Confessions of a Police Constable

by Matt Delito

  Simon swung his torch around, and took a couple of steps down the corridor.

  Suddenly, I heard an almighty crash and a shout.

  ‘Whattafuuuuuuuuu—’ Simon wailed, as his torch went spinning away into the dark corridor, creating a ghoulish shadow play on the walls as the light from his torch picked up all sorts of rubbish on the floor.

  ‘Aaaaaaaaaah,’ Simon shouted again. In the light of my own torch, I could see him grabbing his arm. I also spotted his assailant; it was the Turkish man Tracy had warned us about before we entered the shop.

  I reached up to my radio and pressed the orange button next to my antenna.

  ‘Urgent assistance required,’ I shouted. ‘Basement of the Internet shop, 33 Garyson Rise, we’re under attack from a man with a stick.’

  I paused briefly to think whether there’s anything else I needed to say: ‘Get us an ambulance as well, Mike Delta two-eight-eight got whacked.’

  With that, I turned my torch off.

  There are few things police officers care about more than their torches. You’ll inevitably lose your torch eventually, but that doesn’t stop me from investing some serious cash into a top-quality light source; I use the thing nearly every night shift, so it makes sense to get a proper one. Some officers choose to use Maglite-style torches so they can double as nightsticks, but I don’t quite see the point. I already have a police-issue Asp – or a gravity friction-lock baton, as it’s officially called – which is manufactured specifically for slapping people about, so I have no idea why anyone would choose to carry a heavy flashlight. My torch is a Night-Ops Gladius, a tactical flashlight that was apparently made for mounting on an assault rifle or a pistol. Since the Met hasn’t deigned to provide me with one of these lead-redistribution devices, I use the torch on its own. I chose it for several reasons: it’s as solid as can be; it’s the right size to be used as a Kubotan (a small hand-to-hand combat weapon); and, most importantly, it has a rapid strobe mode, a feature that has saved my bacon more than once.

  With a quick twist of the torch’s rear cap, you can prepare the strobe mode. Next, point it at someone’s eyes and press the back of the cap to activate it. If you’re at the receiving end of that treatment, it’s extremely disorienting; the only thing you’ll see is the strobing of the light – the person behind the light becomes completely invisible.

  This seemed a perfect occasion to exploit my torch’s functionality. I flicked my Gladius into the strobe mode, passed it into my left hand, and drew and racked my Asp with my right.

  I could just make out the man from the light of Simon’s torch, which had come to rest pointing at the wall behind him. He was hiding next to the half-opened door, as Simon lay yelping on the floor, pushing himself towards me with his legs.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked him, knowing the answer.

  ‘Do I fucking sound all right?’ he barked. ‘He twatted me in the fucking arm, didn’t he?’

  ‘Hey! You!’ I called out to the man. ‘You saw us, you know we’ve got two more officers upstairs, and we’ve got a vanload more coppers coming. Put down the bat, you can’t win.’

  An unprintable malediction ruptured from behind the door.

  ‘I’ll give you five seconds,’ I said. ‘Then I’m coming for you.’

  I could see him take a firmer grip of his aluminium bat as he tensed in anticipation; I also heard a faint creaking on the stairs next to me. They must have finished loading our other prisoner into the back of the van, because both Tracy and Sergeant Thomas were on the stairs, batons drawn, ready to spring into action.

  ‘Five …’ I said. Simon staggered to his feet next to the stairs, and leant against the walls.

  ‘Four …’ I called a few seconds later. I whispered to Simon, ‘Take my torch. When I say One, lean as far forward as you can.’

  ‘Three …’ I said out loud, before dropping my voice to a whisper again ‘… and hold the button on the back pressed in. Whatever happens, keep it aimed at his eyes.’

  ‘Two …’ I called out to the man. Then slid my torch into the hand of Simon’s uninjured arm, double-checking he had a firm grip of the torch before I let go of his hand.

  ‘Got that?’ I whispered.

  ‘ONE!’ I called, and dropped to the floor with all the grace and finesse of a narcoleptic cow.

