Confessions of a Police Constable (11 page)

I must have looked rather grateful, because she responded by smiling for a brief moment, before nodding her head towards the motorcyclist. ‘Go save a life, cowboy,' she said.

I recognised her just as I made to turn away; we bring prisoners to A&E all the time and she was one of the nurses we deal with.

I shook my thoughts back to the task at hand as I bounded over to the motorcyclist. His arm was sticking out at a curious angle. With his other, working, arm he was wrestling with his helmet.

‘Hey. I'm police. Don't worry, an ambulance is on the way. I need you to lay down and not move for a while, okay?' He seemed happy to take instructions. ‘What's your name, mate?' I asked him.

He said something that sounded like Alexej.

‘Alex. Can I call you Alex?' He tried to nod, but I stopped him with a wave. ‘Alex, you may have a neck injury, and nodding is bad news. I need you to lay down on your back and just not move. Can you do that for me?' He did. I opened up the visor of his helmet to give him some extra air. He was dazed but able to talk to me.

‘The man. Is he okay?' Alex asked me, straining to move his head to catch a glimpse of the pedestrian.

‘I don't know,' I lied, hoping Alex wouldn't notice that I looked like I'd been doing butterfly strokes in red paint all morning. ‘The ambulance will deal with him. For now, I'm just worried about you. Where do you live, mate?' I talked to him about various day-to-day things, just to keep his mind occupied. Keeping him talking had an additional bonus: it meant that I would immediately notice if his situation worsened.

The first ambulance arrived, and I knew it was bad news when they came over to us nearly immediately.

‘Let's have a look at you, then,' the paramedic said to the motorcyclist, before looking at me and shaking his head.

The pedestrian didn't make it.

It's always really hard not to place the blame in traffic collisions. In this case, the motorcyclist was going too fast for the conditions, but still well within the speed limit. As far as he was concerned, he was crossing on a green light, and making good progress past a line of stopped cars. The pedestrian only saw the line of stopped traffic, ignored the red light for pedestrians and failed to consider whether there might be other traffic behind the stopped vehicles. He should have stopped to check, perhaps, but it's easy to forget – even if it was an oversight that claimed his life that day.

More police and ambulances showed up; the motorcyclist had a badly broken arm and a serious concussion. I called my sergeant, and told him the state of play.

‘Go home, Delito,' he said. ‘We've got plenty of people on today, sounds like you need a break.'

I felt bad about leaving my team in the lurch; traffic accidents like this are relatively commonplace, and I could have worked my shift if I'd had to, but I was looking forward to a shower, to scrubbing the blood off me, to getting my clothes into a washing machine and going back to bed.

One of the ambulances gave me a lift home: it was on the way to the hospital anyway. I remember my last thought before I went to sleep was ‘What a horrible way to die.'

In the parking lot behind a local Sainsbury's, I was sitting with my feet on the Panda's dashboard, waiting for my colleague Jay to come back with our lunch. I didn't really have any reason for staying in the car, other than complete, abject laziness. I suppose I quite like to have someone else buy my lunch for me … with my own money, of course.

Jay, especially, had been on a great streak for picking tasty foods lately – he'd had a vegan girlfriend for a while, a relationship that fell apart, and he'd been trying to take revenge by eating as many cows, lambs and chickens as possible. If you ask me, it's not the greatest way of getting back at an ex, but as long as it made him happy …

‘Mike Delta two-four receiving Mike Delta,' the radio buzzed. I looked down lazily, before reaching for the in-car handset. It was one of those old-fashioned squeeze-button microphones you see in American cop shows a lot. We never use it; in fact, I'm not even sure why we have them. The cars are fitted with small microphones next to the sun visors, along with fancy push-to-talk buttons on the steering wheel – but I guess I was in a retro mood.

‘Ten-four, Mike Delta,' I said, in my worst American accent. (Incidentally, that is also my best American accent.)

‘You free to deal with an assault?'

‘Yeah, why not. Send 'er over.'

‘Done. Thanks. It's on an S-grade.'

