Just the Job, Lad

by Mike Pannett

  ‘Yeah, no problem. I’m going to need a coroner’s officer, Mike, to stay with the bodies. Can we have one of your officers?’

  ‘Yep, you can use Jayne, she’s done it once before.’ I stood with my hands on my hips for a moment, gathering my thoughts. ‘God knows how long the tailbacks are.’

  He pointed towards York. ‘That way it’s nearly to Stockton Lane end,’ he said. ‘The AIU just phoned me as I was arriving.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ I glanced past him, down Golden Hill. All I could see was a solid line, down the hill and out of sight. Thousands of cars and coaches, stretching for several miles.

  Fordy was back from the car. ‘He all right?’ I asked him. ‘The driver?’

  ‘Think so, yeah.’

  ‘Right, we’ve got to do something about this traffic. It ain’t gonna get any better by itself. Jayne, I’m sorry but I need you to be coroner’s officer. Can you liaise with Simon?’

  ‘Yeah. Will do Mike.’

  Jayne was looking at the crushed Nissan. ‘What a bleeding mess. How the hell did it happen? Nice sunny day like this . . .’

  ‘That’s for the AIU to find out,’ I said. ‘People lose concentration . . . Ah, here’s Thommo.’

  ‘Aye, did my best, Mike.’ Thommo was panting, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Backed up solid, way past Rillington.’

  ‘Right, well, I’m gonna send you straight back along the line, tell them what’s happened, ask them to be patient. You know the routine. Meanwhile I’m going to figure out how to get them shifted. They’ll be backed up to the coast if we don’t get something sorted.’

  We had a massive problem here and our options were limited. The Castle Howard route would work for any traffic stuck on the York side of us, but I couldn’t see us turning the rest of the queue around, not yet at any rate. Another possibility was to redirect the traffic from the coast through Stamford Bridge and onto the Bridlington road – take them into York that way – but it was narrow lanes all the way across and we’d only end up adding to the queues already forming along the A166.

  I must have stood there for a full minute, just thinking. The AIU crew had arrived and were at it with their tape measures, cameras and chalk, marking the road and making notes. Mercifully, the motorists in the queue were now staying well away from the scene. Some were sitting on the grass verge in the sunshine; some were still in their cars, listening to their radios.

  I looked back down the hill, towards the bend where the Low Hutton road turned off. Now there’s a possibility, I thought. I used to ride that way on my bike when we were kids, fishing at Kirkham weir, and sometimes we’d make a circuit, riding up to the top, above High Hutton, to watch the traffic on the main road before racing back down. That lane came out barely half a mile from where I was standing, on the York side of the blockage. In effect it was a single-track loop that went round the site of the accident. Maybe I could route the traffic in at the bottom, up through the Huttons and out the top, beyond the accident. The problem was that it’s a narrow series of lanes, and too long to work on a traffic-light system for both directions. I could only feed the traffic through one way.

  ‘1015 to control, over.’

  ‘Yeah Mike, how’s it going up there?’

  ‘The accident scene’s under control, traffic and AIU are on scene. Jayne is acting as coroner’s officer, but listen . . . I’m trying to work out how to shift this traffic. Can you notify all the local radio stations to tell drivers to avoid the area and expect long delays. The eastbound traffic can be diverted from Whitwell-on-the-Hill round by Castle Howard. I’ll send Thommo to start this rolling. Can you get Highways out with the signs to that location?’

  ‘Received, Mike.’

  ‘As for the westbound traffic, can you get Highways to set up diversions off the interchange? Get Fordy and Ed to go down there and start the ball rolling. That’ll leave me the queue we’ve already built up along the dual carriageway, back to the roundabout. I think we might be able to get them round the Huttons Ambo loop. But it’ll be tight. I need to go and check it first.’

  ‘Received. I don’t think we’ve ever used that route before, Mike. Will it take the bigger vehicles?’

  ‘I’m about to go and find out.’

  ‘Do you want an update on the queues, over?’

  ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘Ten miles each way.’

