Newton's Third Law

"I don't want an ambulance," he moaned.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Probationary Constable Number 33 put his radio back into its pouch. I shook my head at him.

"Of course you don't," I growled. I pulled the biggest bandage I could find out of my first-aid kit. It was for binding up amputation stumps. I stuffed Citizen 98798's head into it.

The artery in his temple wasn't having any of it. It coloured the bandage crimson and spurted claret onto the carpet. His face had turned a ghostly shade.

"But I think we're going to call one anyway."

"Ambulance message to 56 Paradise Towers. Twenty five year old male. Breathing, conscious. Bleeding heavily," Number 33 relayed.

"I told you..." Citizen 98798 spluttered, "I'll be alright."

"You need stitches," Number 33 protested.

"I just want a plaster."

"You need blood as well," Number 33 explained patiently.

I was impressed. Police officers are trained to communicate effectively. Number 33 was avoiding words with more than one syllable.

"I've got loads of blood," he said. "Look..." He waved an arm around the room. The carpet was red and soggy. Arterial spray had splashed the wall. Desperate handprints were everywhere as Citizen 98798 had staggered upstairs from the street below.

"I don't need your help," Citizen 98798 insisted. "Who invited you in here anyway? Have you got a warrant?"

"Um... sir, I don't need a warrant. I haven't got my fingers inside your head because I'm searching it for drugs."

Citizen 98798 was an unofficial Village pharmacist. He had been conducting business in the wrong part of the Village. The part that belonged to another unofficial pharmacist.

"So will you tell us who did this?" I asked.

"No, he's a mate."

"Surely you mean, he was a mate?" Number 33 corrected, appalled.

"It was just an argument."

"He tried to cut your head off with a machete."

Citizen 98798's eyes glazed over. I could hear the sirens downstairs.

Two burly ambulance men got out of the lift.

"I told you I didn't want an ambulance," Citizen 98798 complained.

"Well, that's the problem with the Village," I explained. "There are certain decisions we don't trust people to make for themselves. That's why we employ police officers. To tell stupid people what to do."

"It's also why we have Trinny and Susannah," Number 33 pointed out.

The ambulance men freed Citizen 98798 from my amateur bandaging. It took some time. "Did you have to wrap a duvet round his head?"

I shrugged. I take the same approach to bleeding citizens as I would to a leaking water pipe. I perform an inadequate repair that will last a few seconds then phone for someone with a van and the right tools.

In the back of the ambulance Citizen 98798's mobile phone rang.

He answered it.

"Yeah," he said, "he cut me open with a machete. I'm gonna get me a strap."

He meant, by that, a gun.

Citizen 98798 lived. The doctors at the hospital were able to pump blood back into his body, repair the artery and stitch him up. If we hadn't found the blood in the street and followed the trail up 16 floors, high into the aerial slums of Paradise Towers, Citizen 98798 would pushing up daisies, singing with the choir invisible. He would be a Norwegian Blue.

Probationary Constable Number 33 was awestruck. It hadn't happened to him before. "We saved his life!"

"But every action has an equal and opposite reaction."

"What?" he asked.

I grunted something inaudible in reply.

It's not the fact that Citizen 98798 declined to write a glowing letter of thanks to the Village police for our prompt action. That doesn't bother me. Or even that he threatened to sue me for breaking down the door to his flat when he was dying behind it.

No, I'm worried that Citizen 98798 might find himself a gun and go on a roaring rampage of revenge. Then another twenty five year old might be dead.

All because some idiot had called an ambulance.