A cautionary tale for policemen

Charley Tout MP still loved the morning ritual of leafing through the London editions.  He had them all delivered early to his flat.  Websites were OK, but he didn’t have time to go looking for politically relevant articles.  Searching placed altogether too much reliance upon Herr Heisenberg.  The dead-tree product, however, gave him everything right there at the breakfast table, and set him up nicely for a day’s political chess.

This morning, though, he was only really interested in one of the nationals, and that, of course, was the Daily Mail.  A tad disappointingly, he hadn’t made the front page.  But there he was in a good position on page 3.  “Minister fights far right legal attack on free speech” it said.  “EXCLUSIVE by Kimberley Pruett for the Daily Mail” it said.  Charley read the body of the text with mounting satisfaction.  When he reached the end he went straight back to the beginning and read it again.  She had done everything he could ask for.  Absolutely everything.  He was a happy man.  He reached into his left-hand jacket pocket for his pay-phone and scrolled down to her number.

DCI Bennet was not a happy man.  On arriving at the station at 8.00 am as usual, Sgt Dutta had pressed that morning’s edition of the Daily Mail on him.  For his benefit it had been opened to page three and pre-folded.  “Oh Christ, what!” exclaimed Bennett.  He took the paper to his office, sat down and surveyed the damage.  Though written from a ridiculously unreasonable angle, the article was unmistakably about the Holly business.  It was high on dog-whistling and low on case details.  But it specifically mentioned Peckham Police.  Someone somewhere had leaked to the press.  If that someone was in the station, it wasn’t him.  But it could be one of the other two detectives or anyone else who had some contact to the case.  Realistically, that meant Boulder, Eilam, or Brook.

That said, in his experience no one with a functioning brain cell leaks to the media in a clumsy and discoverable way, and no one owns up.  Investigations are almost always a waste of everybody’s time, and do more harm than good, since suspicion does much of the work of guilt itself in corroding the relationship of officers and managers.  Still, it was to be expected that someone upstairs or at Curtis Green would want enquiries to be made.

The very next written documents Bennett saw were the time-sheet and incident report that had been dropped in his in-tray by Kevin Boulder the previous evening.  They did not agree with one another.

Bennett strode out of his office with an ominous sense of purpose.  “What’s this rubbish?” he exploded, tossing the time-sheet onto Boulder’s desk.  This says you were three hours with Holly yesterday morning.  Your report is so bloody thin, you couldn’t have been more than ten minutes.  So what were you doing for the rest of the time?”

Boulder was stunned and could make no immediate reply.  Bennett continued, “Here, DS Boulder, is the sum total of what you wrote in your report:

“I asked Mr Holly what reason ‘Stephen’ and his associates might have for funding Prakash Ghosh.  He said “It is common for groups to use facebook, twitter, and other on-line platforms to promote their agendas.  The agenda of ‘Stephen’ and his associates appears to coincide with the efforts of other activist individuals and organisations to secure a change to British law in support of multiculturalism and its attendant population change.

“It took 30 seconds to read that.  Are you seriously claiming that Holly took three hours to tell you?”  He tossed the incident report after the other one.

“I tried to write more down but I can’t.  There was too much.  I mean, what that guy thinks and the crazy stuff he knows is ... y’know.”

“No, I don’t,” Bennett retorted, “In fact, I couldn’t give a monkeys.  Put it in your report!

He turned on his heels to walk to his office.  Desperate to offer some defence, Boulder followed, talking away at the back of his head, “Guv … guv, look ... guv, this guy specialises in stuff like the theory of law … right? ... and ‘e was telling me stuff ...”

Bennett swung around in the doorway, “Theory of law?  You went there for information on this ghost Stephen and the other two.  Are you telling me you spent an entire morning discussing theory of bloody law?”

Boulder winced, but stood his ground, “It’s background, guv.  I have learned that what we are investigatin’ ‘as deep roots.  If you don’t think we need to understand what those three are doin’ and why, then fine.  But if you do, then it’s not a bad idea to spend a couple of hours lookin’ into it properly, is it?”

