Who'd Be a Copper?

by Jonathan Nicholas

  I called for another officer, and very soon afterwards two CID officers arrived. We discussed taping off the room for forensic examination, convinced at that point it was a murder scene. When the ambulance crew arrived I immediately noticed how calm they were. They confirmed that he was deceased and then spent quite a long time looking in his mouth and examining the lumpy bits of red dotted around the room. They read the labels on some bottles of tablets and then rolled him over to examine him in detail. There weren’t any injuries anywhere on his body.

  “On his own was he when you found him?” one of them said to me.

  “Yes, yes he was.”

  “The room was locked from the inside?”

  “Yes,” I replied, “and bolted.” The ambulance crew then chatted briefly to one another, each nodding and commenting before they both turned to us. One of them then said:

  “We can’t be a hundred percent certain, not until a doctor’s confirmed it, but we think he’s coughed up a lung, and it’s killed him, as it would. I’ve seen it before...”

  KARMA

  Of course it isn’t usually dead people that hurt you, but the living. I’ve probably wrestled with hundreds of people in my service, all part of the job as a front line cop. Sometimes people do not want to co-operate with the police, right from the initial encounter, and you end up rolling around in the gutter with them, fighting. You can guess very quickly when this is about to happen because the best warning sign is when they tell you to “Fuck off.” In the early days of my service this would send me into a mild panic, thinking back to training school when I failed to subdue the pretend drunk. Later in my service I just sighed and got on with it in the most appropriate manner fitting the circumstances. ‘Controlled aggression’ as it is known, was something I had to learn, and it was difficult for an ex-hippy like me. Clenched fists, threats, staring eyes and a fighting stance are the other signals that follow. By this time you should have your handcuffs poised at the ready.

  I clearly remember the first occasion I dealt with an angry drunken man on my own. I was on foot patrol at 2am in the Basford area of Nottingham when I was sent to a domestic dispute at a terraced house in Suez Street. On my arrival I noticed the front living room window was smashed, and I remember thinking it must have made a lot of noise. I stepped into the kitchen at the side of the house. A thin woman of about thirty years of age with long black hair was standing at the sink crying. She looked up at me.

  “You’re not on your own are you?” she said as she tried to look behind me. This wasn’t a good sign.

  “Yes, I am, why?”

  “Well it’s okay anyway; I think he’s gone. He’s smashed my window, have you seen it?”

  I nodded and took out my pocket book. I’d just started writing notes when I heard footsteps outside coming towards the door. I saw a large figure fill the doorway briefly before it disappeared.

  “That’s him!” she shouted at me, before turning back to the sink to resume her crying. I stuffed my notebook into my tunic pocket and followed the figure into the street. I saw a man with his back to me walking away, twenty yards down the road, so I shouted:

  “Excuse me, can I have a word with you a minute?” and he stopped and turned around. He paused then started walking towards me. As he grew closer I could see he was extremely thick-set with no neck and huge hands like shovels. He was greasy, scruffy and enormous. He looked like one of the morlocks from the 1960 film The Time Machine, but the morlocks were much better looking.

  “I just want a quick word with you, if that’s alright?” I heard my voice sound a little pleading as I assessed the sheer size of the man. He wasn’t taller than me, in fact he was a few inches shorter, but as he waddled drunkenly up to me it seemed he took up the entire width of the pavement. A smile spread across his face as he stopped a few feet from me and he simply said:

  “What?”

  “She tells me you smashed her window?” I said, indicating towards the house and large shards of glass in front of the window. “Is that right?”

  “What if I ‘ave. What are you gonna do about it?”

  “I need to talk to you about it down at the station...” I said to him in as informal a manner as I could, doing my best to avoid confrontation. He smiled again, a slow mischievous grin like a Bond villain. In fact he also looked a lot like Oddjob, the oriental gent with the lethal bowler hat in the film Goldfinger. I pressed the yellow transmit button on my radio and requested transport. I didn’t at that time ask for any formal assistance, but perhaps I should have done. While still staring in my direction he gave me a very calm reply.

  “Fuck off.”

  He then turned around and started walking away. I took out my chain link handcuffs and grabbed his left arm. He seemed quite relaxed so I quickly searched for an exposed area of wrist. I thought I might be able to manage the situation if I could apply handcuffs, and until that moment it was going well. Then to my horror I realised his wrist was as thick as a man’s leg, and therefore the cuff wouldn’t fit, it was just too narrow. There was absolutely no point trying to handcuff this man. I knew exactly what to do next, so in a flash I pressed the transmit button and sent one word across the airwaves:

  “Assistance!”

