Gangbuster

by Peter Bleksley

  When I was at one nick, I worked with a mate who had a reputation as big as a bus in the Old Bill. We got on like a house on fire. We were great friends, on or off duty.

  Much to everybody’s surprise, the nick where we worked had a little gym down in the basement and after work we used to go down there and beat fuck out of each other in the boxing ring, have a shower then go out on the piss together. People could never suss it out. We were real buddies. His great boast, repeated to me not long ago, was that there wasn’t a policeman on earth who’d spent more on prostitutes than him. I mean, he was notorious. And this was while he was a serving police officer. We used to do everything together – work together, drink together, fight together, fuck women together.

  One night, we were at a leaving function together – they were always coming up as people were posted about in the job or retired – and my mate said to me, ‘You’ll never guess what happened to me last night.’ Now, with this guy, you don’t even start to guess because it could have been anything. All I knew was I’d seen him for a drink the previous night and he’d said, ‘I’ve got the raging horn, Blex. I’ve got to go down Earl’s Court and find a bird.’ Not unusual. So he told me what happened.

  He’d gone down to Earl’s Court, picked up one of the local brasses and gone back to a hotel room. But because he’d taken a load of booze on board, he wasn’t able to get it up. As far as he was concerned, ‘If I can’t perform, I don’t have to pay.’ That was his thinking and he wanted to keep his £50. She had different ideas and started screaming at him to hand over the money. A big row broke out and suddenly he was surrounded by her pimps, three big geezers, Maltese or Cypriots. He managed to bluff his way down on to the street, where he felt safer, and continued arguing the toss. One of the pimps pulled a knife and held it to his throat and told him he’d got to pay whether he’d had a shag or not. At this point, he pulled out his warrant card and said, ‘Do you know who you are doing this to?’

  They didn’t give a toss and demanded that he paid up. So he got the money out of his pocket and pretended to drop it on the floor accidentally. One of the pimps bent down to pick it up and my mate hit him with a belting right cross. He was a good boxer, and the blow knocked the geezer spark out. Then he had it on his toes, leaving the £50 behind.

  The pimps chased him all round the back streets of Earl’s Court, still keen for some aggro, but he managed to give them the slip.

  But, all in all he was not best pleased and he now wanted to go back down there and exact some retribution. And, of course, who did he want to go along with him, but yours truly.

  We hadn’t really got a plan and I didn’t know what we were going to do, but I thought I’d better trundle off with him.

  When we’d worked together once, a defence barrister asked my mate in the witness box, ‘Is it right to say you are the brawn of this partnership, and DC Bleksley is the brains?’

  He replied, ‘Oh, no, no, no … Blex can smack ’em as hard as I can.’

  He always was a fearsome handful and one of the older and wiser detective sergeants who had seen us having this agitated scrum down at the leaving do had immediately suspected that something dodgy was afoot. He came over to us and demanded to know what was going on. So we told him the brief story of what had happened to my mate and he said, ‘Well, all right, just leave it, don’t do anything rash, don’t do anything quickly and we’ll hatch a plan to sort things out in a sensible and proper way.’

  He wanted to set up a proper observation and nick the girls for soliciting for prostitution and the pimps for living off immoral earnings. That’s what the wise old sage decided and we nodded our agreement. But once we were outside my mate said, ‘Bollocks to that, let’s go and sort them out.’

  We were trundling down the Earl’s Court Road a bit later when he nudged me and said, ‘That’s her.’

  The tom was hanging about at the entrance to Earl’s Court tube station, where a lot of them touted for punters, and my mate was on his way over to her before I could stop him. I thought he was just going to go over to her, remonstrate and get his money back. But he walked straight up to her and with no further ado went BANG and slapped her straight in the mouth. I thought, Oh, fucking hell, this is not in the plan.

