Just the Job, Lad Page 4

  As for the rest of the gang, we drew a blank. We had no other evidence or forensics to make further arrests. All we could hope was that the intelligence we’d got from the vehicles involved would prove helpful in the future.

  ‘So what’s new?’ I was back in the parade room, digesting the news, when Ed came in to wait for our briefing.

  ‘Not a lot, buddy. Apart from your drama the other night it’s been pretty quiet, really. Which suits me fine. I’ve been on duty ten days on the trot.’

  ‘Overtime?’

  He nodded. ‘Thommo managed to get himself on the sick again.’

  ‘Ed, I asked you what was new.’

  ‘Yeah yeah yeah.’

  ‘So what’s he done to himself this time?’

  ‘Use of Force training.’

  ‘He went on that? Fatal, buddy. Fatal.’

  ‘Yep. He’s got himself properly fixed this time. Ended up with his arm in plaster. I mean, how does the man do it? How can anyone be that unlucky? It has to be deliberate.’

  ‘No, it ain’t deliberate. Just . . . predictable. My old dad had a phrase for blokes like Thommo. They have what he called “an excess of zeal”. Too bloody keen. I’ve been on Use of Force training with our friend, and let me tell you, Ed, he gets stuck in.’

  ‘With an excess of zeal, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  The Use of Force and shield-training used to be a regular thing for me, back in my Met days. When I was in the TSG, or riot police as people like to call it, we attended the Hounslow training centre several days each year. We had to both keep ourselves in physical shape and sharpen our technique, as well as familiarising ourselves with new equipment as it was developed. They have a whole mocked-up town there – entire streets where you can carry out all kinds of exercises, from one-on-one combat to crowd control to handling a full-on civil insurrection. Sometimes we even had twenty or thirty police horses down there to practise tactics. It’s quite a sight when the mounted branch are clattering along the street in full riot gear. And the noise – it’s like the Charge of the Light Brigade. If you need an adrenaline rush, you’ve got it.

  Normal uniformed cops train twice a year. Our sessions are held at Swinton sports centre, just down the road from us. It’s a two-part affair, and both are compulsory. Without them you can’t refresh your training records, which are what allow you to carry your handcuffs and your CS gas and use your baton.

  It’s physically demanding, more so as you get older. You practise bringing a subject to the ground, applying wristlocks and armlocks, handcuffing a target who’s armed or aggressive – all the techniques you need to subdue someone and make a safe arrest without putting yourself or the subject in danger. People think it’s a simple matter, slapping the handcuffs on someone. It is on TV, but what the public doesn’t realise is that the new rigid cuffs, if applied incorrectly, can cause serious injury.

  You also learn and practise karate chops, judo throws, and how to disable someone by finding the various pressure points around their body. And you practise it all in pairs. Having been through it with our mate Thommo, I had no problem imagining how he might end up with his arm in a pot. Thommo went into this sort of thing with an enthusiasm that he rarely displayed at work. ‘Reminds me of my young days back in Glasgow,’ he’d say as he waded in, grabbed you round the waist, hoisted you over his shoulder and thumped you down on the thin matting they have in the gym there. Of course you have to try to bring a semblance of reality to the training, but Thommo pushed it to the limit.

  As for the instructors or PTIs, it’s a bit like Dirty Harry meets the Terminator. Especially when they’re all padded up with protective wear – what they call the ‘angry man suits’, with the whole of their body protected. It’s real tough-guy stuff, the idea being that they attack you, either unarmed or with a dummy weapon. You have to fight back and defend yourself, and because they’re padded you can use a fair bit of force, but those instructors are as hard as nails and wily with it. They’ll try to catch you out with every trick in the book. It’s a funny feeling being attacked by a fully protected man, six foot four tall, putting on a display of fake anger that would make Steven Seagal look like a teddy bear. If you get it wrong they take you down – right in front of all your colleagues. And no matter how fit you are, after a full day of seeing off a succession of assailants armed with plastic knives and fake guns, being kneed and elbowed, thrown and handcuffed time after time, you can expect to go home covered in bruises, and aching in muscles you never realised you possessed. So it was no real surprise that Thommo was on the sick.

