Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes (3 page)

The ten weeks of training saw an exam at the end of each week, a rigid 70% pass mark was applied and woe betide the ‘dippers’. I was spared any ‘dipping’ – I came close now and again, but as with most things in life, it doesn’t matter how close to the line you are, as long as you are on the right side of it.

Christmas mercifully punctuated the ten weeks, giving a fortnight off to recover. I returned after the break as a member of the ‘senior’ intake, and with my peers I watched the new junior intake as they struggled to cope with their unfamiliar lifestyle. I was starting to climb the ladder of experience, and felt more at home in my new world. By early February I was back with my fellow newbies at the Force Training Centre for two weeks of ‘Local Procedure’. This consisted of more physical stuff, punctuated by lessons which all seemed to begin with ‘forget the crap they taught you at the District place – this is how you really do it.’

Rather confusing really, but not ours to question.

After this came the first step into real life, when we went our separate ways ‘onto Division’, or into the real world of policing, and starting over once again.

During Local Procedure I was told I would not be posted to my home town, in case of potential embarrassment if I were to encounter friends or relatives when early in service. So for my sins I was posted to the opposite side of the County, to the County town, where the Police station was situated on the ground floor of the Headquarters itself. Not good, I was told – ‘you get all the bosses watching what’s going on.’ The truth turned out to be quite different – it was more a case of all the middle level supervisors, the Inspectors and their ilk, thinking the higher ranks were watching them. Most of the big bosses (with a few exceptions, as I was to find out later) hadn’t a clue what went on, they didn’t even want to know, mainly because if they identified a problem it put the onus on them to solve it. The Inspector level on the other hand spent so much time trying to look good that they often lost touch with the ‘ground floor’, which is probably why we, the workers, got away with so much.

Promotion prospects also looked good for me as a male – there were three toilets on the ground floor, clearly marked for those permitted to use them: Men, Women, and Senior Officers. If ever there was a hint for promotion-hungry
policewomen to buy a recipe book and a pram, that was it.

The same ‘bottom of the ladder’ feeling I had had in training was back again as I started my first day of ‘proper’ work, and walked into the parade room at 5.45 on a Monday morning. I had to look forward to two years as a Probationary Constable, known colloquially as a Probie. Of course my arrival pushed the previous new Probie one rung up the ladder, and he moved on as a member of the shift, where I was the rank outsider. The advantage was that mistakes could be forgiven (up to a point), and also I had the first ten weeks ‘in company’, meaning I was put with a Tutor Constable who would take me under his wing and guide me on the right path. Or not, as the case may be. In the fullness of time I was actually to have two tutor cons, the first of whom arrived at 8am (‘I don’t do earlies so you won’t see me at 6 o’clock any morning’) and greeted me with the words,‘I only became a tutor so I would have someone to do the writing for me. Don’t ever put on a statement that I was there because I’m not going to Court to cover your mistakes.’ Reassuring stuff.

So my very first patrol was with one of the ordinary block members named Gus, a most professional man whose job it was to look after me for the two hours until my mentor dragged himself out of bed. Gus drove me around the town for a while, pointing out a few landmarks and trying to give me basic practical advice. Driving round in a marked car for the first time also made me realise how very much ‘on show’ I was – drivers’ behaviour was totally different to when I drove in my own car. This was the first true evidence of the line I had crossed in joining the Police. I was on society’s side, but not really part of
it. I was the one who people expected to see when they needed help, but didn’t want around when they preferred to be left to their own devices.

I asked Gus how he would go about stopping a car. Such a basic thing, but a point where I as the man in uniform, the authority figure if you like, would initiate an encounter with someone who didn’t really want to be spoken to. How did he deal with such a situation? So he showed me. The next car we came up behind, he flashed the headlamps and it pulled over. The driver sat in the car, puzzled as to what if anything he had done wrong, and why he had been picked to be stopped. Gus walked towards the open car window.

