Horse's Arse

by Charlie Owen

  She'd got off to a shocking start during her first week when she'd rebuked Sergeant Tucker, a grizzled thirty-year veteran, who'd failed to rise from a chair and show due deference to her rank. He'd put an arm round her shoulders and said firmly, 'Listen, darling, as long as you've got a hole in your arse, I'm only ever going to regard you as a fucking nuisance.' She'd reported him to Gillard who'd promised to deal with him and then promptly put the incident from his mind. He had far more important things to do, like arranging his retirement cruise. Tucker continued to make her life a misery, constantly referring to her as 'Cupcake' whenever he saw her. She vowed to get her revenge on the horrible old bastard. Unfortunately she hadn't a clue how to.

  Psycho had taken an instant dislike to her. She had an emasculated husband tucked away at home, but Psycho was convinced that was merely a cover for her true sexual preference. 'She's got to be a fucking lesbian. How could anyone fuck anything that ugly?' he regularly asked. Even Bovril had to admit that she was on a list of five women he could never shag. She was third behind Golda Meir and Piggy's wife. Psycho had begun to wage a psychological war against her, starting by defacing the stream of pompous memos emanating from her office and graduating to circulating a totally bogus one demanding that all male officers expose their genitals to her instead of saluting when they met her on the rare occasions she was out patrolling the ground. Psycho had also noticed the similarity with Rosa Klebb of SPECTRE and produced some surprisingly professional 'Wanted' posters of Klebb with Bott's head superimposed which had appeared around the nick. Klebb's memorable and sinister words 'He seems fit enough' soon began to appear added to all her memos, real and bogus, and became a catch phrase amongst officers at the nick who would greet each other with it. So popular did it become that Gillard had begun to try to slip it into any conversation he had with her as a bit of a personal challenge.

  For the last two mornings, Psycho had crept into her office using the spare key from Enquiries, and had a huge, smelly crap in her toilet, which he didn't flush. Bott had nearly vomited on entering the room yesterday. She'd rushed into Gillard's office and dragged him back to show him.

  'Jesus Christ, Hilary,' Gillard had said, his eyes watering, you'd better see a doctor. That thing's got veins in it.'

  'I didn't do it, you fucking cretin,' she screeched. 'Those bastards downstairs did it. If you don't sort this out, I'm going to take it up with the Chief Constable,' and she stormed out of the office. The outcome had been a collector's item of a memo from Gillard, reminding all officers that senior officers' toilets were for their exclusive use only - except in an emergency when care should be taken to ensure that they were flushed thoroughly.

  Having fouled her toilet for the second morning running, Psycho hurried back downstairs and put the spare key back in the enquiry office safe.

  'I hope you washed your hands,' said the Blister, hardly glancing up from the magazine she was reading. She'd seen it all before. Psycho cackled insanely and ran out to the back yard to get his car and be as far from the scene of the crime as he could be when the shit hit the fan, quite literally.

  The Blister continued to read until she heard the front doors to the enquiry office open. She looked up to see Rosie, one of the local tramps, peering balefully through the reinforced glass window that separated the public area from the office itself. Rosie was about sixty, completely bald and toothless, wearing four layers of clothing and accompanied by her ever-present shopping bag on wheels. She was also hugely incontinent and generally had an exclusion zone of several feet around her that only the unwary dared to violate. She'd spent last night in a shop doorway and was particularly ripe this morning. The Blister detected the smell through the glass and wrinkled her nose.

  'Morning, Rosie, what can I do for you?' she asked without getting up.

  'Any chance of a cup of tea? I'm fucking freezing,' gummed the old woman. She knew the Blister was a bit of a soft touch, unlike most of the male officers who generally hurled abuse at her before hoofing her out of the nick on the end of a boot.

  'Yeah, sure, but outside, OK?' said the Blister, getting to her feet and going into the telephone room where all the tea-making stuff was kept. Rosie obediently shuffled out on to the steps at the front of the nick and settled down. By the time the Blister brought out a polystyrene cup of tea to her, she had pissed herself again and a stream of urine ran gently down the steps on to the pavement. The smell was overpowering and Blister gasped as she handed over the cup.

  'Jesus Christ, will you control yourself, Rosie. Drink that up and get on your way, preferably to have a bath somewhere.' She hurried back to her magazine, but looked up again a few minutes later when she heard the doors open and saw Rosie standing at the glass.

  'More tea,' the woman demanded, holding her cup out.

  'Bollocks. On your way, Rosie.'

  'More tea or I'll shit myself here.' Blister knew bloody well that the horrible old witch was perfectly capable of carrying out her threat and capitulated immediately.

  'OK, OK, go on, outside, I'll bring you another one,' she said urgently, grabbing the cup under the glass partition. Rosie shuffled away as before.

  Half an hour later, six cups of tea had passed straight through Rosie's decrepit insides and now ran down the steps in a torrent. The front of the nick was awash, the stench overpowering. Blister was beginning to panic as she realised that shortly she would have no option but to actually take hold of Rosie in order to get rid of her.

