We had to take the money and the notebook back to the neighbour. He laughed and said, ‘It’s all right. I know youse hadn’t nicked any. I saw you make the mistake but thought I’d got it wrong. That it was my maths. Never my strong point.’ He happily signed our notebook to that effect but I still worried about being questioned and strip-searched.
The next sudden death for me and Kenny took place on a cold and frosty Sunday morning in February. The puddles were iced over and the meagre day had only just begun. With not much else to do at six thirty on a Sabbath morning, we took a walk through an ancient cemetery.
I saw him first. He was sitting on a bench, slouched over a pair of old walking sticks. I suggested we took the other path, to allow the man some privacy.
‘I think we’d better check him out. He looks a bit too cold to me,’ said Kenny.
We approached the figure. Kenny touched the man’s neck. He looked at me and shook his head.
I glanced down and on the path, between the man’s legs, was a pool of congealed blood with a razor blade lying in it. Beside the man, on the bench, lay an unsigned letter.
It revealed his story. He’d visited his wife’s grave and taken a seat on the bench. He had cancer and early dementia. He could no longer go on without his wife. He missed her so much. He was lonely. They didn’t have children. He was an old man on his own and it was time to be with her again.
It was so very sad. I stood in the churchyard and cried. I wasn’t tough. Not then.
Kenny was sympathetic and we dealt with the situation appropriately and respectfully.
A few weeks later, there was the man Kenny had to drag out of the river. I had to deliver the terrible news to the dead man’s family when they came to the station to report him missing.
We had an old lady who had been dead in her bed for a week.
Then the young mum who had an undiagnosed heart complaint.
And there are many others we remember … lest we forget.
When that female chief inspector told us on our first day at training school that many of us would be injured on duty, I remember my throat constricting and my head giving a little wobble. I was clumsy and knew I could do myself an injury on my own without any help from anyone or anywhere else. I didn’t like violence. I hated confrontation. Was I sure I was in the right job?
Yes. I loved it. All of it. Even when it was bad.
I’ve policed many football matches when the Premier League was known as the First Division, and policed various marches and demos, but none so scary as my first, the Wapping dispute in 1986.
Two of the important roles of a police officer are to protect life and protect property. Whenever there are large demonstrations, marches and protests, it’s everybody to the helm. Days off are cancelled, operational tasks rearranged, and whatever his or her regular posting, every officer needs to have a uniform ready for when duty calls.
The blistering, bubbling air was heady, heavy, as the capital prepared. In the bitter night, London waited. The festering pit of strikers, policemen and rubberneckers were gathering and sharp cracks of anticipation were interspersed with tingles of fear. The normally quiet streets of east London were like a boil about to burst.
Tired green battle-buses trawled through the streets as tetchy crowds swarmed on both sides of the metal barriers guarding News International. The cavalry arrived on glossy-coated beasts, many hands high and emblazoned with Metropolitan Police regalia. They incited fervour as they stomped and snorted excitement and fear, while their lord-like riders tried to still the rearing hooves. Fresh manure permeated the air, filling flared nostrils. Discordant horns and hooters joined the cacophony: sounds and smells of conflict.
Quiet chat grew to a low chant: ‘Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs.’
Keeping up the rear, dog-handlers struggled to keep anxious Alsatians in the back of their battered vans until the order for release came. It would, without doubt, come soon. Every animal instinctively sensed distress and unrest. Scurrying rats had long deserted their familiar streets and riotous disturbance chased foxes from urban undergrowth. Howls echoed in the night, as Man became Beast.
Like the last night of carnival, alive and electrifying, agitated tension filled the air as both sides prepared, the big wheel of misfortune turning. Hook-a-duck; hook-a-pig.
Politics had become lost, had nothing to do with the violence that converted convoluted words into an excuse for those wanting, waiting to fight. Genuine strikers, honest police officers and hearty politicians had no place in Wapping on 15 February 1986.
I was but a girl, naive and inexperienced, wearing a uniform tunic and skirt of heavy serge, with thin tights clinging to my legs because there were no trousers for women officers. Not then. My meagre arsenal comprised a handbag, a whistle and a little wooden truncheon, far smaller than those issued to the policemen. My new hard bowler hat had recently replaced the soft black and white peaked caps and I was thankful for that, at least.
Mike Bruce, my sergeant, must have seen my anxiety.
‘We’re the enemy, whether we like it or not. It’s nothing personal,’ he said, squeezing my hand. ‘It was like this up the mines. Just stay close to me, Ash.’
I knew all about the mines. I’d lived in a town bordered by a dozen working pits. In 1984 I’d given 10 per cent of my factory wage to the families of the strikers because that’s what those who were fortunate enough to be working did. The poverty of the proud pitmen, the despair of their conscientious wives, their children’s hungry faces – they flashed back as the baying crowd chanted venom into my face.
‘Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs.’
‘But I’m not their enemy,’ I whispered, fear catching at the back of my throat.
A duty, a job. To serve Queen and Country. I naively never expected to become an object of ridicule, to face such hatred. I only wanted to help people.
‘Oink, oink, oink. Pigs, pigs, pigs.’
Someone shouted, ‘Spit-roast porky-pig!’ and the baying crowd jeered and hollered, thumping the air with lascivious encouragement. A kazoo sounded and a mounted officer danced his skittering horse to the back of the police barricade.
I looked around and saw two other policewomen. That made three of us in a crowd of 400 or more officers. Perhaps there were more hidden in the melee but I couldn’t see them.
Wide-eyed and bewildered, I asked my sergeant, ‘Why do they hate us so much?’
‘We represent authority. We’re the link between them and the powers in charge.’
‘I know that. I’m not without sympathy. I understand. But it’s not our fault.’
‘Don’t matter; they can’t get at Maggie Thatcher so we’re the next best thing. We’re as bad as she is … to them. Maggie’s bootboys. Whether we personally support her or not.’
The atmosphere worsened as the crowds swelled, people pressing against steel barriers that were weakening at the surge of protestors and police officers.
‘Pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs.’
‘Keep your head down when the shit starts flying. Link arms and stay linked,’ Sergeant Bruce shouted above the horde.
The