‘Good morning. The reason why I’ve stopped you is just for a routine check of your car, tyres and tax disc, that sort of thing. Do you have your driving documents with you by the way?’ and so he went on. He had instantly answered the questions that the driver wanted answered. He was polite, calm and reassuring. In those first two hours he taught me many things by good example and gave me a framework I was to use thousands of times stopping cars and people over the years to come – his firm but friendly manner was inspirational. Neither of us could know it at the time, but his career was to end some years later when he stopped a car one night, and two minutes later was kneeling in the road with a large knife held to his throat. That incident was to be his last ever operational matter, and he retired shortly after on ill health, his nerve irreparably broken. Mind you, at least he was alive.

At 8am my tutor Alex Richards arrived. This heralded several weeks of an overbearing know-it-all attitude, one which
gave me great sympathy over the rest of my service for those just starting out. I started my days on patrol as passenger in a panda car. My mentor didn’t believe in walking – for him anything that walked for work was a lower form of life.

My first four shifts ran from a Monday to a Thursday and were ‘earlies’. The shift started at 6am and finished at 2 in the afternoon. I then had Friday to Sunday off, before starting the proper monthly rotation of shifts. This began on a Monday with seven 10pm to 6am night shifts, finishing at 6 o’clock on a Monday morning. The Monday also formed one of two ‘rest days’, even though you were asleep for half of it. The next block of seven shifts from the Wednesday till the following Tuesday was ‘lates’ from 2 to 10pm every day, followed by two more rest days to take you to a Friday, when the early turn began. Seven 6am to 2pm shifts brought you to Thursday afternoon, which gave way to a whole three days off before returning to the start of the cycle on the Monday, when it was back to nights at 10pm. Apparently it was better for you to work seven in a row as it gave your body time to adapt to whatever shift it was you worked. In reality by the time you got to the one weekend a month off that the system allowed, you were so tired that you needed the three days to start feeling even remotely human again. This was a shift pattern I was to work continuously for the next fifteen years.

Having said that, you can’t join an emergency service and be expected to provide a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week presence without some sacrifice, and no shift pattern is going to be perfect, though with hindsight the 7-on 2-off system was probably as far from perfect as you could get.

So my first round of shifts proper started on a Monday
night. With four earlies under my belt I was looking forward to putting some practical experience onto the bare bones of knowledge given in training.

The shift paraded on at around ten to the hour. ‘Parading on’ was an archaic term which actually involved a briefing punctuated by the drinking of tea, smoking of cigarettes, cracking of jokes and breaking of wind.

Alex and I left the Police station and drove into town, and after only a few hundred yards my tutor pointed ahead – it took me a moment to spot what had caught his eye, and then I saw it. A tramp. A gentleman of the road. Leaning against a barrier at the side of this particular road without a care in the world.

‘Wind your window down,’ said Alex as we slowed. This was wonderful – I had seen the vagrant ‘practical’ in training, and now in real life I would observe with care as Alex directed the unfortunate gent to the nearest Salvation Army hostel. This meant I had the opportunity to learn the whereabouts of this charitable establishment without having to ask a colleague first and betray my ignorance.

The car stopped with my window immediately adjacent to the tramp, and I noticed that he was not just leaning against the railings for the rest and relaxation, he was also relieving himself into the road. Any romantic notion about tramps evaporated as a smell of strong white cider and urine floated into the car. Alex opened his mouth to offer the man directions, but the advice given was quite unexpected.

‘Why don’t you f—- off and die somewhere you f—-ing filthy bastard? You’re disgusting, pissing in the street like a dog. Go on, f—- off.’

The tramp stayed resolutely leaning on the railings, grinning happily at us, nodding gently. Alex glared at him in contemplation for a moment before giving up, putting the car into gear and driving off.

So that was the real life version of dealing with tramps.

In truth the correct way was probably somewhere in between, and strangely I don’t know to this day where the Salvation Army hostel is in that town. The benefit was that we didn’t arrest him, there was no desire to do so, as the first thing we would have to do would be to put him in the car, and I doubt he would have been the only ‘passenger’ so to speak.

That set of nights provided a number of ‘firsts’ for me. You must bear in mind that I had come into the strange world of law enforcement from a very sheltered and almost artificial start to life. I had gone from prep school to grammar school to University, I had spent my non-academic time in a large house in a rural area. It was an excellent upbringing in a home full of care, consideration and intellectual stimulation. An overlay of religion meant that anything involving death was glossed over, and could generally be avoided. That first week on nights was to be instrumental in altering my perception of life and death.

