‘Show TOA9 for Mike Delta two-zero,’ I said, as I engaged the ‘run lock’ and climbed out of the Vauxhall Astra.
Run lock is one of the fun features built into a police car. It enables us to press a button, take the keys and lock the car with the engine running. If anyone tries to put the car in gear or open a door, the engine stops again. Run lock is useful when you have to leave your car parked somewhere with the radio and the flashing lights still operating: by leaving the engine running, it doesn’t run the battery flat, but nobody can steal the car either!
‘Hi there. You okay?’ I asked the kid, as he came towards me.
He nodded.
‘You haven’t seen anyone trying to smash up a car, have you?’
He nodded again.
‘That was me,’ he said, and shrugged with a lack of commitment that made me stop in my tracks. How do you make a motion showing a lack of caring without caring? Mentally, I was shaking my head at this kid’s utter lack of … well … anything.
I blinked a couple of times.
‘Uhm … okay. Why did you smash up a car? Where is it?’ He pointed at a dark red Volvo that was parked outside number ten.
We walked over to the car together, just as another police car showed up.
‘TOA two-six,’ my radio crackled, as the two officers climbed out of the car and started wandering towards us. I was about to send them on their way again, when a man emerged from one of the houses. An extremely agitated man.
‘He smash the car! He smash the car!’ the man shouted in a Turkish accent. He was walking briskly, gesticulating wildly. I took another look at the Volvo. It could have done with a wash, for sure, but all the windows seemed to be intact, and I couldn’t see any obvious damage.
‘What did he do?’ I asked the man, as I gave him a once-over. He was wearing a pair of tracksuit bottoms, a food-stained T-shirt and the air of someone who had just rolled out of bed.
‘He smash the car!’ he said again.
I glanced back and forth at my colleagues. We deal with traffic collisions on a daily basis. We have seen a lot of smashed cars in our time.
This, I concluded, was not a smashed car.
‘In June! He smash the car!’
‘What exactly did you tell the people when you called 999?’ I asked him, as it dawned on me what was going on.
‘I say he smash the car!’
‘Sir,’ I said, ‘You can’t dial 999 about an incident that happened several months ago. If someone is smashing up your car, breaking into your house, or attacking you, call 999. With this—’ I sighed. Realising my approach was futile, I changed tack. ‘Do you know this young man?’ I asked him, as I pointed at the kid.
‘Yes,’ the man said. ‘He is my son.’
‘He stole my Blackberry!’ the kid piped up.
I’ll save you the confounding banality of reporting a running dialogue. It took us the best part of 40 minutes to complete the puzzle of what had happened – the kind of puzzle that sits on the shelf until the cat has taken off with half a dozen pieces, and nobody really cares whether it’s ever completed or not anyway.
I would be lying if I said that my job didn’t involve dealing with a lot of this type of puzzle.
It turned out that back in June the father had taken the son’s Blackberry as punishment for something or other – as parents are wont to do. In my day, we were sent to our room right after dinner, or deprived of watching Columbo for an evening. These days, the kids have to give up their Blackberry privileges.
Fair enough.
The boy retaliated for this grave miscarriage of justice by taking a cricket bat to the family car, smashing up the bonnet, the windshield and a couple of the side windows. The police were called, and the kid was taken in for criminal damage.
This time, the little scoundrel had started a fight at school, and once again the dad took his mobile away. Then ensued a lot of screaming and ranting. The dad thought he was going to smash up the car again, so he called the police.
I’d heard enough. I took the boy aside.
‘Mate, why do you do stuff like that?’ I asked him. ‘You can’t go around starting fights and smashing up cars – that’s not going to get you any friends. I understand you might get frustrated and angry, but you’re a clever kid, and it’s not good news if your own dad has to keep calling the police on you.’
The boy replied (I swear to god this isn’t a word of a lie), ‘I have anger-management issues.’
‘Uhm … Who told you that?’ I asked. ‘Have you been to see a doctor?’
He hadn’t. This was a 13-year-old kid who had self-diagnosed himself with anger-management issues. I didn’t know what to make of any of it.
‘He’s in a gang, you know,’ the kid suddenly said.
‘Who?’ I tried to clarify.
‘My dad. He’s in a gang.’
Over the past hour, I had already caught him out in half a dozen lies – was this another trick? As a precaution, I called Carl, one of my colleagues, over and asked him to run the father and the kid through the PNC10, CAD, and Crimint11 to check whether we had any intel12 on them.
‘What does he do?’ I asked the boy, mostly just to keep him talking.
‘He has a gun,’ the kid replied, looking at the tips of his Converses as he spoke.
Carl was just getting off the radio. He came towards me, shrugged, and shook his head in a manner that I took to mean there was nothing particularly suspicious about either of them.
‘A gun? Really? Where does he keep it?’ I asked the kid.
‘In his car, under where the spare wheel is,’ he said, and glanced up at my face to gauge my reaction. ‘I’ve seen it. It’s black.’
Now, I was facing a choice. If there is a suspicion of guns, I can’t really do anything without Trojan assistance – i.e. armed police – but the kid had been lying to me all morning, and he had already implied several bad things about his dad, apparently only to get back at him. At the same time, I couldn’t ignore this piece of information, either. Since the dad indicated that the car was the suspected goal for the son’s attack, it gave me an idea.
‘Can I see your keys for a second?’ I asked the dad. He dug the car keys out of his pocket, and as he did, I took a closer look at him. He didn’t appear to have any clothing on him that could hide a firearm. I took the keys off him and turned back to Carl.
‘The kid’s just told me his dad has a gun in the car. Nick him for suspicion of possession of a section five firearm. Get Belinda to help you,’ I told him.
Carl walked over to Belinda, said a few words, and together they approached the dad. They cuffed him with his hands behind his back before he had any idea of what was happening.
He was handcuffed in a ‘back to back’ configuration, creatively named such because the backs of your hands are facing each other, behind your back. Other ways of handcuffing people are a ‘front stack’ (imagine folding your arms, and having a set of rigid handcuffs applied from wrist to wrist), or a ‘rear stack’ (the same, but on your back). It’s also possible to do a ‘palm-to-palm’, but since we use rigid handcuffs, if you’re going to cuff someone palm-to-palm you may as well not bother handcuffing them at all. It doesn’t do much to impede movement, and they could potentially use the rigid bar between the cuffs as a weapon.
The dad started struggling, shouting