Starting Over

This was what Keith was good at. This was where he excelled. We drove around slowly, the lady still upset on the back seat, until we were passing a tube station where some kids in school uniform were talking to a skinny guy in his twenties. He had a scabby pallor about him that marked him as a heroin addict.

‘He’s not eating his greens, is he?’ observed Keith, stopping on a double-yellow line. When we got out of the motor and moved closer to the little crowd, I could see how scared the school kids were. The suspect had one hand in the pocket of his shabby parka, and held the other palm outstretched to the school kids. One of them was giving him an iPod. Keith chuckled as he put his arm around the suspect’s shoulder.

‘What’s going on here then?’ he said.

The suspect looked at him with a start. ‘Just listening to some music, officer.’ He handed back the iPod and made to bolt, but Keith’s friendly arm held him in place.

Keith was nodding. ‘Downloading a few banging tunes, are we?’ He nodded at the iPod. ‘What you got on there? Bit of garage? Bit of Shirley Bassey? I’m a Clash fan myself.’ He looked at the frightened faces of the schoolchildren. ‘Never heard of The Clash? What do they teach you at these schools?’ He made a small gesture with his head. ‘Better run off and do some homework.’

They scarpered. The suspect made one last effort to get away. Keith embraced him tighter.

‘Not you, moonbeam,’ he said. ‘You’ve got detention.’

With his free hand, Keith reached into the parka and pulled out a screwdriver. The metal had been sharpened to a vicious point.

‘That’s what he waved in my face,’ said the woman. She wasn’t crying now.

Keith considered the screwdriver. ‘Planning a bit of woodwork, are we? Knocking up a few dovetail joints?’

I went through the rest of his pockets. Each one produced a mobile phone. When the lady found the one that belonged to her, Keith told her to get into the car and wait. She didn’t move.

Keith pulled the thief under a sign that said NO ENTRY and into the tube station. The lady and I followed them. I could hear the trains rumbling far below us. Keith slammed him back against the wall and gave him a slap across the cheek.

‘Stealing someone’s pictures of their children,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that’s very nice.’

‘You can’t do that,’ the suspect said. ‘That’s police brutality.’

‘I can do what I like if you resist arrest,’ Keith said. ‘Did you see him resisting arrest, DI Smith?’

‘It was appalling, DI Jones,’ I said.

‘I know my rights,’ the suspect said. ‘I want my lawyer.’

‘Yeah, call your lawyer,’ Keith agreed. ‘Get him down here from the EU Court of Human Rights.’ His face was getting red again. ‘I’ll give him a good hiding too.’ Then he thought of something. ‘But you can’t call your lawyer, can you? You haven’t got any stolen phones left.’

The lady was standing by his side. ‘Can I have a go?’ she said.

Keith was expansive. ‘Be my guest!’

He held the suspect’s collar while the woman’s open palm crashed against his unshaven cheek. For the first time, she smiled.

‘How did that feel?’ Keith said. ‘It looked like it felt pretty good.’

‘It felt very good,’ the lady said. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘Oh, you’re welcome,’ Keith said politely. He began dragging the suspect to the car. The lady went back at him for seconds, but I gently restrained her. I was already thinking about the Himalayas of paperwork we were going to have to climb, but when we got to the street Keith let him go, like a fisherman throwing back a little one, chuckling as the suspect dashed into the crowds.

‘Not taking him in?’ I said.

Keith shook his head. ‘What’s the point? So in six months’ time some judge can give him community service? It’s not worth the wait.’ He pulled open the driver’s door and I went round the other side. ‘He’s not going to show his face around here again,’ Keith said over the roof. ‘Probably going to devote himself to good works.’

And when we got into the car, the lady opened up her mobile phone and showed us the pictures of her children.

By the middle of the afternoon, I was kidding myself. By the middle of the afternoon, I thought that I was a real policeman again. And that’s when we saw the patrol car.

It was parked in front of a derelict building, its yellow-and-blue Battenburg markings the only splash of colour on the street. I recognised it as a BMW 530iD, an ARV – armed-response vehicle. There were three cops in uniform crouching behind it, looking up at the building. Keith parked the car and we strolled over to them.

There were two constables, one of them a girl, and an inspector, the double silver pips of his rank shining on both epaulettes. He looked at us and then looked away, unimpressed. Keith and I smiled at each other.

