CONFESSIONS OF AN UNDERCOVER COP
Ash Cameron

For Kenny.

And for our children.

See, we did have a life. Once.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

The end

In the beginning, there was light

Drunk and orderly

Prisoners, property and prostitutes

In your face

A man’s world

Face down in the gutter

Have you told her?

Do not pass Go

Gruesome twosome

Hard-knock life

Black and white

Strapped

Knee-capped

Fitness test

On prescription

No headway

Moving west

All the evidence

The night I met …

Up the junction

Bounty hunting

Nondescript

Wheel clampers notorious

Willy warmers

Cut!

House bugs and other nasty things

Who’s there?

In the crowd

Fast forward

Working the streets

Bit of a handful

Sewer rat

Suspects with benefits

Summary justice

Unmistaken identity

Down the drain

Doors

Dead or alive

The day I met …

Street people

Poisoning pigeons

’Ere!

Expensive jackpot

Keeping up appearances

Marshmallow surprise

The day I almost met …

Marianne St John

Phantom of the theatre

Fast train to London

Pockets

Somebody’s son

Polacc’ed: police car accidents

Swinging low

999 hoax calls

A little bit on fire

Night-duty eyes

On the job

Dead ringer

Perks

Lucky ladders

Downfall

Ailsa MacPhee

A quick buck

B for bingo

Game on

The beano

Busted

Hats off

Ménage à trois

The cost of an arrest

The day I met Jennifer

Exciting boredom

Saving lives

It came off in my hand, sarge

Christmas confession

The call you’re waiting for

Animal lovers

Stanley the Stallion

Dirty Don

Importuning and all that

Daisy chaining

A pounding

Cassie’s girls

Courting

The verdict

Contempt

Through the square window

Let right be done

In stitches

The day Diana died

Women’s work

Mommy dearest

What do you call it?

Double jeopardy

Not their fault

Mum’s gone to Iceland

Mother love

Fly away home

Wearing his ring

Who’s lying?

The man in the corner

Head case

When the Twin Towers fell

Bin-bag kids

Pets at home

For Stan, Santa

Chasing motorcycles

Bad apples

Fair cop, guv’nor

The waiting room

In my head

The end – again

OTS and other strange things

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

The end

I was nineteen when I went to London to join the Metropolitan Police. I left the police force twenty years later, combining my leaving do with reaching forty.

They say life begins at forty. Mine didn’t begin but it did change. I look back and wonder: that person, that police officer, was she me?

It’s easy to see why cops feel battered when the people they deal with are often the bad people, the sick of mind people, and the victims and witnesses who are often distressed. And there are those who for whatever reason blame the police for everything.

Police officers can become embittered working in areas of high crime, populated by people with an abhorrent dislike of the law and those who try to enforce it. It’s easy to understand the cynicism and jaded outlook when the days are filled with endless abuse and violence and grief. Even the officers working in the affluent suburbs and the beautiful countryside see people at their worst, all high drama and emotion, because in policing you are rarely involved with people at their best. After all, unless something’s gone wrong, why would you need the police?

It’s a strange phenomenon, and a bit perverse, when a good day at work can be a bad day, a sad day or a tragic day. Saving a life is one of those days.

There are also moments of fun and bizarre absurdity, slivers of sunshine, when you can laugh a real, gutsy belly laugh and know that today is one of the good days. They are golden.

I would have liked to reach the rank of inspector. Beyond that you become a manager, a pusher of pen and paper or mice and emails. Although the higher ranks are necessary, it’s a totally different job. I finished my service as a detective sergeant and I was happy to settle for that, in the end.

Officers higher up the chain of command don’t deal with the public. They deal with police officers and bureaucrats and forget what life is like policing the street. The real gutsy jobs are carried out by those who work hands-on with victims and suspects, getting down and dirty, and there are fewer hands-on officers nowadays, at a time when we need them more and more.

There are lots of opportunities in the police force. I wanted to experience as many as I could. I moved on, did different things, worked in diverse roles with different people in various departments. If I found myself grumbling too much, I knew it was time for change. I believe you make your own future and I’ve never sat around waiting for it to happen.

I’ve worked in the capital, in the East End, the West End, and north London. I’ve worked somewhere in the North too, in a constabulary. I’ve been a uniformed constable, an undercover cop, a detective and a sergeant. I’ve worked with the public in their many guises – victims, witnesses, prostitutes, rent boys, criminals, suspects, and many professionals in multi-agencies. I worked in London at the height of the IRA bombings and dealt with a few too. It’s scary going to work knowing that you might be bombed at any time. As emergency workers, we’d run towards the explosion whilst urging everyone else to run away, and hoping there wasn’t a secondary device primed to go off on our arrival. I’ve worked with the vulnerable, investigated racial incidents, homophobic attacks, elder abuse, missing people; I’ve worked in witness protection, on murder squads, in domestic violence and child protection. I’ve been a volunteer that took underprivileged kids on week-long camps. I’ve helped out in a women’s refuge and come to the aid of Girl Guide and Brownie packs. I’ve saved lives and failed to save others. I’ve done some good things and I’ve also made mistakes, but I’ve always tried my best.

I had a fantastic time and have lots of marvellous memories. I miss the job incredibly, every single day. I loved it. All of it. Even when it was bad, it was good. It was part of me and it always meant more to me than perhaps it should have. It has taken a toll, like it does on every one of us who put everything we have into it. There are threats that still bounce around in my head from time to time, spat out by vile people who I helped to send to prison. I think they’re probably out of jail now, and sometimes I feel them looking over my shoulder.

In the end, I had to make a choice. I could finish the last third of my career on completely restricted duties or take medical retirement due to a physical condition I was diagnosed with. It wasn’t an easy decision and not the way I would have chosen to end my career, but I decided to leave with twenty years’ service when there was a chance to start a different life while my children were young. I gave the job everything I had to give and I still believe the things I believed when I joined. I believe in justice, in right and wrong and, most of all, I still have that desire to help people.

It’s a brave and frightening world out there, but leaving the police force was not the end of my life, even though at the time I wavered and thought it might be. I’ve had some wonderful, exciting and difficult times. When I left, many people asked what I was going to do. All I knew was I intended to take some time out, be a mum, keep my options open and see where life took me. And I wanted to write, because ever since I could I have written stories and there are so many stories in my head.

These are my memories of all those things I’ve mentioned I did, and more. Not all of it is pleasant reading, but then not all of society is pleasant.

I wanted it all and I got a lot. These are my stories, told my way, with names changed to protect the guilty. And the innocent. A colleague might tell them differently.

In the beginning, there was light

All of the new recruits were sent to Hendon Police College. I was young, naive, and full of hope, anticipation and excitement, eager to complete the twenty-week residential course and get out onto the streets.

On the first day we had to swear our allegiance to the Queen. One hundred and sixty of us gathered together in the gym hall that I would come to hate during that twenty weeks.

A female chief inspector spoke, filling our heads with horror, some reality, a few romantic ideals, and a squiggle of ‘What the hell have I done?’

‘Some of you will stick the thirty years. The majority won’t. You’ll love it; you’ll hate it. It won’t always be pretty. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been wounded on duty at least once, so be prepared. You might be injured and it could end your career. You might be shot. Stabbed. Killed. You will get hurt. Get used to it.’

She paused. ‘Some of you won’t make it through training school. Once on the streets you might decide you’ve had enough of being hated by the public, the press, the politicians and the prisoners, for you are nobody’s friend. Remember that.’

My head spun. I looked at her. She was tough. I was soft. How would I cope with being hurt? Being hated? I only wanted people to think the best of me.

‘But you may love it. It’s the best job in the world when you save a life or stop a suicide. When you help people in the most difficult of circumstances. When you find a missing child and reunite him with a distraught family who feared the worst. But don’t forget, you can be a hero one minute and then you’re back out on the streets being pelted with flying bottles and vicious words.’

She looked around the room at the sea of fresh untainted faces in front of her.

‘It’s a good job if you can hack it. Not of all of you will. There are specialist departments to work in like mounted branch, dog section, CID, or undercover, so deep undercover that sometimes you forget who you are. You might decide to go for promotion. Or stay on the beat. Your whole time served might be in one police station, entrenched in a community. The rewards are there if you want them, but watch your back and those of your colleagues because they are the only allies you have.’

Among us were youngsters like me, not much in the way of life experience, starting out keen and vulnerable. There were others who’d decided they wanted a career change and policing had sounded like a good option, with a decent wage, job security and a pension. There were ex-service personnel who’d seen so much more already, and there were graduate entries straight from university.

We stood and listened and wondered why we thought we could do this job. The only dead body I’d seen was a boyfriend’s grandmother in her coffin, but she had been over eighty and it didn’t seem to count.

‘You will come across things you don’t like, things that turn your stomach, deal with offences you didn’t know existed,’ she continued. ‘You will see things you know aren’t right. You will have to decide what to do because when you’re out there, you’re on your own and only you can decide if you can live with the consequences. Only you are responsible for your actions.’

She was done. We filed out feeling like we’d been bollocked, looking anywhere but at each other lest we saw the fear.

In that moment I decided I could, I would do this job. If I survived training school …

Drunk and orderly

It’s a well-known fact that policemen like to drink. It’s one of those clichés found in crime novels and TV dramas. Like most clichés, it exists because there’s a truth in there somewhere.

When I joined the Met, I didn’t drink alcohol. I’d had the odd shandy, a couple of lager tops, a rare lager and lime, but nothing else and certainly no hard stuff. My first hangover was at Hendon Police College. It was my twentieth birthday and a true initiation.

My fellow rookies had taken me out and they’d bought me drink after drink. My poison was Pernod and black and they came thick and fast. I ended up pouring each one into a pint glass. By the end of the night I’d drunk two pints of the vile stuff. I went to bed very merry and very drunk, with a tongue that was warm, wet and black.

The next day I was ill. Very ill. Some joker suggested I drank milk, a ‘great’ hangover cure. Never having had a hangover before, I did as he suggested. The half-pint of cold semi-skimmed took less than a minute to come back up, curdled and purple. I was truly poisoned. There was no sympathy. To be unfit for duty through drink, or to be drunk on duty, are poor conduct matters that can lead to disciplinary action.

