by Glenn Wood
After he left I thought about going back into the restaurant and telling them what had happened but I knew they had me marked as prime suspect in the missing sausages case, so I couldn’t expect much sympathy there.
I had no option, I scraped as much of the food off the floor as I could and rearranged it back on the plates. Then I zoomed around to Carey’s house to remove the fluff from the pudding before dousing it with Brandy to get rid of the taste of gravy. Carey sponged off the front of my trousers, which didn’t help my concentration and I rushed back to work. Amazingly, I got away with it but I did notice the policewoman I was working with that afternoon sneaking a few nervous glances at my crotch.
We spent the rest of the day attending domestic disputes. They followed a familiar pattern. Someone got pissed and a year's worth of resentment and anger poured out at the surrounding family members, who didn’t want to be there in the first place. I was pleased when the shift ended.
The festive season brought about some interesting developments in the flat.
Sheep and I were both reading a series of books about the Second World War and one morning I finished my volume and went into his room to get another one. I thought he’d be at work because he started at some ungodly hour. Imagine my surprise when I walked into his room to find him asleep in bed. Wow, I thought, he must have slept in.
This was unheard of and I felt a twinge of pleasure at being able to wake him. As I moved closer I noticed it wasn’t Sheep. Being the observant guy I am, I couldn’t help but notice it was a woman in his bed. Either that or Sheep had grown breasts during the night. Then I realised it wasn’t just a woman, it was Michelle. I nearly fell over with shock. I hadn’t seen this coming. I knew she had split up with her boyfriend and was a free agent. But still, bloody hell. I didn’t know what to do so I sneaked back to my room and lay on my bed flabbergasted.
Despite the temptation, I’m not going to make judgments about house-mate relationships. It would be difficult as I married mine.
The old adage ‘two’s company, three’s more fun’, didn’t turn out to be true and within the next month Sheep and Michelle decided they wanted to move into a place of their own. There was no animosity involved and we remained best of friends, but the move left me in a pickle. I could have handled the rent alone but didn’t want to live by myself. With Sheep and Michelle gone, who would be around to pick me up off the kitchen floor next time I electrocuted myself?
I made up a list of what I required in a flat mate:
· A working knowledge of first aid and/or a medical degree.
· Cooking and cleaning abilities.
· A good stereo.
· The ability to bring home free stuff from work, preferably food.
· Mechanical and electrical knowledge.
· Not being a psycho.
· Having a father who owns a brewery (this was optional).
As you can see, my needs were simple and thus armed I set about advertising for some new people to share my life.
The first candidate didn’t come out of the newspaper. She came from a friend of a friend, of a friend, knowing someone whose cousin might know someone who could be looking for a flat, for a friend, possibly. Her name was Eula and she met only one of the above criteria. She wasn’t a psycho. However, she managed to override my strict rules of admittance by being sweet, blonde and very cute. I offered her a room on the spot. To my surprise she accepted and agreed to move in the following weekend. She told me later that it was her first time flatting and she figured she would be safe flatting with a policeman. Silly girl.
I only wanted to let out one further room, as the fourth bedroom was good for storing stuff that may come in useful one day. You know the sort of thing - speakers for a car stereo that don’t work but may be able to be fixed, broken pieces of furniture, a socket set, a flat rugby ball, some cushions that didn’t go with anything nor were ever likely to, some beer crates and the first six volumes of Popular Mechanics.
I carefully interviewed a number of people for our final house-mate and chose an Ian. He seemed like a cool guy who I thought would fit in well with Eula and me. I was confident of my decision because as a policeman I had been trained to be a good judge of character and would be bound to see right through anyone dodgy. Surely.
The night after Ian moved in, I drove to New Plymouth to see my parents. This left he and Eula alone in the flat. I thought this would be a good opportunity for them to get to know each other. It would have been if he hadn’t completely freaked Eula out. So much so, that she slept with a chest of drawers pushed up against her door and a loaded pistol in her trembling hands. After that she went to a friend’s place for the remainder of the weekend.
I returned to the flat on Monday evening, blissfully unaware that anything was amiss. I had a good chat with Ian, shared a beer and we watched a movie. Eula was in her room studying and sticking needles in her Ian Voodoo doll, so I didn’t see her that evening. For the next few days everything was fine (or so I thought) although I did notice Eula was spending a lot of time wherever Ian wasn’t. I asked her how things were going and she said okay but remained non-committal about her impressions of our house-mate. She and I were together a lot the following weekend, which I wasn’t complaining about. I did notice that Ian had many friends to visit, some quite suspicious looking. Still, no bells rang. I just figured he was a popular guy.
