Citizen Survivor Tales (The Ministry of Survivors) (7 page)

What do you think young Alfie, the day-dreaming bookworm of the merchant navy would think of Viscount Sark?

I think, I think young Alfie, and his world, died with his mates the day that Old Sally was sunk.

Alfie Stark was in tears by the end of this interview, but whether they were real or those of the reptile he really is just under the skin, is anyone’s guess. Cliveden is certainly a lovely setting and who wouldn’t want to be lord of all they survey? But as for an improvement in the lot of the workers – as always, regular reader, it is up to you to decide. And perhaps add Alfie Stark and his myrmidons to the list of people to check should any harm come to me or mine.

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Mr. Arnold, a known criminal, gave a detailed account of what had lead him to contact
PC Pugh
. He did not take the situation seriously and appeared to find it amusing. He rambled about delusional stories of
police abuse
and
corruption
and claimed that his earlier arrest by
PC Pugh
was an
unlawful arrest
,
abuse of process
and act an of
misconduct in public office
.

Mr. Arnold is clearly very clever and well aware of the offences he has committed but disturbingly expresses no remorse for them.

He has been provided bail on the condition that he does not contact any
officer of
Warwickshire and Coventry Constabulary
, particularly his victim,
PC Pugh
.

When questioned if Mr. Arnold posed a risk to children, he became extremely
agitated
and
defensive
, most likely an admission of guilt.
Police Constable PUGH
(FORWARDED TO PROSECUTION)

THE POLICEMAN

Name: Bill Dixon
Location: Bidford-on-Avon
Occupation: Police Officer (retired)
Threat level: 3
Article clearance: Silver
Case file: 12/2999/GBL

I was fortunate to be able to interview ex-police officer Dixon, as most people who have held official positions are excluded from all contact with any press or media of any description. However, through some administrative glitch, all too common these days but often working in the favour of the wrong (or in this case, right) person, I was granted permission and the interview below is the result. Excuse in advance, regular reader, the rather pedantic content; Mr Dixon seems unable to just ‘go’ somewhere, without proceeding in a northerly (or whichever is appropriate) direction. I have tried my best to weed out his more byzantine sentences; with how much success, you must be my judge.

Thank you for speaking to me, Mr Dixon.

My pleasure, call me Bill. Old Bill actually. Due to my age that was my nickname. I always wanted to be a policeman since I was a boy, like my father before me, so I was delighted when I was accepted into Warwickshire and Coventry Constabulary. Luckily I had the height, and the moustache to pull it off!

What was it like being a policeman in the early days?

It was a bloody nightmare, thank you for asking. When war broke out, all the Borstal boys who’d served six months were released, along with any inmate up and down the country who only had three months or less to serve on their sentences. The chaps at the station weren’t pleased with that, no, not pleased at all. The war thinned our ranks considerably, believe it or not, down some fifty percent, I believe it was, within very few months. We tried to play it down, but the villains soon cottoned on to the fact. Jewellery, that was one of the big ones, robbing jewellers, having the bottle to do it in the cold light of day so confident were they. We were kept busy morning, noon and night, though I won't lie to you, the overtime came in handy. Our wives got used to not seeing us too often and there were those who in the end decided they didn’t want to see us at all. Oh, yes, very high separation rate there was in the Force in those early years. Course, I was already too old for that kind of shenanigans. My wife, she’d shut up shop in that respect years before, so no loss to me. But yes, the overtime came in handy.

The main headache, as I’m sure you can guess, was bombings and blackouts. Criminals loved a blackout, you can use your imagination to guess what sort of things they could get away with in pitch black. If we were lucky, it was a gangster using it to get revenge on one of his ilk, if not, it was some innocent. It’s one thing to be able to tell the difference between the bombs and a murder when the smoke clears, it’s another to be able to deal with it.

When the air raid sirens went, that meant two things. First, obviously that bombs were probably coming our way and second, the thieves would be out. The villains loved that sound, it meant the streets would be empty. I remember one time, and we never caught him, there was one lad, with an ARP armband and helmet who was smashed his way into a store and was loading up a van as bombs were falling only a mile or so away and the air was thick with smoke. The funniest thing, and I suppose I have to admire him in his way, he’d even convinced a couple to help him load up the van, must have told them he was taking the goods for safekeeping or some nonsense. He drove off before I could get to him.

