Supa-dobra

The Rover lurched down Serenity Street. The street lamp slipped over the registration plate and I typed the index into my on-board computer.

A285TDA

It was eerily quiet. We hadn't been called to so much as a stray dog in the last two hours. The Rover was the only car moving. It bimbled along the road towards the Village outskirts. I caught a glimpse of the driver. He was unremarkable.

A forty-something white male. Wearing a business suit.

We followed the Rover. I wasn't particularly interested. It didn't look like a 'good stop'.

A good stop is one which results in an arrest. There are certain hallmarks. You can tell if a car is going to be a good stop before you even turn the blue lights on. Look for young men - and no, the colour of their skin is not what we look for - wearing baseball caps or hooded tops. If they're wearing a baseball cap beneath a hooded top, you've hit the jackpot. That fashion victim is probably wanted for murder.

My onboard computer flashed red!

STOLEN!

Blue lights flashed. Shrieking sirens howled. I screamed down the radio.

Scrabble games were abandoned (Number 11 would later claim I ruined his imminent seven letter word: MISTAKE). Doughnuts were ditched. In the gloomy cul-de-sac beneath the broken radio mast, Number 2 opened his all-seeing eye. Every police car in the Village raced towards me.

Within thirty seconds, I had three police cars behind me and four in front. The Rover was trapped in a bubble of strobing Astras. I jumped out of the car. As I ran to the driver's side of the Rover, another five police cars screamed into the area.

"Open the door!"

The middle aged driver looked astonished: in fear of his life. Paralysed.

His window was open.

I dragged him through it.

In retrospect, I'm surprised his ear stayed on.

"I'm arresting you for driving a stolen vehicle!"

He mumbled something in Bosnian.

(I later learned from an army friend that 'dobra' means something like 'good'. Quite why this gentleman was so attached to the word, I'll never understand. My army friend has an opinion. He suggests the driver had been stopped so many times in his war-torn country by foriegn troops that he had come to realise the one Bosnian word they wanted to hear was 'dobra'. Unthreatening. Good.)

"Dobra?"

I threw him on the ground. I wrenched his arms behind his back. I slapped my handcuffs on his wrists and squeezed them tight. I picked him up by the armpits. I hurled him headfirst into the back of the van.

"Uh, Number 6..."

"Yeah?"

Number 17 looked at me uncomfortably.

I followed his trembling finger. Looked at the Rover's registration plate.

A note to the DVLA. A suggestion, really. It would help us out.

We read car registration plates for a living. Police officers look at car registration plates more often than any one else on the planet. Our perusal of these strips of metal is not always under ideal conditions. Sometimes it is dark, or at a distance. Sometimes the car attached to the strip of metal is being driven at 80 miles an hour the wrong way down a one-way street in order to get the driver as fast as possible away from us. Under these circumstances O can look a lot like D. Please abolish one of these letters. It would save future embarassment.

A285TOA

That week's Number 2 sashayed cruelly towards me. Everyone laughed nervously. The car was not stolen. It was registered in a foriegn-sounding name. Bosnian was my guess.

It was time to be very polite to my 'guest'.

I opened the door to the van. Twelve police cars vanished into the night. They were never there. If there was any CCTV tape of them being there, it would disappear. Shadowy uniformed figures would be seen throwing the tape from the Village cliffs into the waves of a nameless ocean. The witnesses would be paid off. Cast-iron alibis would be constructed.

Number 2 offered me his wisdom and experience.

"Looks like an illegal arrest to me."

I desperately tried to remember whether I had paid any money into the Police Federation lately. They had lawyers.

The Bosnian sat in the cage. Trussed like a kidnap victim.

"I think you'd better release him, Constable," Number 2 said as loudly as he could. He peered into the cage. "Little rough, weren't you? That ear's bleeding."

I unlocked the cage.

"I'm... so sorry," I mumbled. "I thought.. that er... your car was stolen. I'm um... dyslexic," I lied.

"Seven years for perjury," Number 2 warned.

I released his handcuffs. Dusted him down.

"Dobra!" said the driver crossly.

"Excuse me? What did you say?" I leaned in closer. I'm deaf as well as blind.

"Dobra!"

I caught a whiff of the grape.

A shaft of light burst over the horizon. Something was dawning.

"Have you been drinking, sir?"

One roadside breath-test later...

"Control," I smirked down the radio, "Result for Serenity Street: one arrest for drink drive."

Number 2 reluctantly gave me back my warrant card.

"At least one of your senses works."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"You have a policeman's nose."