The Confessions Series. Ash Cameron
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Название: The Confessions Series
Автор: Ash Cameron
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
Серия: The Confessions Series
isbn: 9780007515097
isbn:
I had a fantastic time and have lots of marvellous memories. I miss the job incredibly, every single day. I loved it. All of it. Even when it was bad, it was good. It was part of me and it always meant more to me than perhaps it should have. It has taken a toll, like it does on every one of us who put everything we have into it. There are threats that still bounce around in my head from time to time, spat out by vile people who I helped to send to prison. I think they’re probably out of jail now, and sometimes I feel them looking over my shoulder.
In the end, I had to make a choice. I could finish the last third of my career on completely restricted duties or take medical retirement due to a physical condition I was diagnosed with. It wasn’t an easy decision and not the way I would have chosen to end my career, but I decided to leave with twenty years’ service when there was a chance to start a different life while my children were young. I gave the job everything I had to give and I still believe the things I believed when I joined. I believe in justice, in right and wrong and, most of all, I still have that desire to help people.
It’s a brave and frightening world out there, but leaving the police force was not the end of my life, even though at the time I wavered and thought it might be. I’ve had some wonderful, exciting and difficult times. When I left, many people asked what I was going to do. All I knew was I intended to take some time out, be a mum, keep my options open and see where life took me. And I wanted to write, because ever since I could I have written stories and there are so many stories in my head.
These are my memories of all those things I’ve mentioned I did, and more. Not all of it is pleasant reading, but then not all of society is pleasant.
I wanted it all and I got a lot. These are my stories, told my way, with names changed to protect the guilty. And the innocent. A colleague might tell them differently.
In the beginning, there was light
All of the new recruits were sent to Hendon Police College. I was young, naive, and full of hope, anticipation and excitement, eager to complete the twenty-week residential course and get out onto the streets.
On the first day we had to swear our allegiance to the Queen. One hundred and sixty of us gathered together in the gym hall that I would come to hate during that twenty weeks.
A female chief inspector spoke, filling our heads with horror, some reality, a few romantic ideals, and a squiggle of ‘What the hell have I done?’
‘Some of you will stick the thirty years. The majority won’t. You’ll love it; you’ll hate it. It won’t always be pretty. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been wounded on duty at least once, so be prepared. You might be injured and it could end your career. You might be shot. Stabbed. Killed. You will get hurt. Get used to it.’
She paused. ‘Some of you won’t make it through training school. Once on the streets you might decide you’ve had enough of being hated by the public, the press, the politicians and the prisoners, for you are nobody’s friend. Remember that.’
My head spun. I looked at her. She was tough. I was soft. How would I cope with being hurt? Being hated? I only wanted people to think the best of me.
‘But you may love it. It’s the best job in the world when you save a life or stop a suicide. When you help people in the most difficult of circumstances. When you find a missing child and reunite him with a distraught family who feared the worst. But don’t forget, you can be a hero one minute and then you’re back out on the streets being pelted with flying bottles and vicious words.’
She looked around the room at the sea of fresh untainted faces in front of her.
‘It’s a good job if you can hack it. Not of all of you will. There are specialist departments to work in like mounted branch, dog section, CID, or undercover, so deep undercover that sometimes you forget who you are. You might decide to go for promotion. Or stay on the beat. Your whole time served might be in one police station, entrenched in a community. The rewards are there if you want them, but watch your back and those of your colleagues because they are the only allies you have.’
Among us were youngsters like me, not much in the way of life experience, starting out keen and vulnerable. There were others who’d decided they wanted a career change and policing had sounded like a good option, with a decent wage, job security and a pension. There were ex-service personnel who’d seen so much more already, and there were graduate entries straight from university.
We stood and listened and wondered why we thought we could do this job. The only dead body I’d seen was a boyfriend’s grandmother in her coffin, but she had been over eighty and it didn’t seem to count.
‘You will come across things you don’t like, things that turn your stomach, deal with offences you didn’t know existed,’ she continued. ‘You will see things you know aren’t right. You will have to decide what to do because when you’re out there, you’re on your own and only you can decide if you can live with the consequences. Only you are responsible for your actions.’
She was done. We filed out feeling like we’d been bollocked, looking anywhere but at each other lest we saw the fear.
In that moment I decided I could, I would do this job. If I survived training school …
It’s a well-known fact that policemen like to drink. It’s one of those clichés found in crime novels and TV dramas. Like most clichés, it exists because there’s a truth in there somewhere.
When I joined the Met, I didn’t drink alcohol. I’d had the odd shandy, a couple of lager tops, a rare lager and lime, but nothing else and certainly no hard stuff. My first hangover was at Hendon Police College. It was my twentieth birthday and a true initiation.
My fellow rookies had taken me out and they’d bought me drink after drink. My poison was Pernod and black and they came thick and fast. I ended up pouring each one into a pint glass. By the end of the night I’d drunk two pints of the vile stuff. I went to bed very merry and very drunk, with a tongue that was warm, wet and black.
The next day I was ill. Very ill. Some joker suggested I drank milk, a ‘great’ hangover cure. Never having had a hangover before, I did as he suggested. The half-pint of cold semi-skimmed took less than a minute to come back up, curdled and purple. I was truly poisoned. There was no sympathy. To be unfit for duty through drink, or to be drunk on duty, are poor conduct matters that can lead to disciplinary action.
However, the trainers were forgiving as long as I sat in the classroom and did my work, didn’t fall asleep and didn’t puke.
It was a lesson that taught me quite early on about policemen and their drinking habits. I was a quick learner and I’ve never drunk Pernod since, but I didn’t learn enough to stop me imbibing other poisons in the future …
It was customary for probationers to buy a round after their first arrest. And their first dead body. And their first court conviction. And every other opportunity that the ‘old СКАЧАТЬ