Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes (17 page)

‘Simon me old mate. Long time no see. Come on in. What yer havin’ then?’

Simon turned politely to me. ‘Pint is it?’ he asked.

‘Is it?’ I said.

‘Why not?’ he countered, and turned to the landlord.

‘Two pints of bitter then please.’

Just two hours into the shift was a bit early to be holing up in a boozer, but Simon was driving and the night was promisingly tranquil. Unprofessional it might feel to turn up at a job smelling of beer, but any late Sunday night call would almost certainly have been alcohol related, so a couple more sets of beery breath would go unnoticed. Probably.

After a few minutes I began to think the landlord was serving short measures, because the pint glass in front of me was almost empty, yet I barely recalled drinking any of it. Without asking, he solved this dilemma by refilling our glasses. Simon’s had also emptied at a surprising rate, so if we were being served short, at least it was being done to both of us. Not that it mattered, as we weren’t even paying for it – we did offer, but he refused on two counts – ‘I can’t sell beer outside hours,’ he slurred, ‘and you aren’t allowed to buy alcohol on duty anyway, so there.’ My conscience eased in the face of such law-abiding and considerate logic, and became easier still with the subsequent half-gallon of finest bitter which lubricated it, and I relaxed as a willing audience to the drunken landlord’s seemingly endless repertoire of tales from the licensing trade. There were quite a few parallels with my own career – moments of great joy, times of hard unrewarding toil, bosses who seemed out of touch and uncaring, and a public who held
a permanent belief that you were there purely to serve them, that you loved them, and that you never needed or took time off or had any life beyond the one they saw.

After what seemed a very short space of time in this convivial environment, Simon got unsteadily to his feet.

‘Well, we’d better be on our way now – check the patch before we have to go off.’

My watch said it was just after 4 in the morning. I checked my radio and found it had been correctly switched on and only then realised there hadn’t been a call on it all night, not even over in Newport.

We said our goodbyes and walked back to the car. The checking of the patch that night consisted of driving the half mile back to the Police Station, drinking a few strong coffees and dozing in the armchairs near the full-size snooker table that took up most of the floor space in the recreation room. By the time the day shift came on we were passably sober, and made our separate ways home after what must have been one of the easiest night’s work in the history of policing.

While the landlord had been correct in not accepting money for the drink provided, drinking on duty was normally forbidden under pretty well any circumstances according to the discipline rules. Fortunately these rules were enforced by senior officers, most of whom had drunk so much on duty throughout their careers that unless one’s intoxication was blatant or resulted in an uncoverable mishap, it meant drinking on duty was a way of life for some rather than a luxury. The only limiting factor was one’s own judgement and conscience. The ‘quiet night’ incident
was exceptional for me, and even as a passenger in a Police vehicle I thought it generally unprofessional – I would be unhappy to be a member of the public and have an intoxicated Policeman turn up at my house – but it did happen on occasion and never seemed to raise any concerns among those who had such a visit. (On the other hand, the public expect to see a human face to policing, to err is human, and therefore I allowed myself to err occasionally, just to show how human I was.) There was only one occasion I can recall of actually driving a Police car while ‘under the influence’. It was a Christmas Day and I was on a late shift. Like most Christmas Days it was quiet, the shops were shut so there were no shoplifters, and even the more low-life families managed to raise enough Christmas cheer to avoid falling out to an extent where they felt in need of our services. My Cockney colleague Paul and I were enjoying being paid double time to do virtually no work, but after several hours we were finding time was dragging. We had ‘done’ our respective patches by driving round for an hour or two, done a bit of paperwork back at the nick, but boredom soon set in as the often-wished for opportunity to catch up uninterrupted on paperwork lost its charm. Paul then had a very charitable and pleasant suggestion, to go and do the rounds of the old folks’ homes. To be elderly and institutionalised seems unfair. To have lived through numerous Christmas celebrations and end up with no true family to celebrate it with is a sad way to be in, so Paul reasoned that any visit must be better than none.

