Confessions of a Police Constable (15 page)

‘I'm Sam Spade,' I answered.

‘Right-oh,' the man said, and vanished inside, leaving the door open.

Chip came to the door. He was tall, and from his colossal upper arms it was obvious he spent a larger percentage of his time than I in the gym.

‘What do you want?' he asked, with only the slightest trace of a foreign accent; he had obviously been in the UK for a long time.

‘Hey,' I began. ‘You sold me some memory cards on eBay. They are fakes, and I would like my money back, please.'

There was a long silence. He now knew who I was and what I wanted, but I could see he was still trying to figure out how I found him.

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' he said before quickly stepping back and starting to close the door. I moved my foot forward, and placed it in the crack before it closed. As soon as I'd done so, I realised that I'd technically committed burglary, but I wasn't going to let him just shut me out without getting some sort of resolution.

‘Get the fuck away from me,' he said, and he opened the door again – only by a couple of inches – before slamming the heavy wooden door shut on my foot. If I had been wearing normal boots – or even my police boots – I'd have broken a couple of toes at least. Fortunately, my motorbike boots are built for brutality: they are designed to keep my feet and ankles safe in case I come off the bike in a crash. I barely even felt it.

Chip opened the door again, and surprised me by pushing me backwards with both his hands against my chest.

‘You can't prove anything,' he said, before taking yet another step forward and pushing me again. ‘Why don't you piss off before I call the police,' he said.

‘Actually,' I replied, with as much calmness as I could muster, ‘that sounds like a good idea. Then we can explain to them how you defrauded me of two hundred and fifty pounds. Let's see what they say to that.'

Chip didn't take that very graciously at all.

‘Fuck you,' he elocuted.

Then it happened: his arm dropped down, and he took a step back. I had no idea what martial art he was trained in, but I've practiced enough martial arts in my time to recognise a fighting stance.

‘Calm down, let's talk about this properly. I obviously know who you are, what you've done and where you live, and I'm not going to leave until you refund my money. There's no need for all of this. Well done you for tricking me out of two hundred and fifty quid,' I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm, ‘but just give it back, and I'll be out of your hair; I won't contact you again.'

He shifted his position again. His legs were no longer next to each other; one was slightly behind the other. He had dropped his head down slightly and bent his knees as well.

I knew exactly what was going to happen next, and knew I wasn't going to enjoy it in the slightest.

Chip was signalling his punch. Actually, ‘signalling' would be giving him too much credit. He might as well have written, ‘I am going to punch you' in elaborately lettered calligraphy on a postcard and handed it to me.

Or, to put it simply, it was brutally obvious that my newfound friend was a better fraudster than he was a fighter.

‘You're about to make a very stupid mistake, my friend,' I said to him. Meanwhile, adrenaline was being pumped into my bloodstream, causing everything to drop into a bizarrely familiar slow motion.

I knew we had a video camera pointing at us. I knew everything he was doing was being recorded. If we succeeded in getting a recording of Chip punching me, the plan would be to visit the local police station and have him arrested by the local force for assault. We would have the video and Sam's witness statement as proof. Hopefully, in his interview, Chip would 'fess up to his fraud, and I wouldn't have to explain how I found him. All of this was racing through my head, as Chip was moving himself into position for the now-inevitable punch.

I promise: I had fully intended to let him punch me.

Unfortunately, ten years of jiu-jitsu training wasn't going to disappear that easily. I just couldn't let him reduce my face to a bloody mess. Despite my pledge to take the hit, I felt my body disobey my brain.

