Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes (4 page)

Another unpleasant formality was to sign the corpse’s leg with your name and service number, and also write the dead person’s name in block capitals. Not an act of wanton yet gruesome graffiti, but actually a very practical move, as it ensured that if there was any doubt about the identity of the corpse, it would bear a written continuity from the point where it was identified to the point of burial, cremation, or whatever the ultimate disposal might be. This guaranteed that bodies didn’t get mixed up. The nasty bit was that someone (guess who?) actually had to put pen to skin, and if you had an elderly corpse and a fine point biro on a cold day, then there was a real risk of poking holes in not-very-robust flesh. A broad felt pen was best in such circumstances, but invariably you never had one with you when you needed it, so usually it was ‘steady as
you go’ with the trusty biro. Just remember not to put the end of it in your mouth during moments of contemplation.

Years later the ‘signing of the leg’ was superseded by plastic name tags on wrist and ankle as is done with newborn babies for similar but much happier reasons. At least that means arrivals and departures now have the same procedure.

There was also a form to fill in, giving assorted information for the coroner, ranging from the obvious details such as name, date of birth and so on, and ending up with any information known about funeral arrangements. The body has to be examined for any suspicious marks, holes that nature didn’t provide, that sort of thing, and next of kin have to be located and spoken to, to fill in any gaps on the form.

The fact that this routine is one of the things that just has to be done, and the knowledge that the buck has firmly stopped with you (so like it or not it’s your job) may go a long way to explaining the Police attitude to life and death. Death is not good, nor is it bad, it just happens. You don’t have to like it, but it will have you in the end. This in turn leads to a rather unconventional attitude, possibly from the philosophical resignation about death, or possibly from a lot of Police officers having a sick sense of humour. Which side of that is the chicken and which is the egg I often wonder, but I suspect the experiences develop the humour as a way of coping. You can’t have so many people with a shared sense of the bizarre all coincidentally joining the same line of work, surely.

A Probationer who arrived a year or two after me was on patrol with his Sergeant when they had a call to go to the local hospital
for a sudden death – it was not the first time for this lad, and what happened may have had something to do with him not being the most popular of people. They arrived at the mortuary to find the rear doors unlocked, so to speed things up the Sergeant told the Constable to start checking the body while he went to look for a porter. The body was conveniently in the Chapel of Rest, lying under the obligatory sheet.

The unsuspecting probationer entered at the feet end, understandably a bit nervous, and blissfully unaware that in the darkness the other side of the viewing glass was the rest of his block, watching his efforts.

Now the normal approach would be to remove the sheet and get on with the job – the mentality behind many an unpleasant task by officers up and down the country every day – this should have been no exception. However, to the amazement and delight of the watchers in the viewing area this lad propped the door to the Chapel of Rest open with his foot, then pulled the sheet up a few inches to expose two bare feet. He then prodded them gently with the clipboard he was holding before waiting for a few seconds. Stifled laughter from the viewing area did not get through the glass.

Emboldened by the lack of response from the corpse (what else did he expect?) he pulled the sheet up a little further, prodded the shins in similar manner and again waited. His confidence growing he moved the sheet further up and prodded a bare knee, at which moment his foot slipped off the door which shut with a bang, shutting him in what was in effect a narrow corridor with a dead man.

He paused at the unwelcome confinement, then prodded
the leg a further time, whereupon the ‘corpse’, alias PC Newman, sat up and yelled,‘F—- OFF!’

As a consequence a good laugh was had by all, apart that is from the probationer who was off sick for 3 days and required a change of underwear.

The most famous practical joke in a mortuary is known throughout the Police service – I have never ascertained its true origin, but I would be very surprised if it wasn’t true.

The story goes that a probationer (just for a change) was asked to open one of the mortuary drawers and examine the occupant. As he did so, the ‘corpse’ opened its eyes, smiled, and said,‘Ello sonny!’

You can imagine the result I am sure, but the recipient took it in good humour once he’d calmed down.