  Ed and I had a quiet start to the night. There wasn’t much happening in town and by a little after midnight we were on our way round the villages. I was praying for action, mainly to keep me from nodding off.

  ‘Stop yawning, will you?’

  ‘Sorry, Ed.’

  ‘Should hope so. You’re just back off holiday. And you’ve had all day to sleep.’

  ‘In theory, yes.’ I wasn’t going to go into details. Whenever I mentioned my home life he’d tell me what a lucky fellow I was and start on about his own domestic woes: too many kids, too much clutter, too many jobs to see to. No, I’d best steer clear of the subject. Ed was driving, and he’d pulled up in a gate-hole beside the road that runs through Hovingham. I wound the window down and took a deep breath of the night air. ‘Smell that,’ I said. Someone must have just cut the grass verge and the atmosphere was heavy with the scent of newly mown grass. ‘Summer’s on its way, old buddy. Summertime – and the living is easy,’ I crooned. But Ed was sniffing his sandwich.

  ‘Bloody corned beef,’ he said. ‘She knows I don’t like it. D’you think she’s trying to tell me something?’

  ‘Course she is.’

  ‘What? What’s the message? I don’t understand women.’

  ‘Ed, mate, she’s saying it’s time you learned to make your own pack-up. At a rough guess, like.’

  Ed grunted and took a bite. ‘She knows if I’m hungry enough I’ll eat anything.’

  We sat in silence for a few minutes. The road was deserted. There was barely a light on in the entire village.

  ‘I don’t think I could stand the excitement,’ Ed said, taking a last bite of his sandwich and hurling the crust out through the window.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Living in a place like Hovingham. I mean, when was the last time you had to deal with a crime out here?’

  ‘Can’t remember. I stopped some guys in a van one time, coming up to Christmas. I was sure they were stealing turkeys. Positive.’

  ‘We all remember that. Turned out to be a bunch of silly pluckers, didn’t they?’

  ‘No, that was me, buddy. I was the silly one. Come on,’ I said. ‘Change of scene.’

  Ed started up the car. We pulled out from our parking spot and drove slowly through the village, past the Worsley Arms towards Malton. A pair of headlights dazzled us on the sharp bend that takes you out of the village, but the driver quickly dipped them and sped past. I only caught a glimpse of the car. It was a Golf, purple with customised plates, some sort of high-performance thing.

  ‘Flash bastard,’ Ed muttered.

  ‘Just ’cos he’s got more money than you.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think he’s got three kids and a mortgage. Nor a wife who tries to poison him with corned-beef sandwiches.’

  Back in town we were all set to swing by the station when we got an emergency call.

  ‘Control to 1015, over.’

  ‘Go ahead, over.’

  ‘We’ve a report from Pickering, Mike. A young girl, semi-conscious. Sounds as though drink is involved. There’s a friend with her, very concerned. Ambulance on its way, over.’

  ‘OK, Julie. Show me en route. Over.’

  ‘Tuesday,’ Ed said as we sped around the roundabout and over the bypass. ‘They never used to start this caper till a Friday. Now it’s any night of the week.’

  The roads were fairly clear at that
time of night and with Ed getting his foot down we were there in six or seven minutes.

  We found the girl lying on the pavement at the back of a pub. She looked pitifully young, and very sick. Semi-conscious at best. Her mate was crouched beside her. As soon as we approached, a couple of youths who’d been standing nearby sloped off into the shadows. The girl had put a coat over her friend’s shoulders and was shaking her, but the only response was a low moan. I presumed she was drunk, but her friend was having none of it.

  ‘She just started staggering about. Said she felt giddy.’

  ‘Here,’ I said, kneeling down and putting the girl’s head to one side, ‘let’s check that her airways are clear.’

