by Mike Pannett
‘Yeah, but what about your expenses? Travelling in from Norton every night? You’ll hardly be breaking even, will you?’
Ronnie shook his head and grinned. ‘I get a ride in, and a spot of supper.’
‘Who off? Him in the frock coat?’
‘No, her in the frock.’ I couldn’t recall having seen Ronnie look sheepish before – except maybe when I arrested him in Bulmer cemetery that time – but that’s the only way I can describe the look on his face as he said, ‘Works in a hotel restaurant just down the road there. Brings me in whenever matey needs me. Then about nine, when they finish serving, she meets me at the kitchen door and slips me a plate of grub. She fetches me steaks, chops, all sorts.’
‘You always were a slippery customer, Ronnie. Anyway’ – Ann had grabbed hold of my arm – ‘I’d better be off. And by the way . . .’
‘Yeah?’
‘Keep out of trouble, won’t you?’
Ronnie grinned and touched the side of his nose before slipping away down the alleyway.
Despite our guide’s stories about mysterious apparitions in unlikely places, there were no more ghoulish figures leaping out from dark corners. By the time the Minster clock struck half-past eight we were on our way back to where we’d started, and just a few minutes’ walk from the place I’d booked for our supper – during which I found myself eyeing the waitress and wondering whether she might be Ronnie’s lady friend. We had a super meal, and, true to my promise, I let Ann have the wine while I stuck to Coke.
‘Well,’ I said, as we got in the car and headed out towards the Malton road, ‘I reckon that just about wraps it up.’
‘Wraps what up?’ Ann sounded every so slightly tetchy.
‘Why, the Christmas shopping. Nicely timed, too. No major panic. We go in, we get the gear, and we get out. Job done.’
‘Mike, we are three days away from the Christmas holiday – such as it is.’
‘That’s what I’m saying. We timed it to perfection.’
‘You may have timed it to perfection, having a quick rummage round HMV, but some of us have wider responsibilities, a slightly longer list of presents, and are running out of time.’
‘You mean there’s more to be done?’
‘More to be done? It’s a good job you’re in that driving seat, Michael Pannett. Otherwise you might be feeling my hands around your neck right now, applying a little pressure to your windpipe.’
‘What have I said?’
‘You men really are hopeless, aren’t you. All the Christmas arrangements – they don’t just happen, you know.’
‘Oh, so we’ve still got a few more bits to get then?’
‘Just the odd one or two,’ she said, through clenched teeth.
‘I tell you what, it’s late-night shopping every night at Monks Cross. Shall we stop off?’
‘Mike, it’s gone ten o’clock. It says “late night”, not “all night”. You just concentrate on getting us home. I need my bed. On an early tomorrow. And I’ve plenty on at work.’
We’d begun the run-up to Christmas now. From here on, from a policing point of view, things were likely to get really busy. Kids were out of school, workplaces were preparing for lengthy shutdowns, and everywhere you looked on a night-time there were works parties in progress. The pubs were busy too, and the landlords were rubbing their hands. Maybe it’s peculiar to our area, but there’s a sort of tradition in the building trade that everything shuts down for at least a couple of weeks around the turn of the year. What that means is that you’ll often have a bunch of lads with large pay packets in their pockets and not a lot to do apart from descending on the town looking for a good time. And for one or two of them a good time isn’t really complete unless the night ends up with a bit of a rumble. We had one particular character who ran a scaffolding business, staffed mainly by members of his extended family. They were like a clan, really – and they were all built like brick outhouses. The main man they called Jacko, and he was a seriously hard case. I suppose it’s in the nature of things that if you spend your working days running up and down triple-extension ladders and clambering over roofs you have to be tough. He certainly was, as were his lads. And they were proud of it. I’d only come across them in town once or twice, but I’d heard plenty about them. They actually came from over Kirkbymoorside way, and they had quite a reputation. People were scared of them, in awe of them.