As we were nominally covering separate beats we drove a car each to the home nearest to the Police Station, and Paul burst into the day room like an infusion of true cheer, talking
non-stop, cracking jokes and bringing smiles to some quite unseasonably glum faces. He didn’t even seem to pause for breath as he went from resident to resident. I trailed in his wake, but the whole atmosphere soon became one of cheer, and sure enough after a few minutes someone uttered the magic words – ‘would either of you like a sherry?’

The very predictable answer – in short ‘Yes please’ – was arrived at via comments of ‘shouldn’t really’, ‘on duty’, ‘frowned upon’, but we allowed ourselves to be ‘persuaded’ and had a very pleasant drink listening to some of the old dears who took an instant shine to Paul and were soon regaling him with tales of Christmases and family long past.

Having done our bit we eventually said our festive goodbyes, and walked back out to the car park.

‘Where to now?’ I asked Paul.

‘Well, we could go back to the nick, but there are three other homes full of low flying angels with far more sherry than they’ll ever drink. What say you we do a bit more missionary work?’

My charitable instincts up and running, I followed Paul to more such institutions where the performance was repeated, and on each visit the sherry bottle was produced right on cue. It was good to do this visiting, but seeing how many lost souls were in these places made me wonder if the words ‘long life’ and ‘happiness’ really do belong in the same sentence. Certainly not without some qualification.

After the fourth home, Paul and I agreed that we had probably had sufficient alcohol that to push it further would be to risk driving while above the limit, so decided to return to base and have something to eat and a coffee.

Getting out of our cars in the rear yard I had an idea.

‘Why don’t we go on the breathalyser machine and see what our levels really are?’

‘OK,’ said Paul. ‘Have a guess and see who’s nearest.’

The breathalyser machine at the station was an accurate machine that would analyse a breath sample and give a readout of complete accuracy. The opportunity to see how close to or even how far over the limit I was fascinated me. The bars of pubs up and down the land were filled with ‘experts’ who would tell you how to fool the machine, or how many drinks you could have without going over the limit, what to eat to ‘soak up’ the alcohol and so on. Almost all this advice falls in the territory of snake oil and quack medicine, and none of them had the luxury of a Home Office approved machine to try out. We were also safe in the knowledge that the Sergeant who operated the machine would not say anything if we were over, such was the mixture of teamwork, camaraderie and culture at the time.

I thought about how much I had drunk, and how I felt. Not drunk, far from it, but the ends of my fingers had a slight numbness which was always my first indication that I had alcohol in my system, and I had a guess at around 30 microgrammes. This would put me below the legal limit of 35 microgrammes, but to be honest I would not have been surprised to find I was over. I did not feel it would be sensible to drive for a little while, and was beginning to regret my festive bonhomie, even if it was in a good cause.

Paul had a provisional guess that his reading would be around 30 to 35, so we were both thinking on the same lines. The station Sergeant, Barry Morris, led us to the machine and
gave us a slightly disapproving look, but said nothing. He set the machine up, Paul and I gave our samples in turn, and sat back for the result.

To our astonishment I blew 5, and Paul blew 7. Neither of us were within a mile of the limit. Barry looked at us.

‘That’s a bloody disgrace, that is.’

‘Sorry Sarge, but 5 and 7 is really low. I’m amazed,’ I said. ‘Anyone over the limit must have to have a proper skinfull.’

‘I mean it’s a disgrace that you two go on the piss on Christmas Day and can’t even get into double figures!’

He turned back to the machine and tested his own breath alcohol level.

It came out at 52, comfortably over the limit.

‘There you are – a day at my desk and a decent reading. Bloody amateurs the pair of you. Now get back on patrol, I’m off to the doctor’s room for a sleep’.

And so saying he disappeared for the rest of the shift.

