The police arrive

Posted on by Vincent

Normally the skirling of police sirens, whilst deafening, passes swiftly enough. This time I subconsciously detected something different. Like a pipe band silenced suddenly by punctures to their windbags, the sirens stopped in mid-skirl, which meant they had stopped at our doorstep. I looked out our first-floor window just in time to see the doors of two squad cars and a police van open simultaneously and hear the scuffling sound, as in a street brawl, of four police running up our drive with the fearful determination of a posse closing in on an international terrorist. Then a fifth police car stopped outside, further from the kerb and at an even more rakish angle than the others. A blonde female officer in a ponytail and a bearded Sikh officer in a black turban joined the party.

I was about to make the obvious joke to K, “They’ve come for us at last!” but there wasn’t time. We heard an urgent knock at the door. I was again about to make a remark, but the normal tapping turned into a collective heavy-weight pounding designed to break down the door if I did not open it of my own free will. I hurried down to see three anxious policemen in bullet-proof vests, ready to leap in and overpower me. “Thames Valley Police”, one of them announced unnecessarily. “Did you call us?” He could see from my startled confusion that I had not. So they commenced pounding the adjacent door to the downstairs flat (labelled D: we are B) with equal vigour. So I left them to it.

I heard a voice from inside the downstairs flat, to the effect that he or she could not open the door. It was locked. It sounded like a voice speaking through a window aperture. The other day they had called me through this window when I was coming home and passed me a letter delivered to them by mistake, apologising that it was not possible to open the door. Perhaps they only use their back door, though the previous tenant (who was certainly wanted by the police on several counts) mostly used his front door. He was a very pleasant chap, helped me start my car a few times and I helped him with his. He came from a country world-famous for the ingenuity of its criminals, but I will say no more.

So the police went round to the back, with me trying to see and listen through our bedroom, then kitchen, then bathroom windows. The only intelligence I gathered was one police woman telling her radio: “The situation seems to be this: that the . . .” She walked round the corner to a blind spot where I could not see or hear anything.

Things went quiet, no struggle, no shouting, no drama. Downstairs they are a pleasant Pakistani family, known to our landlord (which is no guarantee of their respectability, I should add); a couple with a baby, though I have always felt a certain mystery about them. When the police raided (or responded to an emergency call, whichever way you see it) the couple’s nice new car was not in the car park. Yes, we have a big car park at the back, big enough for a dozen police cars—but that is not their style, police throughout the world prefer to park randomly and untidily. Later, while the police were still in attendance, the tenants’ car was there. Still later it was gone again. Was no one under arrest? Could members of the family (or gang) come and go freely? Most of the police contingent departed with their vehicles, leaving just one car. I went to empty the garbage and saw the downstairs flat back door open. The remaining policemen must be inside: doing what? Windows were open too, the curtains flapping. If it was the smell of death they were trying to get rid of, where was the forensic team? I got a glimpse of the front room, through the disarranged curtains. A large printer/photocopier, a fan: looked more like an office than a lounge. A desolate atmosphere like an empty nest.

Tell me, Mr Sherlock Holmes, what was going on? As I have reported on my now private Wayfarer’s Notes blog (why private? you may ask) this town is officially a centre for the plotting of terrorism. For months at huge expense the woods were searched for explosives and clues. I never learned the outcome, but the teams of police were glad of the overtime payments for such easy work. For a centre of terrorism, it is a very peaceful place and in particular the teenage Muslims are polite and well-behaved compared with their counterparts—what shall I call them?—Christian, white, indigenous? My theory is that it’s the peacefulness of the town that’s the source of the danger. If the Muslim youth spent their spare hours in binge drinking, nightclubs and general rowdyism, they might be less inclined to heroic suicide missions.

PS In September 2007 we were able to by our own terraced cottage on Jubilee Road, quite near the flat in West Wycombe Road

8 thoughts on “The police arrive”

  1. My inability to solve the mystery shows that I was wise not to choose a career in detective work. I've never solved a mystery even in a book or movie, and am usually completely lost by halfway through, and so I hope you'll tell us the rest of your story.

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  2. I have not solved it myself, Fleming. This being England, one is reticent with one's neighbours and certainly would not ask them about the recent unpleasantness. However after reading your comment, a plausible explanation popped into my head, and as in the best thrillers, the clues were there in the original text.

    The previous tenant was a Nigerian, a quite pleasant fellow who had a Russian girlfriend, as it happens. My experience has told me that Nigerians are almost synonymous with crime but the only ones I know about in his case were an insouciant attitude to unpaid bills: several hundred pounds for parking at an airport for a few months; not paying the tax on his car. (Regular letters are delivered here for my landlord, which he is not excited about when i pass them on. I opened one in the end and it threatened a visit from the bailiffs for an unpaid gas bill)

    So this is my theory. The wife downstairs receives a frightening phone call. A man threatens to kill her husband in case some money is paid. The visit will come in the next hour. She calls the police. They come in numbers. They provide assurance of protection. They realise after calling up the police records that it is a case of mistaken identity. (I did once have a policeman calling at my flat asking about the man downstairs, when the Nigerian was in residence, but again, I didn't confront him about it.)

    So they leave one policeman in the house, guarding it whilst the family go out for the evening, and come back later. Eventually the police remove their guard as it will have become obvious to any aggressor that they won't have a clear run.

    However, if the Nigerian had been in residence when the threat came, i would imagine that he would not call the police, given his past record.

    I feel confident that my story is correct but being a reticent Englishman will take no steps whatever to check it out.

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  4. Thanks Oscar. Another odd thing happened more recently. This time it was a fire engine outside the house with a full team of firefighters with its diesel throbbing and the lights going round so bright into our living room. The effect was not calming, and as ever, I tried to find out what it was about without actually asking. This time it was a flat in the next block. Nothing as simple as smoke or flames. The firemen kept rolling up sections at the back of the truck where they have various sorts of equipment & tools in cases. They rummaged around and never seemed to find what they were looking for. Had a lady got her toe stuck in the bath? A toddler's head stuck through the stair rails? It must have been much rarer than those, something that required a special set of industrial-strength forceps perhaps. The police car that also attended the scene got bored and left. The firefighters seemed to have forgotten about their poor client trapped by some nightmare technology in a lonely apartment. They were lost in the frustration of not being able to locate their inventory.

    Again, I never found out what they originally came to attend and whether they succeeded.

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  7. Had me laughing out loud all the way thru Vincent! Hilarious writing, great subject and you wrung the words right out of it, lol! I vote for counterfeiting ring!

    Cops are helter skelter all over the world, they relish in breaking the mundane laws of social behaviour and reasonable order as they carryout their duties to safeguard our sanity.

    Speaking of sanity, I think you are right in your estimation about the peace of the area being the problem causing the terrorism potential….I have often thought about this, but from a slightly different angle. By keeping the overcharged youth cells filled with those normal activities of barhopping and binge drinking, sports mania and other outlets for their wildness, they, the authorities, also keep them from having time and awareness to delve into what is going on around them realistically-wise, this way, peace is maintained thru the most efficient and least costly means. Even with that, there is more to be said and realized as the reality of the intelligence communities behind the governments.

    Great writing, sure I am late, but enjoyment is where you/I find it, I will try to read some more in the future, assuming my new server survives more than a few days.

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