However, the trainers were forgiving as long as I sat in the classroom and did my work, didn’t fall asleep and didn’t puke.

It was a lesson that taught me quite early on about policemen and their drinking habits. I was a quick learner and I’ve never drunk Pernod since, but I didn’t learn enough to stop me imbibing other poisons in the future …

It was customary for probationers to buy a round after their first arrest. And their first dead body. And their first court conviction. And every other opportunity that the ‘old sweats’ demanded. How we didn’t end up bankrupt, I don’t know.

Back then the shift used to mean working a whole week of night duty, then after finishing work on the Saturday morning, the guys would trot off to the Early House, a pub that opened at six in the morning for night-duty workers, post office workers, and those who worked in the markets like Smithfield and Spitalfields. The previous landlord of the pub had refused women entry, so female officers were exempt. However, a couple of years later he died and his son took over and for the first time the Early House saw women other than the regular Saturday-morning strippers. So of course when the doors opened, I had to go to the Early House. It was another obligatory initiation. Besides, the guys seemed to have so much fun on those Saturday mornings that I wanted to see what I was missing.

The first round cost me over twenty quid, which was a lot out of my spending money. The landlord took the opportunity those mornings to clean up his bar, so he only served pints and that was it. So I drank pints. Five of them …

Someone dropped me off home at my flat. I can’t remember who. My parents were coming for a visit that night and as I was on nights they were going to stay over. I’d bought them tickets for the theatre. I don’t remember them calling; my flatmate sorted them out. I woke up with less than two hours before I needed to be back at work for night duty. I was hungover and bleary-eyed and although very glad I wasn’t a police driver, I didn’t relish walking the beat in the cold rain. But, of course, it was obligatory.

Various stories that follow involve alcohol, and yes, you may assume that by the time I left the force I had been well and truly initiated. I could hold a drink or two. Or twenty. At my leaving do, I raised a glass of champagne and tried not to think of the innocent me of twenty years earlier, and how the alcohol-loving police officers got me in the end. Nor did I wish to remember the worst hangovers!

Cheers!

Prisoners, property and prostitutes

At training school we were warned about prisoners, property and prostitutes. If anything were to go wrong, it would usually have something to do with at least one of them. In the late seventies, around the Life on Mars years and before I joined the police force, I had dealings with all three.

Family circumstances had meant that I left home at seventeen and lived on my own in a cold and tiny flat opposite the sea. I needed two jobs to pay my bills, so I worked in an office during the week and in the cloakroom of a popular nightclub Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The money was rubbish but it helped. I fancied doing bar work, but the Fugly brothers who ran the tacky joint said I was too clumsy and not pretty enough. They may have had a point on the first and the book is open on the second.

One Thursday night, a long time after the supposed closing time, I was still at work in the club. It was about three in the morning and I was desperate to go home as I had to be up early for my office job. A drunken woman and her partner came to collect her coat but she couldn’t find her ticket. She told me it was a white fur jacket with tissues in the pocket. There were three men’s jackets and one white fur hanging on the rack. I found tissues in the pocket.

Maybe I shouldn’t have given it to her but I did.

Half an hour later, the Fugly brothers tumbled down the stairs from their exclusive hidden bar, arm in arm with women I knew to be prostitutes, followed by half a dozen regulars – CID officers from the local nick, with their own cackle of voluptuous prostitutes.

The next night uniformed police came to arrest the elder Mr Fugly, a wiry ex-boxer, for knocking out forged fifty-pound notes. He was back an hour later, no charges and big fat grin. He sat at the corner of the bar, laughing.

‘CID sorted me out. A case of mistaken identity,’ he said, throwing back a slug of Scotch: Prisoners.

A few days later the brothers called me in to see them. The younger of the two had so many rolls of flesh around his neck that he looked as though he was wearing a scarf. With his bald bulldog head and flaccid bottom lip, he was intimidating. He stood over me, drool slavering down his chin as he ate a bacon roll. It made me feel sick.

Apparently, I’d given away the wrong fur jacket. The nightclub had secret CCTV cameras that nobody knew about, but I did now. It showed a woman handing over a ticket at 11 p.m. I gave her a fur jacket from the corresponding hanger. At 3.30 a.m. it showed me handing over the other fur jacket to the woman who didn’t have her ticket. I could never understand how the first woman came by the ticket of a coat she says wasn’t hers. Or how the second woman identified the remaining jacket, down to the tissues in the pocket. Yet they had the wrong coats. It caused mayhem and that was the end of my beautiful career in hospitality. Thanks to Property.

Many years later, I dealt with a case involving a family headed by a matriarch who openly declared that back in the day she’d been a prostitute who slept with policemen and gave them information. She knew one of the officers on the case.

‘Old friends, sort of,’ she said.

A short time later the officer took early retirement.

Aye. Prisoners, property and prostitutes.

In your face

After an enlightening time at Hendon I was posted to the heart of the East End. On the night of my passing-out parade I stayed with my parents at the pub they’d just taken over on the border of Essex and London. After the events of that night, I realised that night nothing in my life was ever going to be straightforward again.

Early in the evening my father ejected a drug addict for shooting up heroin in the toilets. The youth, Tony Atkinson, came back at midnight when the only people left were a small gathering celebrating my day.

The huge front window smashed into a thousand shards as Atkinson bounded through it, threatening us with a sawn-off shotgun.

My father didn’t hesitate. He pulled back his old seafarer’s arm and punched him once, knocking him to the floor.

I grabbed my virgin handcuffs from the bar where I’d been showing them off, and I jumped on top of Atkinson. I didn’t think, didn’t hesitate. Foolish really. Thankfully, he was out cold. I sat on his chest, grabbed his arms and snapped on the cuffs.

Technically he was my first arrest but I didn’t go down on the custody sheet. The privilege went to the area car driver who was first on the scene. He was a decent arrest, what we called ‘a good body’ because Atkinson was wanted for offences of armed robbery, assault and drug dealing. The local police had been looking for him for weeks.

But the police didn’t only arrest Atkinson. They arrested my dad, too.

Atkinson was conveyed to hospital with concussion, my dad to a police cell. I spent the night at the station giving a statement, defending my father against a potential charge of GBH.

Atkinson could have pressed charges against my dad, and threatened to do so. I didn’t understand. No court would convict him, surely? It was a case of justified self-defence. Atkinson had a loaded gun and could have shot any of us. How was being knocked unconscious disproportionate to being threatened with and being in fear of a sawn-off?

It was a few weeks before we were informed there would be no further action taken against my father. Atkinson had done a deal and pleaded guilty.

It was certainly an introduction to policing.

A man’s world

In the early days, they tested policewomen in a way they never would, or could, today. I resisted the arse-stamping initiation, something they did, or tried to do, to all new female officers and some civilian workers too. A swift tug of their skirts and down with the underwear, they’d try to brand their bottoms with the station stamp, a sort of ‘you belong to us now’. I was very shy, embarrassed and could think of nothing worse. I wasn’t going to let them get me, but they had me in other ways. Messages such as ‘please ring Mr C Lion at London Zoo re an enquiry’ or ‘Mr Don Key at the local council’. One poor policeman was sent to the chemists to ask for some fallopian tubes. Like in many jobs, you learn to develop a sharp skill and quick wit that wasn’t in the formal job description. I had a good right hook, should it be necessary. But they had me in other ways.

As the lone female probationer on a shift made up of men, I had to make the tea at the start of every shift and all the other breaks that policemen took. There was another woman on my relief but she was mainly on desk duty and she had much more service than me behind her, about four years more. Two guys started at the same time as me but they were men. It wasn’t their job to make tea unless I wasn’t there, then it was. However, I now make a mean cuppa, even if I can’t stand the stuff, so I have to say thank you boys.

As in many predominantly male occupations, there was a lot of sexist behaviour. It’s only now looking back that I realise the full extent. There was a lot of banter, some quite risqué, though I think there was general respect from most men and they didn’t go too far. Many had wives, or girlfriends, or daughters and said they wouldn’t want them to do the job, that it wasn’t work for women. Older guys, those who’d done their time and were ready to retire, thought women should deal with the domestics, give out the death messages, look after abandoned or abused children and deal with sexual assaults. They remembered a time when there was a Police Woman’s Department and female officers only dealt with those things.

When it came to the reporting of dead bodies, known as sudden deaths, the call was usually despatched to the probationers. It was down to them to deal with the families, the doctor, the undertaker, the paperwork and often attend the post-mortem (PM). It’s an ideal way to get used to being a police officer and to learn how to be professional in such circumstances. It’s the same today but back then, the priority went to WPCs. Make me or break me, malicious or mischievous, it was seen as toughening you up, and ultimately, you had to do it. Or get out. But times change and it’s no longer like that. Yes, the first jobs probationers are given are still sudden deaths, shoplifters and civil disputes, but there are as many women officers as there are men, and sometimes more. Any hint of testing the metal in a sexist or racist or any other ‘-ist’ way, and Professional Standards (previously known as Complaints) would come down and haunt you out of a job.

It might not have always been right, and some would argue there were quite a few wrongs in the way some people were treated back then, but we had a lot of fun and learned to laugh at ourselves as well as others. Earning respect and proving your worth is still good currency and I have no complaints about that.

But back then, I was given ten dead bodies to report on in my first five weeks and we used to have to attend the post-mortem for every sudden death we dealt with, unless it was a murder in which case it was a job for CID. By the time my probationary group had our official PM training session, I’d already been present at many.

Two of the men in my group fainted and one clung to a drainpipe as he threw up in the swill yard (where the hearses delivered/collected the bodies). I stayed long after we were dismissed to go home and discussed the procedure with the pathologist and the mortuary attendant, eager for information and willing to learn what I could.

I enjoyed my job – all of it, even if it did include a bit of death.

Face down in the gutter

My first dead body showed up on my second day on the streets. It was a cold, crisp early day in January and my tutor, PC Joe Gardiner, walked me along one of the busiest roads in the East End.

Traffic was building up. I took each step with trepidation, remembering the photo albums we’d seen at training school of fatal traffic accidents, murders and accidental deaths. We passed two of my fellow probationers stopping vehicles driving in the bus lane and I wished I could join them.