It was on Christmas Eve itself that the trouble kicked off. I came in for my night shift to be told by the lads on the late turn that this lot were in town and threatening to stir something up, and the warning was underlined at our briefing. Cocksy told us they’d already been upsetting the customers in the Spotted Cow and were now working their way through town towards the Blue Ball in Yorkersgate. Still, we were well up to strength that night, which, as you can imagine, you want to be. We had four officers off the late shift, then me, Jayne, Fordy and Ed, plus a couple of Specials: Will MacDonald – the lumberjack, as I called him – and Keith Nicholson. And not forgetting Thommo. The sort of crew, in other words, that you want with you if trouble’s going to break out.
The late-turn lads had actually made a couple of arrests – although none of them were Jacko’s men – but I found myself wondering whether it was enough. That shift, in my opinion, tended to let things go a bit too easily. They’d soft-pedal it. There are various ways of dealing with situations such as you get on a busy weekend, or at times like this when everybody’s out on the streets drinking. Call them differing styles of policing. I believe in staying good-humoured, but not getting too pally with the public. These are mostly younger people you’re dealing with, and they’re easily influenced. Wherever you decide to draw the line, you have to make it quite clear that you’re there to keep the peace, that you’re not going to stand any nonsense, and that if anyone crosses that line you will come down on them, hard. They’ll try it on – they’re bound to – and if you get a shift on whose mentality is to let people get away with a bit here and a bit there, well, you’re likely to have problems. It stands to reason. So we as a shift prided ourselves on generally being able to maintain order better than most – providing the previous lot hadn’t let things get out of hand.
Ed and I had barely been out an hour. There were plenty of people in town: lots of girls with tinsel in their hair being chased by lads in Santa hats, and, it being after eleven, they were a bit boisterous; even so, it was all pretty light-hearted, as you’d expect on a Christmas Eve. As good-humoured as it was, however, we were very aware that a lot of people were pretty drunk, and with Jacko’s crew in town it wouldn’t take a lot for things to kick off. Our job was to keep a lid on it, and to do what we needed to be out and about, and highly visible. We wanted to be seen around town and make it clear to people that we were there, in numbers. We even had two of the late-shift officers out on foot, one with each of the Specials. We’d visited the pubs and chatted with the doormen, getting a feel for how things were developing. Our hope was for people to have a good time, celebrate Christmas Eve and trot off home having had a fun night out.
I was over in Norton with Ed. We’d parked outside the Derwent Arms and were having a quiet word with a group of lads who were getting a bit rowdy. We tried to reason with them. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘spare a thought for the residents around here. Think of them kids with their Christmas stockings hung up. They’ll be trying to get to sleep.’
‘Will they f***?’ someone said. ‘They’ll be trying to stay awake and see Santa flying by.’
‘Look,’ I said above the laughter, ‘we’re all for everyone having a good time. Just tone it down a bit – and watch your language. Better still, stay inside the pub, eh?’
Ed and I were just persuading them inside when the call came over the radio. ‘Urgent assistance, urgent assistance!’
Those are two words that guarantee an instant response. You’re trained never to use them unless you or your colleague is in big trouble, when a situation is life-threatening and you need
the cavalry, fast. It’s not a call you send out lightly, because you’re asking for your fellow officers to abandon whatever they’re engaged in, make you their number-one priority and get to you as quickly as they possibly can. If it’s a road traffic accident, for example, and the road is blocked – even if a death is involved – you’ll send out a call for additional units. You wouldn’t ask for urgent assistance because it’s a done deed, a fait accompli. You ask for urgent assistance when you go to a domestic incident and someone pulls a knife on you, or when you stop a car and four people pile out and come for you; or when, as in Fordy’s case, you’ve gone to a pub in answer to a call from a bouncer and found the place in uproar.
We’d barely got in the car when Fordy was back on. ‘I’m at the Blue Ball . . .’
As loud as he was shouting, I had all on to hear what he was telling me. I could make out ‘all kicking off . . .’, then there was a moment’s pause in the signal, then the sound of breaking glass, followed by a shout. ‘Need some help down here . . . quick as you can. There’s a ri—’
When a radio goes silent, that’s when you really start to worry. It could mean anything.