A few weeks later another new recruit arrived, and the previous ‘victim’ was asked if he would like to be the ‘body’ to administer the surprise. Naturally he jumped at the idea and late one night was taken up to the hospital mortuary where he dutifully climbed into the open refrigerated drawer which was then pushed shut. He then lay in wait for the minutes to pass until it was his turn to scare the living daylights out of his new colleague. Alone in the drawer, his eyes grew accustomed to the very faint light which seeped in. As time went by he realised that although the drawers slid out independently of each other, the inside of the fridges was one large open space, and each tray was open to the next.

More time passed, and he was wondering when his turn would come to be brought out, when the corpse next to him turned and said,‘Cold in here isn’t it?’

The story goes that he needed several stitches in his forehead from sitting up too fast and hitting the underneath of the tray above him.

Practical jokes aside, deaths at hospital were a lot easier than a death in someone’s home. At the hospital the formalities were already done – life had been pronounced extinct (something pretty obvious, but a doctor was required to use his professional knowledge to make the official declaration) and the fact we had been called meant it had already been decided that no death certificate would be issued so all the form-filling was for a purpose. Also we were just another part of the overall proceedings to the family who were on unfamiliar ground. In private homes we were usually second on the scene. Ambulance first, because no-one in their right mind would call the Police for first aid – and then when the ambulance people had given up we would arrive, and we had to be certain that there was no suggestion of ‘foul play’.

Handling this sort of thing tactfully was sometimes difficult, because no family will take kindly to even a veiled hint that they could be under suspicion. Of course if they actually
had
bumped Uncle Fred off for his money they are going to be even more indignant to try and put you off the scent. So a diplomatic middle path had to be trodden in these circumstances, and you had to do the job correctly each time, including the rather undignified task of ‘checking the body’. This would be done by two of you (to avoid any accusation that the Fabergé egg collection had been nicked from the room while you were in there) and when completed the undertakers could come and
remove the body to the mortuary. In case there were any doubts about the necessity for proper checking, everyone was told of the two Bobbies who had been to a house where an old man living alone was found dead on his lounge floor, apparently an ordinary collapse and quite routine. They dispensed with the proper check, it genuinely didn’t seem worth it. When the body arrived at hospital and was stripped, they found a large knife wound in the old man’s back. In a wonderful piece of damage limitation they decided to put the clothes back on the corpse and take it back to the house, carefully putting it back on the floor where it was found, carefully arranged in the same position in which they had found it. They then called the CID and Scenes of Crime people and started again from scratch.

Fortunately forensic investigation was still very much in its infancy at that time.

After our night shift came the late turn, and more ‘firsts’ followed. Significantly I very soon had my first ‘process’ as it was called. This was the term for booking a motorist. Before fixed penalty tickets all bookings were written out in full in a sort of pamphlet, with acts and sections for each offence added at the end. It was a long-winded affair compared with today’s tickets, but you were expected to do at least one a day as a foot patrol, and more as a panda.

Like most detected motoring offences, my first catch was quite spontaneous and due purely to being in the right place at the right time. An elderly gentleman turned right at a ‘left turn only’ junction, and boldly ignored several enraged motorists to continue into a local car park. We followed, and once again I got
the level of support and training I had come to expect from Alex – ‘Off you go then’.

In the absence of any useful advice on how to deal, I had to cast my mind back to the practical exercises at the Training Centre. An exercise would begin with an officer stopping a car, whereupon the driver would then do something totally unexpected – either run away, be insane, argue at every turn, or be your Chief Superintendent. Or quite often a mixture of several of these. All this would be conducted in front of a group who were glad it was you not them acting the part, and instructors who would tell you to expect the unexpected.

As I approached the car the driver got out and walked briskly towards me. That in itself was unexpected.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, how can you forgive me,’ were his opening words, spoken with a strong middle-European accent – he turned out to be Lithuanian – but his command of English was perfect, and I couldn’t have wished for a more penitent, polite and cooperative man for my first ‘process’.