  ‘Right, I’d best get started.’

  The trouble with having a bright idea such as I’d had is that other people, locals, in particular, are going to figure it out too. I turned my car round and drove east a few hundred yards, then turned off at the sign that points to Huttons Ambo. I’d only got a couple of hundred yards up the road when I was stopped in my tracks by a convoy of cars pointing the same way as I was, but at a complete standstill.

  ‘1015 to control, over.’

  ‘Go ahead, Mike.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got a real problem here. The road’s totally blocked. It looks like people have tried to take this route already. Got a line of cars trying to get through from the bottom end – and they’ve just about stopped the job. I’m going to have to leave my car and go on foot. See if I can sort it out.’

  ‘Received. We’ve just taken a call from a local farmer who states that traffic from both directions has met and it is now total gridlock. Tempers are flaring.’

  ‘Received. I thought that might be the case. I’ll cone across the road at this end of the loop, prevent anyone else coming down. Can you get the York traffic car just to shoot to the other end and cone that off as well?’

  ‘Received, Mike.’

  ‘I’m going to need some extra staff to get this to work.’

  ‘1015 from Special Constable Nicholson.’

  ‘Go ahead, Keith.’

  ‘Yes Sarge, I’ve just come on duty. Do you want me to come and assist at the Huttons Ambo junction?’

  ‘Keith, good timing. If you could make your way and stop anything else coming down here that would be brilliant.’

  I got back in the car and went to back it off the road, careful to leave it where it wouldn’t cause another blockage.

  I was just putting the car into reverse when a stubby finger rapped on the side window. I wound it down to see a bearded, weatherbeaten face peering in at me.

  ‘Now then, Mr Pannett. Are you in trouble, lad?’

  It was Bob Ferguson, one of my Country Watch members.

  ‘I bloody well am, mate. We’ve had a nasty accident on the main road – two fatalities, traffic backed up halfway to Leeds. Now this lot’ – I pointed at the line of cars that had stopped in front of me – ‘decide they’ll take a short cut.’

  ‘Aye.’ Bob scratched his head. ‘Aye,’ he said again, ‘I see what you mean.’

  I looked at him. ‘Any suggestions?’

  ‘Aye, I have.’ He looked at the line of cars. ‘I reckon I can help you out.’

  ‘What you got in mind?’

  ‘Why, I’ve a field round the corner yonder. It’s right where t’cars from both ends have had a coming together. I left the lot of them shouting at each other to back up. Daft buggers. Anyhow, sometimes I have the Scouts camping in it.’

  ‘Very good Bob, but where are we going with this?’

  ‘It’ll take two, three hundred easy. You’ll see.’

  ‘Bob, three hundred what? Scouts? What you on about?’ I really wasn’t in the mood for Yorkshire riddles.

  ‘No, you daft sod. Cars. Cars, lad!’

  ‘Ah, I get it. You mean stop the job, get one lot in, clear the road and let them through from the other direction?’

  He scratched his head again. ‘Aye, sommat like that. It’ll tek a bit of organising, but you can manage that, bright young lad like you.’

  ‘I’m just worried about them buses on some of these tight corners. And lorries.’

  ‘Aye, they’ll tek a bit of negotiating will them buggers.’

  ‘Will they make it?’

  ‘The
re’s no other way.’

  ‘Right, we’ll go for it. Let’s get up there.’

  It was a good half a mile and I had to field off questions from just about every driver as Bob and I trudged past. I gave them all a stock answer. ‘Just bear with us, we’ve had a very serious accident. We’ll get things moving as soon as we can.’

  The field was perfect. More or less level, but sloping gently down towards the river Derwent, and nicely grassed over. He’d clearly had cattle in it, but not for a week or two, to judge by the dried-up cow-pats. Bob assured me that we shouldn’t have a problem with vehicles getting stuck; the ground was dry and firm.

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘we’ll start with this lot coming from Malton direction. Can you man the gate, while I bring ’em in?’