  I heard some replies but by then I was too busy to acknowledge anything. If this man were to get his hands free he would probably pummel me to death in the street. I took hold of both his wrists over his coat and I held on to him as though my life depended on it, which it probably did.

  “Get off me, now! Get your fuckin’ hands off me!” he shouted. I was close enough to smell his lager breath mixed with stale cigarettes. I could see a moonscape of craters in his pock-marked face and wondered for an instant if this ugliness might be the last thing I ever saw. Several very long minutes passed with me still gripping each arm by the wrists. As if to confirm my suspicions he then started shouting:

  “When I get my hands free I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, you fuckin’ bastard! You’re dead!”

  We were moving around in the street, onto the footpath, then back onto the road, as though taking part in a strange ritual dance. The only alternative, as I saw it, was to release my grip and reach for the bit of wood that was wobbling around inside my right trouser leg. But it was whether I could get hold of it in time. I didn’t have anything else to use and no other option but to let him go, but this was unthinkable. Don’t get me wrong, I dearly wanted to run away, but duty kept me firmly in place. The same sense of duty that kept the men in the Flanders trenches a hundred years ago.

  The man’s eyes were focussed on some point in the infinite distance, the way drunken people do, and he was snarling like a rabid dog. His face was contorted as though he was in a gurning competition, which if he’d entered at that moment he would have certainly won.

  Suddenly at the end of the street I saw a police car pause briefly, the small and ineffective blue lamp on the roof slowly rotating. But they couldn’t get to me because of the recent installation of ‘tank trap’ restrictions in the road designed to stop all vehicles except fire engines. The police car disappeared and with it went any help I was hoping for. It was at that moment I realised just how tightly I was gripping the wrists of this awful man. I heard the sound of ripping fabric as the sleeves of his nylon coat came away at the shoulder, both at the same time, like in a slapstick movie. The stitching burst to reveal fluffy white filling, and suddenly he was wearing a waistcoat. For a moment we both noticed this and it seemed to piss him off even more, the fact I’d now damaged his precious but very shitty coat.

  Another long minute passed before two colleagues pulled up in a police car. A sergeant, John, took hold of the man from behind while Paul opened the back door of the Ford Escort. Paul then grabbed him so I could finally release my grip.

  It took three of us almost ten minutes to get this man into the back of the vehicle. He was kicking, throwing punches, shouting and screaming. Paul and I had to sit on top of him in the rear passenger foot well while John
drove the car a mile back to the station. He struggled continually and shouted threats and obscenities. As is customary with such violent people he was thrown straight into a cell to calm down. All three of us sustained injuries from this incident. Those were the days before CS spray or Taser guns.

  The man’s idiot girlfriend later dropped the complaint of criminal damage, and instead we had to merely pursue a charge of threatening behaviour. In the next few days I made enquiries in the street and traced three people who’d witnessed events, two elderly ladies and an inoffensive, quietly spoken middle-aged man. Sadly when their names were disclosed to the defence, as is the custom, the horrible man threatened them. He barged into the man’s house, grabbed him around the throat shouting:

  “You’re not gonna get to court ‘cos I’m gonna take your knee caps off before you get there.”

  I had a desperately pleading phone call from the poor man wanting to withdraw his statement. He wouldn’t tell me why until I visited him and he finally told me what had happened. I could imagine how he felt, and I didn’t blame him for it. The two ladies were equally terrified. He’d said to one of them:

  “If you go to court and give evidence against me I’ll knock you down and piss all over you.”

  Needless to say this annoyed me deeply. These witnesses were crucial. In a broader capacity the police rely on the public, they can’t do their job without them.

  I revisited all three of the witnesses and gave assurances regarding their safety. All three were terrified. After much persuasion they finally relented and I obtained additional witness statements describing the threats he’d made. The idiot had stepped up the trouble he was in tenfold, though he didn’t know it yet.

  As soon as I had the evidence I drove across the city to his address with several colleagues. I arrested him for the offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice. I recorded the interview on hand-written contemporaneous notes, as was the custom at the time. He simply replied, “No comment” throughout the entire thirty-five minute interview. He was remanded in custody. The original offence of threatening behaviour was dropped.

  The courts take a very dim view of justice being perverted in this way. He was sent to prison for a year. This was the first time I really felt completely immersed in a case, and it was what is generally known in the police as ‘a good job’.

  A few months after his release I chanced upon a teleprinter message in Radford Road control room detailing a serious road accident. The same obnoxious man had been driving a car at speed when drunk and had collided with a tree. It must have been a very big tree because he was killed. I know he was a human being, of sorts, but I smiled when I read this news.

  Singing Stairway to Heaven using a duck as a microphone, Kibbutz Be’eri, Israel, 1981

  A long-haired scruffy hippy.