‘Received!'

I reached for my phone. The call was a Sierra-grade. This meant we had an hour to get to the location, but it never harms to get going. I rang Jay on his mobile, to urge him to get a move on. It's possible to call people directly radio-to-radio, of course, but the user interface on our radios is very Motorola circa 1995, which means it takes a rocket scientist to figure out how to programme numbers into the phone book etc. So I just went ahead and called him on my personal phone instead. At least that's usable.

Before long, Jay hopped into the car. From the second he opened the door, I was aware of a truly delicious smell.

‘What'd you get?' I asked, fastening my seatbelt.

‘Chicken. Roasted. Whole,' Jay replied. I looked over. He grinned, barely holding back from salivating. ‘Where are we going, then?'

‘Church Street,' I replied. ‘It's a weird one, actually. We've been called to a boxing ring about an assault, I think. We're meeting a Chris there, who is the victim, apparently.'

We made it to the address we had been given in decent time.

‘This,' Jay observed, ‘is not a boxing gym.'

We were standing outside a deep and narrow building, with Japanese-looking writing on the signs and posters. This was a martial arts dojo, and a much fancier one than the ratty, 1960s-throwback community hall where I train jiu-jitsu twice per week.

A paramedic came out to greet us.

‘This way,' he said, without seeming to be in a particular hurry. That's usually either really good news or really bad news: either Chris wasn't hurt enough to warrant being in a rush, or he had already died.

We were led into a café-looking area near the front of the dojo. An advanced session of some martial art I didn't recognise – it looked a little bit like taekwondo – was in progress in the hall itself. We could see the training through the large glass wall, and it looked rather impressive.

In the café, we met a young man in a martial arts costume. Another paramedic was checking his pulse and blood pressure, as he sat in a chair.

Not dead, then, I concluded.

‘What happened here?' Jay asked, after we had introduced ourselves and verified that this was, indeed, Chris.

Chris opened his mouth to answer, and it was immediately clear that he had recently had a tooth knocked out, in addition to other injuries to his face – and arm, which he was wearing in a sling clutched close to his body.

‘He beat the shit out of me,' Chris said.

‘Who did?'

‘The instructor.'

‘What is his name?'

‘John.'

‘Where is he?'

‘In there,' Chris nodded, starting to turn his head to look through the glass wall, but then flinching in pain as he twisted his neck.

‘Right. So what exactly happened?'

‘We were training, and I landed a punch a little bit too hard.'

‘So you punched him?'

‘Yeah, I suppose, but I didn't mean to. Or, well, I meant to punch him, just not as hard as I did.'

‘Forgive me if I ask a stupid question,' Jay started, ‘But isn't punching people the point of martial arts?'

‘Well, yeah – but we don't go full contact without a lot of padding. Normally, we just mark our punches, and I guess I miscalculated, and put a little bit too much into my punch.'

‘By accident?'

‘Of course!'

‘Does that happen a lot?' Jay asked

‘I suppose it's not uncommon to leave a session with a few bruises here and there. When you get better, you tend to have more control. As you climb through the belts you learn more, and you become used to not punching too hard. I guess I miscalculated in this case.'

‘Right. And then what happened?'

‘He paused for a second, pointed at me, and without saying anything, started beating me up.'

‘And this is the instructor?'

‘Yeah.'

‘I see you're wearing a green belt.'

‘With a blue stripe,' Chris replied, holding up the limp, blood-splattered end of his green belt, to show off a thin length of blue fabric that was attached.

‘Whatever. What does that mean?'

‘Er?'

‘Does having a green belt with a blue stripe mean you know what you're doing?'

‘I suppose it means I'm about halfway to my black belt,' Chris replied.

‘And the instructor … he is a black belt?'

‘Yeah. I don't know what dan, though.'

‘Dan?' Jay turned to me: ‘Matt, you know this stuff, don't you?'

‘I dabble,' I said. ‘Not in this sport, though.'

‘Are injuries common?' Jay asked me.

‘Not in jitsu.' I reply. ‘Bruises, mostly.'

