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I decided to go for the longer drop because although the garden was derelict, I could see a path at the side of the house that might lead onto the street. I flung my handbag down first and, cursing, I pulled my skirt up to waist level. I leant forward and gripped onto the wall, then swung my left leg round to the right. My beautifully polished toecaps scraped the bricks at the same time as the inside of my thigh grazed the top of the frost-embossed wall. Ungainly. Unpleasant. Painful. I swung round and hung by both arms. I closed my eyes and dropped down, hoping I would manage to slide down the wall and miss the prickly bushes.
I managed but I snagged my stockings and gashed both knees. I felt around the cold earth for my handbag, snatched it up and clasped my sore palms together. If only my gloves hadn’t gone missing. I admit my eyes were stinging a little as I tried not to feel sorry for myself and hobbled through the overgrown garden to the path that led to the front of the house. Hurrah! I was on the street. At least nobody had seen me.
The station wasn’t far, so I walked back instead of calling for a lift. I knew they’d be busy with the prisoner. I sneaked into the toilets, tended my bloody knees and the stinging rash on the inside of my thigh, and bemoaned the damage to my shoes. I’d spent ages bulling them up. Tired and emotional, I wept. So much for being a rufty-tufty policewoman.
I cleaned myself up and went to the locker room where I changed my stockings and ran a black polish wipe over my shoes. It would have to do until I got home. I walked into the front office and Sergeant Matthews was by my side.
‘There you are, Ash! Where’ve you been? We’ve been wondering what happened to you.’
‘They nicked the burglar and I was way behind them so I walked back to the nick, sarge. I’ve been in the loo.’
‘Why didn’t you answer your radio? They’re all out looking for you.’
‘I never heard anyone call me,’ I said. When I thought about it, I hadn’t heard anything over the radio for ages. I looked down and it wasn’t on. It must have been knocked off when I climbed down the wall.
‘We had a 999 from a concerned woman. She said someone was sitting on her wall and she thought it was a police officer. A female officer.’ He looked at me, eyes raised.
I looked back, eyes wide, lips schtum.
‘Ash?’
‘Well, I’m here, sarge. Might as well call the troops back,’ I said.
I saw him look at my shoes. Then at my skirt covered in grubby brick dust.
I turned my back and mooched around my in-tray, hoping he wouldn’t press it further.
He didn’t.
He called the lads to tell them I was in the station and the caller must have been confused, a bit of night-time eyes.
In true back-covering protective fashion, he never mentioned it again. And neither did I, until today.
On prescription (#ulink_71fccb77-ff23-5667-b455-81c7ab39384f)
I was minding my own business as I walked past Mile End tube station on my way to a briefing for a plain-clothes task I was involved in when a call came out that an intruder alarm had gone off at the chemist’s. I was directly outside. I knew there had been three false calls at the pharmacy recently because they’d had a new system installed and staff had accidentally pressed the button. I also knew how busy it was at work, with people off sick, on leave and in court, so rather than tie up a patrol car, and even though I was in plain clothes, I said I would see what the problem was, fully expecting it to be another false alarm.
I was wrong.
I entered the shop and it was empty but for an assistant, a pretty Asian girl. She was crying.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked her.
‘You have to leave, quick, the police are coming,’ she whispered.
I showed her my warrant card and said, ‘I am the police, what’s up?’
‘Are you on your own?’ she whispered as she pointed to the back of the shop. ‘He’s in there with Mr Simon, the chemist. He’s got a knife.’
I looked through the open hatch into the small back store. Every shelf was packed with boxes and tubes and medicines teetering on top of each other. I saw Mr Simon standing in the corner and a tall man facing him with his back to me. The man had something in his hand but I couldn’t see what.
I turned to the assistant. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Maia,’ she sobbed. ‘He’s after drugs. He’s called Robert something and he comes in every day. He’s on a script.’
‘Maia, please call 999.’
‘I can’t. The phone’s out the back. That’s why I pressed the alarm button.’
I handed her my radio. ‘Go out onto the street and use this. Press that button and tell them who you are and what’s going on. Tell them an officer is here and I’m on my own and that the man has a knife.’
She took my radio, sniffled a bit and nodded.
I went behind the counter and picked up a foot aerosol, the only thing I could think of to arm myself with as I walked into the medicine store.
‘Hello?’ I said.
The man turned, thrusting a large knife. It was a horrible-looking thing that flashed silver in the sharp strip light, six or seven inches with a serrated edge.
‘Get out!’ he roared at me.
‘I’m a police officer. I’m on my own. Please put the knife down.’
‘I want the drugs in his cabinet. I know where he keeps them. It’s locked. If he gives them to me you can both go. Right? Right?’
Mr Simon shook his head. The room was strangely silent, no sounds from outside at all; it was like being cocooned in an egg box.
‘I’ll tell you one more time, open the cabinet,’ Robert said sweating, his pupils tiny pinpricks, his face a waxy pallor with a look that matched the desperation in his voice.
I hoped the troops would arrive soon. I tried to reason with him. ‘We’ll talk about the drugs but you don’t need the knife.’