  The pimps appeared from everywhere – doorways, the drains, whatever – and we were surrounded by the vice bosses of Earl’s Court all steaming angry. My mate was fuelled up and I’d got a drink on board and so we were suddenly going at it like maniacs trading punches with the pimps, putting the boot in. A couple of them then ran off into a newsagent’s-cum-convenience store with a fired-up copper in hot pursuit. Well, he was my mate, I was in it to the hilt now so I had to leg it behind him. We steamed into the shop and it was literally like a scene from a movie. There were punches being thrown, shelves of goods being sent flying across the floor and we were giving them a right pasting, I mean we were both good boxers and they got our best shots. I dug one and he went straight back into a shelf sending cans of beans, tins of tomatoes and whatever all over the place. My mate got hold of another one and was banging his head into the fucking frozen food cabinet. The geezer running the shop was screaming and playing merry hell. It was absolute carnage, total chaos.

  After a couple of minutes, my mate obviously felt we had exacted suitable revenge and we’d better get out. The shop owner was still kicking off and a crowd was beginning to gather. We came out into Earl’s Court Road where the traffic was jammed solid in the one-way system. The tart was running up ahead of us and there was a police car stuck in the jam. I grabbed hold of my mate, trying to be sensible, trying to be the brains of the team again, and said, ‘Come here, let’s just see what happens before we do anything.’ With that, we could see her bending into the police car obviously telling them she’d been duffed up by some lunatic. She was followed by the pimps, holding heads, limping, giving it all that, showing them what happened. She was pointing up at us and nodding and saying ‘That’s them.’

  At this point I said, ‘Right, let’s get out of here.’ We skidaddled off down the tube, split up, jumped trains and went our own separate ways.

  It turned out that the police car was from a neighbouring police station, and not our nick where everybody knew us. Just our luck, because they would have had to deal with it impartially as was their duty. Allegations of assault and battery involved pulling in about eight or nine witnesses, as well as the victims, to give statements in evidence. The brass and her pimps spent all night making these fucking great statements of complaint. She put it all in there, that he was a copper who had tried to shag her the previous night but couldn’t get it up.

  The next day, my mate was off but I went in on normal duty and the place was a hot-bed of rumour. As soon as people heard, they were saying, ‘If there are two bastards who would go and get involved in something like that, it’s those two.’ So I hung around keeping my head down and my ear close to the ground. I was expecting the shit to hit the fan at any moment.

  When there is a spot of internal bother, you can have the complaint investigated locally or by the specialist Complaints Investigation Bureau at the Yard, and that can be really nasty. Dear old Basil Hadrell, the Chief Super who had been landed with the papers in the case and was overseeing the investigation, had through a trusted colleague put the word out that if whoever is responsible comes forward, it could remain an investigation at local level and it wouldn’t have to go up to the Yard. The go-between took me aside and said, ‘Look, was this you two at this shindig? From the descriptions and the modus operandi it could only be you two.’

  I said, ‘Yeah, it was.’

  He said, ‘Right, if you are prepared to admit it, everything will be kept local and you won’t have to face all the flak you’ll get at the Yard.’

  I managed to get hold of my mate on the phone and said, ‘Come on, you’ve got to come in. We’ll put our hands up and go for as much damage limitation as possible.’

  We were up before the uniformed Chief Ins
pector who’d been designated by Mr Hadrell to investigate the case at about 6.00pm that night. He just asked us, ‘Were you involved in an incident in the Earl’s Court Road at approximately midnight last night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right, I’ve no further questions to ask at this time.’

  He said he would conduct his enquiries and we would be dealt with later.

  Curiously, we never heard another word. The matter was completely dropped much to our relief. There was no official explanation but we were given to believe that one of our colleagues had gone down there and sorted things out with the tart in a more amicable way than me and my mate. I can imagine them saying, ‘Well, look, after all, at the end of the day, you are a prostitute and these other people are living off your immoral earnings … do you think it wise to proceed with these charges?’ They all disappeared soon afterwards and haven’t been traced since which was a result as far as my mate and I were concerned. The officers on the case tried to find them a few months later to re-interview them, but they still refused to come forward. No action was taken but an internal report did suggest that ‘the greatest care’ should be taken that the two of us never worked together again because in the two-and-a-half years we had operated as a team, we had each accumulated a total of 13 complaints – 12 while we were working together.

