by Glenn Wood
When I looked at the shattered helmet that sat beside my bed I could understand the reason for their anxiety. I would have been killed had I not been wearing it. As it was, the doctors were astounded at my good fortune. If the Ford had hit me a fraction further to the left it would have shattered my knee caps and I would never have walked again. If my body had first hit anything other than the windscreen (which cushioned the impact) then the rigid frame of the car would have snapped my back or neck, either killing or paralyzing me. This bad luck, good luck scenario has plagued my life. The bad fortune of my crash was compensated by the relatively minor nature of my injuries, but as usual, fate had one final knife twist for me. I was charged with Failure to Give Way and as I wasn’t insured I was expected to pay for damages to both the bike and the car.
At first, I spent a lot of time bemoaning my situation. I stopped after talking to the guy in the bed next to me. He was in a bad way with most of the bones in his body shattered and serious damage done to his internal organs. He had a tragic tale to tell.
His ‘accident’ occurred as he was driving innocently along on a moped. All of a sudden he found himself tangled up in a car chase. Actually it was a truck chase. A traffic officer had tried to flag down a large truck and trailer unit, which refused to stop. A chase ensued. Half way through the pursuit the truck came upon the moped and began to pass it. The patient told me he could see the truck driver’s face in the side mirrors and they locked eyes. The truck driver smiled then swung the wheel. The truck lurched over and collided with the tiny motorcycle, smashing its rider under its wheels. The plan obviously being to create an accident and force the pursuing officer to stop and attend to the victim. It worked and while the officer was frantically attempting to keep the moped rider alive, the truck got away.
It was a terrible story. The driver of the truck was guilty of one of the most malicious acts I had ever heard of.
The moped rider was lucky to be alive and he told me that the truck driver’s face was etched in his memory and if he ever saw him again he’d kill him. The vehemence with which he spoke left no doubt as to the veracity of his statement. Can’t say I blame him.
The failure to give way charge wasn’t great for my career but it was just a minor dint in the growing number of chinks in my armour. Financially, it was a disaster. I was saved from huge debt by two things. Firstly, the owner of the motorbike took pity on me and wrote the bike off, telling me he'd take the loss as I'd suffered enough. If, by a very slim chance, he is reading this then I'd like to thank him officially for his generosity. He didn’t know me from Adam and he shouldn’t have lost out through my stupidity but I am eternally grateful that he did. Cheers mate, I owe you one.
The owner of the Ford was a nice guy too. He visited me in hospital and didn't correct me when I declared I wasn't to blame for the accident.
No-one had the heart to tell me about the STOP sign I'd missed and I was labouring under the misapprehension I wasn't at fault. The Ministry of Transport and the Ford owner's insurance company soon put me straight. For the first time in my life I hired a lawyer to help dig me out of the crap. Carey saying: 'At least you weren't seriously injured' didn't help when I looked at the bill of $3500, especially as my savings account contained just over $1000. My lawyer did lots of legal stuff to prove that the lack of road markings contributed to the crash. He successfully reduced the fine for the Failure to Give Way charge and then resorted to old-fashioned grovelling to reduce the sum I owed the insurance company to $900. By the end of the exercise I was sore and broke but it could have been worse.
Needless to say, my next vehicle was a car. Another Cortina, proving I have little capacity to learn from my mistakes.
Just how close I’d come to death that day was hammered home to me a few weeks later.
Carey and I were returning from a trip to New Plymouth, when we came upon an accident. We were travelling through Goat’s Valley, a winding and dangerous piece of road about an hour out of Palmerston North. We rounded a bend to see a line of cars backed up along the road. Several people were gathered around a person lying on the ground.
A tangled mess of burning metal lay by a stalled truck. I could barely recognise the twisted wreck as a motorcycle. It had obviously collided with the truck and its tank must have exploded on impact. The accident had happened ten minutes earlier and had blocked both lanes of the road.
