Constable on the Prowl (The Constable Nick Series Book 2)

by Nicholas Rhea

  I rang Control Room and provided them with a description, saying the stolen vehicle was heading towards York. Control Room promised assistance in the shape of a modern, highly sophisticated police patrol car. I could hardly set off in pursuit on my motorcycle — by the time I’d got myself dressed in my plethora of gear, the car would be miles away. I decided to use the Superintendent’s car, for it was parked in the station garage. I made this decision in the full realisation that my career might come to a sudden end, but villains are there to be caught. I might just catch this one. If I did nothing about it my career would come to a similarly swift end.

  The gleaming car awaited. Its keys dangled from a hook in the Charge Office. Feeling almost as if I was taking this car without lawful consent I took the keys and raced around to the garage. Within seconds I was on the road and enjoying the chase. There is little doubt that these official cars were beautifully maintained and tuned. The policemen who looked after them nursed a deep pride in their work, and all vehicles were in a superb condition. There was not a scratch on this car and its paintwork gleamed. Its engine purred like a contented cat and I found myself humming with sheer enjoyment as I sped through the sleeping town in pursuit of the stolen car. This was the life!

  I switched on the radio, gave my call-sign to Control Room as I booked on the air, and smiled at the consternation of those listeners-in who would think that the Superintendent was not only out on patrol, but hotly pursuing a stolen car. Such is the effect of a personalised call-sign like Mike One Zero Papa. I listened to the commentary on the radio — a York constable was heading towards me, hoping to head off the vehicle, and it was a fair bet that one of us would halt the flight of HAT 101. That number was etched into my memory.

  I sped along the fine surface of the main road with the wind whistling about the car as I drove to its limit. I touched 100 mph and the car remained as steady as a rock. I had been mobile for some ten minutes when I heard Control Room announce to all involved in the hunt for HAT 101 that a village petrol-pump owner had heard a noise and had seen the driver helping himself to a tankful of fuel. I knew the village. It was off the main road, so I turned off its long, straight carriageway and bore along the peaceful dark lanes. I urged the willing vehicle into the bends and along the straights at speeds which would have terrified me under normal circumstances. There was a maze of lanes here, but I knew I wasn’t far from the village in question. The car could be in any of these lanes.

  Quite suddenly I came up behind the stolen car, It seemed the thief had not realised he was being chased because he was pottering along at a fairly sedate 45 mph I was now faced with the problem of stopping him. This was not easy, especially on such narrow lanes, and it was before the days of blue revolving lights and flashing police signs. I had to rely on my headlight dip switch, horn and my voice. There was no loud hailer fitted to this car — some of the more splendid patrol cars possessed loud hailers from which booming voices, amplified many times, could halt a thief in seconds and arouse half the town in the process. But I had none of this sophisticated equipment so I shouted out of the window, blared my horn and flashed my lights. It had some effect.

  The driver thought I wanted to overtake him, so he pulled into the side of the lane to allow me through. At that stage, it seems, he realised it was a black car with no markings but containing a chap in uniform bent on stopping him. Quite understandably, he accelerated. I did likewise. Suddenly we were roaring alarmingly along the narrow lanes with lights flashing and horns blaring. Tall, thick hedges rushed at us on the corners, and hills yawned before our noses. Houses tore past and cattle shook their heads in bewilderment. How long we careered like this I do not know, but it seemed like hours. Then very unexpectedly he turned sharp left, which meant I had to brake urgently. Tyres screamed as I attempted his sudden change of direction and I found he had careered through an open farm gate and was currently sinking into a foul smelling pond. I stopped at the edge as he clambered across the roof of the car, now up to his axles in slime, and I said, “Come on, you’re under arrest.”

  “Oh, bloody hell!” he said in evident resignation and he came quietly as arrested persons tended to do in those halcyon days. I conveyed him to the police station, where a sergeant now waited. The formalities of searching him, questioning him and eventually charging him were completed and the perplexed owner was taken out to retrieve his car from the pond. We drove the Superintendent’s car on that trip too, and used a tow-rope to haul the abandoned vehicle from its soggy parking place.

  By six that morning the excitement was over. The man had been charged and would appear at court that morning. Meanwhile he would remain in the cells as a guest. The loser had got his car back, the farmer into whose pond the stolen car had dropped would have a tale to tell at market and I would be roused from my sleep by nine o’clock, only three hours later, in order to attend court and give my evidence. In those days policemen weren’t supposed to need sleep.

  I attended court and the case was rapidly dealt with, the thief pleading guilty to the offence of taking and driving away a car without the consent of the owner. He also pleaded guilty to careless driving, and using the car without insurance. I gave evidence in the formal manner drummed into us at training school and he got away with a total fine of £65, and had his licence endorsed.

  I was then ordered into the inner sanctum, wherein dwelt the Superintendent. I expected praise for my part in effecting the swift arrest of the car thief, but instead found myself facing a very red-faced and irate Superintendent who waved an official logbook at me. It belonged to his car.