The chemist stepped forward.
I shook my head at him and turned back to Robert. ‘You really don’t want to hold up a police officer, do you? It’s only going to make things worse. Put the knife down. Do you have a regular script?’
‘Yeah, yeah I do. But I need more and he won’t give it to me.’ He wiped his sweating forehead with the back of his hand. He was agitated.
‘You don’t look very well,’ I said.
Time stood still. Nobody said anything; the air was tense, the mood sharp. No one wanted to make the first move.
He stepped towards Mr Simon. ‘I need the drugs. Now. Just get me the drugs.’
The chemist said, ‘Robert comes here every morning and I give him his prescription. He was late today and he didn’t come yesterday and he missed a few days last week. I know he’s been getting it from the chemist in Poplar. I wasn’t going to give him it again.’
Robert swung the knife up towards Mr Simons’ chin. ‘Shut up. Shut up!’
I stepped forward at the same time as Mr Simon. We both bumped Robert and the knife clattered to the ground. I kicked it away and it slid beneath a cabinet. Between us we wrestled Robert, who was more than a bit uncoordinated, and we made him lie face down on the floor. Just at that moment half a dozen uniformed officers hurtled into the tiny room.
‘What kept you, boys?’ I said, my heart pounding in the well of my throat.
Robert Miscow came from a well-to-do family. He’d dropped out of university and got into drugs. He received a six-year prison sentence for armed robbery. Mr Simon and I received commendations. I can’t help thinking it was all a bit mad, a bit sad and a bit dangerous.
And that’s just what I loved about my work.
No headway (#ulink_eb0cd839-cf15-5026-aab8-9049c80d4aa6)
Unfortunately for him, PC Jim McBean was often posted with me. I say unfortunately not because I didn’t work hard, or that I was difficult to work with, or that we didn’t get on. We did. I say it because when we worked together, we attracted trouble.
Sergeant Flint posted us together one Sunday night duty. ‘Keep out of mischief, you two. You know what I mean.’
Everyone laughed.
It was about two thirty in the morning when we were called to a domestic on the eighth floor of a tower block. We were the only unit able to attend as half the shift were on their meal break (usually known as ‘refs’ for refreshments), and those that had the earlier slot were busy dealing with prisoners.
As is the way when you are in a hurry, both lifts were out of order and so we had to take the stairs. After climbing sixteen flights of stairs in a rush, I was exhausted. I could hardly breathe, never mind speak.
There were four flats to each landing. The door to the one we were called to, number 803, was open. It led into a hallway that turned left, I presumed into another part of a hall with doors off it to the other rooms, including the sitting room. All was quiet, not a sound.
‘Hello!’ I shouted. ‘It’s the police.’
‘Anyone home?’ shouted Jim behind me.
Silence when you arrive at a domestic could mean a number of things. It might mean it was a false call. Or maybe one half of the domestic has left. Rarely, there might be a dead body, or even two. The mind runs wild for a moment and then calms down as you realise they’ve probably made up and gone to bed.
I turned to Jim, tutted and walked down the short hall. Before I had time to think, a man steamed around the corner at me, brandishing a bread knife in each hand. He lunged straight for me, screaming, ‘Arrrrrggggggghhh!’
My instant reaction was to put both hands up in front of my face. I closed my eyes. I didn’t immediately feel the pain. That came once I’d seen the blood. I fell to the floor, thick red covering my hands like gloves.
I was aware of Jim jumping over my head and tackling the man, throwing him to the ground in that good old judo way of his.
Two women came out of a room, huddled together, crying. One of them grabbed the knifeman’s leg and bent it up as he and Jim lay in a bundle on the floor. I fought through the jumble of arms and legs and scrabbled for the knives.
Brian Petch was rabid, like a wild man, with a guttural screaming that seemed to come from his belly. He had super strength and it took everything Jim and I plus the two ladies had to keep hold of him. I can’t remember which one of us called for urgent assistance but someone did. It seemed to take an age for anyone to arrive but then I remembered – the lifts weren’t working.
When the cavalry did come, they came in droves. When the call goes out that an officer has been injured, everyone comes, from your district and beyond. Adrenalised comradeship, an innate desire to be there, to give assistance, to protect, and to apprehend. And indignation that a man is down.
Despite at least a dozen uniformed police officers and the two night-duty detectives, Petch still tried to make a run for it. He hadn’t bargained on meeting the dog handler on the stairs.
Joey the police dog took a tasty bite of upper thigh for his supper. It meant a lot of work and report writing for his handler, but Joey was given extra biscuits and plenty of pats on the back for making the arrest.
I was lucky to escape with injuries to my hands only. I was patched up with stitches and bandages and went back to the station. The impact didn’t hit me until I sat nursing a cup of hot sugary tea. It had happened so fast. The shock was as much about what could have happened as what actually did – how he could have stabbed me, how it might have ended – and the thoughts bounced around my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and sat there shaking.
Petch was a drug addict who’d just been released from Pentonville prison. He hadn’t had any drugs for months but had taken something that night which had had a strong effect on him. He’d turned up at the flat of the guy he’d been sharing a cell with, looking for a bed because his pal had promised he could get one there. He found the man’s wife with a woman, her lover, and went berserk, even though it was nothing to do with him.