As we made our way up the main road I saw what looked like a bundle of rags up ahead by the kerbside. I felt giddy. This was it.

A few steps closer.

Another.

I saw it. Him. The body. A tramp. A dead person.

The world was going about its business, ignoring, or not seeing, the man frozen to the ground. PC Gardiner and I stood looking down at him.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Joe said.

I looked at Joe. Looked at the tramp. I felt the weight of my policewoman’s hat on my head. I didn’t know what to do, what to say. I was a fraud. I wasn’t qualified to deal with dead bodies. I wanted to run.

I took a deep breath and crouched down, the hem of my skirt skimming the icy pavement. My stocking-clad legs were cold, as cold as the end of my nose and the tips of my toes in my polished black flat shoes, not yet scuffed by life. Or death.

I leant forward and could hear the sounds of traffic driving by, rattling engines and belching exhaust fumes. I looked at the man’s face. Icy dewdrops had frozen on his white beard. He had frost in his eyebrows and on his eyelashes. A smattering of frosty spider web had settled in his dirty grey hair.

I pulled off my gloves and bent closer to feel for a pulse in his neck. I knew I wouldn’t find one. There was something about his eyes. Glassy, non-seeing, half-open. The death stare.

He was a wizened old tramp with the stench of dirt and stale alcohol that wafted up my nose with my first smell of death. I touched the poor fibre of his clothing. Thin. So very cold. And old. Like his body. He might snap if we moved him. His face was white and purple and I wasn’t sure whether it was bruising or lividity. He was half-curled, almost but not quite foetal.

‘He’s definitely dead,’ I said.

‘You the doctor now, Ash?’ asked Joe.

‘Hmm. No.’ I thought about it. ‘Do we call the doctor? Or do we need an ambulance?’

‘An ambulance is for the living. Does he look like he’s just died? Can we save him? You want to give him the kiss of life?’

I gulped, repulsed, embarrassed. ‘No. No, I don’t think so. But … I’ve never seen a dead body. How can I tell?’

Joe softened his tone. ‘He’s not warm. He’s covered in frost. Okay, that could happen when he’s asleep but there’s no sign of life, no pulse and he looks like he’s been here for some time.’ He waved a gloved finger over the man’s face. ‘He’s long dead.’

Joe called for the divisional surgeon, who wasn’t a surgeon at all but a GP who was on call for the police and the only one who could officially pronounce life extinct. Each district had on-call doctors who worked on a rota basis and topped up their salary working for the police. Today they’re known as Force Medical Examiners, or the FME. Ordinarily, we would call a deceased’s own doctor, but we didn’t know this man, or who his doctor was.

Scenes of Crime Officers (SOCO) only attended suspicious deaths or suicides, as would CID, so the rest was up to us, the uniform shift. I had to draw a sketch plan of where we’d found the body. I made a note of his clothing. We had to search the body and seize anything of value. In this case, there was nothing but small change. No wallet. No identification. Nothing.

Then we had to wait. And wait. And wait. The doctor came and pronounced life extinct, then the undertaker finally came to collect the body to transfer it to the mortuary. There was no point taking him to A&E.

Back at the station, PC Gardiner gave me the sudden death forms that needed completing for the coroner. My Girl Guide skills came in handy when one of the questions asked which direction the body faced. North-west.

‘Fax it to the Coroner’s Office,’ Joe said. ‘And be on standby for the post-mortem.’

Post-mortem. When I’d woken up that morning the last thing on my mind was a post-mortem. I hadn’t thought about dead bodies. My head was full of chasing suspects, catching burglars, sorting out a lovers’ tiff, my own romantic ideals. I’d never imagined I would be picking up a dead tramp by the side of the road.

Two o’clock that afternoon when I should have been clocking off duty, I stood by a metal trolley in the mortuary looking at the naked body of our unknown vagrant, the stench of death firmly entrenched in my nose and in my head. Today, I know that smell anywhere and can magic it up on a whim. You never forget.

The body of a very large man lay on the gurney next to our tramp. He’d been dragged beneath a bus for a hundred yards or more. Most of his skin was missing and the body looked black.

An old lady lay on the third trolley up. She’d had her post-mortem and her chest was stitched up in a ‘y’ shape. She was waiting to be put into the fridge before being taken to the undertaker.

If all of this shocked me, I wasn’t prepared for the post-mortem itself. I didn’t faint, I wasn’t sick, but it was unlike anything I’d anticipated. It’s not nice, not pleasant, but it is fascinating. And for the sake of the queasy, I’m not going to detail it.

Our tramp had frozen to death. Hypothermia. Such a sad way to die, lonely and cold and hungry. His last meal had been some chips about twelve hours before he’d been found.

I did cry a tear for him when our efforts to find out who he was failed. His fingerprints were not on the system and he wasn’t known to police. He wasn’t a regular vagrant around our area, so we sent a headshot to all the stations in central London. They failed to recognise him too, even though he’d obviously lived on the streets for some time. We checked and re-checked missing persons records to no avail. The local paper published his photograph and wrote an article about how he was found but still nobody came forward to claim him. Six months later, the council informed us he’d be given a pauper’s funeral.

Who was he and where was his family? What had he done with his life? How and why had he ended up on the streets? When had he given up? Why? All of these questions remain unanswered. My first dead body: John Doe.

Nobody ever claimed him but I will always remember him.

Have you told her?

One of the most difficult and heart-rending jobs of a police officer is to tell someone a loved one has died. Like most jobs nobody wanted, the task of delivering a death message was given to the women or the rookies and for a time I was both. I was given them all. I hated it and often had to fight back tears as I gave the terrible news. I would rather have dealt with the actual death than have to inform the relatives. I’m the sort of person who cries at a stranger’s funeral.

As soon as I came on duty one night, PC Jim McBean and I were sent to a house to pass on some bad news. We stood outside the door and I knocked twice. There was no answer but someone was at home because the television was flickering through the net curtains.

Jim rapped on the window.

A blonde woman pulled back the curtain. She was holding a crying baby and looked frazzled. She waved at us, indicating she would come to the door.

When she clicked off the latch and pulled the door open, my radio burst alive. ‘Ash, have you told that woman her husband’s dead?’

Not the way to deliver a death message.

Do not pass Go

If someone says don’t look, you automatically get the urge to do just that, especially when it’s a mangled car wreck.

There was a fatal accident at the bottom of a very busy junction, on the corner where a street market began. Shops and a pub and a betting shop lined the parade. One of those heavy super-armoured vans that are used to convey money had taken out a blue Volvo estate.

I was instructed to make sure nobody went past the police tape. After six hours, I was weary.

‘But I live down there!’ said an old man.

‘Sorry. You’ll have to wait,’ I said.

‘I only want to go a hundred yards,’ said a man with a dog.

‘Sorry. You’ll have to wait.’

A woman with shopping bags approached. ‘I have to collect something before the supermarket shuts.’

‘Sorry. You’ll have to wait.’

And so it carried on. I deflected all the pleas and fended off those who’d come to gawp. It was tricky as the van was laden with cash and it had to be gathered up and accounted for.

An irate woman approached and wouldn’t accept that she wasn’t going through. She was insistent, persistent and annoying.

My legs were aching, I was desperate for the loo, the forensic examination would be another few hours, and the PC assigned to take over from me hadn’t turned up. I was grumpy and I wanted to go home.

‘I don’t care if you’re the Queen of England, you ain’t going down that road!’ I rationalised it was human nature to lose it, all things considered. ‘A man has been killed in that car this afternoon.’

She dropped her handbag and fell to the floor. She screamed and held her head in her hands and howled, oh how she howled.

I shouldn’t have spoken to her like that. It was no excuse that I hadn’t known it was her husband’s car. I had just delivered the cruellest of death messages.

Gruesome twosome

They called us the Gruesome Twosome, my future husband and I. I suppose that’s why we paired up. It put everyone else off. Whenever we were posted together, we ended up with a cartload of bodies, often the arrested kind but frequently the dead.

Kenny was one of those policemen who knew everyone and everything, with a mind like an encyclopaedia. Or the internet, had we had such a thing when I was a lass. He was a walking intelligence unit. People would ring him at home for a snippet of information because Kenny always knew everything about everything.

Kenny was married when I first met him. He was quite a few years older than me and far more mature. I was a young girl. A slip of a thing, as people used to say. He was attractive, I supposed, but I never looked at him in that way. There was never any suggestion of us getting together. He was happily married and I knew his wife. I always thought he’d make a great dad because he was so good with us probationers, as well as everyone else. He was the sort of policeman that you’d want with you when your back was up against it or you were knee deep in the cack. And he could talk his way out of most situations, too. People responded to him well. Perhaps it was that good old cockney way of his that he had honed to perfection. And I don’t mean the likes of those you find on EastEnders. He was just an all-round good guy who treated people decently, whoever or whatever they were.

The first dead body we dealt with together was an old man, Mr George Chapman. He’d sat down in front of his television and died, his dog by his side. A neighbour who could see the man in his basement flat noticed he hadn’t moved in between the hours of him going to work and coming back. The neighbour had a key but called the police before using it.

I was on foot patrol on my own and given the job. When I arrived, the neighbour let us into the flat. I naively said him, ‘Have you seen a dead body before?

‘I was in the war, love. I’ve seen my fair share, don’t worry,’ he said, with a wink.

I felt stupid but it was a lesson learned and although I’d already dealt with a few sudden deaths I was disconcerted to see Mr Chapman sitting there with his eyes half open, seeming to look at me wherever I moved in the room.

I called all the people I needed to call and I took a statement from the neighbour. Then I called for a unit to come and collect the dog. He’d have to go into kennels until we found the next of kin of Mr Chapman.

Kenny came to the rescue. He’d been posted to a panda and agreed to pick up the pet. ‘Don’t forget to search the house, Ash. Old people are notorious for stashing money away. The local burglars get wind he’s died, they’ll be in looking for it.’

