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.

Water Torture

Probationary Constable Number 33 suggested he was overworked.

"I'm sick of it," he said.

"Go on, what's the matter?" I was required to be sympathetic. To provide an absorbant shoulder. Whether I cared or not.

Number 33 laid his grief before me. Like a 'lookie-lookie' man selling watches on the beach.

His trouble was this: Number 33 had been in the Job a year. I don't want you to get the wrong impression. That doesn't mean he had a year's experience. For 18 weeks of that year, he had been at Training School. For 10 weeks after that he had been on Street Duties (more training). If you've ever been given a fine for not wearing a seatbelt and you haven't sworn at anyone, you've met a Street Duties copper. No-one else bothers.

So out of that year, Number 33 had been doing real police work (by that, I mean running to 999 calls) for 24 weeks. This is the point at which a Probationary Constable in the Village can begin to drive a police car.

Unfortunately for ambitious Probationary Constables, the first police car they get to drive is classed 'basic'. That means they are not allowed to use the pretty blue lights. That comes later - assuming they get through two years without killing anyone or causing an international incident. You have to arrest a few people as well.

The problem with driving a 'basic' is that the control room saves up griefy calls for these vehicles. They are usually Ford Fiestas lacking power steering, air conditioning, and MOT certificates.

All that Probationary Constable 33 seemed to deal with these days (now that he was a 'basic' driver) was griefy calls: low-risk missing persons (teenagers from care homes who absconded to Brighton every Friday night and returned every Monday morning), geriatric (occassionally incontinent) shoplifters, or sitting up on crime scenes for hours without end (waiting for CID to show up in the same way that Christians are still waiting for the second coming of Jesus).

"That's what I've been dealing with," Probationary Constable 33 complained. "I joined the police for the thrill, the excitement."

"We all go through it," I commiserated. "It's a natural stage in your progression. These are basic police officer tasks. How do you expect to teach officers less experienced than yourself unless you know these procedures backwards?"

That didn't work. Probationary Constable 33 started talking about resignation.

"You can't resign," I joked. "You'll get gassed through your letter-box and wake up in a Welsh village. You're part of the establishment now. You'll never be a civilian again."

"A citizen," he corrected me.

"Sorry."

His indoctrination was more recent: fresher than mine. I bowed to his interpretation.

"You need to go through it. It's a baptism of fire. Once you've served your time dealing with the mundane calls, you'll be better equipped to deal with the important ones."

"Look," he said. "I see more experienced officers treating this job as a joke. They avoid work as if it'll give them syphillis. I'm happy to work. Send me to the critical incidents."

He had a point.

"It could be worse," I said.

"How?"

I took him upstairs to the control room. They have a plasma screen TV up there.

Sky news.

Another village, populated by cousins of ours, was in trouble. A hurricane had torn it into pieces. It had let the water in. New Orleans was submerged.

"Look at that," I said.

I began to talk above the images of death and despair.

"The New Orleans Police Department is in turmoil. A lot of poor people stayed in New Orleans because they didn't have the means to get out. Maybe some stupid people who did have the means stayed too. The only people who couldn't leave, who didn't have the right to, were the New Orleans Police Department. They were duty-bound."

"What does this have to do with me?" Number 33 asked.

"You joined the Job because you wanted to drive fast, have a laugh, see a few things you would never have seen (maybe chopped-up bodies and bomb sites, I don't know) and have a good pension at the end of it. Perhaps somewhere in the back of your mind, you wanted to help people. To instill calm and control, to stem the lawless tide of cruelty and violence. Those are all good reasons."

"Yeah..."

The newsreader described gangs of armed looters roaming the streets. Pot-shots from sniper rifles directed at aid workers.

"I think you might have a few things in common with the police in that Village." I pointed at the TV screen.

I told him that bulk of the New Orleans Police Department had held their posts. Made their stand. Stood up for what they believed in. Despite 70 percent of them being made homeless, despite being cut off from their families. Without working radios, or cars, or even a headquarters. They had patrolled the watery streets, rescued who they could, held looters at bay, dodged sniper-fire.

"Um..." said Number 33. He wished he didn't have me as his mentor. All he wanted was for someone to commiserate with him.

Poor bugger.

I went on. "Two New Orleans Police Officers have committed suicide," I said, "because they couldn't always help. They had to send the thirsty and the dying away."

Probationary Constable 33 said sorry. I don't know why. He's a good officer.

I relented.

"If you get too many reports to deal with," I said, "let me know."

The Village wasn't submerged. Not yet.

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."

How Not To Drive A Tank

It was no big deal. One of our younger citizens had been arrested for riding a stolen moped. On the down side he had no helmet, no licence, and no insurance. On the up side, the bike was stolen over a year ago. He had borrowed it from a mate who had bought it off another mate who had swapped it for a wristwatch with someone who's name no-one remembered. He wasn't going to be charged for the 'stolen bike' part of the problem.

