Confessions of an Undercover Cop. Ash Cameron

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