I knew old folk did that because my granddad had done the same. Kenny left with the dog. I waited for the doctor and the undertaker to come and set about searching the bedroom, away from the half-open eyes. First stop, the bed. Cliché, yes, but there it was: a stash of fivers and ten-pound notes. I gulped. I collected it all up and looked in the bedside cabinet drawer. Apart from some loose change there was nothing of note. Then I looked in the wardrobe. It was one of those old-fashioned polished wood, curve-fronted pieces of furniture that were beautifully designed but out of favour. Just like the one my granddad had. On the shelf with the pile of old underwear was an envelope containing fivers. I checked the pockets of all the jackets and found more money. I called Kenny on the radio.

‘When you’ve got a minute could you come back please?’ I asked. ‘And bring some property bags.’

‘Aah,’ he said. ‘You’ve found what I was talking about then?’

‘Umm. Just a bit.’

Kenny took it all in his stride. He checked the places I’d checked and then we searched some more. We counted it all up and it came to a few thousand quid.

‘The neighbour who called it in can witness we’ve taken it. Any luck with next of kin?’

‘I’ve got an address book. The neighbour said Mr Chapman had a couple of nieces who sometimes visit but he doesn’t know where they live. I thought I’d ring some of the numbers in his book when I got back to the nick.’

‘Good thinking,’ said Kenny. He went off to get the neighbour while I transferred all the money to the kitchen table.

We counted £3,225, all in ten- and five-pound notes. We counted it twice. The neighbour acted as a witness and counted it with us. He signed our notebooks to agree it was correct.

On the way back to the station with the money all signed and sealed up, Kenny joked, ‘They’ll have to strip-search us you know. Check we haven’t stolen any.’

I believed him. At first, anyway. He was a joker!

We booked it into Property and the station sergeant came to countersign it. He ripped open the seal and counted out the money. He counted it again. Then again. It was £100 short. What? How? I felt my insides go cold and I felt a little bit sick. I knew I hadn’t taken any. I was confident Kenny hadn’t either. I also doubted the neighbour had. So how?

Kenny checked the adding up on the original notebook entry. We’d written down a list of where each amount was found in the house. He totted up the totals again. The maths was wrong. In adding it up, somehow we’d included an extra hundred. The mistake was there to see.

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.

Hard-knock life

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.

Black and white

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 inspector approached, tall and stern, yellow flak jacket standing out against the sea of bodies.

‘They’re out for it tonight, copper’s blood. Remember Tottenham. Look out … and good luck.’ He moved on, passing the unwelcome news along the line. Tottenham. It was only four months earlier that PC Keith Blakelock had been killed. He was at the forefront of every officer’s mind. Barriers rattled, straining at the bit. A firecracker split the air. Cheering resounded in the inky night. Another battle-bus arrived, spilling open another packet of policemen tooled-up in riot gear. A heave forward pressed Sargeant Bruce and I against the metal barriers like we were cattle waiting to be herded into a truck. I was very afraid of being trampled.

A hand flew out, grabbing my hat. Someone pulled me backwards as the Velcro straps beneath my chin ripped open like weak packing tape. I clamped my hand down onto my hat and managed to keep on the only protective cover I had. Mike flung me behind him.

A sparkle of colour lit the night, showering reds and greens in shooting umbrellas of light that extinguished before they could settle on the restless mob. Cordite hung in the air as the fireworks intensified. Loud pops fired like showground rifles. Bangers whizzed and wailed, falling out of the sky and smattering into the crowd. Rockets speared the atmosphere like a dare. The taste of hatred, thick like treacle, clung to the insides of my mouth. Sour. Bitter. There was nothing sweet about this initiation.

Another yellow-coated inspector wound his way into our crowd, jostled among sweating police officers chomping and stamping, every creature farting and belching fear.

‘Gold Command has ordered reinforcements. Rent-a-mob are expected to turn up. Most of the bloody force is out here tonight. Essex and Kent are on standby.

‘Get her to the back of the crowd, Mike, it’s no place for a woman.’ He thumbed in my direction and moved on, spreading ill cheer.

‘OOO, OOO, OOO, oggie, oggie, oggie.’

‘Pigs, pigs, pigs.’

‘Lesbo, lesbo, lesbo.’

Horns, hooters and whistles blew as fireworks continued to shoot. Nails, stones and broken bricks began to fly through the night; a maelstrom of powerful tools mingling with offensive diatribes. Police officers pushed from the rear as the shields, horses and dogs made their way to the front.

‘Okay, Ash, when the shields get here, we’ll move back,’ Mike shouted.

‘Right, sarge.’ I had no intention of moving without him.

‘Pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs.’

‘I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air …’ struck up a chord from the back of the mob.

‘OOO, OOO, OOO, oggie, oggie, oggie.’

Heat emanated from both sides of the fence. Adrenalin flowed as sardine-packed policemen and strikers filled the streets. A police horse forged a way to the front of the crowd and I felt the animal’s terror. I watched beads of fear roll down the smooth chestnut body of the beast, spittle flying from its mouth as his rider reined him in. The overpowering smell of leather, manure and hatred clung to me.

‘OOO, OOO, OOO.’

The opposing team swelled by a few hundred more and the West Ham signature tune built to a crescendo.

The first petrol bomb fell wide and flames rendered the air orange with licks of fire.

‘OOO, OOO, OOO, oggie, oggie, oggie.’

‘Heads down!’ a voice behind me ordered.

Our team crouched on command as another milk-bottle bomb flew our way. It landed at the forelegs of the stallion. He reared up, grand and foreboding, huge hooves turning as he spun. The metal arch of the horseshoe glinted as the rider was flung to the side, his foot caught in the saddle.

I skidded on fresh manure and rolled into the officer to my right as a hoof skimmed my left shoulder. The beast’s other leg smashed down beside Mike. The poor horse fell onto his forelegs. I saw that the mounted officer had been pulled free from the horse by some officers and was being passed along the crowd like a hot potato, out of reach of the grabbing hands on the other side of the fence. Too hot to handle, he was jostled up into the air and thrown again and again into the back of our crowd.

The battle raged as Mike and I were carried out among the wounded, statistics from the strike. Eight officers were seriously injured, many more hurt. Fifty-eight arrests. Genuine protestors and police officers feeling the pain. Everyone scarred.

Twenty-five years later and 300 miles away, I watch on my television as a fire extinguisher is dropped from a great height onto waiting officers dressed in yellow jackets and black trousers, busy bees scattered across the foyer of a government building. A youth climbs a flagpole and defaces the Union Jack. Hundreds of students gather and protest against the proposed rise in university fees.

People complain about police tactics of kettling the crowd. A posse of schoolgirls guards a police van to stop vandals from ripping off doors and smashing windows.

Some months later a man is shot dead by police. There are lots of questions to answer. Lots of people angry. Rioters who have no idea why they are rioting take to the streets and loot and maim. Senseless violence. Many innocent people hurt.

I’m compelled to watch; I can’t turn it off and can’t turn it over. I’m there. On the streets. Fighting again.

I watch the scenes unfold from the comfort of home. I watch, remembering Wapping; the Poll Tax riots of 1990; the BNP march of 1993. And many others. Nothing is simple, nothing black and white. It might have been many years ago but nothing changes. There are always the police to blame.

Strapped

My first injury of significance was eight months into my probation. By the time it happened, I’d dealt with plenty of abusive, drunk and violent prisoners and I suppose I’d been lulled into a sense of security. When tackling someone who doesn’t want to be arrested, or someone who wants to fight, you rely on your wits, your colleagues and your senses, one or all of which are prone to letting you down.

Female officers were armed with a little wooden stick, a truncheon, that was usually used to smash the windows of houses to which we needed to gain entry because the occupants were either avoiding us, or dead. We didn’t have CS spray, or utility belts with heavy equipment to weigh us down. Nor did we have body armour. All that came later. Women didn’t even wear trousers, mounted branch excepted.

It was a Friday night duty and I was posted with PC Jim McBean. I liked him. We got on well. He was a family man with four years’ service and eight years older than me. He knew everything, everyone, and was what was known as an ‘old sweat’.

It was nearing one o’clock in the morning, our refreshment time, and all the pubs had shut, or were closed having a landlord’s private party, common practice in the East End on a weekend night.

Jim drove slowly past a block of flats on a notorious estate and I glanced into the car park as we passed by. I saw a stationary vehicle facing towards us, blocking the car park entrance. The headlights flicked off as we drove by.

‘Can you go back, Jim? There’s a car there. I don’t know if it’s stalled, or something. Maybe it’s nothing,’ I said.

Jim stopped and reversed back a few yards, pulling up in front of the car park. It was dark with the shadows of the building blocking natural light. The security lamp that was supposed to be lit had been smashed. We got out of the panda car and walked across to the purple Porsche. I heard the engine of the car ticking, cooling down. The driver’s door creaked open and a tall dark-skinned man climbed from the driver’s seat.

Jim called for a PNC check on the vehicle to see if it was reported lost or stolen and to find out who the registered keeper was.

The guy backed away into the car park, towards a stairway.

‘Wait!’ I shouted, rushing to the driver’s door, which he’d left open. The ignition barrel was missing. The car had been hot-wired.

I ran to the stairwell and blocked the suspect from going into the building. He was broad and well over six foot and I felt tiny as he looked down at me. He did that sucking spittle in between his teeth thing.

‘It ain’t what you think,’ he said.

Jim stood behind him.

The guy turned, waving his arms up in the air, as if brushing us away even though we hadn’t touched him. ‘You only stopped me ’cos I’s black.’

‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘We stopped you because we thought there was a problem with the car. That you’d broken down or something. Whose car is it?’

He sucked into his teeth again. ‘My mate’s, man. I jus’ stalled it.’

‘You’ll have the key then?’ Jim asked.

I saw the man’s head coming towards me but I couldn’t do anything, go anywhere, my back against the stairs. He moved fast and smashed his head down onto my shoulder. The pain was like a metal spear shooting down through my chest. I fell to the ground. I know I screamed because I heard it, but it didn’t sound like me. It was a yowling, yelping animal. The pain was sharp, sheer and I’d felt nothing like it before.

Jim grabbed him by his T-shirt, flung him up and then down in one sweeping motion in a swift black-belt judo move. The guy’s head impacted with the tarmac and his left eyebrow split open. Jim pulled the prisoner’s arms up his back and straddled him. I crawled towards them and hurled myself onto my attacker’s legs, tights all tattered, my arm hanging limply.