George Weg stood aside unhappily as some humourless and sinister looking men wearing latex gloves and faces as expressionless and uninformative as an identikit drawing began pawing over his work-station, and evidence-bagging and logging everything on his desk bar the mouse-mat.

“What do you want with that?” he protested as one of them bagged the notepad next to his land-line.  No one explained.  No one took any notice of him at all.  Eventually, a sinister looking female drone pocketed the mobile she had been speaking into and walked over.  “Come with me, please,” she said coldly.

“Will somebody tell me what’s going on?” Weg pleaded.

There was no reply.  Weg was led in excruciating silence past his blank-faced, fish-eyed co-workers at their desks.  He was taken down to the goods entrance at the rear of the building, where an anonymous black van was waiting.  The female drone opened the rear doors.  “Sit there,” she said, gesturing to the bench on the off-side of the van.  Weg looked up to the faces at the windows of the building above, dozens of them staring down pruriently at him.  A visceral hatred for all of them, as deep as time, as familiar as tefillin, welled up inside him.  “Move,” commanded the female drone, and he climbed in.

Bennett relented.  A little.  “Sit down” he said.  “It had better be good, because if it isn’t you’re right in the frame for this.”  He pushed the newspaper across the desk.  Boulder read the opening words and looked up at his DI in genuine shock.

“This isn’t me, guv!  I didn’t do this!” he exclaimed. 

“You’ve got five minutes to convince me,” replied Boulder, “Now, what’s this background you say you’ve learned about?”

“‘olly said a lotta stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Like, erm … he said stuff about world-making, right guv?  He said these people are tryin’ to do that.  There’s, like, a whole … what’s the word? … stratum, that’s it ... a whole stratum of people thinkin’ in another way from the rest of us ... all the time workin’ this deeper level of ... he called it ...er ... he called it causality, yeah.  An’ this is the dangerous bit” and Boulder lowered his voice to a whisper, “not all the people thinkin’ about things in this way are Jews, but all Jews are thinkin’ about things in this way.  They got a name for it.  Tick something.  ‘olly said it’s just part of being a Jew.  Ghosh an’ the other Asian bloke aren’t the same.  They don’t clock the difference with the way they think, which ‘olly said is just political.”

Boulder was getting into the swing of this, eyes darting about the room as if the corners of it were akin to the corners of his memory, hands searching the air in case unfamiliar terminologies could be pulled right out of it.  On he went, unstoppable.  “Then ‘olly talked about norms which he said are the foundation of law, right?  An’ then he talked about the difference between social norms - right -  and, er, the ... anyway, it’s the difference between what we have now and what we are actually getting.  An’ he explained ‘ow we are movin’ all the time from a single national legal … he said, er, architecture, an’ ‘e had a special word for it … mon … monist … nah, never mind ... anyhow, we’re moving, ‘e said, to a disordered, erm … so local, er, selective laws, yeah, for different people ‘cuz they do not live like us what made the law.  ‘olly said it will be a legal anarchy an’ underneath it all will be this code of endless tolerance.  Which is really everybody bein’ forced … er, ‘olly said ... to suppress themselves.  Y’know, their own natural thinkin’.  An’ if you can’t do it convincingly enough you’ll face legal consequences which, by today’s standards … y’know ... will look very, very unfair.  For someone who commits a definite act of discrimination you’d be talking about summary violence by the state.”

“You can see the collapse of a real justice system already in ‘ow we have to do community policing, an’ in the consent we have to negotiate just to operate in certain areas.  Then there’s the way we ‘ave to back off when arrest rates are used to claim that we’re institutionally racist.”  Same thing with the courts.  ‘olly’s done all this crime and sentencin’ analysis, and it explains ‘ow judges and magistrates sentence not just in response, y’know, to the current profile of offenders, which is what they’re there to do… right? ... but to the claim that sentencing standards and incarceration rates prove they’re institutionally racist.  Y’see, because somebody is acting causally everybody else gets pushed into acting … er … politically.  ‘olly reckons a PCSO on the ground is more politically important in the long run than an MP sittin’ on his arse all day in the ‘ouse of Commons.”

Bennett sat dead still for several seconds after Boulder fell silent.  “Bloody hell, Kev” he said finally, “tell you what, mate.  Leave your report just the way it is.”