  Simon shouted a battle cry that would make a banshee sob with envy, as he pressed the button on the back of the torch. The super-bright LED bulb started strobing rapidly, catching the man square in the face. I crawled as fast as I could, on all fours like a dog, along the floor.

  With the first few strobes, I could see his wide-open eyes. The next few flashes illuminated his whole face as he moved out of his hiding place, taking a firmer grip of his bat and trying to shrink away from the bright light being beamed at him.

  I could see the expression on his face change with each pulse of light.

  It showed his gritted teeth.

  It showed a face that was making the decision to fight for his life.

  He raised his bat. But then, suddenly, realised something was wrong; the source of the strobing light and manic cry wasn’t coming closer.

  Just as the penny dropped, my baton connected with the side of his left shin. The man screamed and I didn’t waste any time. I leapt to a position behind him. He was holding his bat with his right hand, as his left went down to his shin. I whirled around and put my whole weight behind my baton, aiming for the side of his upper arm. To the sound of a nausea-inducing snap, the baton thumped into his arm less than a second after it had reduced the nerves in his lower leg to a concerto of agony. From the ‘snap’, I was pretty certain I had broken his arm.

  I grabbed my cuffs out of their holder, but before I was able to get close enough to apply them to the now-squealing man, another set of hands reached out of the dark, grabbed him and hauled him to the ground, pressing his face against the dusty floor. Tracy’s torch clicked on and suddenly the whole messy scene was well lit.

  He wasn’t one for wasting time; Simon’s attacker was in handcuffs before he had time to take another breath.

  By now I was sitting on the floor, my back to a wall, panting. As the adrenaline of our sneak attack wore off, I could feel my knees hurting. I looked down to see I was bleeding from my right knee; my left one was badly scraped as well but somehow wasn’t leaking, though the trouser legs on both legs were torn.

  ‘Extra points for creativity,’ Simon said drily, and limped his way up the stairs, muttering something about ambulances.

  One of those shifts

  ‘We’ve had a report of a burglary in progress at the MumToBe on 53 Lower Street,’ the call came over the radio. ‘Graded I, Graded India.’

  I leapt up and grabbed the coffee from the table in front of me. I must have squeezed a little bit too enthusiastically on the Styrofoam cup.

  The lid popped off.

  The cup buckled.

  It slid from between my fingers.

  The cup hit the table, sending a fountain of steaming hot coffee straight up towards me. I saw it coming in slow-mo, but thanks to a bona-fide miracle, it failed to hit me in the face. Instead, it cascaded down the front of my Metvest and into my lap.

  I swore and then, leaving the enormous puddle of coffee where it was, grabbed some napkins, and furiously rubbed my crotch with them, as I sped out of the cafeteria, transmitting at the same time.

  ‘Show two-four,’ I said.

  ‘Last transmitting, what’s your shoulder number please?’

  ‘It’s PC five-nine-two Mike Delta, Matt Delito.’

  ‘Received. We’ll send the CAD to your MDT,’ they concluded, and proceeded to send the notes for the current call to the mobile data terminal built into my police car.

  ‘Received, thanks,’ I said, and climbed into the vehicle.

  The fabric our uniform trousers are made of is truly, profoundly horrible: scratchy and static and not particularly comfortable. Though, it does have two advantages: it dries very qu
ickly and, being dark blue, stains don’t show up that easily.

  However, as I sped out of the gate, blue strobes reflecting on the walls around me, the formerly scalding-hot coffee was cooling down rapidly, and a chill ran up my spine. I glanced down: there was a hugely visible wet patch on the front of my trousers.

  In moments, I turned the car down Lower Street, and arrived at the MumToBe shop front.

  ‘Show two-four on location,’ I transmitted, as I brought the car to a very rapid halt. I got out, grabbed my torch and peered into the shop for a closer look.

  The scene was dead.

  ‘I can’t see any sign of the burglars, but the glass in the entry door has been smashed in,’ I transmitted, realising grimly what that would mean.