‘Yeah, same here,' Chris said.

‘So, he just went for you?' I asked Chris.

‘Yeah. I hit him in the front of the shoulder. I suppose I may have hit his clavicle. He just lost his shit and went for me. I think he only got about six strikes in before the others dragged him off, but the doc here thinks he has broken my arm. He broke one of my teeth, too, and I'm definitely going to have a bit of a shiner as well. He kicked me in the head.'

‘Did you fall down?' I asked.

‘No, I was standing the whole time.'

‘But he still kicked you in the head?'

Chris laughed. ‘Kicking someone in the head when they're standing up isn't that hard,' he said.

In jitsu, we don't really bother with kicks above the belt level: if you're going to give up that much balance, you may as well get in close and break one of their joints. I suppose this is one of the philosophical differences between our two martial arts.

‘And the instructor's name is John?' I checked.

‘Yeah. He's the tall bald guy,' Chris said.

Jay and I stood at the window briefly, and watched the action on the other side of the glass.

‘Let's do this,' he said, glancing over at me.

He unfastened the pushbutton that secures his CS gas and loosened his baton in his holster. I shook my head and did the same, before we both walked into the main arena.

‘What is this?' John the instructor bellowed. ‘Get those filthy shoes off our mats!'

I completely understood where he was coming from, and I felt genuinely guilty about tromping straight onto the mats. In martial arts, this is a place of respect: you bow to enter the dojo itself, then you bow again to walk out onto the mats, then you bow when you face an opponent – and you do it all again, in reverse, when you leave. In the context of most martial arts, wearing your shoes on the mats is quite spectacularly rude.

However, when we both hurriedly stepped back onto the solid ground, the instructor made no move to come join us.

‘Can you come over here for a moment? We need to talk to you,' Jay said, resting his right hand on his handcuffs, beckoning for John to come closer.

‘Can it wait?' John said, glancing at the clock mounted above the door we had just entered. ‘We are finished in about forty minutes.'

‘'Fraid not,' Jay said. ‘Now, please.'

‘Seriously, forty minutes,' the instructor said, visibly annoyed.

‘No.' Jay said. ‘Now.'

The instructor still didn't appear to want to come over.

‘Look, I really don't want to step on your mats again, but if I have to, I will. I need to talk to you, and we're going to do it like civilised people, not with five metres between us and fifteen people looking on.'

‘They all saw what happened; they'll back me up,' John replied.

‘My friend,' Jay started, ‘you have ten seconds. I'm going to go back into the café now, and you're going to join me.'

‘Am I fuck. I'll be there when the session is done,' he replied.

I walked out onto the mats, and Jay followed.

‘What the fuck do you think you're doing? Do you have no respect?' John howled, in a tone of voice that made it sound like we were stomping on his kitten on our way to spray-paint swastikas on his daughter.

‘Sensei, you're swearing at a police officer in your own dojo, on your own mats,' I hissed, ‘Don't talk to me about respect.'

By now, Jay and I were standing about a metre away from John. I couldn't help but be acutely aware of the 15 blue- and brown-belts standing behind their instructor.

‘Get off my mats,' he shouted.

‘We will, when you come with us.'

‘I'm not coming.'

‘Yes, you are.'

‘You can't make me.'

‘Yes, we can.'

‘You think?' he laughed, and took a defensive stance, before shouting something in Korean. The troupe of people behind him took up a pose that I assumed was the start of some sort of training exercise.

‘Use your brains,' I said. ‘Of course you guys can beat us up. There are only two of us. But if you try, we'll be back, thirty of us. Fifty. A hundred. And you will all go to prison for a significant time. All I want to do is talk to you, John, about what happened to Chris.'

‘Put one hand on me, and I'll fuck you up,' John replied.

‘Are you preventing me from doing my duty as a police officer?' Jay asked, innocently.

‘Damn right I am.'

‘Fair enough,' Jay said. He took a step back and reached for his radio.

‘Mike Delta receiving four-eight-three?' he transmitted.