  'Time you were on your way, Rosie,' she called unconvincingly from inside the front doors, holding her nose against the smell.

  'Fuck off,' muttered Rosie, getting to her feet, hoisting her filthy, tattered skirts and shitting against the wall. Blister gagged and hurried back to her office. She'd pretend she knew nothing about Rosie, despite the smell, which was now infiltrating the nick. She tried to engross herself in her magazine, but was disturbed by the sound of a man shouting and swearing outside. An irate Chief Inspector Gillard then barged in through the front doors. He had decided on an early start to spend as much time as he could without Bott to annoy him, and as he hurried along the pavement had failed to notice either the liquid or the smell coming from the front steps of the nick. At the sight of a toothless old hag emptying her bowels on the upper steps, he had reeled and then lost his footing altogether, falling back into an ever-increasing puddle of piss. He was drenched, and, even worse, some of it had splashed into his hair. Now he stood dripping in the front office, glaring at the Blister with the veins in his temples standing out.

  'What the fuck is that old bitch doing on my front steps?' he roared.

  'What old bitch?' said the Blister innocently, getting to her feet.

  'The one that's pissed and shit all over them, you stupid cow. What the fuck's the matter with you, have you no sense of smell?'

  'Sorry, guv, I've got a shocking cold. Is there someone out there then?'

  'Jesus fucking Christ,' screamed Gillard hysterically, 'look at the fucking state of me. Get rid of the old bitch now.' He squelched to the doors giving access to the nick and waited for the Blister to use the buzzer. She was craning her neck trying to see the scat she knew nothing about outside. 'Door,' bellowed Gillard.

  'Sorry, guv,' she said, reaching below the desk to the buzzer. The door opened and Gillard stamped across the corridor to the stairs, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind him. Blister considered her options, which were not good. She didn't fancy ignoring Gillard's pretty concise instructions, but the thought of manhandling Rosie off the steps was not appealing. The smell that had followed Gillard in was worse than ever, and she was going to have to do something about it.

  Salvation arrived in the form of Sergeant Tucker, who had also arrived early for duty as court sergeant and now materialised from the nether regions of the nick. He stood ramrod straight, as befitted a former Guards drill instructor, and wrinkled his nose as he looked suspiciously at the Blister.

  'What the fuck is that?' he asked.
/>   'Some old scat's pissed all over the steps apparently. Gillard went arse over tit in it.'

  'Have they now?' he barked, and marched out into the front office and opened the front doors. He took a step back as the full horror assaulted his senses.

  'God's teeth,' he yelled, before marching back into the nick, propping open the internal doors, and disappearing down the corridor. The Blister watched with mounting anticipation. He reappeared a few moments later, dragging a firehose, which he carried out into the front office. Opening the front doors, he released the hose valve and directed the powerful jet of water at the source of the problem. The jet hit Rosie in the side of the head, flinging her like a rag doll down the steps.

  'Bugger off, you filthy old slag,' roared Tucker with a manic light in his eyes. He continued to direct the jet at Rosie, rolling her across the pavement and into the road. Early morning passers- by couldn't quite believe what they were seeing, but this being Horse's Arse they continued on their way. Having hosed Rosie out, Tucker was about to kick her shopping trolley after her when he thought better of soiling his glass-polished shoes, and hosed it after her. He then directed his attentions to the wall and steps before shutting off the valve and vanishing back into the nick.

  Rosie sat dripping next to her shopping trolley at the side of the road, shouting obscenities at the nick as passing cars hooted her. Gillard had returned downstairs to ensure that the Blister had complied with his instructions, and had seen Rosie disappear like so much flotsam. He promised himself that he'd look after Tucker; that bitch Bott could poke her complaints up her arse. He glared at the Blister again, who looked up, flushed, and quickly went out to make herself a cup of tea. Gillard staggered back to his office to change and wash before Bott arrived and completely fucked his day up.

  'Why couldn't she have fallen in that piss?' he muttered to himself.

  Pizza was soaked and freezing after half an hour's aimless wandering around the virtually deserted town centre. Large numbers of the shops were unoccupied, boarded up with 'For Let' signs peeling off outside, more in hope than expectation of a letting. He decided to try to ponce a cup of tea from the baker's shop on the other side of the market place, and quickened his pace as he passed through the rows of empty stalls. The drizzle had intensified and large drops were falling from the peak of his sodden, ill-fitting helmet.

  Pizza had quickly lost the feeling of finding his vocation in life and was worried that he'd made a dreadful mistake. His job was pointless, he felt he achieved virtually nothing, and, worse, no one seemed to give a fuck, either about the job or about him. He was ignored by his supervisors and colleagues, and despite his best efforts to ingratiate himself they regarded him with icy contempt. He took it very personally, unaware that he was undergoing a rite of passage that all police officers were subjected to, and endured, before they were accepted as a member of a group. It was nothing personal. Newcomers couldn't be trusted until they'd been thoroughly tested by their peers. Once you were in, you were in for life, but if you were out you were fucked. Pizza felt well fucked.

