when I was a lass. He was a walking intelligence unit. People would ring him at home for a snippet of information because Kenny always knew everything about everything.
Kenny was married when I first met him. He was quite a few years older than me and far more mature. I was a young girl. A slip of a thing, as people used to say. He was attractive, I supposed, but I never looked at him in that way. There was never any suggestion of us getting together. He was happily married and I knew his wife. I always thought he’d make a great dad because he was so good with us probationers, as well as everyone else. He was the sort of policeman that you’d want with you when your back was up against it or you were knee deep in the cack. And he could talk his way out of most situations, too. People responded to him well. Perhaps it was that good old cockney way of his that he had honed to perfection. And I don’t mean the likes of those you find on EastEnders. He was just an all-round good guy who treated people decently, whoever or whatever they were.
The first dead body we dealt with together was an old man, Mr George Chapman. He’d sat down in front of his television and died, his dog by his side. A neighbour who could see the man in his basement flat noticed he hadn’t moved in between the hours of him going to work and coming back. The neighbour had a key but called the police before using it.
I was on foot patrol on my own and given the job. When I arrived, the neighbour let us into the flat. I naively said him, ‘Have you seen a dead body before?
‘I was in the war, love. I’ve seen my fair share, don’t worry,’ he said, with a wink.
I felt stupid but it was a lesson learned and although I’d already dealt with a few sudden deaths I was disconcerted to see Mr Chapman sitting there with his eyes half open, seeming to look at me wherever I moved in the room.
I called all the people I needed to call and I took a statement from the neighbour. Then I called for a unit to come and collect the dog. He’d have to go into kennels until we found the next of kin of Mr Chapman.
Kenny came to the rescue. He’d been posted to a panda and agreed to pick up the pet. ‘Don’t forget to search the house, Ash. Old people are notorious for stashing money away. The local burglars get wind he’s died, they’ll be in looking for it.’
I knew old folk did that because my granddad had done the same. Kenny left with the dog. I waited for the doctor and the undertaker to come and set about searching the bedroom, away from the half-open eyes. First stop, the bed. Cliché, yes, but there it was: a stash of fivers and ten-pound notes. I gulped. I collected it all up and looked in the bedside cabinet drawer. Apart from some loose change there was nothing of note. Then I looked in the wardrobe. It was one of those old-fashioned polished wood, curve-fronted pieces of furniture that were beautifully designed but out of favour. Just like the one my granddad had. On the shelf with the pile of old underwear was an envelope containing fivers. I checked the pockets of all the jackets and found more money. I called Kenny on the radio.
‘When you’ve got a minute could you come back please?’ I asked. ‘And bring some property bags.’
‘Aah,’ he said. ‘You’ve found what I was talking about then?’
‘Umm. Just a bit.’
Kenny 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.
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.
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.