Control were straight onto the call and everyone on duty was jostling to find the radio space to answer. The good news was, we had Brian on duty. He had vast experience of this kind of thing, both as a former officer and as an old hand in the control room at Northallerton.
‘Control to all units, I have all units assigned to the Blue Ball. Can we have radio silence until we get a sit rep from the pub.’ Brian wanted to make sure that Fordy could pass on any further information as the situation unfolded without being cut out by other radio traffic. In a situation like this you might only get one chance to say something critical.
There’s nothing quite like the feeling you get when you’ve called for urgent assistance and you hear everyone shouting up to come and help you. You know that they’ve heard you and they’ll all be doing their utmost to get to you as fast as they can. It can give you that extra bit of strength to hang on in there.
We were speeding away from the Derwent Arms, blue lights on and two-tones blaring. As well as warning people we were coming it would, hopefully, let Fordy know when we were approaching him. That’s a sound you long to hear when you’re in trouble – the cavalry coming over the rise. We raced over the railway, swerving out into the middle of County Bridge to avoid a girl who’d stumbled on her high heels, grabbed a friend’s arms and dragged her off the edge of the pavement with her.
‘We’ve one officer down and injured.’ Fordy sounded out of breath, indistinct. ‘Can’t see the other.’
‘Do you need an ambulance, over?’
There was no reply, just the sound of shouting, and a kind of grunt.
‘1015 to control, there in about one minute. Confirm ambulance en route and CCTV monitoring outside?’ At least if we got some record on camera, it’d be a help if it came to prosecuting any troublemakers.
‘Confirmed Mike.’
We arrived at the Blue Ball to find a scrum of bodies outside the door, mostly males trying to force their way back in, but impeded by others – mostly female – trying to get out. In the melee were a couple of doormen trying to hold back two or three handy-looking lads. As I opened the car door a bottle smashed on the pavement beside me.
‘Bloody hell! You’re here.’ One of the doormen stumbled his way out of the crowd. He had a smear of blood across his cheek, his tie had come adrift of his collar and his shirt was all untucked and open to his stomach.
‘Where are the cops?’ I asked.
‘Inside. It’s all kicking off.’
I turned to Ed. ‘You ready?’
He was speaking into his radio. ‘Control, 1015 and myself on scene. We’ve got quite a crowd outside the pub and according to the doorman there is large-scale disorder inside. We’re about to go in to try and find Fordy.’ He glanced at me, and at the doorway as a chair-seat flew over the scrimmaging bodies and clattered against a lamp-post. I’ve been in many a situation like that back in my TSG days, but always in full riot gear, with shields and helmets, and plenty of officers. When you’re fully kitted up and surrounded by as many as thirty trained riot police – yes, I’ll admit it – you can almost get a buzz out of going in to do battle. You have that extra confidence. Sure, you have the fear, but you also have a feeling that you can take on the world. You’re good at what you do, better organised than the opposition, better prepared, and you know that the guy to your left, and the guy to your right, have been through it all dozens of times with you before. But a situation such as we faced here, with fewer officers, scantily protected, and some of your colleagues lacking experience, I have to say I wasn’t approaching it with total confidence.
Ed extended his Asp and gave his CS canister a reassuring shake. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s get in there,’ then he jumped as a pint glass shattered on the pavement just a few feet from where we were standing.
We launched ourselves at the mass of bodies around the entrance and started pulling them out one by one. There was a bit of effing and blinding, but they didn’t resist once they saw the uniform and realised we meant business. Most of them were more interested in getting a ringside seat than joining in.
Inside the pub it was a different matter altogether. Fists were flying, guys on the floor were being kicked; women were screaming, tearing each other’s hair; glasses were being smashed, chairs and tables tipped over. It looked as though it had degenerated into a free-for-all, with people hitting out at random. How the hell anybody could tell whose side they were on was beyond me. With the low ceilings and cramped rooms it was going to be a nightmare getting it sorted. There was another melee at the rear exit, where a doorway led into a sort of garden. I was scanning the room trying to locate my colleagues, but I couldn’t see anybody in uniform. I was suddenly barged into by a drunken knot of youths tussling over a chair. I shoved them backwards as hard as I could with both hands. ‘Get back,’ I yelled. ‘Go on’! F*** off or you’ll get nicked.’ I stood as tall as I could and gave them the hard stare. They needed to know I meant business. I was deliberately trying to frighten them. They needed it. Who they hell did these people think they were?