  My mate disappeared off to the Flying Squad and I went to the Central Drugs Squad. That was our somewhat spurious reward, a couple of premier squad postings. We counted ourselves very lucky. The only time we ever saw each other after that was over the occasional pint.

  * * *

  Another fiasco I was involved in came when I was on a major undercover operation in South London and had ended up at Sutton Police Station as my temporary base. When you work undercover you are itinerant and you can end up in any nick for briefings, evidence collecting, interviewing, and your face is not generally known. But when a Yard squad descends, word usually gets about that something is on the go. You get used to the itinerant life, moving about all the time, working at different stations and hopefully you have the communication skills to get along with people you don’t normally work with on a daily basis.

  One day, we’d just conducted a search as a part of a big robbery inquiry and had gone into Sutton nick – not exactly one of the biggest in London – and while my colleagues were dealing with a prisoner we’d arrested I ventured out to the front counter to which members of the public have access. I was looking for some forms and they were usually kept handy in the front office.

  I heard a commotion and a woman burst into the front office heavily out of breath saying, ‘Help me, you’ve got to help me.’ It’s not my job to deal with it. I’m a Scotland Yard detective and I’m dealing with something else. I look round and see two bone-idle, fat old fuckers sitting there doing nothing, just getting on with their business, ignoring this bird. I turned round.

  ‘Somebody going to deal with her?’

  ‘Well, all right, yeah, in a minute.’

  I thought, You ignorant fucking toss pots. All the time, the woman was pleading for some assistance.

  ‘Help me, please, help me.’

  Nobody else was doing anything. I approached her out of a sense of duty, although it wasn’t my place, and said, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I’m a store detective, come with me, come with me.’

  I could see she was getting more distressed by the second, so I leapt over the counter and went into the street with her.

  ‘I’m a store detective,’ she repeated breathlessly, ‘little fella, beige bag, he’s nicked a portable TV.’

  She pointed down the street and way, way in the distance I could see this little fella disappearing round the corner with a fucking great beige hold-all.

  ‘OK. Leave it to me,’ I said and I was off down the high street like shit off a shovel. There I was, supposedly the élite of Scotland Yard’s undercover drugs detectives, scooting after a shoplifter.

  Pretty soon, I’d caught up with the geezer, about 5ft 6in, covered in tattooes – up his arms, round his neck, across his forehead. I ran up to him and said, ‘OK, mate, I’m Old Bill, I know you’ve just nicked this telly.’

  He said, ‘Yes, right, OK, mate. No problem, I’ll come with you.’ I took the beige hold-all off him with the TV in it, in case he did a runner, and grabbed him by the arm. I thought, I’m really going to get the piss taken out of me when I get back to the Yard.

  We were walking back towards Sutton nick when, like a shining beacon, along came local plod. He was about 19, brand-new out of training school, and up he came to do his duty. But I had made a fatal mistake. I’d got the beige hold-all.

  The baby bobby ran up to me and said, ‘I’ve reason to believe you’ve been shoplifting and there’s a stolen television in that bag. I’m arresting you for theft. You do not have to say anything, blah, blah, blah.’

  I was standing there, holding on to this shoplifter half my size, and I was totally gobsmacked. I said, ‘You’re having a laugh here, aren’t you? You’ve got the wrong bloke. I’m actually from Scotland Yard and I’ve arrested him for shoplifting.’

  He looked totally baffled. ‘Have you got a warrant card on you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Will you show it to me?’