Charley was breezing out of Westminster, still feeling pretty damned buoyant.  He had a half-hour to kill before meeting up with Kim of the Mail for lunch – a nice, early booking for the table ... his diary cleared for the next two hours.  Perfect.  He thought he might find a small gift for her.  Something personal but not presumptuous.  Perhaps a classy silk scarf.  But then, damn it, he had a call, and not from Kim of the Mail.  It was from Mark Brick, sounding rather unhappy.  Brick was a junior government whip, a post which he combined with Clerk to the Council.  He was very much Party establishment, and definitely not Charley’s favourite person.  He was insistent that Charley attend a meeting in the whips office right now.  No delay.

He didn’t like Brick, not least because he owed him for burying an unfortunate incident last year with a topless showgirl in Paris – just a moment of silliness, really, perfectly harmless but possibly not helpful to the Party if the press got hold of the pictures.  He had been much more temperate with Johnny Walker ever since – at the best of times pretty hard in foreign capitals, and harder still if you’re Charley Tout.  But blackmail was stock-in-trade for the whips, and being in their debt was never, never a good situation.  He had an uneasy feeling that that debt might now be called in.

His unease turned to something very like alarm as he crossed the Member’s Lobby on the way to the whips.  Sashaying slowly towards him was Donna Scott-Walters.  She held his gaze unblinkingly and then bestowed a knowing, supercilious smile upon him as they passed.

Bennett was completely at a loss to explain what the Holly investigation had gained from Boulder’s fireside chat.  There was still Dev Badhari, though, whom Eilham was to question.  That should be all done by now.

“Anyone know where Tony is?” Bennett shouted to the entire room.  He was met with blank stares.  He went back into his office and rang Eilam’s mobile.  It was switched off.  He rang through to Dutta on the front desk.  “Sergeant, is WPC Brook in the building, by any chance?” he asked.  The reply came back that she had gone off duty an hour ago.  He put the receiver down with some force. “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, exasperated, “I’m expected to run these enquiries, and my officers are too fucking busy getting educated or getting laid!”

Then, quite unbidden, a memory of another illicit conversation, this time not with DS Boulder but with an equally voluble police psychologist at a conference a decade earlier, floated into his head.  “You will find,” the guy had assured him, “that, among other things, black officers exhibit substantially different attitudes to casual sex and their own promiscuity, which no internal disciplinary structure will moderate.  The service will be given no choice but to tolerate those attitudes, which will mean suppressing traditional management expectations.  Police managers who transgress or complain will be got out of the way.”

Grasping for some meaning for ”got out of the way”, Bennett rose from his seat and walked to his door to the main office.  He gestured to Boulder.  “Summary violence by the state!” he stated, as Boulder approached, “Give me that again.”

“Don’t talk, Charley.  Just listen” said Brick, “A policeman requires to interview you.  He isn’t the sort of policeman you disagree with.  He has been good enough to respect your position as a government minister, and to hold the interview here now, away from prying eyes.  Also, because of my role on the privy council and because of the necessity that the facts are made available to the PM he has kindly consented to my request that I remain present.”

Brick ignored Charley’s urgent request for an explanation “Through here ...” he said, and led the way into an ante-room.  A tall man, dark suit, dark presence, grave demeanour, was waiting.

“Charles William Tout?” the man said, “My name is Walker.  I hold the rank of detective inspector with SO15.  I have Bronze Community status.  Do you know what that means?”

Brick took up position leaning with his back to a wall, arms akimbo.  He had the casual, heartless air of someone preparing to witness a particularly cruel field sport.  “What does it mean?” he asked Walker.

“It means that I am granted the legal power of extra-judicial decision,” explained Walker, “I can will certain outcomes.  So for example, I can decide in the next few minutes what immediate path …” and he turned to Charley, “”Mr Tout’s life will take.  Is that clear, Mr Tout?”

Charley was too busy clambering on his high ministerial horse to be impressed.  “You see Mr Brick here.  He can talk to me like that.  But you can’t.  Why the hell didn’t you arrange to see me through my office?”