Jim radioed for urgent assistance. When the cavalry arrived, the man, who gave his name as Colin Abehu, was taken away in the back of a police van. I was carted off to hospital for my shoulder to be set and strapped. It was dislocated and the collarbone smashed.

Abehu had a split eyelid.

The Porsche had been stolen from a financier who lived on the Isle of Dogs. Abehu was charged with theft of a motor vehicle and assault on the police. He admitted nothing and the case went to trial.

The jury found him not guilty on all charges. It was my first time giving evidence at Crown Court. I don’t know why they didn’t find him guilty. It left me with a bitter taste and a deformed collarbone and I didn’t like it at all.

Knee-capped

My next injury was purely down to me being clumsy. I had to make some enquiries in relation to a credit card fraud and PC ‘Garry’ Garraway said he’d give me a lift. Garry was his nickname because police officers are nothing if not unoriginal when it comes to nicknames.

Garry manoeuvred the panda car into a small gap between a row of parked vehicles on Majesty Lane.

‘Cheers, Gazza, I’ll be about an hour, okay?’

‘Yeah, just give us a call on the radio if I’m not here. I shouldn’t be that long.’

I climbed out of the car and slammed the door. I turned towards the pavement. There was a good eight-inch gap between the bonnet of the panda car and the rear of the car parked in front of it. I didn’t look. I didn’t see. I strode on. I didn’t account for the tow bar. Smack! The hard ball of iron slammed straight into my left kneecap. Another sheer ice-sharp pain that I remember along with the scream. I clutched my stomach to stop myself being sick over the police car. In an instant, my knee swelled to three times the normal size.

Garry shook his head as he helped me back into the vehicle. ‘How long have you been back at work, Ash?’ he said.

‘Six weeks,’ I grimaced.

That was the first time I dislocated my left knee.

Fitness test

I’ve always hated running. When I joined the force I managed to run a mile and a half in twelve minutes. Women recruits had to do it in a maximum of thirteen minutes, thirty seconds so I was pleased. But I still hated it.

These days police officers have to run after suspects while laden down with body armour, utility belts, handcuffs, radios, paperwork, CS spray, ASP (extending baton) and other heavy miscellany, so I suppose I should have been grateful I only had a truncheon, handcuffs, radio and a force issue handbag. In plain clothes it was a warrant card, handcuffs and if lucky, a radio.

I couldn’t do it now, I’m not fit at all, but when I was, I caught many of those I chased. But there’s always some you can’t catch.

It was a frosty morning about 4 a.m. when a 999 call came out about a suspect being disturbed burgling an empty house. We ended up chasing a guy through a row of enclosed back gardens. Then we arrived at a six-foot wall. My male colleagues legged it up and over with aplomb. I jumped up on top – and stayed there. The drop on the other side was more than eight foot. I was stuck. I couldn’t move because my skirt was hitched up thigh high, exposing my stocking tops and hindering me. To move I’d have had to pull my skirt up higher and slide one way or the other. It would never have happened if we’d had trousers.

I watched the guys bobbing up and over fences and walls. A gutsy yelp told me they’d caught their man. I sat and pondered my fate, hoping I wouldn’t have to call for help. It was cold and painful and what if I ended up frozen there, on top of someone’s wall?

I had to make a decision. Could I drop down one side? Could I get out of either garden without disturbing the occupants of the house? I couldn’t see clearly as it was dark and I didn’t have my torch because someone had borrowed it and forgotten to put it back. Or nicked it.

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

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

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

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

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.’

I noticed the cut of his suit, the quality shine to his shoes, and the smooth leather of the wallet he showed me. Something about his little tale didn’t ring true and it was a script I was becoming familiar with.

‘I see,’ I said. ‘Where were you before this man approached you?’

‘Just a little place having a drink.’ He didn’t meet my eye. ‘The guy head-butted me and stabbed me in the hand, officer. Will you take a statement?’

‘Which little place?’ I asked.

‘It’s not relevant, is it? I was walking along the street when he attacked me.’ Mark Stamper became irritated, edgy, and there was a distinct lack of eye contact.

‘We could go and retrace your steps, from this little place to where he stopped you …’ I played his game but he decided he didn’t want to play anymore.

‘Forget it,’ he snapped.

‘Absolutely not. You’ve been assaulted. Robbed. Aggravated robbery is a serious offence.’

‘I don’t want to cause a fuss. Can’t you just give me a crime number or something? I need to get home.’

‘Would you like me to call your wife, Mr Stamper? Our control room can let her know you’re all right.’

‘No!’ he shouted. ‘No. No need for that. I don’t want any trouble.’

I took Mark Stamper to the station and sat with him in an interview room off the front office. I gave him a cup of tea and took his statement, reminding him that in signing it he was making a true declaration. He decided he couldn’t remember which ‘little place’ he’d been to as he wasn’t familiar with Soho and he certainly wouldn’t be coming back. The cashpoint was at the bottom of a busy street, near Regent Street. I knew which one it was and I told him it had had CCTV installed recently.

Mr Stamper then decided he didn’t want to make a complaint after all.

I gave him my details and reminded him again that assault was serious and we would certainly like to deal with that, even if he changed his mind about the robbery.

I knew he knew that I knew. I also knew he wouldn’t pursue it further.

It was a familiar story. These ‘little clubs’ – clip joints – smaller than a sitting room, advertised Girls, Girls, Girls who, for a fee, would sit with gentlemen and encourage them to buy drinks, drinks that were 2 per cent alcohol, not what it said on the bottle. They’d charge the guy £45 for half a glass of watered-down fizzy Pomagne, companion service included. When he made to leave, he’d be stung for a bill of £300, £400, £500 or more. The price included the ‘company’ of the short-skirted, usually stoned hostess who’d waggled her bikini-topped breasts into his face and stroked his trouser leg. When these men wouldn’t, couldn’t pay, they’d be frog-marched to the nearest cash machine to withdraw everything they had. Protestations were met with a threat, maybe a head-butt, and sometimes a jab or two. The money would be withdrawn and handed over. The majority of these men refused to tell the truth, ashamed, embarrassed and caught out having to admit they’d been in a girly club, so we’d receive an allegation of cashpoint robbery instead of the real version of events. Most of the victims had families and could ill afford fifty quid, never mind five hundred, so they reported it as a street robbery, a credible excuse to their partner to account for the missing money because there was no way they were going to tell the truth – that they’d been in a club with women of lower moral standards.

I don’t know who they were trying to kid: us, their wives or themselves. It was robbery, and often menacing, and it did sometimes include assault, but the perpetrators got away with it because nobody wanted to say they’d gone to a clip joint. The thugs knew this and exploited the situation.

Sometimes, someone surprised us and told the truth. We’d then go back to the club and demand their money back. The door gorilla would produce the small print at the bottom of the sticky menus that listed the extortionate prices for company and for drinks. It then became a civil dispute because what these men hadn’t realised was that by sitting down with a girl and ordering drinks, they’d agreed to the terms and conditions. If there had been an assault, we could arrest the attacker, but more often the victims refused to cooperate with police when they realised they’d have to give evidence in court.

On some occasions we’d carry out an operation to stop it, but there are always guys wanting to take a chance with a girl in a club and while there’s demand, there will always be heavies who won’t let them get away with it.

The night I met …

I’ll never forget the night duty I was sent to Jermyn Street, W1, to stand by while filming was taking place. It was just another job in the day in the life of a young constable in the capital. There was always filming taking place somewhere in the West End. Most of it happened at night when the streets were quieter and there were less people around. It was a boring task but once in a while something exciting happened.

There I stood, scuffing the pavement while keeping the non-existent crowd at bay, and trying not to lean against the metal barriers, which were more for effect than protection. I was bored and dreaming about my warm bed, thick blankets and a deep sleep. I had no idea who was filming, what they were filming or when it would finish.

A distinctive voice crooned in my ear, caressing the air with a tone like velvet. ‘Aren’t you cold, my dear?’

I was startled and compelled to look up. I fell into pools of sparkling blue as his twinkling eyes smiled at me. Wow! This man oozed sex appeal even though he must have been thirty or more years older than me. Age didn’t matter on this cold autumn night.

I smoothed down my skirt, coarse under my fingertips and unbecoming as a fashion item for a young girl like me. ‘Err … a bit … yes … chilly,’ I stuttered.

He was much taller than I’d imagined.

‘Don’t they give you trousers these days?’ he asked, eyes sparkling, mouth crinkling, everything about him charming and easy.

I smiled back. ‘Not yet. Maybe in a couple of years, when they catch on.’

‘In my dad’s day,’ he said, ‘when he was a sergeant at Bow Street Police Station …’

And that’s how I became star-struck for a man older than my father. I spent a very nice half an hour with this gorgeous man, alone in his company. He told me all about his father who policed like policemen should back in the wartime years. He told me about his childhood and what it was like to have a policeman father and how he was both in awe and just a little bit frightened of him. How they were given oranges and lumps of Christmas pudding in their stockings at Christmas and if they were lucky they’d get a sixpence. Or maybe half a crown.

He asked questions about me and appeared interested in the answers, things like why I’d gone to London, what my ambitions were and what did my family think. He said he hoped I’d live my dream, just like he was living his.

He might have been acting, or he might have meant it. I don’t know. I was sorry when he had to go back to filming. Like a true fan, I was enamoured. I was also a smidge embarrassed when I asked for his autograph. I still have it, written on a piece of Metropolitan Police memo paper.

I’ll never forget the night I spent half an hour with Roger Moore.

He was the first of the big stars I was to fall for …

Up the junction

To be authorised to drive a police car you have to pass a police-driving course. This meant six weeks of intensive training, at the end of which you had to pass a final test. This was far more advanced than a normal driving test. It was exhausting, hard work and rigorous, with a lot of theory to learn.

In the Metropolitan Police, the driving school is based at Hendon Police College, now known as the Peel Centre. Each course would have five or six teams of three officers posted with an instructor. We would work all day driving fast and strategically in unmarked cars through country lanes, in towns and on motorways. We had a day on the skid pan, which most of the guys loved, a day driving a double decker bus on an airfield, and a day changing tyres, fan belts and learning about other mechanical things.