He had some other points in his favour. He was polite. He actually called me 'sir'.

I don't require that level of respect and deference from teenagers. That might surprise some people, but the world has moved on. Being called 'officer' or 'constable' is welcome but I don't bat an eyelid if a sixteen year old calls me 'mate'. Anything is preferable to the usual. The usual is being referred to as a part of female anatomy.

Citizen 36709 displayed a pleasant attitude for his age. It didn't get him out of a trip to the Village police station, but it did mean that neither of us would have to see the doctor when we got there.

Another item in his favour: he was scared silly of his Mum.

"Please don't call her," he begged.

Citizen 36709 was only 16. Mum turned out to be an annoyed but very reasonable parent. She explained that her son had fallen in with the wrong crowd. She was worried about him. She told me he wanted to join the army. She asked me to have a chat with him regarding his recent bad behaviour.

I checked the records. Citizen 36709 had come to police attention several times over the last few months. He seemed to have made some new friends in the Village. These friends had files much longer than his. They were well known to me.

We sat in the room. Citizen 36709 sat quietly while his Mum fumed beside him. The matter of the moped had been put to bed. Our impressionable lad would face nothing more serious than charges for driving offences. I turned off the tape recorder.

It was time for that chat.

"You're a bright lad," I opened. Start with the positive. "Why have you been getting into trouble so much?"

Citizen 36709 looked at his Nike Airs (or whatever teenagers wear these days to run away from police faster).

"I want you to listen to your Mum and Dad from now on," I said. "They're trying to do what's best for you. You worry them by getting into trouble."

He didn't like that.

"You want to join the army?"

Citizen 36709's eyes lit up. He came to life right there in front of me.

"I want to drive tanks," he gushed. "I used to build airfix ones when I was little."

"I don't think," I said slowly, "that Her Majesty's Royal Tank Regiments would want to employ a car thief. Do you?"

He looked momentarily stunned. He hadn't thought of that.

"It's up to you, Citizen 36709. If you want to make a success of your life, then stay out of trouble. Jail time tends to get in the way of a career."

He appeared pensive. He assured me he would think long and hard about stuff.

"That was impressive," said Number 8. "Stern but fair. I think you might have straightened him out. That could be the difference between him growing up to be a valuable member of society with a contribution to make... or becoming an armed blagger."

"I hope you're right," I said. It's subtle things that save souls.

The next morning I peeled my bloodshot eyes open for Parade. On the power-point presentation that formed our intelligence briefing, I saw a familiar face.

Citizen 36709...

...arrested in the dead of the night. Charged with burgling an old lady and threatening her with a kitchen knife.

"I guess he won't be driving tanks," I mumbled.

It was no big deal. We lose battles like that all the time.

Suicide Watch

"Number 6 receiving?" The unfamiliar voice blared out of my radio.

Whilst it is true that I am not a number, that wasn't going to get me out of answering. So I keyed the radio and made a noise like paper being screwed into a ball.

"You're R1," the voice said, meaning I sounded like I was trapped down a cave.

I did my impression of static again. It seemed to settle the matter.

They were looking for me. The control room. The sinister bald footsoldiers of Number 2 scanned the airwaves, trawling for any trace of my existence.

I knew why. A man had been arrested in the Village High Street attempting to cling to the bonnets of moving cars. We knew who that was. Citizen 57019 was always trying out new and interesting ways of killing himself.

Number 2 had decreed a 'constant watch.' They were seeking me for my eyes.

I had performed the duty some months ago. Citizen 57019 had been arrested for trying to jump in front of a truck on that occassion. He had been provided with a cell. The door was left open. I stood in the corridor.

Watching him.

Constantly.

Citizen 57019 stripped naked. He wrapped his trousers round his neck. I wasn't to be foiled that easily. I stole his clothes.

Citizen 57019 lay down and started to bite the narrow tiled platform that functions as a bed. I wasn't worried about this. The bed was indestructable and Citizen 57019 had no teeth. They tend to break off on solid objects.

Citizen 57019 went quiet. It was a ruse. The calm before the storm.

Citizen 57019 ran to the toilet in the corner of the cell. He shoved his head down the bowl. I pulled him out. Sat him down.

He did it again. I repeated my lifeguard act.

He did it again. This was getting scary. I had never seen anyone try to drown themselves in a toilet before. I thought for a moment. I turned the water off. Flushed. That was better. There was only a shallow puddle left in the bowl. To drown in that, he would have to...

Oh...

Citizen 57019 stuck his head down the bowl and performed a tottering handstand. All the better to shove his head down the pipes, to get to that last bit of water.

I pulled him out. He tried again. This went on for a while.

Six hours.

We didn't speak much.