We had a call to do a ‘death message’. Someone has to do these things, and as with anything distasteful or odd, the Police are usually that ‘someone’.

Unexpected deaths are the worst, so on the face of it this one actually looked a little more promising than many – go and tell Mrs. Riley that her 80 year old husband Patrick had collapsed and died while a patient at the local hospital. As he was already in hospital I imagined the death would be at least half-
anticipated. On the way to the address I decided how I would approach this – the wife (or now more correctly ‘widow’) would answer the door, I would introduce myself, sit her down quietly, break the news sympathetically and probably leave after summoning a neighbour or relative, and the two would be reminiscing quietly as I left perhaps half an hour later after a cup of tea. It sounded good. I would no doubt be guided by Alex’s experience. He would steer me gently when or if things didn’t go quite according to plan.

It wasn’t far off midnight as we arrived at the tatty house on one of three large council estates which surrounded the town. The downstairs lights were on, another hopeful sign.

With what was quickly revealed as his usual level of support Alex just said,‘Right, off you go,’ and sat immoveable in the car. It looked as if I ’d have to carry out my plan alone.

I knocked at the door, and again a minute or two later. The front step on which I stood was slightly lower than the hallway, and as the door finally opened I found myself level with a large, white flabby stomach. The legs supporting the stomach wore trousers, from the bottom of which protruded a large pair of dirty bare feet. From the trouser waistband a pair of braces circumnavigated the stomach and went over the pale bony shoulders, and a short way above the chest was a head. With a beard. Inexperienced though I was, I could tell this was probably not Mrs. Riley. As I drew breath to speak, an upstairs window was flung open and a voice started to scream, ‘It’s Patrick, it’s Patrick’ at such volume that normal conversation was impossible. At least I had located the widow Riley, but my plan was in tatters. The stomach looked enquiringly at me.

‘I think Mrs. Riley has realised why I am here,’ I said. ‘Mr. Riley passed away at the hospital earlier this evening. Can you perhaps contact them and make the necessary arrangements?’

‘O.K.’ said the stomach and shut the door. Not the sombre yet tasteful event I had rehearsed, but effective nonetheless.

Later in the week I dealt with a similar incident, but this time it was at the hospital end – what is called a ‘sudden death’. This means any situation where someone has died and a doctor will not issue a death certificate. This can be for an obvious reason – anyone with a knife sticking out of them, or the odd bullet-hole for instance – or just if they had simply not seen a doctor in the preceding two weeks. Often a certificate will follow without the need for a post mortem examination, but in the interim, a lucky Constable gets a ‘sudden death’. The Probies got most of the sudden deaths, and as the most recent arrival on the block, I was guaranteed first pick whether I liked it or not.

I have spent more time than I would want in hospital mortuaries, and they all share the same strange, unnatural atmosphere. Antiseptic mixed with other smells – you have a fair idea where they come from but no-one ever asks. Rows of drawers floor to ceiling, hiding an unknown number of bodies, and white plastic trolleys here and there. Easily washed and not built for comfort. The guests here don’t need padding any more.

The interface between this area and the public side of the hospital is the Chapel of Rest, a long narrow room designed to accommodate a trolley and occupant, and separated from a seating area by a glass screen. A door (normally locked) beside the glass allows access to the seating area, and a door at the end
of the narrow room allows the trolley to be wheeled in and out as required from the area where the fridges are.

As a rule I had always associated death with age, so this first sudden death was an eye-opener to me as it was a man some five years younger than I was. At the age of 19 he was a passenger in a car which crashed. He had a broken leg and other minor injuries, but no-one had noticed a damaged aorta which burst as he was being moved out of intensive care, ironically. He died a few minutes later, and had the look on his face of a man who didn’t want to go. The experience of dealing with the body was quite unreal, I suppose because it was not only a new experience, but also quite unlike anything I had ever done before. Here was something that had so much of a living person about them, yet also possessed many qualities of a tailor’s dummy. A bizarre mixture and something I have never fully come to terms with.