I duly cautioned him, issued the relevant documentation and reported him for driving without due care and attention. He offered no arguments or bargaining as many motorists usually did. This was just as well, for while my voice was calm, and despite the easy ride, my knees were shaking like mad with nerves at this intrusion into the man’s life. He had given an instant and heartfelt apology, and here I was booking him to go to Court. I had been raised to believe that a genuine apology was worth more than any punishment. This was a view that would have to go on the ‘back burner’ – I was acting as an agent for society, not judge and jury, nor even the victim of his
misdemeanour. The obvious potential for disaster in his driving had been considerable and apology or not, he had crossed the line where a report had to go in.

Back at the station I wrote up the paperwork and submitted it to my Sergeant for scrutiny. He read it and promptly threw it on the desk.

‘You can’t put that in,’ he said.

Why not? I thought. Had I not described the manoeuvre in sufficient detail? Had I left something fundamental out? (Quite likely given my tutor).

‘You can’t put “
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, how can you forgive me
” – you’re blatantly fitting him up.’

This was a new one on me. ‘Fitting him up?’ I queried.

‘Putting words in his mouth – people never say “
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, how can you forgive me
”’.

‘This one did Sarge. Honestly.’

A dubious glance. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’

‘Well you’re the one who will have to tell the Magistrates if he goes not guilty.’

I left the office rather confused. Why would I want to ‘fit someone up’? If he had said,‘It’s a lie, you’ve got the wrong man,’ I would have written that down in exactly the same way, but it wouldn’t have affected how I ultimately dealt with the matter. Anyway I had witnessed the whole thing from start to finish, so to some extent his comments were not particularly relevant.

The art of ‘fitting up’ was something about which I was to learn more a few months later when I needed help with a crime file. I
went up to the CID office to see if anyone was still on duty in there. It was getting on for midnight and there was meant to be a ‘night jack’ as they were called, but anything beyond 10pm usually saw them ‘meeting an informant’, generally in the King’s Head or similar premises, and strangely never in a public park or perhaps a church during daytime. On this occasion my luck was in, and in the dark office a small lamp illuminated the desk at which the night man sat, writing away. The rest of the room was in darkness.

He looked up as I came in. ‘What d’you want?’ he asked. An aggressive and unwelcoming greeting was quite normal from most of this department, especially to a probationer, the lowest form of life in a Police station.

‘Can you give me a lift with this file please? I could do with a bit of advice.’

‘Not now, I’m interviewing,’ came the gruff reply.

‘Interviewing who?

‘This bloke – he’s done loads of burglaries and I want to get them all cleared up.’

‘I bloody haven’t,’ came a muffled voice, and as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness outside the pool of light on the desk I saw a man standing next to it. I looked closer and saw he had a metal wastepaper bin on his head.

‘You’ve done them and you’ll cough to them,’ said the detective, and as he did so he picked up his truncheon from the desk and hit the waste bin with a loud ‘clang’.

‘I’ll come back later when you’re less busy,’ I said. This was dangerous territory, and something which I felt I had better leave alone, given my lack of experience and insecurity in the job.

In those days it was wise as a member of uniform staff to keep away from the CID office unless you really had to go there. I never came across the ‘upturned bin’ interview technique again – it was obviously that detective’s own speciality. However in those low-technology days there was a more widely used interview ‘skill’ involving a photocopier, a piece of machinery of which few prisoners had any great knowledge. A sheet of paper would have the word ‘LIAR’ written on it in bold capitals, and be placed under the copier lid. Two wires would be secreted round the back of the machine, out of sight of the interviewee, and the other ends of the wires secured round his thumbs before the questioning began. The photocopier, it was explained, was a lie detector. Every reply that didn’t fit with the interviewers’ suspicions was duly checked by pressing the big button on the machine. The machine would oblige by producing a piece of paper with the word ‘LIAR’ on it, and the interview would progress, usually downhill, from there.