The Follow

Sally leaned over with a cup of tea as a waft of her perfume tickled my nose.

‘Thanks, Sally. How was the film last night?’ I vaguely remembered that she had been going out with one of the string of boyfriends that treated her like shit, despite our regular advice about the type of man she should go for.

‘Yeah, it was okay, but Darren made me pay for the film and dinner again. He’s such a jerk!’

Another voice floated over the partition, and I swung round to see Kevin Sands, one of the three detective sergeants that run the office, leaning casually against a nearby pillar.

‘Sally, I’ve told you before, all you have to do is dump him, and I’ll kick Mrs Sands out. You can have her half of the bed.’

From anyone else it would be harassment, but Kev has the ability to be rude, sexist, and generally as non-PC as you can get, yet make it clear that he doesn’t mean any of it. He had spent more than thirty years in the force and came back on the ‘thirty plus’ deal, which meant that he could do another five years. He’s one of the funniest men I have ever met. Not only does he have a mind that’s more devious than a politician’s, he has comic timing that Bill Bailey would kill for.

Sally laughed at him and went back to her desk while Sands took the empty chair at the desk behind mine.

‘You all ready for court this morning, Gareth?’ he asked, trying unsuccessfully to press the height lever on my chair with his foot.

I nodded. ‘I think so. What’s not to be ready for? I saw him stab Jimmy; if I’d been any closer I would have been the one that got stabbed.’ Just the memory of it made me angry, seeing again the look of pleasure on Davey’s face as he jammed the knife into Jimmy’s chest.

It’s a common misconception that most stabbings are done with combat knives. Nine out of ten are done with kitchen knives that you can pick up in almost any store for a few quid. Every other car I’ve stopped in my career has one tucked somewhere, whether it be in a tool box or hidden under the driver’s seat. But they rarely get turned on us.

‘Come on now,’ Kev said, obviously seeing my faraway look. ‘You know the drill; just concentrate on the questions they ask you and don’t babble. Answer “yes” or “no” if you can, and don’t try to explain unless you think they’re trying to lead you. Not that I’m trying to teach you to suck eggs.’

I smiled, appreciating the pep talk. I’d been to court dozens of times but each time I still got stage fright, especially in crown. Not only did you have a judge, the defendant and the lawyers to deal with, but you also had twelve members of the public staring at you, trying to decide if they believed you or not.

One of the first things I had learned about court was that your evidence didn’t matter if you didn’t come across well. If you could convince the jury that you were solid, dependable and honest, they would believe you if you told them that the sky was green. If they thought you were bent, however, the case was lost no matter how compelling the evidence. You may think that’s an exaggeration, but trust me it isn’t. I’ve seen watertight cases lost because an officer got a bad bout of nerves and mumbled their evidence like they didn’t know what they were saying.

‘Oi, wake up,’ Kev said, leaning forward and pinching the fleshy bit of my arm above the triceps hard enough to make me yelp.

‘Ouch, that’s assault!’ I complained as he got up and ambled out of the pod, studiously ignoring me. I shook my head and turned back to finish the reports, hurrying as I glanced at the clock and saw that I had to be in court in little less than an hour.

2 (#uedf78121-241a-5bd5-a263-8ce3572030ba)

Hove Crown Court looks more like a library than a courthouse from the outside, with dark brown brick and dirty white walls. It’s situated on the corner of Holland Road, with no parking for anyone other than workers, and it sits several streets away from any of the bus routes. It is as convenient and well thought out as the rest of the justice system.

I paced up and down in the police waiting room trying not to annoy DI Jones, the officer in charge of the case. Normally, the OIC was a detective constable but, since it was a police officer who had been stabbed, they’d bumped it all the way up to an inspector.

She looked very smart in a no-nonsense trouser suit, with her hair scraped back into a tight bun and just a hint of make-up to hide the strain of a four-week court case. She sighed as I walked past her for the eighth time in the tiny room.

‘Gareth, can you please sit down?’ she asked, looking threateningly at me over her glasses.

‘Sorry, ma’am, I’m just nervous. I want him to go down and I’m a bit wound up.’

‘We all want him to go down, Gareth. But right now I’m trying to read through the file and you’re putting me off.’

I stopped pacing and stood in front of the mirror, checking myself for the twentieth time since I’d been in the room. I’m not used to wearing a suit and it had felt strange to be looking smart. I’d chosen a grey double-breasted affair with a lavender shirt and tie, and was extremely grateful that I’d remembered to shave that morning. Usually I don’t, due to the fact that a few days’ stubble makes you look less like a police officer when you’re on the streets. I hadn’t, however, managed to get my hair cut and my brown locks were getting long enough that they were starting to curl over my ears.

