Pete is one of those people who seem to be fuelled purely by air and love for The Job. He also has a look that – when combined with the uniform – makes women swoon when they see him. In some officers – the ones able to pretend they don’t notice, or don’t know – that can be a fantastic trait, because it makes certain quick quests for information all that much quicker. Pete knows what he’s doing, and he’s a solid police officer. If the women think ‘He can fuck me’, the men think ‘He can fuck me up’. In short, Pete spends every minute he doesn’t spend in uniform in a gym. I’ve run into him at the gym a couple of times, and he doesn’t mess around; he may very well be the fittest officer on the entire borough. He’s not particularly tall – about five foot seven – but he’s built like a row of brick-and-mortar outhouses, and inspires confidence through and through.
Sasha is not entirely unlike Pete in many ways: she’s witty, knows her laws and white notes6 inside out, and she’s no slouch either – she regularly runs half marathons and is apparently trying for her taekwondo black belt. She’s about as tall as Pete. Her slender build, short hair and fragile-looking glasses make her positively androgynous-looking – especially when she’s fully kitted out in her Metvest. She famously disposed of the rumours of her being a lesbian by sleeping with Pete just for long enough that everybody knew about it, before dumping him and returning to single life. The ‘everybody knew about it’ part was secured when she, early one Tuesday morning, transmitted over the radio, on the open channel, ‘Mike Delta two-two-three, do you have any johnnies?’
She got into some trouble with the brass about that one, but she gained major points with the rest of the team, and she’s now well known as someone who doesn’t mince her words – quite refreshing, really.
Once we’ve all said our hellos, we sit down briefly and talk about some questions they have, before breaking out the boot polish, giving our shoes a quick shine, and hitting the streets. Street duties involve a lot of foot patrolling, so you get a proper workout in the process, but seeing as I spend most of my time either driving around in a car or doing quick sprints after naughty little toe-rags, I usually find a walking session to be no bad thing.
It was a pretty slow morning. The radio was so dead that people occasionally ran a radio check, just to make sure their radios hadn’t stopped working. So, without anything better to do, we decided to head out on ‘reassurance patrol’.
Reassurance patrolling is usually done in areas where something bad has happened recently. Not long ago, we’d had a series of stabbings in one particular part of the borough, so we decided we’d take a stroll down the streets that had been worst affected, stop to have a chat with some of the shop owners, and just see how things were looking, on the whole.
By the time the morning had crawled to an end, we’d handed out five traffic tickets (all for mobile phone use), taken weed off some young troublemakers and issued them with a formal warning, and spent a bit of time running after a shoplifter who was unlucky enough to come across our path, before continuing his unlucky streak by running straight into a blind alley, where Sasha quickly got her arrest in. We dealt with it swiftly – both Pete and Sasha had made dozens of arrests by this point – and once we were done, we decided to pop into KFC for some lunch.
This particular branch of the Kentucky Fried Chicken (or Unlucky Fried Kitten, as we tend to call it round these parts) is weirdly L-shaped, and we took our seats in the short leg of the ‘L’ to chomp down our meals.
As we were idly chatting, we heard some commotion by the counter. When we’d come in, we had spotted a security guard, so I figured he’d take care of things. But no such luck: things escalated rapidly.
‘I gave you 40 pounds, you fat bitch.’ A voice broke through to our table of three, ending our genteel luncheon abruptly. Sasha and Pete looked at each other, then at me.
‘Hey, you are the cops,’ I said, grinning, as I took the last bite of my Zinger Tower meal. With a full mouth, I continued, ‘Go deal with it.’
The dashing duo rounded the corner, with me following a few steps behind.
Leaning forward with one hand on the counter was a very large man in a bright patterned shirt. When I say large, I mean very, very large indeed. Positively obese, in fact – larger than any man I had ever seen before in my life. For every movement he made with his arm, another part of his body seemed to be moving, as if it were echoing it – or perhaps protesting under its own weight.
Behind him was a shorter but no less formidable woman, who turned out to be his wife. The couple were on their honeymoon from Texas and had decided to come to London ‘because we love musicals’, they told me at some point later in the proceedings.
I recognised the man’s accent as American, but I wasn’t really sure who he had shouted at. In addition to the couple, the security guard was standing very close to them, making sounds designed – but failing – to calm them down.
‘What’s going on here?’ Sasha interrupted.
‘Ah, thank fuck for that,’ the man exclaimed. ‘This fat bitch stole my money,’ he repeated. I half expected him to point to his wife, but he nodded to the serving counter. I looked. At first glance, the counter was empty, but then I spotted a girl – not older than 20 – cowering behind one of the fryers.
‘Excuse me, could you come out,’ Pete said, waving to the girl for her to come closer, and smiling that broad, winning smile of his. ‘We just want to find out what’s been going on here.’
Pete was in front of me, so I have no idea what he was doing, but based on how the girl reacted, I can’t help but think that he must at least have winked at her. For the briefest of moments, I entertained myself with the idea that he might conceivably have blown her a kiss.
The girl – her nametag revealed her name to be Cecilie – was five feet tall at the most. She could probably do with going jogging every now and again, perhaps, but calling her ‘fat’ hardly seemed fair, especially considering the girth of both the man and his wife. As soon as Cecilie stepped out, the man went off on one again.
‘I paid you forty pounds! You gave me change for thirty! Where is my change, you dim-witted bitch?’ the man hissed.
‘Hey,’ said the security guard, wearily, ‘There’s no need for that kind of language. We have CCTV covering all the cash registers, and can easily check whether you got short-changed. If that’s the case, we’ll of course make sure you get the right change.’
The way the security guard had taken control of the situation was admirable, a perfect example of conflict resolution: admit there may have been a mistake, offer to look into it, and propose a resolution. Surely, nobody could have a problem with that?
Very, very slowly, with all the eager acceleration of an iceberg, the man turned around, and took a couple of tiny, shuffling steps towards the security guard. The only reason they weren’t nose-to-nose was that the guest’s remarkably sized stomach prevented him from getting any closer.
‘Fuck you, you fucking nigger,’ the customer sneered, followed by what seemed an eternity of silence. The security guard just stared at him. I expected him to be angry, but instead he was completely shocked. Even working as a security guard in a fast-food restaurant in a relatively gritty part of town, he didn’t experience ‘the N word’ all that often.
‘Right, that’s it,’ Sasha said. ‘I’m arresting you for offences under sections 4a and 18 of the public order act. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if, when questioned, you fail to mention something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’
‘What did he do?’ the man’s wife squealed, but her query was interrupted by her husband’s caged-animal roar.
‘What the fuck? No, you can’t arrest me. I haven’t done anything.’
He turned to me.
‘You