  There was only one thing for it. I couldn’t do a drive-around looking for the suspects. Nobody was in the shop to look after it, and with the front door completely smashed in, I couldn’t leave it unguarded.

  As soon as we arrive on scene, it becomes our responsibility that nothing further is stolen, so I wouldn’t be able to leave until the door had been boarded up or the owners of the store had returned to look after their wares.

  I got back on the radio, on the spare channel.

  ‘I’m going to need someone who can board up a shop door,’ I transmitted.

  There was a moment’s pause before the response came: ‘Ah, I may have some bad news for you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, there was some unrest in one of the neighbouring boroughs earlier today, and there seems to be quite a long wait before anybody will be able to come out and board up a shop front.’

  ‘Er. Could you give me an estimate?’

  ‘I could, but you’re not going to like it’

  ‘Go on?’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘What? in the morning?’ I asked, looking at my watch. It had only just turned 10 p.m.

  ‘Sorry, buddy. We’ll try to send someone to relieve you as soon as we can, but for now, hang tight!’

  I looked up and down the street. The whole stretch of road, as far as I could see, was completely deserted. Not a single open shop, not one pedestrian. Even the lamp-posts seemed to spill their light on the road only with great reluctance. Great. I’d be spending the next few hours guarding a ghost town.

  I grabbed some POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS cordon tape from the back of the Panda, and cordoned off the area in front of the shop, from the corner of the shutters, via a lamp-post, to the next set of shutters along.

  After that, there was nothing to do but wait.

  I settled in, standing against the wall.

  The first 20 minutes were a bit slow.

  The next 20 minutes were dreadfully boring.

  The next 20 minutes were deathly boring.

  In the 20 minutes after that, I started to lose my will to live. To make matters worse, I discovered that I really, really needed to go to the bathroom.

  My watch beeped. It was 11 p.m. My radio was beginning its slow-building crescendo in the Friday-night symphony of destruction: there was a relatively serious accident where a bus driver had run down a pedestrian; there were three separate armed robberies, which appeared to be linked, and the robbery squad, on motorbikes, had support from four additional motorbikes from Traffic, trying to chase down the moped-riding robbers. There was a huge fight among several groups of travellers, which seemed to spread slowly from pub to pub somewhere in the south of the borough; there was a sudden death of a woman in her mid-30s that was considered suspicious. Later, another traffic collision was added to the mix, this time between a car and two bicyclists, one of whom had tragically expired on the scene already.

  If that sounds busy, it wasn’t the half of it: a report had been called in of a man shouting threats to kill at a group of teenagers. The man had been spotted with what appeared to be a shotgun, and the helicopter and several Trojan units were called in. The main dispatch channel was taken over by a shooting incident, and the working channel was changed to another channel. The earlier brawl slowly got even more out of hand, and fighting had now been reported at four different pubs. CS gas was deployed in two of the locations, and the Territorial Support Group was called in to try and deal with the fighting, which was now technically three riots and an affray.

  And all the while, I was standing outside the Mum To Be, with a wet and cold crotch, and a desperate need to go for a wee, powerlessly listening as my teammates were being pushed to hell and back.

  Then, finally, my radio said something actually directed at me.

  ‘Five-nine-two receiving Mike Delta?’ the radio said.

  ‘Yes! Receiving!’ I said, elated that I might finally be relieved.

  ‘You still on your last?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘How long do you think you’re going to be?’

  ‘Er … You tell me? I’m waiting for someone to come board up this shop.’

  ‘Oh. Right,’ the CAD operator said. ‘The next shift are going to need your car. We’ll send someone to come pick it up, and see about getting you relieved.’

  ‘Received,’ I said drily.

  A few minutes later, a car showed up with two officers. One of them left right away in the car they had come in, heading off to help out with the brawl, but I managed to convince the other to stand watch for a few minutes whilst I walked to the McDonald’s around the corner to use the bathroom and buy some water.