“This isn’t a matter for your office.  This is a matter for you personally.  Earlier this morning I spoke to Kimberley Pruett at the Daily Mail.  She was very helpful.  She made a full statement to the effect that two days ago you provided her by means of a temporary email account certain documents from the Metropolitan Police and from the Ministry of Justice.”

Brick let out a sigh of exasperation, as if to say, “Might have guessed!”

For his part, Charley cursed his luck. “Probably goodbye forever to lunch with the lovely Kim,” he thought.  Pretty annoyed and still searching for the slippery politician’s way out, he went on the attack, “Now look, what can that possibly have to do with you … I mean with counter-terrorism?  You are operating well outside your remit.  Which is very clearly drawn, by the way.  I should know.  Ministerially, it starts where my remit ends.”  He was, after all, police minister.  He could talk the security talk a bit.  He knew more than most outside the evil trade, and knowledge is power.

“My area of responsibility is counter-extremism,” Walker explained,”You are going to tell me how you came into possession of that documentation, to whom you have spoken of it, everything you have done with it, and why.”

Counter-extremism.  The poor relation.  Charley saw an opportunity.

“You think so?” he shot back, defiantly, “I know your new boss.  Fawad Rouhani.  Good man.  Had a very fruitful chat with him at Paddington last month.  Now … you are going to stop this right here.  By the time you leave the precincts of this building I will be talking to him.  When I know what this is actually about I will be only too pleased to cooperate.  But not before, and certainly not here like this.  Is that clear, DI Walker.”

Walker was not used to such spirited resistance.  His victims were meant to roll-over compliantly, not fight back.  He asserted his secret policeman’s authority again, in the fond belief that the outcome must be different, “It would be a serious mistake to get high-handed with me.  I am perfectly prepared to remove you now to a place where you will have to answer my questions.”

But the outcome was the same.  Charley smiled.  He reached into his right-hand jacket pocket and fished out his i-Phone.  “R … “Rouhani … there we are.  His private number.  Would you like to talk to him first, or shall I?”

Brick looked on in utter amazement.  When Walker had closed the door of the ante-room behind him he turned to Charley and said, “Fuck me, old man, that was bloody magnificent.  I’ve never known that dodge to work before.  The biter bit!  Of course, I’ve still got to tear you off a strip for leaking to the Mail.”

“Of course,” said Charley, “Whenever you like.”  But as he opened the door to leave he swung around, a puzzled expression on his face, “I had no idea that Chris Maxwell and Scott-Walters were allies, did you?” he asked.

Brick was caught for a reply, just for an instant.  “More than allies?” Charley enquired?

“What do you want me to say, guv?” asked Boulder as he sat down opposite Bennett at his desk.

“Did Holly say anything to you about how state violence in this utopia he imagines would be justified?  Anything at all.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.  But, erm … it mostly went way over my head, y’know.  But ... I think ...  yeah, when ‘e was talkin’ about the architecture of law, see, and ‘ow it will all end with one, like, really crap religious law but based on humanitarianism, see, and this’ll be underneath all the usual kinda ... ‘e called them negative laws … well, then he got into this anarchy thing.”

“So ...” said Bennett.

It’s difficult, guv.

“Just try.”

Boulder sighed a deep sigh of frustration. “OK, er … there could be loads of laws where there used to be just one, right?  Like I said before, almost like laws for every person, ‘cuz they won’t matter the same ‘cuz the life of the individual, see, isn’t going to be valued the same.  Commod … ification … total human commodification, that’s it.  That’s what ‘e said.  Laws don’t really matter when lives don’t matter.”

“Those who transgress or complain will be got out of the way,” said Bennett, thoughtfully.

“You’re thinkin’ about his safety,” said Boulder, eyes screwed up a little.  “You’re thinkin’ some bastard will try to get ‘im.  But ‘e would know that better as anyone, guv.  ‘olly’s chosen to put himself in the way of ‘arm”

“Maybe,” said Bennett, “He certainly believes he is a public threat to an awful lot of people, some of them very powerful no doubt, some not; but all of them totally committed to a system they have worked to build all their lives.”

“For sure, we know what anti-fascists are like,” said Boulder.