I took great care and concentrated hard but it didn’t come easy to me. My head spun every night of every day of the course. It didn’t help that my instructor, Frank Parrot, wasn’t a very nice man. He was a civilian trainer and fancied himself as a cop. He also had old-fashioned ideas and asked me why I wasn’t at home looking after a husband and some children. He said he didn’t understand a woman wanting to do a man’s job.

‘Unless you’re one of those lesbos? Are you?’ he asked me on the second day.

I didn’t reply. He said many objectionable things. I didn’t agree with his views, and he had many, but I kept my mouth shut. I wanted to pass the course.

One of the guys in my car, Laurie, was chatty, a bit of a wide-boy, which was okay because he kept the instructor talking and I didn’t have to say much. The other guy was Rhys. He was Welsh, about my age, married and a bit quiet. He was lovely.

We were in the fifth week and it was a baking hot day. The rapeseed was vibrant yellow and the air pungent as we drove through the country lanes of Essex. My eyes were fuzzy and I thought I might have a touch of hay fever to add to the fatigue.

I’d driven about a mile when the instructor told me to put my foot down and drive faster. I was already doing sixty. I wasn’t familiar with the roads and I wasn’t that confident. He was encouraging me to do an overtake I didn’t feel safe making. He prodded me in my ribs, sharp and hard.

I gasped.

‘Are you an excessive overeater or just naturally fat?’ he said.

‘What? What?’ I couldn’t believe what he’d said. I tried to keep focus on the road. I was furious. How rude. How nasty. I wasn’t even fat! My face burned bright red. The sun glared into my eyes as I drove around a blind bend, and I sneezed.

Up ahead I saw an indent in the road, a farmer’s track or gateway. I pulled in and stopped the car. I got out and slammed the door. I didn’t want to but couldn’t help crying at this point. Hot tears spilled down my face. I’d had enough of being baited and bullied by him, pushing me to fail. I knew I would fail. He didn’t like me and he’d make sure I didn’t pass. He made no disguise of the fact he thought women couldn’t drive. I knew I made silly mistakes and he made me nervous, which made it worse, but I wanted to pass so much. I needed to, not just for the station but for me, so that I could go into surveillance because you had to have the driving skills for that kind of work.

I could see the instructor laughing in the front passenger seat. Bastard!

Rhys got out of the car. ‘He was out of order. I’ll back you if you want to make a complaint,’ he said.

I was heartened. ‘Thank you. I don’t know what I’m going to do but I’m not getting back in that driver’s seat. Not with him.’

‘It’s okay, I’ll drive.’

We stood a few minutes longer. Rhys climbed into the front seat and I took his place in the back. Frank said nothing and neither did we.

Once back on the motorway, Parrot looked at me through his rear-view mirror. ‘Over your little tiff now?’ he said.

I ignored him and looked out of the side window. I was still flushed, still furious, and determined never to drive with him again.

When we got back to the training school I gathered my things. I had to carefully consider my next move. I was young in service. I couldn’t and didn’t want to refuse to go back. My shift needed me to pass this course because we were short on drivers. And I wasn’t a quitter.

I went back the following morning and asked to see Sergeant Thomas, the officer in charge. He was also an instructor and his team were getting ready to go out.

I told him what had happened the previous day and on other days during the previous five weeks. He listened, nodded, made sympathetic noises. I had the impression I wasn’t the first person to complain about Mr Parrot.

Sergeant Thomas told me my instructor hadn’t given me good weekly reports. He said he was surprised because he’d seen me driving on various days and thought I was doing okay. He was a man down in his car because one of his students had gone off sick with chicken pox so he said I could go with him.

I had the best drive ever. Sergeant Thomas said he was impressed and there was no reason why I should fail. Yes, I was a careful driver, but I didn’t hesitate or hold back.

The next morning Sergeant Thomas took me to one side before setting off for the drive.

‘Rhys came to see me last night. He’s backed up what you said. You’re in my car for the rest of the course and I’ll be taking you for your test. You can make a formal complaint if you want to, Ash.’

I didn’t want to do that. I couldn’t because it would be difficult. I’d be branded a troublemaker, labelled as a grass, someone who couldn’t take a joke. I’d been allowed to change instructors and was beginning to believe I could pass the course. If I complained it would mean internal discipline for Parrot. He would deny it and then what? Perhaps naively, I hoped this would be enough for him to not do it again. I didn’t want to drag Rhys into it either. I had no idea what Laurie would say but I had a feeling he wouldn’t want to get involved.

‘I spoke to Frank Parrot,’ Sergeant Thomas said.

My body slumped.

‘He said he was putting you under stress, making you drive under pressure, because on the streets you have to be able to keep calm while driving fast police cars with the blues and twos on. You might have to deal with an urgent assistance, or a robbery in progress, or something high tension and he said he wasn’t sure you could handle it.’

‘Really? You really think that’s what he was doing?’ I said. ‘He knows nothing about me or how I do my job. He’s plain nasty. He was doing it because he could, because he thought he could get away with it. Is that how you teach your pupils, sarge?’

The sergeant shook his head. ‘Err … no.’

Nothing more needed to be said. We both knew the truth of it.

I didn’t make a formal complaint. Today, I probably would, but I’m older, wiser and less intimidated. Back then, I was just grateful to pass the course. And I did. One up to me and one down to Parrot. I guess I was triumphant because it wasn’t just about passing the course: it was a turning point. Sometimes you have to fight to realise that nobody has the right to make you feel like that but they will if you let them. It was good for my confidence to win that round and move on.

I wasn’t the first and I wasn’t the worst affected. Lots of women, and some men, had it harder, harsher and it wasn’t fair. Thankfully the police service has come many miles since those days.

Bounty hunting

After a couple of years working in the heart of London, I was beginning to think it was time to move on. I loved it very much but six years into my career, with experience of two very busy districts, it was time for the next challenge. It was almost Christmas and each day was hectic with shoppers, partygoers and tourists, with an added dash of criminals looking for rich pickings. It was a great place to work with a vibrant atmosphere, sparkling Christmas lights and the ambience of good will to all men. It would be a shame to leave my uniformed colleagues but uniform street patrol wasn’t something I wanted to do forever. I didn’t have time to think too deeply but having made the decision, I decided to see what the New Year would bring in 1992. January was always a good time for change.

With three and half days left of the year, the prisoner count stood at 9,800. The superintendent returned to work after his jolly Christmas break in festive spirits and good humour. He laid down a challenge. The person who brought in the ten thousandth prisoner of the year would receive a decent bottle of Scotch. He was confident that 200 prisoners wouldn’t pass through the doors between then and the chimes of Big Ben bringing in New Year.

Everyone wanted that bottle. How far it would go on a shift of perhaps twenty or thirty officers, or an office full of CID detectives, was a moot point, but it was a sharp tactic to get everyone working over the usual lull between the festive bank holidays.

CID scoured the crime books for outstanding arrests and warrants. Street Crime Units were extra vigilant in arresting street entertainers, those selling knock off perfume and other goods on the crowded pavements, plus the prostitutes and rent boys. The crime squads worked hard at the pickpockets and van-draggers (people who steal from the back of delivery vans) and drug dealers. Each uniform shift cleaned up Soho, arresting vagrants and druggies, and fought over calls for shoplifters, breach of the peace and other miscellaneous fights and disturbances. A three-day initiative on drink driving was implemented around Mayfair and St James. More cars than usual were pulled up for minor offences because you never knew when a regular stop would lead to something more. Between now and the end of the year everyone was working hard. Instead of warnings and cautions and let-offs, we operated a zero-tolerance approach.

You could say the period between Christmas and New Year that year was one of the most productive ever recorded in the West End. The prisoner count crept up. By the time my shift came on night duty on 29 December it was 9,852.

There was no way we’d be able to arrest more than a dozen miscreants between us because there were only six of us on the streets that night. With the usual calls to deal with, unless there was a big incident, even a dozen would be pushing it.

When we came back on duty the following night, the station had been busy and the count stood at 9,966. We knew the early-turn relief would nab that bottle if we didn’t, so in our parade briefing we devised a plan of action. We needed thirty-four prisoners booked into custody. We had ten officers on duty. The area car was double crewed and could deal with the 999 calls and anything else they could fit in. The two vans could lose their escort, which gave us six-foot soldiers. We prayed nothing major was going to happen. If it did, we’d be done for, and and those bandits on the other shifts would get the booty.

Come mid-shift the world would have settled down and that’s when our plan would kick in.

By 2 a.m. we were up to 9,972. Everyone agreed to forfeit their refreshment breaks and get back out there until we were done.

The drunks, vagrants, beggars and other assorted street people were rounded up and brought into the station in the back of the van, six at a time. We each took a prisoner, booked them into custody, gave them a caution, and released them back onto the streets, only to be found loitering or drunk again. Then the next six were brought in, processed and chucked out. Word soon travelled the itinerant community and we even had a couple of youngsters turn up at the front desk asking if they could help out and be arrested because it was ever so cold out there and they could do with a warm place to stay.

We obliged a sleeping vagrant who was particularly grumpy about being woken up in his comfy doorway. We agreed to give Wilf a bed for the night and breakfast in the morning in return for his cooperation. Everyone was happy.

Poor Archie Meehan, riddled with lice and addled with alcohol, was given three cautions that night, but he embraced it. He wanted to be the 10,000th prisoner and we gave him the privilege at 5.30 a.m. He raised his arm and said he was going down in history. It was one of his proudest moments, he said. I’m sure someone must have slipped him his favourite tipple as a reward.

Of course, rumours reigned about who the arresting officer was. I was never sure, not exactly, and I can’t lay claim to it being myself, but I was there and took my part along with the best of them.

It was never about the bottle of Scotch. It was about other things altogether. It was one of the best of times and that night the street people did us proud. In the true spirit of working together, it was sublime. And a great way to round up the year.

Nondescript

I’d always wanted to work in plain clothes, to do detective work, to investigate crime. Perhaps it was too many Enid Blyton books as a child and too many detective novels growing up, but the idea of covert surveillance fascinated me.