  I looked him straight in the eye. ‘So you are proposing that I put the bag down, let go of him, get my warrant card out to show you … by which time he will have legged it again. Then you’ll believe I’m a copper and we can all go running off after him again.’

  He wasn’t budging. ‘If you refuse to show me your warrant card, I can only assume you are lying. I’ve got to arrest you.’

  So he took the beige hold-all from me, doing exactly what I’d done a few minutes earlier. I still had a hold of the little fella, the young bobby got hold of me and there were three of us walking abreast up Sutton High Sreet. Just then, along came what I thought would be my saving grace – the store detective. She went straight up to the baby bobby and said, ‘What are you doing, you stupid boy?’

  He nodded at me and said, ‘I’ve arrested this man on suspicion of shopifting.’

  ‘He’s a policeman,’ she said. ‘He came to my help when I was in your police station.’

  To my amazement, he said, ‘Well, it’s too late now, I’ve arrested him and he’ll have to stay under arrest.’

  She said, ‘He’s the shoplifter … the little fella.’

  So the bobby said, ‘You take hold of his other arm then.’

  Now there were four of us abreast going up the street, him holding me holding him holding her, forcing members of the public out of the way, almost obstructing the highway. Even when we got to the front door of the police station, he wouldn’t let go. Because we couldn’t go in four abreast we had to go in sideways. It was one of the most ridiculous scenarios I’ve ever seen.

  When we finally got through to the charge room, the duty sergeant, who knew I was from the Yard, took one look at us all holding on to each other, grinned, and said, ‘I’m really looking forward to hearing this.’ The baby bobby gave a detailed account of how he had made the arrests and everyone just fell about in hysterics and took the piss out him something rotten. I think he’s probably a chief superintendent by now!

  I wasn’t sorry to get back to our base at the Yard after that fiasco, and it gave my mates in SO10 a good laugh. If you’re in the Met, then the Yard’s where you want to be if you’ve got an ounce of ambition. I loved it. And as a relatively young detective attached to one of the glamour squads, I can only say that Scotland Yard is shaggers’ heaven. I suppose it’s a little bit like war-time – you’re doing a job that has more danger than most and when you’re off duty you’re looking for relaxation in the shape of a pretty girl and a nice few pints.

  There was a workforce of 3,000 employed at the Yard with many attractive, unattached females among the civilian ranks. Work hard, play hard, that’s what a lot of coppers do.

  Inevitably,
our squad had quite a lot of dealings with the Yard’s Press Bureau, the section which deals with the media, papers, TV, radio, whatever, on a day-to-day basis, fielding questions and issuing information. There was a certain amount of scepticism towards one another because we sometimes felt they were useless and didn’t give our squad the publicity it deserved, didn’t argue our cause well enough, and the Press Bureau in turn would think we were bone-headed paranoids or publicity-seeking prima donnas. I think, by and large, both standpoints had a degree of truth to them.

  I had quite a lot of dealings with one of the girls who was quite high up in the bureau and we used to go out for drinks and meals and argue the toss about the virtues of us and them. We’d have a good old argument then wind our way back to the Yard and try to find an empty office to have a shag in. A lot of people were at it. The crumpet there was a joy to behold. Married men were all shagging; the single blokes were all shagging their brains out. It was great fun. But some nights you just couldn’t find a sodding office to do it in. You’d go round rattling all the doors but they’d be locked. I don’t know whether it was others at it or just security but on one such occasion we were forced to resort to the basement where all the cars were kept. All sorts of motors were there, facilities for changing number plates for covert operations, all sorts, so we decided to do it in the back seat of my vehicle. Not ideal and not as good as one of the guv’nor’s offices with a nice big desk to shag over, but better than nothing.

  So we thrashed about in my car for half-an-hour and had a decent sort of shag, her arms and legs hanging out of my motor amid the passion. Although we got on well, she was awfully full of herself and really did look down her nose at most of the lower rank Old Bill. She earned bundles of money and took a delight in pointing that out to us.