  It took a good half an hour, maybe longer, to direct the first line into the field. Then we liaised with Thommo to get the westbound lot parked up. We got them in lines, nursing seven or eight buses and a pair of artics through the tight double bend in the road, then sharply round to the field entrance. There must have been a couple of hundred vehicles all told. There was a lot of grunting, swearing and gear-crunching before we were done. I even fielded a complaint from a man in a smart suit about the state of the field. He’d got brown stuff up his trouser legs and wanted to know why I couldn’t have found a cleaner place for them all to park.

  ‘D’you know, Bob, I think this is going to work.’ We’d got the entire queue of cars parked up and it was time to let the coastbound traffic down the hill, past the farm and away towards the bypass. I held my breath and set them off, keeping my fingers crossed that they’d all get through. Then I shouted up Keith on the radio. ‘They’re heading your way, should be a steady stream. I’ll let you know when the last one passes me.’

  ‘Received, Sarge.’

  It went more smoothly than I could’ve hoped for, and once we’d cleared the coastbound we could then open the road as a continuous diversion for the York-bound traffic. I walked with the line of vehicles back down to my car and watched the last of them clear the lane, then shouted over to Keith, ‘Just hold them there a minute while I spin my car around, then get them to follow me along.’

  ‘Will do, Sarge.’

  I got in the car, turned it round and set off back up the lane. Looking in my mirror I could see the convoy winding its way behind. I flicked the blue lights on. This convoy wasn’t stopping, and I was a beacon of hope for the stranded motorists who were finally on the move. A few minutes later we joined the main road above the scene of the accident, and there was Thommo waving his arms as he directed the traffic off towards York. ‘Aye,’ he said, as I pulled over behind him and got out to monitor proceedings, ‘reminds me of my young days, standing in Glasgow city centre and watching my old man on point duty.’ He squirmed his shoulder round and grimaced. ‘Won’t do my arthritis any good though.’

  As everything fell into place I updated control. Ed and Fordy were now free to organise a flask to take to the scene and take it in turns to relieve Thommo and Keith. I went to see how the Accident Investigation Unit were getting on. Now that we’d got the traffic situation in hand, the next job – and I wasn’t looking forward to this one – was contacting the next of kin. The AIU team had been on the radio to tell me they’d managed to identify the victims. They were a married couple, so it would most likely be a case of contacting their children, wherever they were.

  It turned out that they came from Leeds, which made it a job for West Yorkshire Police. We passed on the details of what had happened, and got them to organise an officer to attend the address and deliver the dreadful news. It’s a horrible business and there’s no easy time to do it. You knock on a door and find people putting the kids to bed, or maybe sat around the tea table, or out in the garden enjoying a drink. I once called on a woman to tell her that her daughter had been killed, and found her in the middle of a domestic bust-up with her boyfriend. It’s no fun being the bringer of bad news.

  The A64 had been closed for well over five hours by the time they brought out a heavy tow-truck to remove the lorry. The car had been shifted to one side of the road and would be taken away by a breakdown crew from Malton. The undertaker had just left with the deceased couple. There was the eerie silence that usually accompanies this type of scene. The hundreds of cars that would normally be thundering along the road were just a distant rumble on the diversionary routes. Apart from the markings on the road, and a few places where the verge was chewed up, everything would be back to normal shortly; the road would be reopened, and people would be speeding by, ignoring the danger signs. We hadn’t established the cause of this particular accident, but most of the ones up there involve people simply driving too fast or losing concentration after a day on the beach.

  It was close to nine o’clock, the sun was setting, and I was starting to wind down. My mind was still busy, still alert, but I could feel my energy levels flagging. I was now starting to turn my thoughts to the backlog of calls that would be stacked up since we had all been tied up at the accident. As officers got released we started to pick them up in priority order. Thankfully there was nothing too urgent, but after you’ve spent several hours dealing with something so serious and demanding you just feel like heading back in for a drink and a debrief. That would simply have to wait, though.