There were ten cars in front of mine, most filled with bored people and impatient children. I pulled my car off the side of the road, told Carey to stay put, and went to see if I could help. As I left the car I could hear the wail of an ambulance twisting its way toward the crash site. I approached the spot where the motorcyclist lay only to be stopped by an officious woman who demanded I return to my car. When I told her I was a policeman she let me through, though she didn’t look happy to have someone on the scene with more power than her.
Two other people knelt by the motorcyclist. One was an off-duty nurse and the other was the driver of the car that had been first on the scene. He was cradling the guy’s head in his hands. I was shocked when I saw the state of the victim. He was alive and conscious, but blood flowed freely from his mouth and was matting in his beard. He was a big guy and wore well-travelled motorcycle leathers.
The thing that disturbed me most was the position he lay in. His right leg was bent behind him at approximately forty five degrees, and his left leg was torn sideways and wedged behind his neck. It was a hell of a sight, but I had to put that out of my mind and do what I could to help, which wasn’t much. The officious lady was doing a good job controlling the scene. The driver was talking to the guy and keeping him calm and the nurse was doing what basic first aid she could.
A few minutes later the ambulance arrived and I made myself useful by helping them unload their equipment. The ambulance officers took one look at their patient and pumped morphine into him. I was put in charge of the oxygen mask and I placed the face piece gently over his head and started the oxygen flow. I took over from the car driver as chief reassurance person and told the motorcyclist he would be okay. I could see from the look in his eyes that we both knew this was a blatant lie but what the hell can you say!
Just how transparent my banal reassurances were became obvious when I removed the mask from his face to clear out the blood. It was like a red spring had erupted from deep in his chest and a constant flow of blood kept bubbling through his mouth. Rather than keep up the thin reassurances I decided to tell him what we were doing. I kept it factual, informing him when we were going to put him on the stretcher and told him how long it would take to get him to hospital. The mask filled with blood once more before we got him into the ambulance and as I cleared the blood from his mouth he coughed slightly before mercifully losing consciousness. I think the morphine must have cut in as he seemed strangely at peace. He never regained consciousness and died on the way to hospital.
Our drive back to Palmerston North was completed largely in silence although Carey did make me promise never to buy a motorbike. It was a promise I was to regret not keeping.
Nazi Feminist Lesbians
I told Sheep about the horror crash when I got home. He was fascinated by my life, which offered him endless hours of horror and amusement. He particularly loved police stories and I didn’t mind sharing them as the most terrifying thing he had to deal with in his job was flaky pastry. Once the latest tragic tale had been told he would chip in with a helpful suggestion to get me through the tough times. His remedy for stress was simple: we should get drunk. I fully endorsed his line of thinking and we helped Dominion Breweries post a record profit for the year.
Having said that, I don’t want to give the impression I’m a huge drinker. I’m not and never have been. For a relatively big guy I don’t have a corresponding constitution when it comes to alcohol. I get drunk quickly, make new friends, tell them how much I love them, recount extraordinarily funny jokes, get involved in deep and meaningful conversations with small shrubs, disagree v
iolently with passing pigs, wonder why everything is moving in an unusual fashion, vomit, then vow never to drink again, until the next time. Sheep on the other hand, was more adept at sinking a few and readily made up for my limitations in that area.
But Sheep was just a cherry floating in a barrel of Slippery Nipples (it’s a cocktail - what were you thinking?) when compared to my colleagues in the police. They could drink and drink and drink. It came from years of practice and the need to out consume one another in that stupidly competitive way males have.
Not that the ability to imbibe twice their body weight was exclusively a male domain. The hell bitch could drink me under the table. Actually, most policewomen I met showed great capacity for consumption. It had something to do with working in a predominantly male occupation. This is conjecture on my part but I noticed a lot of the women felt they had to prove themselves by drinking, fighting and swearing better than their male counterparts. Sadly, most male cops I knew didn’t do anything to convince them otherwise.