  That’s always one of the biggest worries, that they’ll throw up and choke on their own vomit, or that their tongue is blocking their airway – and it happens, even though it’s so easy to make sure that it doesn’t. But in this case the girl was breathing perfectly well, and there was no sign that she’d been sick. I could smell a bit of alcohol on her, but it wasn’t what you’d call overpowering.

  ‘What’s happened? Is it just drink, or is she poorly?’ I asked.

  Her friend seemed relatively sober – and very nervy. ‘She’s hardly had anything,’ she said. ‘Couple of glasses of wine. She wasn’t drunk at all. Maybe – it must be food poisoning.’

  I could tell the friend was trying to hide something. ‘No, she’s had something to be in this state,’ I said. ‘C’mon, what’s she taken? You’re going to have to tell the ambulance crew, otherwise they won’t know how to treat her.’

  The girl looked at the ground. ‘She told me she’d had an ecstasy tablet.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘When did she take that?’

  ‘I don’t know. About half an hour ago?’

  ‘Just the one tablet, you say?’

  ‘As far as I know, yeah. Just one.’

  ‘Have you taken anything?’

  ‘No.’

  I wasn’t sure she was telling the truth but I let it go. The important thing right now was to get her mate seen to. ‘And where did she get it from?’ As I spoke I saw the lights of the ambulance flickering against the side wall of the pub. She didn’t answer. ‘And what’s your and your friend’s names? Addresses?’

  I got their details and went to meet the paramedics as they got out of the ambulance. ‘She’s taken an ecstasy tablet,’ I said, ‘as far as we know.’

  ‘OK,’ was all I got as they bent down to attend to the girl.

  ‘Believed to be just the one, about half an hour or so ago.’

  ‘Yeah, cheers.’ I left them to it and took the other girl aside. ‘Your friend, does she live with her parents?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘’Cos we need to contact them.’ The girl looked pretty shaken. Her face was pale and she was shivering. She only had a thin dress on. ‘You do realise how dangerous that stuff can be?’ I said.

  ‘People take it all the time,’ she said, then added quickly, ‘I don’t, but . . .’

  ‘Where they getting it from?’

  ‘They used to go to Scarborough or York, but you can get it here now.’

  ‘Who’s “they”?’

  ‘People. Lads. I don’t know. They come round and they have it in their pockets.’

  ‘And where are they getting it from?’

  ‘Look, they just get it, OK?’

  ‘Where did your friend here get it?’

  ‘I never asked. We – she got it off a lad we know. I don’t know his name.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘you’re running a huge risk taking this stuff. You don’t know for sure what you’re taking, or how your body will react.’

  ‘She was drinking plenty of water, like.’

  ‘Yeah, dehydration’s a danger, we all know that. But you can take too much water as well. You know that?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘You should be leaving this stuff alone. It might look like fun, but it’ll mess you up in the long run.’

  I’ve always been anti-drugs. I suppose I’m what you’d call a hardliner. I can’t really see much difference between the so-called recreationals – cannabis, ecstasy, amphetamines – and the harder stuff, the heroin and crack cocaine. Maybe it’s because I grew up in an era when they just weren’t around, at least not where I lived. And then I’d spent ten years in the Met, seeing the consequences of drug use: the ruined lives, the gang wars, the degradation of the addicts who turn to petty crime, prostitution, anything that’ll pay for the next fix. Most experienced cops can spot a long-term heroin user a mile off just from their physical appearance; it’s easy. They’re like the living dead. One thing I’d made up my mind on when I moved back to North Yorkshire was that I’d do my level best to keep drugs out of the market towns. But already we’d started to come across people using heroin. We’d search someone suspected of shoplifting, for example, and find them in possession. There were one or two smackheads around town and we knew who they were. What we were finding now, though, were more casual users of recreational drugs, and while it shocked some of my colleagues, I have to say that more than anything else it annoyed me. I simply didn’t want it on my beat. It was another case of ‘not on my patch, lad’.

