Matt Delito - Confessions of a Police Constable

‘Yeah, I completely understand. I’m sorry about the lack of support, but our prisoner transport vans are deployed elsewhere. I’d much rather have taken him in, but apparently something serious is taking place, and I don’t really know what it is.’ I shrugged apologetically.

‘No worries, I understand,’ he said.

I went back to the American.

‘Right, buddy, there’s two ways we can do this. We can either sit here and wait for a van to arrive, check you into custody, interview you, and deal with you properly, or we can send you on your way. What would you prefer?’ I asked.

‘I get to choose?’ he asked, clearly thinking I was trying to catch him out with some sort of practical joke.

‘Well, yes. But if you just want to walk away, you’re going to need to do some serious apologising, starting with my colleagues here, then with me and then the staff here,’ I said.

‘Could you please take these handcuffs off me,’ he said. ‘I would like to shake everyone’s hands, and apologise properly.’

I wasn’t too sure what to do about that particular request. If I am being honest, I knew it was more luck than skill that enabled us to get him in cuffs in the first place, and I wasn’t sure we were going to be able to pull off the same stunt twice.

I conferred with Pete and Sasha. They were both sitting just behind the American. First I spotted Sasha; her face was completely red. Glancing over at Pete, I realised they were both shaking with laughter. Both of them were trying their best to keep the giggles under control, and I was getting pissed off. What the hell was going on?

‘Are you okay to take the cuffs off?’ I asked them. Pete opened his mouth, but didn’t trust his voice not to break into all-out laughter, and so simply nodded, produced his handcuff keys and let the giant free from his captivity.

‘So, about those apologies …’ I said.

‘Erm, yes. Of course, sir,’ he said. As if struck with a magic wand, his behaviour had completely changed. He was as polite as they come.

Turning to Sasha first: ‘I let anger get the better of me, ma’am. I am so very sorry. Please forgive me.’

Next to Pete, then to me with slight variations on the same apologetic theme.

With that out of the way, he bounded out to the main part of the restaurant, much faster than I would have expected from a man his size. I ran after him, but needn’t have panicked; he was the very picture of grace and politeness. He tried to tip both of the restaurant staff £20 for their trouble and the offence caused. They refused to take his money, although they were happy to accept a spectacularly well-performed grovel of an apology.

Finally, he turned to me again, apologised once more, and whisked himself and his wife out of the restaurant.

I immediately rang in to cancel the van, and was asked by the operator to return to Mike Delta (the station identifier for our home police station).

‘Yes, yes, received. We’ll take the bus!’ I radioed back.

‘What the hell happened back there?’ I asked, as I turned back into the area beside the counter to find Pete and Sasha collapsed on the floor, howling with laughter.

‘He …’ Sasha began, but had to abort her explanation attempt in favour of gasping for breath

‘She …’ Pete said, before being similarly overcome with giggles.

‘Jesus,’ I said, getting annoyed.

I decided to leave them to their fits of debilitating laughter, and I joined the restaurant staff to get confirmation in writing that they were happy that the case was resolved by the American apologising.

When we finally left the restaurant, my two colleagues had gathered their wits a little. A little, at least.

‘What the …?’ I asked.

‘Well, when you went to speak to the security guard,’ Pete said, ‘the wife walked up to her husband, and said that if they had to stay here for another five minutes he wouldn’t get any blow-jobs for the rest of the year.’ The last part of his sentence was barely audible, as both he and Sasha were in fits of laughter again.

‘Jeez,’ I said, fighting to stop my inner eye from envisioning any sort of sexual encounter between the two of them. ‘You are buying the beers at the end of this shift, Pete. I’m definitely going to need some mental bleach to get that picture out of my mind.’

‘We’ve just had report of criminal damage in progress, outside 12 Church Walk. An IC2 7youth, around 11 years of age, smashing up a car. On an I-grade.’

On this shift, I was an Incident Response Vehicle (IRV) driver – meaning I was responding to emergency calls about incidences that had recently happened or were still taking place.

When we are on duty, we’re assigned call signs comprised of two different radio-calling identifiers. One of them is our shoulder number (in my case, Mike Delta 592), which only changes if you are promoted to a different rank or you transfer to another borough. The other is the call sign of the vehicle or unit we are assigned to. This changes from day to day, although most call signs have particular duties; for example, one will be the Missing Persons car, another will be an ‘odd jobs’ car, and others will be assigned only to super-urgent calls.

My call sign for the radio that day was Mike Delta 20. Thus far, it had been a dreadfully slow day, so the call coming in over the radio engaged me enough to stir myself me into some semblance of excitement. I don’t mind chasing after a group of troublemaking kids for a few minutes if it wakes me up.

I reached for the PTT 8lever in my car, and pushed it down.

‘Show two-zero,’ I spoke into the microphone mounted next to my sun visor, and heard a distorted version of my own voice, feeding back through the radio I had clipped to my Metvest.

‘Received,’ replied the operator above the echo.

I pressed the ‘999’ button on my dash, and the car’s mobile disco facilities sprang into life. As the siren wailed, I spun the car around. Church Walk was just around the corner. I careened around the last bend, the slightest hint of a squeal coming from my tyres against the asphalt, and saw a young chap climbing over a low fence.

He’s not running away, I thought. In fact, he’s coming towards me.

‘Show TOA 9for Mike Delta two-zero,’ I said, as I engaged the ‘run lock’ and climbed out of the Vauxhall Astra.

Run lock is one of the fun features built into a police car. It enables us to press a button, take the keys and lock the car with the engine running. If anyone tries to put the car in gear or open a door, the engine stops again. Run lock is useful when you have to leave your car parked somewhere with the radio and the flashing lights still operating: by leaving the engine running, it doesn’t run the battery flat, but nobody can steal the car either!

‘Hi there. You okay?’ I asked the kid, as he came towards me.

He nodded.

‘You haven’t seen anyone trying to smash up a car, have you?’

He nodded again.

‘That was me,’ he said, and shrugged with a lack of commitment that made me stop in my tracks. How do you make a motion showing a lack of caring without caring? Mentally, I was shaking my head at this kid’s utter lack of … well … anything.

I blinked a couple of times.

‘Uhm … okay. Why did you smash up a car? Where is it?’ He pointed at a dark red Volvo that was parked outside number ten.

We walked over to the car together, just as another police car showed up.

‘TOA two-six,’ my radio crackled, as the two officers climbed out of the car and started wandering towards us. I was about to send them on their way again, when a man emerged from one of the houses. An extremely agitated man.