“Yeah,” Bennett replied, “they don’t exactly exhibit any scruples about whacking people, do they?  Brick through the windows … spray-paint on the walls … threats to family members.  But would that deter a driven guy like Holly?  He would just put it to work against them, wouldn’t he?  He’d make it easier to present himself as the victim in the courts.  I don’t know, though ... maybe we should alert the Domestic Extremism unit, or at least flag up Ghosh.”

“I would, guv,” said Boulder. “Now if it’s OK, I gotta deal wiv that tip-off on the lock-up being used by our latest two-wheeled local ‘eroes.  I’m off in a couple of minutes with uniform.”

Charley took four decisive steps as soon as he was back in his own office at Marsham Street.  First, he cancelled the lunch table.  No point trying to repair relations with Kim Pruett.  She hadn’t even sent him the customary hysterical text, which would have given him something to build on, at least.  You know ... flowers, a couple of airline tickets to Rome.  No, that was it for Kim.

Secondly, he had a smashing chat with Fawad Rouhani.  Everything was smoothed out.  He even screwed an apology out of the guy, and his secretary supplied him with DI Walker’s contact details.  So now he could set the terms of engagement for a suitably discreet, let us call it, conversation.  None of this high-handed inquisitorial stuff.

Third, he sent an anonymous text to Bonfire, the political scandal blog which all Westminster read with feverish fear or joy.

Chris Maxwell, Catholic father of five, leading brexiteer and Bruges Club member, tipped for high office in the PM’s New Year re-shuffle, seen with Immigration Minister Donna Scott-Walters, twice-divorced mother of two, known for her ambition and ruthlessness but not, hitherto, her lust.

Fourth, he cancelled his afternoon appointments, retired to his South Ken apartment; whereupon he opened a bottle of bubbly, and began planning his next move in the great political chess game.

It only took ten minutes for the call to be returned.  “DI Bennett?  Hi, DC Rifaat Korkmaz of the National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit.  You put in an enquiry about a Dev or Devesh Badhari, and also one Prakash Ghosh.

“I’m probably going to disappoint you, sir.  We’ve no record of Badhari.  However, we have Ghosh on our system as a gay rights activist, but there is not much of a file on him.  He’s come to our attention a couple of times, both on demos.  Once he tried to snatch a video camera from an officer filming marchers.  It got a bit over-heated.  There was some abuse shouted at officers.  So he was restrained and put in a van until the demo was over.  No further action taken.  That was in 2014.  In 2016 he was questioned over an incident when somebody stuck a hat-pin in the arse of a police horse.  Sent it off down Whitehall at a hell of lick, apparently.  Again, no charge.  Don’t know what the horse thought about that.

“So Ghosh may be quite an unpleasant character.  But only may, and he’s certainly not someone we would consider a hardcore extremist.  Sorry, sir.”

“That’s alright, detective constable” Bennett replied, “Would it be possible for a copy of the video from the 2014 demo to be forwarded to me.  I’d like to see it.  And anything you’ve got from 2016.”

“Sure, no problem.  I’ll get onto that right away, sir.” said DC Korkmaz.

Anne Bennett leant over her husband and picked up the receiver before he was even properly awake.  “Wait a sec,” she said down the line, then, “Surprise surprise, it’s one of yours.”

The clock on the bedside table said 4.27 am.  Bennett managed a croaky “Yes” into the receiver.  On the other end was Boulder.  “I just got to Ladbroke Grove, guv.  John ‘olly’s place.  There’s been a fire.  Pretty bad, and not an accident, I’d say.”

“Was he inside?  How is he?” came the reply.

“Alive.  They’ve taken him to straight to Chelsea and Westminster.”

“The burns unit.”

“Yeah,” said Boulder, “I’m gonna go over there when I’ve had a proper chat with the officers here.”

“Who called you?” Bennett asked.

“Notting Hill,” replied Boulder, “because ‘olly flags up with my name as arrestin’ officer.  Golden hour and all that.  I was awake anyway – all those night-shifts you stuck me on disrupt the body clock, y’know.”

“Alright look, I’ll meet you at the hospital in thirty.  We’re going to work this.  We’re going to find these bastards.  We owe him that much.”