A subtle feint to the left and a very fast side-step to the right brought me close to Chip, inside the reach of his blow. He punched with full force, but I was no longer there. His fist had flown past the side of my head and grazed my left ear ever so slightly, but by this point I had already planted the palm of my left hand against his nose rather firmly. Next, my left hand slid down the arm he had tried to punch me with – his right. When it reached his wrist, my right hand came up fast, slapping him across the face. The slap is a ‘weakener' – a punch not designed to harm or disable but to confuse. The hit worked as intended: I could feel the arm I was holding relax slightly. The hand I had used to slap Chip with continued its motion down to meet its partner so that I was holding his right wrist with both of my hands and my back was now facing him. For my final move, I turned around, taking a large step backwards with my right leg, and twisting his wrist upside down. Yanking his hand, I brought him off balance.

This was elementary, white-belt jiu-jitsu stuff. You do this particular movement in your very first jitsy class, and I have done it so many times I could do it in my sleep.

The next step in this series of events would be to snap-kick my shin into his face, before breaking his wrist with a quick clockwise jerk, and then fracturing his elbow by stomping on it with my left shin. I decided to hold back. Securing an assault conviction wasn't going to be easy if he hadn't connected a single punch but came away from the altercation with a broken nose, wrist and elbow.

Instead of causing any real damage, I gave his arm a quick yank, and he was flat on his face. I still had his wrist, and I applied enough pressure to notify him that I could break it if I chose to.

I looked up to find Sam standing next to me, pretending to look a little bored. He bowed down and spoke into Chip's ear.

‘Hey, asshole. I filmed all of that. We have it on tape that you tried to punch him in the face. Also, he's a police officer, did you know that?'

Chip responded with a half-sigh, half-moan.

‘So what's it gonna be, Bruce Lee?' Sam asked.

‘I'll pay you! I'll pay you!' Chip said.

I let go of his wrist and took a couple of steps back.

‘Go on, then,' I said.

Chip vanished inside the house, and came back out a minute later holding a wad of cash. He counted up £250, and added another £20 to the stack. He held them out to me, but Sam snatched the stack and made a big show of checking each bill, muttering things about forgeries. When he finished, he looked at me and shrugged.

‘Looks fine to me,' he said, adding with a grin, ‘Even the serial numbers are different.'

‘Are you really a cop?' Chip asked, as we turned around to head back to our bikes.

I opened my mouth to tell him the truth, but Sam was quicker: ‘I guess you'll never know. Get yourself an honest job instead, eh?'

Later that night, after I'd changed out of my leathers and had a shower, I met Sam for a thank-you pint. As we sat down, he slid a DVD across the table.

‘It's the tape from this afternoon,' he said. ‘I doubt he'll claim he was assaulted, but you never know.'

Later that night as I was drifting off to sleep, I thought about Sam. He enjoys bending the rules a little bit too much to make a good police officer, but if he ever pulled himself together, he'd make a fantastic partner.

Special constables are an interesting breed of police officer: they are ultimately unpaid volunteers, but they contribute at least 200 hours of their time to the police force every year. Many actually do even more hours than that; quite a few help out every Friday and Saturday night, which is amazing – there's no way I would give up my weekends without getting paid.

Specials come in all shapes and sizes – I know of a paramedic, a lawyer, a taxi driver, a couple of students, even a few bankers. Each brings something different to the job – granted, some of them are better police officers than others (indeed, some of them verge on utterly useless) but most are incredibly helpful in our day-to-day policing. Special constables have the same powers as ‘Regulars' – fully employed police officers – and they carry the same equipment.

Specials are on a probationary period much like regular police constables. Unlike regular probationers, however, specials can't go out without ‘supervision' – they are generally paired with either a more experienced special, a special sergeant, or a constable. Personally, I quite like having another pair of hands with me when I'm out and about, and the skippers know that I'm a relatively patient guy, so I'm frequently paired up with specials in various phases of their training.

‘Why do I do this again?' I thought to myself.

It was just after dawn on a misty Tuesday morning. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but the first early start after four days off still gets to me. Every. Single. Time.

The muted half-conversation and the stingless banter around the room indicates that I'm not the only one contemplating a change of career, or a quick nap in the changing rooms before heading out.