"Number 6 receiving?" my radio sniggered. "We've got a job for you. Have you finished at Harmony Street?"

Damn, they had found me. I looked suspiciously at the police car. It bleeped a signal into the sky. I tried to disguise it. I put a boot polish tin lid over the GPS antenna.

I am not an expert in stealth technology. I can tell you that boot polish lids are next to useless. They found me again.

"There is no escape, Number 6."

I changed cars. I remembered that scene in Casino where Joe Pesci is being hunted by the FBI. He threw them with six or seven vehicle swaps. I went one better. Each time I changed, I got a new vehicle callsign. They would never find me now.

The control room aren't lax like the FBI. They're no bunch of amateurs. No sooner had I stepped into my eighth different car than they sent the call to me down the on-board computer. I stared in horror. NUMBER 6 - PLEASE RETURN TO CUSTODY TO PROVIDE A CONSTANT WATCH.

This called for desperate measures.

I had to do something unthinkable.

Something beyond reason.

I was going to arrest someone.

"Any units to deal?" the radio wondered. "We've got a shoplifter at the Village store."

I didn't care who it was. I didn't care if the shoplifter was an eighty year old amnesiac or a pregnant homeless woman stealing for her unborn child. No sob story would melt my icy heart. They were coming in.

"Show Number 6."

This Does Not Constitute An Interview

"I've been to the Old Bailey before, you know?"

This got my attention. I looked at the man who I had just arrested for raping a girl.

We'd found her lying on the pavement. He had done what he wanted with her then thrown her out of a third floor window. I had arrested him some distance away.

His clothes had been carefully folded away into brown paper bags with POLICE EVIDENCE stamped across them. His hands, his mouth, and even his penis had been swabbed for telltale DNA. He had been weighed and measured, filed and stamped. He was wearing a paper suit now.

He didn't seem to mind.

"Have you?" I enquired.

We were having quite a good conversation. The Village demanded answers about this citizen's conduct but I wasn't permitted to put those questions to him. Not without a tape recorder and a solicitor present. So instead we spoke of the following:


The Village had won the Ashes.

He didn't believe me. "We never win anything," he asserted.

"Do you get on with your parents?" he asked.

I didn't want to give anything away. I get on fine with them, thank you very much, but divulging anything personal seemed dangerous. Like wading in contaminated water.

"About average," I said.

"You're lucky," he told me, "I had to go down on my Mum."


The subject quickly changed to whether you could join the Village police if you had a criminal record. Apparently he had ambitions.

"It depends," I told him.

I didn't mention that being charged with kidnap, rape, assault occassioning actual bodily harm, and making threats to murder was something that might cause problems at the job interview.


"Do you know why I'm behaving myself?" He had sat where I had told him to, once I'd removed those pesky handcuffs. He hadn't tried to rape anyone in the last twenty minutes. I suppose that counts as behaving.

"Why?" I asked.

"'Cos I know what you guys are like. Police brutality."

I shook my head. It was ridiculous.

I would soon have to go away and write eleven pages of notes in order to justify why I had arrested him. I had started them already. If I'd punched him in the face it would have been fifteen pages. Hitting him with my baton - you're talking twenty pages. It just wasn't worth the effort.

"Whatever we did in my gaffe, no-one got raped."

The next time someone tells me that the art of conversation is dead, I'm going to recommend they sit in a police custody suite with a misogynistic psychopath. I was Rembrandt, Van Gogh... I was Constable.

"Yeah," he said. "I've been to the Old Bailey three times. I've never gone down. Won't go down this time either. Those slags are too scared to say anything. Plus," he said, "I'm smarter than you lot. My solicitor will get me off."

"I don't appreciate you using that kind of language," I challenged. "Do you want to be further arrested?" It was an empty threat. It meant more writing.

Excluding the House of Lords, the Old Bailey is the highest court in the land. Judges perch loftily amid thunderclouds on thrones that are carved from the bones of convicts, and upholstered in the skin of the guilty. The hallowed courtrooms attract the most focussed and forensic prosecutors; modern day crusaders with lion's hearts. Police officers and criminals alike shudder at the thought of being sent there.

But not this man. He was cool with it. He had won three times.

Some police officers never find themselves in the witness box at the Old Bailey. For others it might happen perhaps once in a career. It was dreaded.

"All these tests," he moaned, "taking wipes of my cock, it isn't fair. I hope she's going through the same thing." He grinned like a shark.

The time came. I put the prisoner into his cell. There were two things he didn't know.

Whilst we had been talking, he had said something. He had been cautioned. He didn't have to say anything.

He had said "Whatever we did in my gaffe, no-one got raped."

It was recorded. The custody suite was fully wired up. I had written it down. He had just admitted to being in the flat. He had admitted to being at the scene of the crime.

The second thing he didn't know was this: He wasn't the only one who had won at the Old Bailey.

You get a tie pin.