Another time, and you’ll have to forgive me for this, I remember a butcher’s shop taking a direct hit, people were in there. The scum was rummaging around stealing the meat, but, it wasn’t always clear to me what was meat and what was, you know, human remains.

Coupons, the blaggards loved coupons, clothing coupons, petrol coupons. They’d get their hands on these in any way they could, trading them for people who had no use for their cars, back-handers from dodgy shopkeepers, even taking them right from the warehouses. And spivs, don’t get me started on them, pencil-moustaches, pin-striped suits, trilby hats. Absolute cads and womanisers, suitcases bulging with stockings, sugar, saucy pictures, tobacco, alcohol. All ‘fallen off the back of a lorry’ of course.

Did you and your colleagues feel able to cope with this new crime?

It became very difficult, as a policeman, even if we’d never say it; you need to know when to deal with something and when to turn a blind eye. People looting shops hit by the bombs, mixed with, and often the same people clearing the rubble, was one of them. Firemen were terrible for it, I remember a house on fire and the firemen were climbing down the ladder, singing their hearts out, wearing fur coats and jewellery over their uniforms, the men holding the ladders laughing their heads off. We’d look away with things like that. Due to the alcohol shortage, people were brewing ‘Hooch’, god that’d blow your socks off and you could tell when someone had had a snifter of that, but drunkards more often than not, weren’t worth the time.

Stealing wallets, purses, wedding rings straight from the dead, that was the worst, something I could never stomach and you can believe me when I tell you we’d deal with those we caught doing that in the manner it deserved. Business owners dreaded the air-raid sirens, knowing the villains would do more damage than the bombs often did. Shop windows covered in plywood and boarded up only took moments for a seasoned robber to get past.

How widespread do you think corruption was?

Corruption was everywhere, few people came out of all that clean, I’m afraid. Even doctors, yes that’s right doctors, they’d sign people off, for a price, for those who didn’t want to be called up, forging certificates, diagnosing wounds and illnesses that weren’t there and there was simply too much chaos and anarchy to deal with all that, all the time. And the thing about corruption is, when one person sees another get away and profit from corruption without repercussion, it encourages them to do the same.

Genuine businessmen, with contracts with the government, they’d fiddle their books, make out they were employing people who didn’t exist or didn’t work for them just to get their pay packets, sharing it with their ghost-workers who were real, pocketing it themselves for those who weren’t. Our children, who were evacuated to the countryside, the families that took them in were even guilty. Claiming billets for children that didn’t exist!

The government would compensate those who had their homes bombed by the Luftwaffe, one cheeky sod claimed his home had been bombed a dozen times! We nicked him, but others were doing it all the time and the Government was drowning under paperwork working out who was genuine and who wasn’t.

How did this affect you personally? Did you think these criminals were evil?

Did it affect me? Yes, yes, it’s fair to say I lost a lot of faith in people in those days, can I blame them? No, not at all, but it doesn’t make it right.

The trouble with evil, and good, is that they are absolutes. Life doesn’t work like that. We are all of us good and evil in our own ways, they aren’t permanent homes, it is a sliding scale each of us moves up and down every day, based on our actions. A youngster poaching or stealing some bread for his siblings, he’s a criminal isn’t he? A man murdering his wife in cold blood of course is a criminal too. A policeman battering a lad to death for a crime he wasn’t even sure he committed, he’s a criminal. Everyone has a different angle of looking at it, a different cut-off point. You’ve got to remember, and it took me a long time to learn this, the police, the police courts, they’re not about justice, they’re about order. They are two very different things. Justice is a dream, an ideal, there’s too much injustice I’ve seen to be convinced otherwise. Order, that’s easier, punishing people for crimes, keeping discipline, and if a few innocent people get caught up in that, well, their voices are soon drowned out.

Do you think the police’s integrity was affected?

Oh yes, without a doubt, in every sense. There was a lot of frustration at the station. I remember one young officer telling the Sergeant a young girl had reported being raped. He was very angry, very frustrated with all that was happening, his face was bright red and he slammed his fist on the lad’s desk, ‘Bloody nick her,’ he screamed. So we did, there she was, a young girl who was raped was arrested and accused of making it up and wasting police time, ‘This is what happens we you lie,’ we said. Think she tried to kill herself in the end. The Sergeant and the chiefs didn’t seem to care who was getting nicked and convicted, and on what grounds, as long as someone was getting their collar felt. Once these poor sods were in front of the magistrates they were easy pickings, they didn’t have a chance against the Police Inspectors.