In a far corner I spotted someone on the floor curled up in a ball, and a solidly built youth kicking him. I pushed my way through the crowd, took a swing and kicked the lad on his thigh as hard as I could. The shock of what I’d done made him stop long enough for me to grab him by the shoulders and drag him away from the lad on the floor. ‘Get back!’ I shouted. ‘Outside, now!’ Ideally I would have arrested him, not to mention any one of several others, but right now I needed to find Fordy and the other officers. Once we got a decent number of us on scene and had the situation under control, maybe then we could start making arrests. I recognised quite a few of the people involved in the fighting, so if we didn’t get them tonight we could round them up later.
‘You all right, Mike?’ Ed was beside me, getting his breath and straightening his coat.
‘Yeah, you found Fordy yet?’
‘I think he’s outside. The rest of the shift have shown up.’ He jerked his thumb towards the door. ‘It’s kicked off out there now.’
Ed and I made our way through the bar, pushing people apart and making it quite clear they would be arrested and locked up over Christmas if they didn’t calm down. The landlord had finally turned off the music and switched the lights on, which had an immediate sobering effect, on some of them at least; a reality check. Behind the bar two of the staff, both of them young women, were pressed back against the wall, clearly shocked at what they were seeing.
‘All right, girls,’ I called across. ‘Don’t worry. We’re winning.’ The tide inside was starting to turn in our favour, but the radio traffic told me the situation outside was bad. As fast as we dragged the fighters off each other, others were heading for the doors, responding to the shouts we could hear from the street.
With the room cleared we finally fo
und Derek, one of the late-turn PCs, on the floor, propped against the bar, clutching his shoulder. He was a young lad and still in his probationary period. ‘Sorry, lads. Reckon I’ve broken it,’ he said.
‘You sure?’
He tried to move his right arm and winced. ‘Feels like it. Bloody well hurts, anyway.’
‘Right, gimme your good arm. You don’t wanna be sitting there, mate; you’re a sitting target.’ Between us Ed and I got him to his feet.
‘1015 to control.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘I’ve located Derek. Looks like he’s got a dislocated shoulder or broken collarbone. The pub’s starting to clear. I think it’s a safer option to leave him with the bar staff inside.’
‘All received. I’ll get a message to the ambulance crew to make them aware. Are you aware that officers are asking for further assistance outside?’
‘Yes, yes, just making our way now.’
Ed was struggling through to the door, doing his best to clear a way for us, shoving people aside, removing a glass from one youth’s hand all in one swift movement. I followed him through.
Outside it was mayhem. There were groups of youths all over the main road hurling abuse and gesticulating, and small fights were breaking out. A paramedic was hurrying towards the pub doorway. ‘Got an injured PC?’ she asked. ‘In there,’ I said.
Jayne and Thommo had handcuffed a young lad and were shoving him into the back of the van, pausing to let him throw up on the road. Then he was locked away. Thommo closed the door on the prisoner, paused to flick something off his jacket and headed back towards me. That was when I heard the shout. Well, it was more of a growl. It was coming from some way away, about fifty yards down Wheelgate. I stepped out into the road just in time to see Fordy being dragged across the road by one of Jacko’s gang. I knew the lad; Fatty Wilks, they called him. There was a squealing of brakes as he stepped right out into the traffic, dragging Fordy with him. He had his head in an armlock. I ran towards them. He’d crossed the road onto the pavement, grabbed Fordy by the body armour and was pounding him against Thomas the Baker’s window. I was sure it was going to break, but instead it seemed to bend as Fordy’s body thumped against it. Christ, how long would it hold out?