I did a short secondment on an elite team, the crème de la crème of undercover units. The girl did good. I learned new techniques, discovered many methods of surveillance, more than I knew existed, and how to read street maps upside down. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I received a recommendation and a heads-up when the next vacancies came around.

Craig Baker, the sergeant in charge of the undercover unit, said that I would do. I was good for surveillance. They needed more women on his team and I was perfect, nondescript, unmemorable, perhaps a tad too tall but I could mingle in a crowd, blend into a sea of faces without encouraging a second glance.

Charming. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or insulted but it didn’t matter. I got the job.

Wheel clampers notorious

When you’re due to move stations or into another role, you ideally clear up your current and outstanding cases. You also need to keep out of trouble. It’s not unusual to be posted as station officer, or gaoler, or be given some other inside position during the weeks before you move on.

I was due to go off and work incognito, so the sergeant posted me to the clamp van. I hated working the clamp van. If you want to go to Traffic or had an interest in motors, then it might be a good posting, but for those like me who preferred dealing with crime and with people, it was loathsome.

As a probationer I did my quota of traffic offences. I reported people for driving in a bus lane, for doing red lights (which I agree is very wrong), for parking on a zebra crossing and for driving a car in a dangerous condition. I did what I had to do as directed by my performance indicators. Once out of my probation, if I presented my sergeant with a traffic process book, once he had picked himself up off the floor, he knew the offence must have been something bad.

Speed kills, yes it does, but I much prefer nicking those involved with a different kind of speed. Therefore, to be posted to the clamp van was my worst nightmare. Not only did it mean getting to work for 9 a.m. and travelling during rush hour, but it also meant I’d have to upset at least thirty people a day, which I hated doing. And I went home smelling of man-van, metal and oil.

The local council ran the clamping department. It had been agreed at a high level that each clamp van should be manned by a trained clamp person (a clamper) and a police officer who had to write the tickets. I can’t remember exactly how much it cost the driver to have the clamp removed but the total cost of ticket and clamp was very expensive. The clampers were council workers not trained in people skills. Nor did they have the vetting police officers had. Some of them were great guys (there were no women clampers) but others were like bulldogs, or gorillas. Neanderthals. And I had a thirty-day posting with them.

The sergeant warned me not to put holiday leave in. ‘Just do it, Ash. And keep out of trouble.’

‘Me, sarge? I don’t know what you mean.’ Like a truculent child, I knew exactly what he meant. Keep my eyes and ears focused on the job. No running off after someone, no nabbing shoplifters who just happened to run out of a shop and into my path, no being sidetracked …

‘If you see anything, or get involved in anything, call for assistance for someone else to deal with it. You’re not getting out of clamping,’ he warned.

Clamps were huge things, all fangled metal and heavy, and I hated them. The objective was thirty a day but sometimes you did a few less, sometimes more. If you consistently did less, you’d get a bollocking. I tried to make sure I did what I had to do, but I didn’t like it.

There was an art to fixing a clamp and some of the clampers had it down to nth seconds. They had a competition to see who did it the fastest. The officer posted with them had to write out the ticket as quickly as possible, slap it onto the car windscreen and then leg it. It pleased me to be posted with a fast clamper. I hated lingering. Once the clamp was on, the only way for it to come off was for the driver to pay the fine and then the de-clamping van would turn up and take it off. We couldn’t. Or at least that’s what they always told me.

If the driver of the car appeared before we left there was often a showdown. I had sympathy but, ultimately, they shouldn’t have parked there. And they should have looked out for the clamping van. We took a lot of verbal abuse. Sometimes it was physical.

Like all cities, parking in London is very difficult and very expensive. If you find a space it’s easy to overrun your meter by a few minutes. Some people took liberties and constantly parked where they shouldn’t and they deserved to be clamped. Some folk, usually the yuppies, would deal with it as an occupational hazard. If they got clamped early in the day, they wouldn’t phone up and pay the fine until much later. They’d treat it as a parking cost and put it on expenses.

If a vehicle was parked in such a way as to cause an obstruction, we would call the towing lorry who would turn up and cart the offending vehicle off somewhere deep in south London. I had less sympathy with them. It was difficult enough to drive in London, especially driving emergency vehicles through the packed streets. If you caused an obstruction, you were fair game to be towed. A few people reported their car as stolen only to discover it had been towed off. A sharp and harsh lesson.

Some clampers took great delight in finding expensive top-of-the-range cars to clamp, and those with exclusive private registrations. If they nabbed someone famous they’d lord about it for ever. The same with fancy cars. I hated being posted with that type of clamper. We’d spend most of the time in Mayfair and the posh streets of Westminster looking for the best and biggest cars. It drove me mad and those shifts were the longest.

Every clamp van had an hour for lunch. Police officers’ breaks were constantly interrupted; you always had to be ready to drop-and-go in an instant and you frequently didn’t get a break. It was different on the clamp van. They always had a full hour. You’d either get 12–1 or 1–2 for lunch, varying it to fit in with the second van. Except for Fridays.

Every Friday lunchtime the clamp van would travel to Lambeth, pull up outside a grotty little pub and park alongside the clamp vans of other local authorities, builders’ vans and other assorted lunchtime drinkers. I suspect some CID from nearby police stations may have imbibed too, back in the day when lunchtime drinking was almost a convention.

I’d buy a takeaway coffee from the tiny café opposite the pub and sit in the clamp van with my sandwich, bag of crisps and an apple while my clamper would enjoy his hour with colleagues. I’d read the tabloid newspaper bought by the clamper that morning and I’d skip over the pages of bare-breasted ladies. I’d get ahead on the paperwork while he’d be in the pub watching the strippers.

I hated my time clamping and was so glad when I never, ever had to do it again.

Willy warmers

It’s cold on night duty. Freezing on occasion. I suggest thermals. Or thick tights. But being cold was not the reason I was knitting at four in the morning when posted as station officer.

I was station officer because I was biding my time, waiting for my posting to Surveillance and trying to keep out of trouble. I’d already had a month on the dreaded clamp van and now it was my turn on the front desk. This included fielding the drunks, redirecting the lost, and taking reports from those wishing to make complaints of thefts or lost property. After midnight it usually fell quiet.

My case files were up to date and the correspondence in my tray had been dealt with, as much as it can ever be. I’d read the daily bulletins and made regular cups of tea for the custody office and CAD room, the hub of the station where all messages were received and allocated, hence Computer Aided Despatch. I’d checked the missing persons binder and the lost dogs, of which there were none; the kennels were empty. My thumbs had been twiddled until they were sore.

As night duty was a week long, it became boring. By Wednesday I decided to take in some knitting. If I followed the pattern, I found it was one of the few craft-like things I could do without winding myself into a knot. I was knitting baby clothes for a friend of mine who was pregnant. Little mittens, socks and baby cardigans are small, easy to do and quick to make, an ideal filler during the night once the city had settled down.

At 2.30 a.m. a call came out about a disturbance in the upstairs room of an exclusive restaurant in the St James area. It was a private party that had ended with a family at war – drunken, argumentative and causing a breach of the peace. Five men and one woman were arrested. The rest of the party turned up at the front desk, irate, drunk and demanding solicitors. They insisted their loved ones had to be released, now, this instant.

My attempts at calming them down failed. The sergeant in the CAD room heard the raucous carry-on and came to my assistance. Two of them ended up arrested for causing a disturbance and swearing at the sergeant and me. One of the remaining crowd tried to reason that his family had been falsely arrested. I listened, nodded and asked him to take a seat while I made tea and coffee for them while they waited for news. Feeling generous, I threw half a packet of digestives onto the tray too.

By 4 a.m., those in the cells were sleeping, as were some of the rabble loitering in the lobby.

One of the arresting officers, Joe Fenelli, stopped by the front office for a coffee and a chat. I was busy – knit one, purl one, knit one, knit two together – working on the sleeve of a baby cardi.

‘That’s them settled down,’ he said. ‘All over a bit of posh totty.’

I laughed.

‘What you knitting, Ash? Willy warmers?’ he asked, pulling a thread of wool.

‘Hey, get off!’ I tugged it back. ‘Yeah, I got white, lemon and baby blue,’ I joked, knit knitting away.

The following morning some of the prisoners went to court for breach of the peace and the others were kicked out, sheepish and hungover.

A couple of weeks later I was issued with a Regulation 9, a form 163, that the Complaints Department (now Professional Standards) issue to give notice that someone has made a complaint about you. Everyone on duty when the Hooray Henrys were arrested was served with a 163. The whole shift had been subject to complaints from the wealthy and influential family. The allegations comprised a variety of things including unlawful arrest, insubordination and abuse of force. Mine was for ‘performance of duty’ issues.

It was alleged that while on duty I was knitting willy warmers, neglecting my post when I should have been conscientious and diligent. What nonsense. I couldn’t believe it. And to think I’d been kept inside the station to keep me out of trouble!

An independent panel was convened to interview every one of us.

‘Officer, why were you knitting at five a.m. in the morning?’ said the chap on the left.

‘It was four o’clock, sir. And I took my knitting to work because it was very quiet and nothing much was happening.’

‘During work time, officer? Surely there was some paperwork you could do? We’re always hearing about how much paperwork there is these days.’

I confidently told him, ‘All my paperwork was up to date, sir.’

He looked surprised.

The woman on the panel looked down her nose at me and said, ‘What exactly were you knitting, miss?’

I hated being called ‘Miss’.

‘Baby clothes, ma’am. For a friend. One of my colleagues, PC Fenelli, joked I was knitting willy warmers but I wasn’t, it was a baby cardigan.’

The older man on the panel woke up and said, ‘Willy warmers? What are they?’

No one answered.

I filled the uncomfortable silence by adding, ‘I was knitting the sleeve of a baby cardigan, sir. It can become tiring on night duty when you’re posted to the front desk. Nothing much happens past two in the morning during the week but we still have to man the front office. I hadn’t had a refreshment break and you can’t really expect to be relieved for an hour by another officer when it’s so quiet indoors and they are busy out on the streets. I sat and ate my sandwiches and did some knitting at my desk during what would have been my break.’