  ‘You didn’t make it, then,’ he said when I returned.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Looks like you’ve pissed yourself, mate,’ he laughed.

  I looked down.

  Oh yes.

  The coffee stain was significantly more visible than I’d hoped it would be.

  ‘It’s coffee,’ I said, but there was nobody listening; he had already vanished down the road in my car, leaving me with only the smell of burning rubber and the echoes of his sirens for company.

  The echoes died out.

  ‘Thanks a lot, guys,’ I said to myself.

  I was outside the shop for another hour and a half before an officer arrived on foot.

  ‘Hey!’ he said brightly.

  ‘Hi,’ I replied.

  ‘What are you doing here, then?’ he asked

  ‘Er … Waiting for you, I hope?’

  ‘I dunno, are you? I’m just wandering around on foot patrol at the moment,’ he said.

  Angry, I grabbed my radio.

  ‘Mike Delta receiving five-nine-two?’

  ‘Go ahead?’

  ‘I was just wondering if you guys would be able to arrange for me to be relieved?’

  ‘Er … I don’t have you as active on my system,’ the CAD op said.

  ‘I assure you I’m most certainly active. And I’ve been on this crime scene for nearly four hours,’ I snapped.

  ‘Stand by,’ the operator replied, and continued, ‘Mike Delta receiving two-eight-one.’

  The officer standing next to me looked down at his radio, and reached for his transmit button.

  ‘Receiving,’ he said.

  ‘Are you free to deal?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘You are on foot, correct? In the Lower Street area?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Could you make your way to the MumToBe on Lower Street?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘There’s an officer there who needs to be relieved.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Mike Delta five-nine-two receiving?’ the operator continued, addressing me this time.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I replied, mirroring my colleague wearily.

  ‘Your relief is on its way.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Two-eight is on their way back to the station with a prisoner,’ they said, referring to the call sign of the caged van. ‘I’ll get them to pick you up on the way.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  I stood around, chatting with two-eight-one for a few minutes.

  ‘Need a d
rink?’ I asked the officer.

  ‘Yeah, if you wouldn’t mind?’

  I walked to the McDonald’s again to get my relief a cup of coffee and a large water. When I returned, the van was there, waiting for me, finally.

  It had been an absolute killer of a shift, and I had missed out on all of it, protecting a broken window pane from curious cats and inquisitive foxes for more than half of my shift. Frankly, all I wanted to do was go home, bury my face in a pillow and sleep for 12 hours.

  As I got in the van, two-eight-one called after me: ‘Hey, Delito,’ he shouted.

  I turned around.

  ‘It looks like you pissed yourself,’ he said, and waved a goodbye.

  ‘Thanks, I know,’ I called back, and slumped back in the van, on my way back to the police station.

  The arrest enquiry

  ‘Delito,’ the skipper snapped, peering over his stack of loosely arranged papers.

  I looked up.

  ‘What are you, six years old?’

  ‘What? I … I didn’t even do anything,’ I stuttered, but the sergeant’s eyes confirmed that my half-hearted lie was never going to be believed.

  I bowed my head and mumbled a ‘Sorry, sarge’, which was greeted by a cacophony of laughter from the rest of my team.

  We had been carrying out a series of practical pranks on each other all week, and I’d managed to be the first person to get caught out, mid-prank.

  I spent the next few minutes fiddling with my handcuff keys, trying to release the cuff that was linking Pete’s arm to the radiator – and just in time, too. The inspector walked into the briefing room, and we all leapt to our feet. Pete hid the fact that he still had a cuff attached to his arm by placing his hand behind his back.

  Some inspectors really like to, er, inspect, but thankfully the unfortunately named Inspector Michael Hunt (he insists, for obvious reasons, on being called ‘Michael’) has a slightly more relaxed take on things.

  Inspector Hunt counted the number of faces, before waving us back down into our seats.

  ‘Nice one, Delito,’ Pete whispered to me. ‘I didn’t see that one coming. Of course, I’ll get my revenge – you’d better keep a cuff key handy …’ he said, grinning.