  “This!” he simmered. “This book — last night you drove over 100 miles in my official car — my car. Two trips, each of fifty…”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “But this is the Superintendent’s car!” he bellowed. “It is not to be used for routine patrolling, not under any circumstances and certainly not by a constable.”

  “I was chasing a stolen car, sir,” I began to explain. “I had no other means of catching the thief,” and went into a long-winded and fairly exaggerated account of my escapade.

  He fumed and panted as I continued, but my reasons were totally invalid. I almost felt he was going to charge me with taking and driving his car without consent! He told me again that Superintendents’ official cars were not to be used for routine police work, they were for supervisory duties. In short, I got the bulling of my life and retracted from the office with my pride wounded. There was no doubt in my mind that if I had not used the Superintendent’s car that thief would have escaped. I was convinced my actions were justified.

  Higher authority didn’t think so. My actions that night led to a Divisional Order which stated quite categorically that the Superintendent’s official car must never be used for routine police patrol duties. It was a supervisory officer’s vehicle for use by supervisory officers on supervisory duties.

  Like all such orders, however, there was an escape clause. This allowed the car to be used for emergencies, but this permission was qualified by saying it could be done only by the personal consent of the Superintendent.

  The inevitable happened. I was on night-duty some weeks later in the same police station when an almost identical event occurred. A householder heard noises in the street and looked out of the bedroom window in time to see his Morris Minor vanishing from sight. He immediately rang the police station and I answered the telephone; the result was a repeat performance of the previous escapade, except that I rang the Superintendent at home to get his personal permission to use his car.

  Three o’clock in the morning is never a good time to arouse anyone from sleep, let alone one’s superior officer, but he was very good about it. He said I could use his precious car to chase the thief. Actually, he had no alternative — to have refused would have created all manner of problems if I had had to explain to an even higher ranking officer how I had been refused permission for operational reasons. So the chase began.

  This crafty
character selected a winding route which twisted through many villages. I knew it well, even though it was pitch black and even if I was perhaps a little more tired than I should be. But I knew the roads this thief was using, and like the previous case I guessed he would not realise he was being followed by a keen young constable.

  I pressed the accelerator and the finely tuned car responded. It took me into those bends and along those roads with a whirr of tyres and a flash of speeding hedges, villages and lanes. I was enjoying myself, this was great. It was better than watching Edgar Lustgarten’s films or re-enacting a Scotland Yard chase in a Jaguar or something equally splendid. I was thrilling myself as I hurtled along those roads in the Superintendent’s lovely vehicle.

  Everything went well until I ran off the road. I still cannot remember where the road went, but I do recall sitting in the car and leaning forward at an alarming angle. The front wheels were in a ditch and the rear ones were spinning uselessly in mid-air. I switched off the engine, disengaged the gears and clambered out, dropping like a pilot from an aircraft as I landed on the grass verge beneath. The car smelled very hot and there were enough sods of grass lying about to carpet a cricket pitch.

  I was totally alone. The place was deserted and I had not arrested this thief. Luckily, the car radio still worked, so I called for assistance.

  I had a very long and painful report to submit when I returned, and the Superintendent said he had no wish to see me.

  I understand he was very upset about it.

  Because policemen rarely owned vehicles they experienced great pleasure when sitting in the passenger seat of a shining black police patrol car. Riding in one of these gleaming machines was the next best thing to owning one, and the truth was that official motorcars remained a luxury in many forces even into the second half of the 20th century. Supervisory officers did use them, but not constables on routine patrols.

  It will be appreciated therefore that the opportunity to actually drive a powerful police car was considered one of the greatest possible honours. This honour was occasionally bestowed upon selected personnel who formed a specialised unit known as the Road Traffic Division.

  Men selected for this duty were undoubtedly the crème de la crème of any police force. Not only had they proved themselves good practical police officers in the traditional style, but they had also shown themselves highly skilled in driving, even managing to retain their smartness in spite of the shiny seats of their trousers and the paunchy bellies which resulted from too many hours in the driving seat. These were the swashbuckling heroes, men with hair styles reminiscent of RAF officers during the war, always well-groomed and eye-catching. These were ladies’ men, an elitist group with a penchant for obtaining cups of coffee in highway cafes and an ability to control a speeding car in all conditions. They were to the police service what fighter pilots were to the Royal Air Force.

  They created legends in their own time. There were tales of skilled patrol car drivers waltzing their cars beautifully on ice, tales of high-speed drives across the moors to rescue suicidal men hanging by ropes from beams of ancient inns, and daring chases to capture stolen vehicles or meet superintendents at rendezvous points. Whatever they did became a talking point over coffee from our night-duty flasks; it was all thrilling stuff.

  For the young policeman whose mode of conveyance was his feet this was a lifestyle to dream about. To become a patrol car driver was the ambition of many and the lot of a few. As if in answer to our dreams it was deemed by higher authority that all young constables should undergo a short attachment to Road Traffic Division.