My sharpest criticism of police culture was that it actively encouraged mindlessly competitive behaviour. The worst example of this was the Sunday School drinking sessions we were obliged to attend at the end of our night shift week. This meant starting drinking at 5am, something I’ve always had trouble getting my head around. I’m up for a few drinks after work but I don’t like being pushed into it or pronounced gay if I wasn’t legless by the end of the session. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy some of the drinks. I did. I just hated feeling like I had to be there.
We were expected to spend not only our working hours in the company of fellow policemen but our social time as well. I struggled with this. There were a few exceptions but I generally found my police colleagues less interesting than my friends outside the job. When cops get together they talk about one thing, the police, which was the last thing I wanted to discuss out of work. I’d had a gutsful of the job by the end of the working week and couldn’t wait for time away from it. That was why I hung around with so many students. sure, they talked bollocks, but at least it was interesting bollocks. I also loved winding them up. They were so earnest and sure they had all the answers to society’s woes. For a bunch of over educated middle class kids, who’d never travelled or seen much of the world, they thought they had it all worked out.
I remember one particular evening when Quentin, who was studying for a Bachelor of Arts at Massey University, had invited the Womyn’s Collective around to his flat for their weekly meeting. They had replaced the 'e' in women because they didn’t like the fact that the word women contained the word men. I wonder what they thought of the word hymen.
The Womyn’s Collective was a bunch of hairy legged, bleeding heart, crocheted-top-wearing, Nazi feminist lesbians. All right, that’s unfair; they didn’t always wear crocheted tops.
They were holding their meeting at Quentin’s flat because they could hold it anywhere they damn well pleased and Quentin was pretending to be politically correct as he needed their support to get the top job at Radio Massey. University, it seemed, was even more political than the police - and that’s saying something. Quentin loved it. He’s always been a political animal and he was always vying for the leadership of some committee or other. Personally I couldn’t be bothered. I’m not very good at internal politics.
The Womyn’s Collective were in the middle of their weekly meeting, all declaring a shared bond of hatred for all things male (except Quentin who was serving them biscuits) and an abhorrence for any form of authority. Then I turned up. I’d decided to pop round for a beer after work. I strolled into the lounge in full police uniform and cheerfully asked, 'Hey Q, who’re the babes.'
Quentin went pale and started making throat-cutting motions but I carried on, blindly immersing my other leg in my mouth up to the knee.
'So are you lovely ladies students?' I said suavely.
Quentin appeared to have a seizure at this point and sat quietly snivelling in the corner, watching his chances as head of Radio Massey waft out the door.
I was taken aback by the vehemence of the head lesbian’s reply to my innocent greeting. It wasn't a serious pick up line, just a bit of harmless guy flirting. Or so I thought. The Womyn’s Collective saw it as a blatant attempt by a malevolent misogynist to oppress the sisters by forcing them to conform to a stereotyped sexist image of womanhood.
I finally dropped into the fact I was addressing the Womyn’s Collective.
'Oh,' I said in an attempt to mollify them. 'You’re the lesbians.'
Well, that was it. It was all on, to a point where physical violence became a real possibility. A lesser man would have run for it and being a lesser man that is exactly what I did, stammering ineffectual apologies as I backed out the door.
The last thing I saw as I bolted for my car was Quentin looking forlornly out the window at my retreat. He was more irritated at me leaving him with a room full of fuming feminists than he was for me making the clod footed blunders in the first place.
Surprisingly, this event had a happy ending. The Collective spent the next two hours bitching about my incredible lack of sensitivity and realised at the end of the meeting that they hadn’t had such a good moan for ages. Quentin was instructed to get me back for their next meeting where they would persuade me to see the error of my ways. They also wanted me to discuss the role of women in the police. Naturally I said no bloody way, but Quentin pointed out that I owed him one so I gave in. They saw me as an interesting subject in a Neanderthal way and I indulged fantasies about them getting their collective kits off and having a sex orgy on the carpet, so we were all happy. Especially Quentin who got the job at Radio Massey after all.
