, a terrified man dialled 999 to report his neighbour’s car stolen in a robbery.