Petch was charged with GBH with intent to endanger life. It was before the days of the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) and the case files had to go off to a department somewhere centrally for them to arrange representation by the force’s legal branch. It used to be the police decision on prosecutions, guided by legal experts they employed, whereas the CPS are now independent. Is it better? Probably. It takes the onus away from the police and they can concentrate on investigating and not prosecuting, purely gathering the best evidence they can. For reasons I will never understand, perhaps saving costs or some other initiative of the time, the case was dropped from GBH to common assault. Common assaults in those days weren’t prosecuted in the magistrates’ court but referred to civil remedies which meant making a personal case at the civil court, a private prosecution between the two parties, rather than a public one paid for by the state.
We appealed but lost our fight.
To go out onto the streets to protect the public, to be stabbed by a raving knife-wielding maniac, only to be told it didn’t really matter, that it was just a common assault, was a kick in the gut for all proactive police officers. My physical scars healed but I felt very let down.
An independent barrister read of the case in the Police Review magazine. He contacted me and asked if he could take my case on as a private prosecution because he felt strongly about this miscarriage of justice. He had successfully dealt with similar incidents involving police officers over the past year and he was happy to fund it through his firm, pro-bono.
I agreed.
The Metropolitan Police couldn’t be seen to endorse this course of action, but every officer involved in the case backed me and agreed to be present at the hearing, as did the civilian witnesses, including the doctor who had treated me. I was anxious but positive.
Due to a certain amount of legal wrangling it took over a year for a final court date to be set. Exactly a week before the hearing was due to start, I received a phone call at home from Surrey Police. There had been an accident on the M23. Brian Petch was the front-seat passenger in a car being driven by another well-known criminal who was high on drugs. Petch had been decapitated.
There was more.
‘Oh, I nearly forgot,’ said the traffic officer. ‘You’d better get yourself tested. Did you know he had AIDS?’
Moving west (#ulink_30a060ec-b7f5-5f1f-bce3-7ae116867e67)
I enjoyed my time in the East End and it was a great place for a policing apprenticeship. I had worked in uniform, done a six-month home-beat posting, worked in plain clothes and had a stint on a murder team, but it was time to move on.
When I first applied for an undercover posting, the interview panel was made up of a detective chief superintendent and a detective inspector. I was overawed and stuttered over my words as I tried to tell them about my aptitude for detective work. I told them how I’d single-handedly arrested a robber armed with a knife and about being stabbed. I mentioned the times I’d given evidence in Crown Court and how I’d dealt with copious dead bodies.
They asked questions I was able to answer both in theory and with practical examples. I don’t know if I impressed them or not. It didn’t work like that.
When I didn’t get the posting my sergeant said, ‘Never mind, Ash. You can always try again.’
I vowed I would, and in the meantime, I planned to work harder than ever, even if it did mean looking for other opportunities.
When the call came out for officers to go to central London, which covered the West End, I put myself forward. I was ambitious and loved a challenge. My ultimate goal was to work undercover, so as much experience as I could get would be invaluable.
I was twenty-three and the people I’d worked with during the previous four years were like a family. I’d moved from the section house accommodation above the police station and was now living in a flat further east, but still in the heart of a wonderful community.
I was sad to say goodbye but it turned out to be one of the best career moves I made.
All the evidence (#ulink_d7c00bdd-b80f-53ff-9f1e-acbc1dfd53e8)
Policing the West End is very different to policing the East End. You still deal with crime and life and death and the public, but the West End is full of tourists, people looking for entertainment and bright lights, as well as the people who live and work there.
I hadn’t realised how many gaps I had in my education until I entered the Collator’s office in my new nick. (These days the Collator is better known as the LIO, or Local Intelligence Officer.) I stared at the various mug shots labelled Van-Draggers, Clip Joints, Dippers, Rent Boys. Where were the TDA merchants (taking-and-driving-away – also known as twockers – taking without owner’s consent), the robbers, the burglars?
It was enlightening to learn about these new-to-me crimes. Most of our suspects in the West End lived ‘off the ground’ rather than on it. They’d come and do their dirty business on our patch then wander off again, so we had a sea of transient faces to get to know and it was hard graft.
It wasn’t long before I learned about a crime unique to areas like Soho.
Mark Stamper, a tall good-looking guy, stumbled down a busy Soho street with a tissue held to his mouth. He had blood on his hands and his suit jacket was ripped. He held the tissue away from his face to reveal a nasty cut on his lip. He said he’d been approached by a black guy in his thirties, meaty and six foot, with a short Afro, and wearing a black Puffa jacket. He said the guy produced a chisel and demanded his wallet.
‘He threatened to stab me, officer,’ he said.
‘Did you give him your wallet?’ I asked.
‘It had my bankcard in it but no money. He grabbed my arm, ripping my jacket, and then he marched me to the cashpoint. He made me take out 500 quid, my limit,’ Mr Stamper said, on the brink of crying. ‘My wife will go mad.’