The door opened and a court usher stepped in, the black gown looking strange over the security-style uniform she wore underneath.

‘PC Bell?’

‘Here,’ I said, sounding like a naughty schoolboy as the nerves made my palms sweat and my stomach flip over.

‘They’re ready for you now. Would you like to swear or affirm?’

‘Affirm, please.’ Not that I have a problem with swearing on the Bible, but not being religious, it had felt to me like I would be lying from the outset, which isn’t a good frame of mind in court.

She led me across the corridor and into the court, situated right at the back of the building on the top floor. As I entered, I headed towards the stand, nodding at both the judge and jury as I went in.

Once I had been safely escorted to my position, the usher placed a card in my hand and I read the words with barely a quiver in my voice. ‘I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

As I introduced myself, I let my eyes drift around the courtroom, taking in the jury, all trying to look thoughtful and solemn, the barristers in their ridiculous gowns and wigs, and Quentin Davey himself, secure behind a Perspex screen.

Davey was staring at me intently, with a half-smile that I didn’t like playing around his lips. Although not an imposing man at five feet six inches, four inches shorter than me and only half my build, there was an air about him that had made the hackles rise on the back of my neck. He has a blatant disregard for anyone or anything else, and that shows in almost everything he does.

I once jumped one of his runners, Peter Finn, a heroin user trusted just enough to sell small amounts of the drug for Davey, and had arrested Finn and seized the five bags of heroin he had left on him. For the loss of the £50 the drugs would have made, Davey had thrown an entire kettle of boiling water into Finn’s face, disfiguring him for life. Try as we might to get Finn to prosecute, some kind of twisted loyalty, or maybe just fear, had held him and he still works for Davey even to this day.

The man that would scar someone for life and stab a copper was staring at me and trying not to laugh. He had to have something up his sleeve that I hadn’t thought of, but what?

‘PC Bell, did you get enough sleep last night?’ The judge’s voice brought my head round with an almost audible snap.

‘I’m sorry, Your Honour, I was just looking at the man who stabbed my partner.’ When lost, confused or cornered, go for the throat.

The defence barrister shot out of his seat like a cork out of a bottle. ‘Objection!’ he called, putting one hand to the wig that had nearly slipped off during his heroic launch.

‘Sustained,’ said the judge, one that unfortunately I didn’t recognize. ‘PC Bell, I don’t want you leading the jury with unsolicited statements, am I clear?’

‘Yes, Your Honour.’ I did my best to sound repentant, but I could see a few members of the jury giving me looks of approval. Strike one.

After my little outburst, I was first given to the prosecution barrister, who very neatly led me through my statement asking no awkward questions, but instead asking me regularly how I felt as I first subdued Jimmy’s assailant and then applied the first aid that had saved my colleague’s life. I spoke vividly of the minutes I waited for the ambulance, my hands covered in Jimmy’s blood as I held a credit card to the outside of his chest to prevent the lung from collapsing as it filled with fluid.

I told the jury about the looks and threats that Davey had thrown at us as I laboured to save Jimmy’s life, about his laughter rolling over me as I was busy keeping my friend alive.

I told them about the blood that had flowed down Hollingdean Road like a flood, staining the pavement while the ambulance crew worked on Jimmy, trying to stop the bleeding before they moved him. I knew as I glanced at the jury that I had them. I could feel tears in my eyes as I finished, and my fingers were white as they gripped the edge of the box. I glared at Davey as if daring him to challenge anything I’d said but he just looked right back at me, his thin face still struggling not to break into a grin.

Soon enough it was the defence barrister’s turn to question me, and he began without preamble. ‘PC Bell, am I right in thinking that it was you who seized the knife in question, after PC Holdsworth had been removed in the ambulance?’

‘That’s correct.’ I didn’t like his tone; he sounded like he was about to unleash something nasty at me.

‘And did you follow the correct procedure when you seized this knife?’

‘Yes, I did. I placed it in a knife tube, sealed the tube and wrote out an exhibit label, which I then applied to the tube. I then placed it all in a clear plastic bag which I sealed with a cable tie.’

‘So, PC Bell, would you say that you are confident that the tube has not been opened since you sealed it?’

I thought for a second, realizing that the only option the barrister had was to discredit the evidence; the rest of the case was too strong to touch. ‘I haven’t had hands on the tube since it went into the store at John Street. I would have no way of knowing, but I presume that if someone had opened it then they would have followed the correct procedure.’

Let him work his way around that and still find a way to blame me for whatever was coming.

‘Your Honour, I would like to produce exhibit GB/250308/1355, which should be a black-handled kitchen knife, stained with the blood of PC Holdsworth.’