It is a popular misconception that plain-clothes policemen are somehow higher-ranking than coppers in uniform. In fact, we all operate within exactly the same command structure as everyone else. So Keith and I outranked the two young police constables, but our balls were no bigger than the ones on the uniformed inspector. And didn’t he want to let us know it.

‘I bet he knows his way around a stapler,’ Keith said to me, making no attempt to lower his voice. ‘Bloody chimps.’ Chimps were coppers who were Completely Hopeless In Most Policing Situations. ‘Do you think the chimp’s got his own biro?’ Keith cackled.

‘There’s a man in that building with a firearm,’ the inspector said without turning round. ‘Name of Rainbow Ron. You might want to get your heads down before he blows them off.’

‘Who’s Rainbow Ron when he’s at home?’ said Keith.

I looked at the uniformed inspector. He probably had a degree. I had five O-levels from my local comprehensive and Keith might have had a certificate for swimming his width, although I wouldn’t swear to it. I coughed for a bit and then pulled out my cigarettes. Keith and I were just lighting up when there was the crack of a shot. We scooted down behind the patrol car. The inspector was screaming.

‘He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!’

‘Get away, Sherlock,’ Keith muttered.

Seeing us all hiding behind the Beemer, a young man at the end of the street began shouting abuse. Pigs this and filth that. The usual material. He was what we in the trade call a hundred-yard hero: a citizen who hurls insults at the police from a safe distance. Keith and I stared at him for a bit and then I noticed something glinting in the gutter. I crawled across to it and picked it up. It looked like a tiny silver mushroom. I handed it to Keith and he began to laugh.

‘That’s a pellet from a .22 air rifle,’ I said.

Keith wiped away tears of mirth. ‘So do you think we can rule out al-Qaeda?’

We stood up. Keith handed the pellet to the uniformed inspector. ‘A souvenir of your first shoot-out,’ he said. We began walking towards the derelict house. ‘Come out with your hands up,’ I shouted, as though I was not a canteen cowboy. ‘Or I’ll stuff that pop-gun right up your rectal passage.’

A bearded man appeared in the doorway of the house, gripping an air rifle by its stock. There were a few steps leading up to the front door and he stopped there, staring down at us. His hair was wild and matted and he was wearing an old trenchcoat. We stopped.

‘Rainbow Ron,’ said Keith. ‘Probably an alias. Drop your water pistol, sonny.’

He could have been a vagrant or a runaway from a funny farm. Either way, he looked like someone with hardly anything to lose. Then, just as I started to feel the fear in my breathing, he threw the air rifle down the stairs. Keith stooped to pick it up. I kept my eyes on Rainbow Ron, and saw his gaze sweep down the street and fix on something. I turned to see what he was looking at. It was some old dear coming slowly down the street, on her way to the supermarket to blow her pension on two cans of cat food. Rainbow Ron started down the steps. I took a quick look over my shoulder; the uniforms were still behind their motor, peeking out at the action. The old woman kept coming, muttering away to herself. I held up my hand. She didn’t see me. She was getting closer. I held my hand up higher and shouted a warning. She must have had the volume on her deaf-aid turned down low, because she didn’t stop. Rainbow Ron reached the bottom of the steps as Keith straightened up, looking at the air rifle in his hand, and the old lady shuffled between us. I saw Rainbow Ron slip one of his dirty paws inside his trenchcoat.

And I thought – knife?

‘Ah, that’s not a gun,’ Keith said, smiling affectionately at the air rifle and looking up to see what I saw at exactly the same moment – the snub-nosed handgun that Rainbow Ron had magically produced from somewhere inside his coat. ‘But stone me,’ Keith added, diving sideways. ‘That is.’

Then Rainbow Ron had the old lady by her fake-fur collar and he was screaming at us to stay back, waving his black handgun in her face, and Keith and I had our hands above our heads and we were shouting at him to just calm down, calm down, and behind us I could hear the uniformed inspector calling for backup on his radio and in the distance the hundred-yard hero was going hysterical.

I looked at the eyes of Rainbow Ron blazing like the winner of a Charles Manson lookalike contest from behind his greasy fringe.

He looked stuffed and cuffed, jail no bail, going down for sure, and that made him dangerous. I took a step back. And then he flung the old lady forward, sending her sprawling, and I felt my blood surge to boiling point.

Then he was off. Back up the steps and into the house. We gave chase. He went up the stairs and he kept going. We followed. But by the time we reached the second floor, Keith was dropping behind, clutching his ribs and gasping for breath.