We covered up for each other. At the time I thought it was a force for good, but I realised how wrong we were, there was one officer who was a womaniser and an adulterer, sleeping with wives whose husbands were off fighting. Well, one day, the husband came home unexpectedly and the officer jumped from a second storey window and broke his leg. We made out he injured himself chasing down the husband who was mugging a neighbour, he got a pasting. I remember one time, someone had made a complaint about one of the officers and, as you can imagine, we don’t look favourably on those who complain about us. He was protesting that he’d been treated unjustly, his earlier arrest was unlawful and his interview was biased and abusive. Do you know what we did? We went through his complaint with a fine-tooth comb, looking for anything to nick him for, and we did. We nicked him for harassment of a police officer, we locked him up in custody without food or drink, freezing his arse off in the cell. That, well, that was the first time I was ashamed. I don’t pretend to be a saint, policemen will always look out for each other, ‘Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good prosecution’; ‘Always choose loyalty over honesty’; and ‘Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas’; I knew the game. But when I saw that chap, stunned and confused, being lead into custody, clearly no idea what he was doing there, simply for complaining, as was his right, about a police officer. When he was in his cell, they blasted ‘The Laughing Policeman’ into his cell over and over. It wasn’t only immoral, it was inhuman. That was the first time I took a step back, and knew we’d gone too far.

How did things change for you?

After that, my mind became clearer, I was acutely aware of everything we were doing wrong, but what could I do about it? Being a copper and complaining about your own is a death sentence, trust me. I remember seeing some graffiti on a ruined building saying ‘The Old Bill are not your friends! Say nothing!’ and I realised this is what a substantial number of people thought of us. You see, being a policeman is to be an actor really, you have to believe it, and your audience have to believe it, if either of those parts breaks down then the whole facade comes crashing down.

We weren’t above the law, we
were
the law, and if anyone dared speak out or complain, well, we were the ones who dealt with those complaints, and why on earth would we give attention to anyone that was going to condemn our own?

The way people were treated by us, well, it was on a coin toss really, if we couldn’t be bothered then you’d be fine. If we’d had a bad day or wanted to take our frustrations out on anyone, then, well, we were judge and jury. If we wanted to nick someone, we would, it’s easy, too easy. You just need to poke, prod and antagonise them until they do or say something you can lift them for, it’s just a matter of time. We had a journalist once, who spoke up against the Constabulary, we brought him into the station for ‘an informal chat’, made him didn’t think he needed a solicitor. Kept chipping, chipping away it him, ‘You’re obviously very clever and good at hiding your tracks, we’re very disturbed you have access to children’ we said. That riled him, when he challenged us, well, we had him for harassment of a police officer and you can get away with treating criminals like second class citizens. I remember a group of young lads on a street corner who matched the description of some shoplifters, we went up to them and gave them all a thump. One of the lads tried to fight back, so, with assault of a police officer now committed, we beat him with our truncheons. Do you know what our nickname became among the young lads? The Black and Blues, quite imaginative really, because that was the state anyone we didn’t take a liking to ended up. Being a policeman, particularly through what Coventry was suffering, should have been about fair play rather than the technicalities of breaching the peace and the desire to feel collars. One officer could give a man a verbal warning, and if another officer didn’t like the look of him, he’d go back the next day and nick him anyway. We lost a lot of respect in the community, and I cannot blame them for it.

As the situation in Coventry got worse, and order was breaking down, we were given more and more rule to apply the law as we saw fit and, well, we fell. We lost all our moral fibre. We became more like an armed gang than anything else. Corruption amongst the police was ignored and seen as acceptable in the circumstances. There was once thirty or so of us scrapping in the streets with a gang of about twenty lads and I remember thinking ‘What is going on?’ Had we backed these lads into a corner so much, made them so desperate, did they despise us so much that they were willing to brawl in the street with us like we were a common street gang? I remember one of my colleagues laughing afterwards, patting me on the back and saying ‘Nice bit of overtime there.’

Often I’d see people being taken off in the back of a police van, not sure the usual sort, but women and children too. I’d ask where they were going, ‘Don’t concern yourself,’ was the Sergeant’s response.