  RAF Dishforth, not taking the job seriously enough.

  My colleague, Ted, even less so.

  Passing Out Parade, RAF Dishforth, June 1984

  With a proud mum on Passing Out day.

  The fortress where I started and ended my illustrious career.

  Nottingham City Centre, 12th May 1986. Moustache, bulled boots, tunic and Burndept radio.

  Typed duty sheets. At the stroke of a pen and some initials you could get the day off.

  A page of my additional questions for crime reports, each cut out with scissors and applied with Prittstick.

  The ten-hour shift system when it first appeared. Seven consecutive night shifts followed by six rest days.

  Some of the special instructions for all staff regarding Ramadan.

  At the music club gig with the prison van, Sherwood Festival, summer 2011.

  At the community centre.

  The Police Review needed someone who looked ‘tired and fed up’, so I volunteered immediately.

  The locker in which everything was meant to be kept neat and tidy.

  Late summer 2013 in Hyson Green, Nottingham. Probably one of the last occasions I wore full uniform.

  GETTING STUCK IN

  THE FIRST DECENT ‘COUGH’

  Several important personal events took place towards the end of 1985. The first of these occurred when a colleague threw a party in the Beeston area of Nottingham. I attended with Dave Kato-sideburns, from training school. I left later that night with a phone number given to me by a charming young lady. Unknown to me she’d seen me running through Wollaton Park on the sponsored run weeks before. Six months later Alyson moved into my little house. Her dad, Ron, lashed her wardrobe to the vinyl roof of his beige Austin Princess. Meeting Alyson was a life changing event. It altered my perspective on everything, including the police. We were socialising with other cops and their girlfriends, and thoughts of leaving the country began to evaporate.

  In the autumn I attended a two-week residential course at RAF Dishforth, known as the Continuation Course. If you reached this point it was almost certain you would have your probation confirmed. It seemed that I might make it after all.

  This was also the time when I converted to a four-seat Cessna 172 at the flying club. I started taking passengers, mainly police colleagues, and we sometimes re-enacted the Dambusters raid over the Derwent Dams. I flew the aircraft at the correct minimum altitudes and complied with all the appropriate rules of the air of course.

  The Hyson Green flats complex was a real nightmare to police because the residents knew every possible escape route. I remember walking under one of the elevated walkways hearing a male voice from above saying: “Gob on his helmet.” I thought they’d missed until back at the station I found a long trail of phlegm down the back of my tunic. Lone patrolling at night was discouraged and once inside the myriad of walkways you were certainly aware of some personal vulnerability. It was almost a badge of honour therefore to be given Area One, which included the flats.

  Late at night it was common for a group of us, usually led by a sergeant or inspector, to visit the complex in order to find the latest West Indian ‘blues party’. Sadly this wasn’t so that we could all have a smoke and chill out with them, but because the noise was usually audible for hundreds of yards in every direction, and complaints were numerous. Once the source of the loud reggae music was found, a casual approach was used, with hats off and passive body language. We’d usually find dozens of people in the flat, and many were overtly smoking cannabis. They were also found to be selling alcohol illegally, hence the other name for such events, ‘shebeen’. In the interests of community cohesion, in other words, fear of causing a riot, such offences were conveniently overlooked at the time. I never encountered any violence or even threats during such visits, but there was plenty of teeth sucking and chuntering. We were The Babylon, and were seen as the oppressors. The person running the event was spoken to, some intelligence gathered, and finally they were asked what time they intended to finish. Then we left. Action was taken at a later date, but it was rightly deemed to be too heavy handed to break it up on the night. It would have been very costly, and frankly we didn’t have the staff to do it.

  There was a huge central boiler system that blew hot air through ducted vents into each flat which never seemed to be turned off. In summer they were roasting, and in almost all the flats the windows were kept wide open as a result. The interior floors were smooth cement and most tenants had simply painted them to suit, which over time had worn away in places. No doubt these flats and others like them were the results of some progressive ‘70s thinking, but they looked horrendous to live in. Their reputation was dreadful and further worsened the entire area. There was a large mural in the centre of the complex depicting a man walking on the moon. It was the single best thing about the flats, and totally appropriate.

  Early in January 1986 one of the flats’ residents visited the police station reporting theft of a CD player. The complainant was described to me as ‘a bit of a niff-naff’ by staff at the counter, and though rather scruffy looking, and possibly a bit ESN (Educationally Sub Normal), as we used to say, he was f
ar from being a complete snaff. The offender, I was told, lived in Bergholt Walk, and he’d stolen the CD player to raise cash for a drug habit. I thought this could be quite an interesting job, it appeared easily detectable, and so I took a witness statement.