  Even though we’d started becoming aware of more widespread recreational drug use, ecstasy was still quite rare at this stage, although there were rumours that it was becoming increasingly available. That did worry me. An awful lot of people seem to think that it’s harmless. Perhaps it is for the majority. They go out, and instead of just having a few drinks and then getting tired and going home at two or three o’clock they can pop a few tablets during the course of the evening as well, and keep going, wide awake and partying hard, till the next morning. As far as I’m concerned, they’re buying tickets in a lottery, and as I drove this young lass home I tried to tell her about the risks she and her friends might be running. Because the risks are huge. Is the drug clean, or has it been adulterated? Some dealers, I pointed out to her, will cut it to increase their profits. Sugar, powdered milk and baking powder are some of the milder additives; some dealers use much nastier substances, including other drugs such as cocaine, speed, heroin and so on, all of which give different effects, meaning that you can’t be sure what you’re taking. Then there’s the matter of how strong each dose will be. Most users find out by trial and error. And errors can be fatal. Have they mixed what they’re taking with alcohol, and if so are they aware of the possible outcomes? And how will the concoction affect their judgement, their behaviour, their long-term health? Will they be making themselves vulnerable to robbery, assault, rape? And after you’ve taken all these risks into account, there’s the simple, inescapable fact that these substances are illegal. Ecstasy is a class A drug, which means that possessing it – and, more especially, dealing in it – carries a heavy sentence.

  I dropped the girl back at home, partly to make sure she was OK and partly so that I could confirm where she lived. I told her I would be back to speak to her at some point. From there I had the horrible task of visiting the parents of the sick girl and delivering the news about their daughter. They immediately headed to the hospital, shocked and angry, struggling to come to terms with the fact that this was happening to their daughter.

  When Ed and I got back to the station and mentioned to our colleagues that we’d had to pack this lass off to hospital, we learned that a number of them – Jayne, Fordy, even Thommo – had good reason to suspect that the use of ecstasy was on the increase. They all said they’d been finding it more than they used to, which was just about never. And over the next two or three weeks I came across further evidence that this was indeed the case. More than once I found young people in possession. The little white tabs looked innocent enough, with just some sort of identifying insignia or trademark to distinguish them. The most common type had what looked like the badge off a Mitsubishi car, another had the outline of a dove. The word was that someone in the market towns was supplying, and that he �
� or maybe it was a she – was a reliable source.

  So we had a problem. I started to put word out to various contacts, people who were as keen as I was to see this nipped in the bud. Some of them had heard rumours, whispers that there were indeed one or two people in the area dealing in ecstasy. But so far nobody knew anything concrete.

  The rest of that week was fairly quiet. I was looking forward to the weekend – well, not exactly looking forward, more that it was on my mind. After Ann’s pep talk earlier in the week I’d been thinking about the business of working my way up to sergeant. Ever since Christmas, when I’d promised Ann I’d start thinking about putting in for the exams, I’d managed to sweep the whole business under the carpet. I still wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go for promotion. I wasn’t sure that it was for me. Did I really want to be a sergeant, or was I just responding to all the mickey-taking I’d had for being a kept man? In the end it was my mum who spurred me into action, as she had done so many times in the past. She talked to me about my dad, and asked me what he would have thought to see me idling in the slow lane when I was capable of so much more. She knew that would get through to me, because I’d always idolised my dad. He was an extremely clever man, and I always worried that he’d think I was a failure for not being as accomplished as my sister, for example, who’d studied hard and was a total whizz with figures; or my brother, who was a chief pilot on the Humber. My mother made me promise that I’d start working through those books, and that I’d report back to her before I called round again.

  So, Saturday morning, after I’d finished my last night shift, and with a two-day break ahead of me, I brought the books out from the shelf behind the television and placed them purposefully on the coffee table before going up for a few hours in bed. I’d get stuck into them in the evening. But before that, in the afternoon, we had a date with our landlord.