‘… is Mike Delta five-nine-two and Mike Delta five-one-one-two,' I heard, snapping me out of my introspective daydream.

I engaged the one spider-sense you inevitably develop as a police officer: the ability to rewind conversations in your head. It's weird; you react to your shoulder number almost instinctively, and even if you weren't really paying attention, you will somehow be able to recall the whole discussion without even really trying. The beginning of the skipper's statement had been, ‘Today, two-six …'

Two-six meant posted on a Panda, which slightly annoyed me because I had been driving the area car, which is more exciting, during most of my last set of shifts. Then I got irritated at my own annoyance, because I knew that on any other day, it wouldn't matter to me what my posting was; as an advanced driver, I would do just as many blue-light runs in a Panda as in the area car. The only real difference would be the kind of jobs we'd be assigned to.

I wasn't familiar with the other shoulder number that had been read out by the skipper, but it was a four-digit number starting with a five, so that meant he or she would be a special constable.

I glanced around the room and switched instinctively into radio mode when I spotted an unfamiliar, and not unattractive, face:
IC1 female, about 20 years old, roughly five-foot-three, wearing a white business shirt with a chequered tie, and what appears to be a Metropolitan Police stab vest. She is armed with a stick and is carrying handcuffs. Spray not seen but assumed present. If I have to make a risk assessment of the woman, it would be high; she is carrying an offensive weapon (a gravity friction-lock baton) and a firearm (technically, the CS gas canisters we are issued with are firearms under section 5 of the Firearms Act 1968). She is also wearing a stab-proof and bullet-resistant vest, which indicates that she is prepared for a confrontation.

I spent a few seconds studying her, until the officer sitting next to her leant back a little, and I got sight of her shoulder number. Three digits: not a special. She must have been a newcomer, or on loan from another team, or perhaps she just fancied sitting in on our briefing.

When the skipper had finished, I bolted out of the briefing room to secure my favourite car. We'd recently taken delivery of a couple of Ford Focuses (Focii?) with reasonably beefy turbo-diesel engines; but more importantly, more comfortable seats than are found in the Astras. If I'm going to spend eight hours stuck in a motor, I want to sit in one that at least has some semblance of comfort.

As I was doing the full pre-tour-of-duty inspection check, five-one-one-two came up to me.

‘Hi,' a young man said, nervously. ‘I think I am with you. Is this car two-six?'

‘It is today,' I reply. ‘Two-six is a call sign, though you won't find it written on the car. I'm Matt,' I said, sticking out my hand. ‘What's your name?'

‘Uh – hi, Matt. I'm Sydney, but my friends call me Syd,' he said.

‘Well, I'm going to be your friend then,' I replied, ‘because, no offence, I ain't calling you Sydney.'

‘Yeah, my parents have a funny sense of humour. I guess I was named after the city I was conceived in,' he said. ‘I'm just glad they didn't get down to business in Scunthorpe.'

We both laughed. I had only known Syd for a minute, but I felt it was safe to assume that I'd get along this guy just fine.

‘Do you want a tip, Syd? Write my shoulder number and our call sign on your hand. If you need to radio in, it'll be the first thing you forget, and you'll feel like a right idiot as you're standing there holding the transmit button. I had to do that for the first year or so in this job, until remembering these things finally became second nature.'

‘That's a good idea,' he said, and showed me his right hand. He had already written it down.

‘Good stuff. But, you should have written it on your left hand,' I said, and flicked the sirens on and off again. Yup, they were working fine. After the checks had been completed, we got in the car and drove off on patrol.

‘So, how long have you been a special?' I asked.

‘About six months, but I've been really busy at work, so haven't been able to do many shifts. This is my fifth,' he said.

‘Your fifth shift?' I replied, and glanced across at Syd. ‘And you get put with me? Oh boy, have they made a mistake.'

He looked back, and I spotted something in his eyes. Nerves.

‘I kid, I kid!' I said, patting him on the shoulder.