Time is a relative concept, apparently, and although there have been 24 hours in every day I have worked, it certainly feels as if some have gone past much faster than others, and as the days blended into weeks, months and years, my time at Newport as a whole passed very quickly. From arriving under a kind of cloud, albeit of someone else’s making, and being rather conspicuous as a result, I quickly became accepted as a block member. It was a time of my service when I felt truly at home and at ease with my work. Some days were better or worse than others, but there was a confidence shared by everyone that as individuals we could cope with our lot, and as a group we could fix pretty well anything. I don’t think there was a single day when I wasn’t happy to go to work.

Some members of the block left, either on promotion, or to go to another station, or to go to a specialised duty. I knew it would be some time before I could specialise, but there was no rush. I had spent three years as a foot patrol, but now I had a driving authority and my whole career ahead of me and I was in no rush. I was quite content, and was learning more day by day and week by week. As and when I was ready to apply for a traffic
course I would do so, and in those days all applications consisted of a short report to your Sergeant and Inspector, and provided you had their backing then you went on a list to await your turn.

This system was the same for all specialised duties, until the Detective Inspector at the station came up with a surprisingly modern idea – he had a space for a trainee detective, and asked for anyone interested to pass their details to him. His idea was that while he knew of several applicants who would be able to do the job well, he wanted to hear from people he hadn’t worked with in case there was undiscovered talent which had not come to his attention previously.

He then conducted a series of ‘interviews’. These were in reality little more than an informal chat, and the successful applicant would be chosen by him alone, but it was the first step on a ladder of equality and fairness, which has led to the system we have today.

Nowadays applicants are carefully screened by way of application form, paper-sift, shortlist, and finally interview by a panel of three independent interviewers. At the interview all candidates are asked the same questions, some of which are even relevant to the post applied for. Notes are taken by the panel and compared later to allow a mark to be awarded to each candidate. This shows who performed well and who didn’t, so that in the event of any argument there is documentary evidence to forestall any appeal.

The successful candidate is usually quietly notified a week before the interviews, but the interview process makes sure the ones not chosen don’t have any grounds to whine about unfair treatment.

But this veneer of equality was in its infancy as the DI went about his own selection procedure. He decided to interview everyone who had applied, and asked them all the same questions. One of the applicants was Paul, my Christmas drinking companion. His lack of sustained alcoholic intake would surely count against him, but undeterred he presented himself at the appointed time. The interview was done in the DI’s office, and had a whiff of the business meeting about it, coffee and biscuits provided and all very pally and relaxing.

After a bit of general talk about length of service, career aspirations and suchlike, the DI came to the heavier questions.

‘What do you understand by
mens rea
?’

‘Something to do with legal things I think,’ he said, his mind trying to remember the full definition.

‘Is that the best you can say?’ asked the DI.

‘Well you should know what it is without asking me – you’re the bleeding D.I. after all.’

Paul had missed the point of this line of questioning, so the interview moved on. The next move was a shock question and was very ‘modern’.

‘Paul – what’s your view about homosexuals in the Police Force? Should we treat them any differently?’

Fifteen years as a private and corporal in the Lancers stood Paul in good stead.

‘I’d shoot ’em Sir,’ came the instant reply. ‘Dirty bastards, shoot the lot of ’em’.

‘And that’s your answer is it?’ asked the DI.

‘Solves the problem doesn’t it?’ said Paul.

The remainder of the interview was a little flat after this outburst.

Paul remained in uniform and never quite worked out why he didn’t get on CID.

The next applicant, Jeff Pound, was more promising material if no more confident of success in the interview.

The same questions were delivered, but in slightly different order. After the preamble came the ‘shock’ one.

‘Jeff – what’s your view about homosexuals in the Police Force?’

Jeff thought for a moment. The DI was impressed by this contemplative silence, and took advantage of the pause to have a sip from his coffee.

The pause was due to Jeff being a bit taken aback, and he wasn’t sure how seriously to take the whole thing, especially as he had been tipped off to the effect that he had not got the post anyway. His reply took the DI by surprise.