Having the sensitivity of a brick made it difficult to deal with some of the situations I attended in the police. I have an uncanny ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the worst possible moment. It was well known that my feet spent more time in my mouth than on the ground. I remember advising one lady who had been involved in a minor car crash that she should see a doctor in case the baby she was carrying had been injured. Not much chance of that. She wasn’t pregnant. Not my finest moment. The woman didn’t half get snippy and explained at length that she had a slow metabolism and found it difficult to lose weight. How was I to know?
Apart from showing a profound lack of perception, I was also abysmal at judging if someone was lying to me. This was, of course, a huge drawback for a policeman and one that got me into a lot of trouble. Especially with my sergeant, who could spot a fib from the other end of the station.
My shortcomings were highlighted one night during late shift. I was manning the front desk when a young guy came into the station to report a hit and run car accident. He said another car had come screaming around a corner and slammed into his vehicle before driving off. He wanted a form for his insurance. I followed him outside and took a look at the car. There was a huge dent in the rear panel just in front of the bumper. It was a nasty ding and would have been expensive to fix. We both muttered about the recklessness of the other driver and I took him into an interview room to fill out a statement.
We were getting on well and he perched himself on the desk as I wrote out the report. Half way through the statement my sergeant came into the room. After observing the interview for several minutes he called me out into the hallway. He told me to tear up the statement and start acting like a police officer. I was dumbfounded. What had I done wrong? I had filled out the right forms and thought I’d handled the complainant with courtesy and efficiency. I asked my sergeant what the problem was. He said my paperwork was perfect but unfortunately it was a load of utter bollocks. My sergeant raised his eyebrows and led me to the window of the interview room. He gestured to the complainant sitting on the desk inside.
'Look at him.' my sergeant said.
I did but could see nothing unusual. Noticing my blank expression my sergeant addressed me as you would a slow and awkward child.
'Look at his body language. He’s sitting
on the desk while you were sitting in the chair, pretty bloody relaxed, isn’t he.'
I’d put his demeanour down to my friendly policing but my sergeant saw it differently.
'He’s relaxed because he thinks he’s got away with something' said Sergeant Nelson. He went on to explain that any normal person who’d had his car rammed would be uptight and anxious to find the person who’d done it. I hadn’t thought of that. I was too busy being impressed by what a nice young chap he appeared to be. That all changed once the sergeant took over the interview. He stomped in, puffed up his chest, told the boy to sit in the chair and then walked around firing questions at him. I stood by and watched. Within ten minutes the guy was a nervous wreck and gaping holes were appearing in his story.
The sergeant took us outside and examined the damage done to the car. He shook his head and claimed there was no way it had been hit by another vehicle. Damn me if he wasn’t right. The kid broke down and told the truth. It was his dad’s car. He had been hooning around with his mates when he had lost control and collided with a pole. He didn’t want his dad to know what had really happened and was worried he would have to pay the insurance excess if it was discovered he was at fault. I’d bought his story hook, line and sinker and he would have got away with it if the sergeant hadn’t come by. I was hugely impressed by the way my sergeant had instantly detected this scam but it worried me how easily I’d been duped. I took Sergeant Nelson aside later that night and told him of my concerns. He was surprisingly charitable (probably because I’d spent all evening telling him how impressive he’d been). He said that the guy had been very convincing and I hadn’t yet developed a cop’s nose. I have a very impressive nose as it happens, but that wasn’t what he was getting at. It was this gut feel thing again - Sergeant Nelson had known the guy was lying before he had even spoken to him. He knew because of an instinct the best street cops acquire after they’ve been in the job for a few years. Some cops never get it (I suspected I’d fall into that category) but to those who do, it’s a great asset. He told me I was just going to have to try harder to gauge people’s reactions and read between the lines. That was easy for him to say - half the time I couldn’t even see where the lines were. He finished our chat by telling me to finish the paperwork on my friend the hit and run victim. He’d been arrested for filing a false complaint.