  The lights from the baker's shop pierced the damp gloom, and he felt a surge of well-being as he pushed open the door and stepped into the yeasty warmth. He took off his helmet and shook his overcoat, sending a shower of water on to the floor. He smiled at the young girl watching him from behind the counter. She had a richer crop of spots than he did, and he began to feel even better.

  'What a poxy morning. Cup of tea, please,' he said pleasantly.

  Wordlessly she filled a mug and placed it on the counter. He picked it up and began to sip the tea.

  '20p,' she said, holding out her hand.

  '20p?'

  'Yeah, 20p. You didn't think you were getting it for nothing, did you?'

  Pizza was speechless. This had never happened to him before when he'd been out with the others under instruction. He put the mug down and began to desperately search his sodden trouser pockets. He began to redden as he realised he was skint. The girl took the mug from the counter and threw the tea into the sink.

  'Come back when you've got some money.'

  'Yeah, right,' said the crushed Pizza, putting his helmet back on and slinking back out into the drizzle. His eyes began to fill with tears as the feeling that absolutely everyone hated him began to consume him. He stood for a moment to compose himself before walking slowly towards the nearby Grant Flowers tower blocks. He was sure he'd recover a nicked motor or two there. Give him a chance to show the others that he was a grafter. Whilst they were all cosseted in nice, warm, dry cars, he was out there on the cobbles in the rain, doing what real coppers had been doing for over a hundred years. Showing the flag, getting amongst them, getting his hands dirty, looking them in the eye. At least he would if there was anyone about; the little slag in the baker's shop who'd just slaughtered him didn't count.

  The tower blocks loomed out of the gloom in front of him like a modern Stonehenge but with none of the mystery or magnificence. They oozed silent malevolence. Thirty storeys high, they resembled a child's neglected Lego construction. They had vast, subterranean garage blocks that had long been abandoned by car owners, and their unlit, vandalised depths were now home to the drug addicts and glue sniffers whose tools of trade littered the permanently damp floors. It was a favourite dumping ground for nicked motors, which were stripped and invariably torched.

  He remembered his first visit to the flats with Ally, who gave him some salutary advice that had stuck with him. 'Keep away from the building line, keep looking up and never use the lifts,' he'd said simply. Not using the lifts was obvious enough, but why keep away from the building line and keep looking up? 'Because the rodents that live here have the habit of dropping fridges and tellies out of their windows on to people they don't like the look of,' had been the reply. Pizza would never forget that conversation. Amid the mind-numbing, parrot-like learning of definitions of offences and powers of arrest, this was the sort of thing he really needed to know about. It had begun to dawn on him that there was absolutely no substitute for experience.

  As Pizza entered the first of the garage blocks, he took out his torch and shone it into the forbidding darkness. The weak beam landed on the rusting, burnt-out shell of a car at the back of the block, and he began to walk slowly along the rows of garages, all without their doors and resembling huge, gaping tooth cavities, his boots crunching on discarded syringes. His breath hung in large clouds as he walked, shining his torch into the dark. He could hear the relentless dripping of condensation from the low ceiling, and felt his childhood fear of the dark begin to wrap its icy arms round his shoulders. The abandoned garages were full of rubbish of every description, and stank of human excrement. Discarded condoms in most of them evidenced another activity popular down there, and he wondered what sort of person chose to have sex in such a place. There was little of interest in the garages on the right-hand side and he began to walk back along the other side, back towards the distant, weak light of the entrance. The first few garages contained nothing to merit further examination, but halfway along, his torchlight fell on a pile of rubbish that appeared to have only recently been dumped and arranged so as to conceal something within it. Very slowly, he walked into the garage, checking from side to side before he began to gingerly move the rubbish to one side with his boot. Under the pile was a large, black, bulging bin liner. Putting on his gloves, which he'd been trying to dry in his pockets, he pulled the top of the bag open and shone his torch inside. He could see what appeared to be clothing. Intrigued, he pulled the bag free from the surrounding rubbish and noticed that attempts had been made to set fire to it. It was so damp that it had barely smouldered. He carried the bag back to the entrance of the garage block and emptied the contents on to the ground. Inside were three pairs of jeans, a pair of brown trousers, two pairs of Doc Martens boots, a red and a checked shirt, a pair of trainers and a blue denim jacket. All were covered in what appeared to be dried bloodstains. Now he felt he was doing something worthwhile. This
was interesting, proper police work. What was the story behind this little lot? Now the others would take some notice of him. This could be a quality job. He pulled his radio out of his inside jacket pocket and called Handstead Control.

  'What d'you want, Pizza?' answered the operator, who shared his colleagues' disdain for him.

  'I'm down at the Grant Flowers garage blocks,' started Pizza, 'and I've found a bag of clothing.'

  'Does any of it fit you?'

  'What? No, no, I've found a load of clothing covered in blood.'

  'Very interesting, Pizza. And?'

  Pizza was speechless for the second time that morning.