On Monday of the following week, about half-way through a day shift, several members of the drug squad came up to me in the corridor. They said they had a search warrant for me to execute. I was chuffed. The drugs squad wanted my help. My campaign of increased vigilance was paying off. They’d noticed that beneath my seemingly incompetent exterior was a first class detective waiting to burst out. I grabbed the warrant with anticipation, wondering if I should requisition a battering ram from stores before I ‘went in’. That wouldn’t be necessary; my house key would do just fine. The search warrant was for my flat. It seemed Ian, was one of Palmerston North’s leading drug dealers and the drug squad wanted me to search his room for narcotics. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn. This couldn’t look good. I stammered a sort of half-hearted apology and noticed that a large crowd of my section members had gathered around to see what was going on. The drug squad happily filled them in.
'It appears Constable Wood has taken on a second job as a caregiver to overworked drug dealers', said one jolly wag.
'He’s renting out space in his own home as a place where they can congregate over a nice cup of tea and a hash cookie.’ said another, picking up on the theme.
'Come on guys.' I grumbled lamely. 'How was I to know?'
'Your two years' police experience and finely-honed crime spotting instincts, plus the fact that he had a bong in his pocket should have given you some clues.' said one.
'The burned teaspoons in the kitchen and the spiky leafed pot plants growing in the hot water cupboard could have aroused your suspicions.' said another.
'Or when he asked you to hold one end of the rubber hose while he tapped his veins. That should have been a giveaway,' added my sergeant.
I protested my innocence, becoming concerned they might have thought I was in league with Ian. Fortunately, no-one believed I’d be dishonest. While my aptitude for the job was constantly in question, my scruples were not. I was so clean, I squeaked when I walked.
Once they’d had their fun I was told to execute the warrant and arrest my flat mate if I found anything illegal. I was advised that perhaps I should reassess my living arrangements, preferably flatting with someone who wasn’t an active criminal. And a full report on the incident would be going on my permanent record. Naturally.
I requisitioned a police car and drove home praying Ian would be out ‘clocking’ or doing whatever it was drug dealers did.
There was no-one else around when I got to the flat so I did my duty. It was probably one of the most cursory searches ever undertaken. I didn’t want to find anything, as having to arrest my house-mate w
ould have just added to my humiliation. I am also embarrassed to admit that I didn’t have much idea of what to look for. We had studied drugs during training but only in a perfunctory manner. I had never even smoked a joint so I had no idea what I was doing. Ian could have left a bong on the mantelpiece and I would have mistaken it for modern art. So, there was little danger of me finding much in my search.
I felt like a criminal myself as I entered his room. It felt wrong to be going through the private things of someone I knew. Within minutes I felt really uncomfortable so I hurriedly opened a couple of drawers, flicked through a couple of magazines he had lying around (Drug Dealers Monthly, The Beginners Guide to Cooking Crack, that sort of thing), looked under his mattress and that was about it. As I completed the search I wondered why Ian had decided to go flatting with a cop. He knew what I did for a living and must have known I’d report him if I found out about his illegal operation. I suppose he hoped that living with me would be a perfect cover for his dealing. Worth a crack I guess (no pun intended). I took one final glance around his room, made sure it didn’t look like it had been searched and shut the door. Warrant executed. I radioed the station and told them I hadn’t found anything. They were disappointed.
I faced Ian that night, sort of. I told him that things weren’t working out, muttered that a few of the lads at the station had expressed concern about our current situation and left it at that. He took it well, saying it was a shame but he understood my position and he moved out the next day.
Eula was rapt.
'Thank God you got rid of that creep,' she said with a vehemence I found oddly arousing.
She claimed to have seen right through him from the start but didn’t tell me because she thought I might be doing a sting operation. Now there was an idea. I thought briefly about following her lead.
'You see Sarge, it was all a clever plan on my part, an undercover initiative aimed at taking out Palmerston North’s drug syndicates by earning their trust then striking when they least expected it.'
In my heart I knew no-one would be fooled.
It was lucky the drug squad got onto Ian as quickly as they did. Eula told me later that she was going to leave the flat that weekend because she hated being alone in the house with him. We were getting on really well (too well according to Carey, who felt instantly threatened by her), in a ‘just good friends’ way and I would have hated to see her go.
Eula quickly worked out that the whole Ian thing had been bad judgment rather than exceptional police work and I was banned from future house-mate selection. I showed her my requirements list, hopeful she’d agree with it and was disturbed to see her throw it in the bin. At that moment I realised I had lost control of the flat and was no longer master of my own domain. Thank goodness for that. I found life so much easier when I just did what I was told.
Eula selected two more house-mates, claiming that my spare room theory was rubbish, as were the contents of said room. She also hit me with the poor student routine and I was forced to agree to a full house. I was hardly ever there so it didn’t worry me much.
Obviously scarred from the Ian incident, Eula went entirely the other way and picked the two most boring house-mates in the history of flatting.