  This was to familiarise us with the miracles performed by this group of specialists, so that we knew their abilities and capabilities. Thus in the course of our duties we could call upon their expertise, and it was hoped we would make greater use of these fine fellows in moments of stress or dire emergency. The cars used by these giants were different from ordinary police vehicles — they had radios for one thing, and their speedometers had been rigorously checked over a measured mile in order that speeders could be safely prosecuted in court. These cars had signs right across the front which said POLICE and which could be switched on at night. Their commodious boots were full of paraphernalia to deal with traffic accidents, like a broom for sweeping up broken glass and a shovel to put it on, a tape measure, cones for warning oncoming drivers, a first aid box, balls of string, lifting gear and a host of other useful things. Unlike modern police cars they did not have blue flashing lights, noisy horns and sneaky computers like VASCAR to trap speeders.

  There is no doubt that these shining black cars held a certain enchantment and offered a romantic interlude in the average bobby’s career. An attachment to Road Traffic Division, however short, must be considered a step towards this Valhalla. It so happened that my fortnight’s attachment coincided with a period of night-duty, which meant I was allocated a night patrol in a warm police car. The arrangement was that I patrol my patch as usual, albeit in the company of a seasoned patrol driver, and our joint manoeuvres would satisfy his patrol requirements in addition to providing supervision of my beat during those nights. It seemed a reasonable compromise and I looked forward very much indeed to my introduction to Road Traffic Division’s marvels and mysteries.

  On the first evening I presented myself at Ashfordly Police Station, where it had been arranged that my driver for the shift would collect me at 10.20. I was armed with a flask of coffee, tin of sandwiches and my trusty torch. At the appointed time my heavenly chariot arrived. It was a shining black Ford Consul known as Mike One Five, pronounced Mike One Fifer in phonetic jargon, and alternatively referred to as MI5. The car’s unfortunate call-sign led it to being known as Mystery One Five or the Secret Service car and its driver was PC Rupert Langley.

  He was a thirty-year-old married man with a lovely wife and two equally lovely children. Rupert and his family had transferred to the North Riding Constabulary from Kent because his wife loved horses and wide open spaces. Malton, with its racing-stables and accessibility to the moors and dales, seemed a perfect posting although her love was for hunting and hacking rather than racing. None the less it was an ideal place for the Langley family to grow up.

  Rupert was at least six feet two inches tall with a slim, athletic build topped by a mop of wavy black hair. The women he met a work and at play fell instantly in love with his dark, thoughtful eyes and it was said that many deliberately drove their cars carelessly or parked illegally in the hope he would take down their particulars. In spite of his sun-tanned magnetism he never strayed from his family home and was always faithful to his wife.

  Few disliked Rupert, and I was delighted he was to show me the work of Road Traffic Division. He was highly articulate and very amusing, two talents that were quickly in evidence as he introduced himself and showed me around his car. It was clearly an object of pride for him as he explained how to operate the radio and how to use the various call-signs favoured by Road Traffic Division. He explained all about the speedometer, so accurate and tested regularly for evidential purposes, the specialist tools and equipment in the boot and finally the P.A. I did not know much about the latter device, but studiously observed him as he operated a switch on the dashboard.

  “That switches on the P.A.,” he said, as if I knew all about it.

  “Does it?” I wondered whether to show my ignorance but he recognised my uncertainty.

  “Public address system,” he clarified the point. “About half our fleet is fitted with the public address system. It’s a loud-hailer device, really, worked off the battery. I just speak into the handset of the official radio,” he picked up the handset “and switch it on. Then I can talk to crowds of people outside all at once or get cars to move aside or stop. Warn folks about lost drugs or bad road conditions. That sort of thing. It’s marvellous. You can tell a whole street about a gas leak in no time.”

  To demonstrate it he switched on and said into the handset, “Good evening, friends”. Outside the car
his words boomed and echoed about the police station and I felt sure they would be heard as far away as the marketplace. I wondered what the townspeople would think as those words filled the night air, and guessed a drunk or two might suddenly become sober.

  Having seen the magic of the car I climbed in. I was now officially an ‘observer’ and as such would be responsible for noticing offenders and incidents during this shift. I would also have to provide supporting evidence for any court case secured by Rupert.

  Not knowing what excitements lay in store we set off smoothly, the beautifully tuned car transporting us in sheer luxury. We accelerated out of the police station yard and made for the tiny town centre. The official radio burbled quietly from the dashboard. It was my job to show Rupert around Ashfordly and district and I felt he was worthy of being shown some of our secret places, where tea and buns could be obtained at all hours. It was his task to educate me about the skills of his specialist department and our mutual task was to police the area tonight.

  Rupert talked freely and I found him easy and entertaining to listen to. As a southerner, he had found the North Riding people to be somewhat blunt at first, but had since grown to like and respect them for their toughness and straight speaking. He had grown fond of the North Riding countryside too, and talked of making it his permanent home. He liked his work, he was happy with his car and appreciated the opportunities provided for him. In short, he was happy; a rare and contented man.

  Our first tour of duty was spent getting to know each other, and attempting to understand each other’s mode of working. Nothing of any great significance arose but our second shift was to prove much more interesting. We stopped one or two motorists to advise them about faulty lights, and I toured my vulnerable properties to check for signs of illegal entry. In this way we successfully combined our roles, and my beat remained peaceful.