  ‘Control to 1015.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Mike, we’ve got a domestic. Male armed with a knife, threatening a female. Child in the house. The informant is the offender’s sister. She sounds pretty hysterical. Are you able to attend?’

  ‘That’s a yes.’ They gave me an address not far from the station off Old Maltongate. ‘Right, received. Who else have we got going?’

  ‘I’ll get Fordy and Ed to attend.’

  ‘All received. Can you flag it up to the ARV unit and make them aware of the situation. I’ll give you an update shortly.’

  ‘Received, will do.’

  I was in my car, hurrying to the address we’d been given, hoping the urgency of the call would maintain my adrenaline levels, because after all that had happened I really had been hoping for a little respite. But that’s the way it goes some days. It’s like London buses. You can go for ages without anything major happening, then it’s one after another. Particularly on bank holidays. Attending a fatality of any kind drains you emotionally, and now we were going to have to walk into a domestic, with people screaming and shouting; and doubtless we would feel the brunt of it, because nine times out of ten they’ll end up thinking it’s all our fault. Meanwhile we would be expected to be patient, understanding, calm, rational, perfectly correct in everything we said or did – without offending a living soul.

  I took a deep breath and reminded myself that whatever we found we would, in the end, sort it, and that come tomorrow it’d be just another memory. As I put my foot down and contacted Ed and Fordy I could feel another surge of adrenaline kicking in. ‘You two got an ETA, over?’

  ‘Just hit the bypass.’

  ‘Received.’

  Right, Mike. Time to talk myself into this. You need to think like a supervisor. Depending on how big the job is, I might need extra staff. I looked at my watch. Too late to call the night duty in early; most of them would be in in half an hour or so anyway. Might need the shields from the station in case we need to go straight in . . .

  The good news – if you could call it that – was that we hadn’t far to go. Just past the police station to the mini roundabout and off along Highfields Road. I soon found the place.

  Here we go, I said to myself. A young woman – she must have been in her twenties – was out into the street trying to flag me down with a shirt or jacket of some kind. Hard to tell in the half-light of the evening.

  ‘Hello. You OK?’ I’d stopped the car and got out.

  ‘Oh God,’ she gasped. ‘You’ve got to get in there. It’s all kicking off. It’s me brother.’ She was pointing to a mid-terrace, in a cul-de-sac, maybe thirty yards off the main
road.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Tell me exactly what’s happening.’

  ‘He’s gone totally ape. He’s got a knife. He’s lost his job, and now his bet’s gone down and he’s – he’s just lost the frigging plot. You’ve gotta get in there, quick, before he kills someone.’

  ‘OK, now listen, I just need you to take a deep breath and slow down.’ I was trying to calm her down, but she wasn’t having it.

  ‘They’ve both been drinking. Just . . . can’t you get in there and get him out?’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘Him and his wife, and the little lass is in there too.’

  ‘How old is the child?’

  ‘She’s six.’

  ‘OK, and what’s your name?’

  ‘Janice.’ She grabbed my arm. ‘You’ve got to get him out, before he kills her. Or himself.’

  ‘Now listen,’ I said. ‘Have you seen the knife?’

  ‘Yeah, he grabbed a carving knife out of the kitchen drawer. That’s when I legged it and called you. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s really lost it. They had a massive row.’ She grabbed at my arm. ‘Aren’t you going to go in and get him?’

  ‘Listen, Janice, I’m not going to do anything that’ll endanger anyone. Not him, nor his missus, nor the child. Now, has your brother actually threatened the child – or his wife?’

  ‘He said he’d kill her – or himself. Oh, for God’s sake do something, please!’

  ‘Has he been violent in the past?’

  ‘No. Not him. He’s just snapped. It’s all got on top of him since he lost his job.’

  ‘What job’s that?’

  ‘At the bacon factory.’

  I saw Ed and Fordy turning into the street. Janice’s phone rang. ‘It’s my sister-in-law,’ she said. ‘She’s up in the bedroom.’

  ‘Can I speak to her, please?’

  She passed me the phone. ‘What’s she called?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s Jo.’