That must absolve me, surely?

I was wrong.

The lady of the bench glared at me. ‘Could you not read law books? You don’t know it all, officer. There are plenty of updates and changes in policy and law to become familiar with, I am sure.’

My quiet protestations of, ‘But that would well and truly put me to sleep!’ were ignored.

They had me.

I was given words of advice and told that in future I should read Blackstone’s police manuals during the nights when I was bored.

And to think, I’d given that family our last packet of biscuits. That’s gratitude. It put me off knitting, too. I never did finish those willy warmers.

Cut!

A few days after the willy warmers’ incident I was back on day shift and still station officer. I made the tea and coffee, checked my handover files and offered to do some typing for one of the dyslexic blokes on shift who was bogged down with his paperwork. I liked to do a good turn and as a quick typist it earned me a few favours in the bag.

I hoisted the manual typewriter onto the counter and swept to one side the bundles of flyers and vouchers that littered the front desk. These comprised the usual advice leaflets for those who find themselves homeless, for domestic violence victims, plus some small street maps and handouts for new restaurants and fancy cafés that enticed customers with generous discounts in return for reviews. Theatres did the same to fill seats at preview shows. A pair of tickets for a West End show cost just a pound. It wasn’t a gratuity because these offers were given to all offices, hotels and shops around the West End and were meant for all to enjoy the perks, police and public alike.

A flyer for Vidal Sassoon salon in Mayfair fluttered down to the floor. I picked it up. ‘Models Wanted. Free haircuts.’ It sounded perfect as I was thinking I could do with a new style for the new job. I phoned and booked my free cut for Thursday, 3.30 p.m., after the early shift finished.

Thursday was uneventful on the front desk and I arrived keen and eager at the hairdresser’s. I signed the consent form, rather chuffed to be having my hair cut at a place I would never usually be able to afford. I skimmed the small print and sat down, unconcerned. It’s only hair, right? It grows back.

My hair was shoulder-length with layers of rotten half curls, hanging limp at the ends. It was time to shed the remnants of a shaggy perm. I needed a new look. Being out of uniform meant no more pinning it up beneath a police hat and it could fly free.

Hairdressers from all over the world came to Vidal Sassoon to be trained and to learn new techniques. A male hairdresser from Chicago was assigned to me, under the guidance of Gideon, his tutor.

‘Perfect!’ said Gideon. ‘And you’ve agreed the terms? That we can do whatever we like? And take pictures to use in advertising if we so wish?’

‘Oh yes, I’m quite looking forward to it,’ I smiled.

He didn’t smile back. ‘As long as you’re prepared. There’s no going back. And no suing us.’

‘Absolutely,’ I nodded, a tad too trusting.

The two men tugged and pulled my hair and entered a technical discussion that was beyond my ken. I started to feel a bit concerned as they discussed how my hair needed treatment to gain back lustre.

I glanced to my left and saw a beautiful girl in her early twenties with long blonde hair and symmetrical features. She could have been a model. Might have been a model. A real one. I felt a tingling creeping up the back of my neck when I saw her hairdresser take a razor to her head. She was being scalped! It was only then it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to be given a conventional cut. Oh dear. Could I take my leave?

When I came back from an intense conditioning treatment, my pretty neighbour was all-over bald. I could have cried for her. I couldn’t understand why she was smiling. Maybe she wanted a total change. Maybe she had been given a modelling job, or was an actress that needed a bald head for the part? Maybe she had cancer and wanted it cut off before it fell out?

I felt uncomfortable as I glanced away and out of the window. I noticed two of my uniformed colleagues talking to a motorist who did not look happy. I shrank further down in my chair, hoping they wouldn’t glance in and see me.

A rumpus erupted outside and the suspect ended up with his arms behind his back, handcuffed.

My hairdresser picked up his scissors and watched the commotion. ‘I see cops are the same on both sides of the pond, honey,’ he drawled.

‘Mmm.’

‘Too many innocent motorists getting popped when these guys should be out catching real criminals,’ he said, chopping a wedge from my hair.

‘Mmm!’ I didn’t like the way this conversation was going.

‘At least your cops don’t have guns, like ours.’ Chop. Chop.

‘No, that’s a good thing,’ I agreed, glad of something positive to say.

‘You’d think they’d have better things to do than hassle people parking for too long. Not as if he’s an armed robber, is it?’ Chop. Snip. Hack.

I bit the inside of my lip. Who knew what they were arresting him for? He might have committed murder for all we knew.

‘Who would do a job like that? Sick in the head if you ask me.’

I didn’t ask him but maybe I was sick in the head – for agreeing to be a patsy for a hairdresser from a fancy salon.

‘So honey, what is it you do?’ he asked.

Wide-eyed and impotent, I looked back at him from the mirror in front of me. I tried not to notice my depleting locks. ‘Oh, I work in an office. Just around the corner. Boring, nothing exciting,’ I spurted out, coward-like and quivering.

‘Let’s see if we can liven up your life a little then, yeah? I think a streak of purple at the front with a long fringe hanging to the side. Short at the back.’

I tried to avoid looking out of the window. I didn’t want anyone to recognise me and wave. I didn’t fancy being a baldy or having any other revenge cut by someone who loathed the police.

I was relieved when I saw the van pull up and take the prisoner away. I relaxed a little, until I looked in the mirror. What the hell had I agreed to?

I left the salon with dark purple hair, which I had to admit was better than one streak, but I’d certainly stand out working undercover with this colour. I doubted my boss would be happy. It was chopped short at the back and the hairline was cut fashionably raggy, according to Gideon. I had a long pointed fringe that hung down to the right but as I’d forever had a right-hand parting, never a left, it felt odd. I didn’t suit my hair hanging down and for years I’d worn it behind my ears, not in front. If I were little instead of large, I’d have looked like an elf.

The salon photographer had taken a couple of pictures and I have no idea if any were ever used. I’ve never had the stomach to look in any hairdressing magazines.

The next day I took a trip to my regular salon and had it tidied up, which is what I should have done in the first instance.

Therein lie a couple more of life’s lessons:

1) Sometimes it’s necessary to lie and 2) there’s no such thing as a free haircut.

House bugs and other nasty things

There is so much to learn when working undercover, aside from surveillance techniques. Of course I’m not going to reveal tactics and practical working methods, though I’ll let you into some of the more interesting aspects of the job. But first, before any of that, there is a huge amount of law and protocol to understand and adhere to. If you don’t know it, you can’t work with it.

RIPA, The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000, governs the use of covert (undercover) operations. Prior to RIPA, 2000, permission for such jobs fell under different regulations, but today these operations require the highest authority. Chief constables are vested with the power to authorise officers to use directed surveillance, to tap phones, intercept mail and email, to put bugs in houses, cameras in offices and so on. It has to be necessary and either in the interests of national security, for the prevention and detection of crime, or to prevent disorder or otherwise in the interests of public safety. There are other reasons but these are the main reasons police use such operations.

Chief constables delegate to high-ranking senior officers, normally the head of the crime department, a commander or chief superintendent, or whoever the relevant force policy dictates at the time. The sorts of offences investigated using covert surveillance are serious crime such as murder, paedophile rings, high-scale drug dealing, major fraud, armed robbery and national security. It can prove and disprove someone’s guilt. It’s expensive and time consuming, the operations long and arduous. And it doesn’t always bring results. Before resorting to covert surveillance methods evidence should be gathered another way, if at all possible.

Barristers and judges are, as you would expect, hot on RIPA and the use of it. It has to be sound, justified and significant. It will be tested in the courtroom and evidence will be dismissed if it hasn’t been gathered and recorded correctly. There is no room for error.

Specialist officers are assigned to plant the bugs, cameras and other devices. Justifying the expense is a major headache for the budget holders and, of course, it is a factor that influences decision-making. The easiest, and probably cheapest, method is a phone tap. A boring job but someone has to do it, listening in to phone calls.

House bugs helped us to secure a conviction for a couple that had systematically abused their baby. The father got a life sentence when the child died and the recorded conversations in the couple’s kitchen were invaluable in proving his guilt.

Phone calls nabbed a national paedophile ring that planned to kidnap a nine-year-old girl.

Many a bad cop has been rooted out through intrusive and covert surveillance and in those cases the judge highly commended the use of covert ops.

The general public think the police can do more and know more than they actually do, so if you think they’re watching you, they probably aren’t. But it might be the DSS, or the NHS, or the Tax Office, or the Local Authority, or Customs, or one of many other organisations covered by RIPA …

Who’s there?

When I joined the surveillance team I found that undercover work is 90 per cent boredom and 2 per cent action. But, oh, what action! The other bits of the job involved meetings, briefings and admin. We did a lot of sitting around in cars. We would sit up in buildings, on park benches, and traipse and trawl the streets. Occasionally we had to mingle, mix with suspects, and pretend to be someone we weren’t. It was a bit like acting, but not at all like it’s portrayed on the screen. It was also dangerous and addictive and far from a nine-to-five job, or foot patrol.

Surveillance units function locally, regionally and nationally, often overlapping, working together on joint operations that include phone tapping, house bugging, following people and accessing information on suspects, as per RIPA and other legislation. Our job was to gather information, intelligence and evidence, to find out what we could about suspects, the things they did and who they mixed with, and also to build up a profile of them. Sometimes we’d be given dossiers on criminals and we had to do the rest of the legwork, tracing and tracking them and monitoring their every move. We didn’t often get in on the arrests, either. We would assist these bigger inquiries and investigations and pass the information back to source once the objectives were achieved. We also worked on our own cases. And although it could be monotonous, trailing someone who didn’t do much for hours, you always had to keep sharp. A foot wrong and cover would be blown; you’d lose the whole thing, making it a costly and botched operation.

A lot of long hours are spent working closely with colleagues of the opposite sex. You’re in situations where you have to depend on each other entirely and trust is essential. It’s not unusual to form close friendships that, even if innocent, threaten personal relationships. The unpredictable lifestyle, having to drop everything to go off on a job, not knowing when you’ll return, can be a strain. I was fortunate, I suppose, that during my years working undercover and in plain clothes, I didn’t live with a partner.

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