Gary was an English student, with a plumb accent and an old-boy network. He was a nice bloke but was incredibly straight almost to the point of being repressed. However, he was a wild and crazy maniac compared to our other house-mate. Angela was a vet student and was so stiff that I suspect she swallowed a bottle of starch as a small child. She spent the entire year studying, only coming out of her room for meals and to sneer at me. At our first meeting she immediately wrote me off as a big thick cop and spoke to me as if I were a stupid child. Having said that, neither of them was a wanted criminal so they were a step up on my last choice. They also paid their rent on time, kept the flat tidy, cooked, were always polite and caused me no trouble whatsoever. It made a dull, but pleasant change.
Eula was quite a different proposition. She was bubbly, intelligent, charmingly naïve, attractive to the point of distraction and what’s more she seemed to like me. I found myself spending more time at the flat than was strictly necessary. Not that I had any romantic designs on Eula - Carey and I were still a hot item, but I enjoyed her company. And I couldn’t see any reason why I couldn’t have a girl friend and a girlfriend. How foolish I was.
It was the beginning of 1982 and with my home life on a stable footing it was time to concentrate on my career. I knew I was behind the eight ball. My personal report was swelling like an infected boil although I was sure the situation wasn’t irretrievable. All I needed were a few quiet months for things to calm down.
The year started well with my day-to-day police work ticking over in an acceptable fashion. I was learning a lot and had brought several minor cases to acceptable conclusions. My arrest record was still very low as I maintained my personal policy of using my powers as a last resort rather than a first. During this calm in the eye of the tornado, several exciting incidents occurred with no accompanying Gonzoness.
The first happened during a night shift at the end of February. Night shifts were almost always eventful and I looked forward to them with mixed emotions. My career high points and my lowest moments occurred all between the hours of nine pm and five am.
On this particular night I was with one of the older cops in the I-car. It had been a slow night and we were following our sergeant's dictum of ‘tipping out’ as many suspicious cars as we could find. It was after midnight and so far we’d drawn a blank, turning over a procession of cruising teenagers, shift workers, insomniac students, adulterous couples and star-crossed lovers. All had their own stories but none of them illegal. Then we hit the jackpot. We drove up behind an old Ford Escort which was driving erratically. Before pulling it over we requested a QVR and were stoked to discover we were following a vehicle which had just been reported stolen. One of two things would happen. The car would pull over and we’d arrest the driver or the car would take off and a chase would begin. Cool. I loved car chases. Hurtling around the streets, lights flashing, breaking all the road rules with little chance of legal recourse. The only bummer being we no longer had sirens. That privilege had been revoked after one naughty officer had switched his siren on when rushing to pick up his fish and chips. He was worried his cod would get cold and deemed it an emergency situation. He crashed the car on the way to the takeaway and the resulting enquiry exposed his misuse of the siren. The fish and chip incident became a political hot potato (deep fried, not baked) and sirens were taken off us until we could prove we could be trusted. It was the governmental equivalent of ‘time out’. The whole class was put on detention for the actions of one irresponsible student. I thought it was dumb. Sirens were reintroduced several years later.
Another great thing about car chases was the possibility of forcing the vehicle off the road. This manoeuvre was a double edged sword. It was fun to do but if you damaged a police car in the process, hard questions would be asked and there would be a never ending stream of reports to fill out.
Armed with our QVR information we flashed our lights, indicating that the car in front should pull over. He paused for a second then accelerated. Yes! The chase was on. A surge of adrenaline shot through my body as we roared off after him. I wasn’t driving, which was a bummer but I was still in the thick of it. I took over radio duty. I picked up the mike and called the station:
'Ops from I-Car.'
'Ops.'
'In pursuit of a tan Ford Escort, registration number blah blah blah blah, heading south down Main Street. Vehicle has been reported stolen and refuses to stop, request assistance.'
On hearing those words every free cop with a vehicle in the entire Manawatu area would have immediately planted boot and headed toward us. No-one wants to miss out on a car chase.
After the first hundred metres, it became obvious the offender wasn’t going to stop until we made him. Great. That meant he was a danger to the p
ublic and had to be apprehended at all costs. I yelled for my partner to speed up. We had a much more powerful car than the Escort and I thought we should ram him. My partner had other ideas. He told me to cool my heels until the other cars arrived. Then we could try and box the other driver in. I could hear the excited chatter on the radio as the other cars converged on our location. I kept them up to date with regular directions via the RT. Suddenly one of our cars (Mobile Beat) came flying out of a side street just ahead of the offender’s vehicle. The driver of the escort took evasive action and turned left at the next intersection. This was exactly what we wanted him to do. The sergeant’s car had just turned into that same street and was heading straight into the Escort’s path. My car was still hot on its tail and Mobile Beat had gone on ahead to cut him off if he turned south. Half-way down the road the offender spotted the sergeant’s car driving towards him. It was hard to miss it as the sergeant was driving in the middle of the road.