Dead if You Don’t

12

Saturday 12 August

16.00–17.00

Keith Ellis opened the security barrier with his pass card and rode through into the sprawling campus of Sussex Police Headquarters. He dismounted from his Triumph Tiger in the car park of the Contact & Communications Centre, a modern, almost futuristic-looking red-brick building opposite the one that housed the police driving school. It was just gone 4.30 p.m., and the Oscar-1 Inspector — formerly known as Ops-1 — had been on a rest day, but he had agreed to go in to relieve a colleague who wanted to attend his son’s seventh birthday party.

Tall and lightly bearded, Ellis cut an imposing figure as he strode across to the side entrance in his Kevlar jeans and lightweight jacket — his last middle-aged throw at being trendy — and pressed his card against the door panel. He felt a twinge of nostalgia, aware he would only be doing this for a few more weeks, after thirty years in varied roles in the force, which included behind-the-scenes at Gatwick Airport, a role in Traffic where he rose to become a Road Death Senior Investigating Officer, followed by a posting as Critical Incident Inspector for East Sussex Division, and now for the past three years serving as an Oscar-1. In this latest role, he had considerable authority and power. Between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. the duty Oscar-1 would be one of the very few senior police officers on duty in the county.

He wondered now, as he had done for several months, whether he was doing the right thing in retiring at the end of the year, at just fifty-two. He would collect his handsome pension pot. He’d be able to text jokes to friends without having to worry about being hauled up in front of Professional Standards accused of being racist or homophobic or sexist or animalist or veganist or whatever faction of the Political Correctness Fascists he might have supposedly offended this week.

And yet...

As a Chief Superintendent colleague who was also coming up for retirement had recently told him over a pint, once the knowledge was out that you were down to your last year or so, your colleagues put you into the UBB.

It stood, unflatteringly, for Useless Bastards Box.

Keith hung up his motorcycle clothing on a couple of pegs in the locker room, put his crash helmet down on a bench, then climbed the concrete staircase, in his black uniform top and trousers, into the open-plan area of the Force Control Room that had been his domain for the past three years. And realized just how much he loved it here. He might be in the UBB these days, but hopefully he could at least show his abilities as a safe, competent pair of hands up to his very last shift.

And this vast room on two floors was where all potential glory — and sometimes sheer horror — for Sussex Police began.

It was where the county’s emergency and non-emergency call takers — or contact handlers, as they were called — sat wearing their headsets, in deep concentration. And it was where the rota of highly skilled operators monitored the county’s 85 °CCTV cameras.

Everything that might involve the police in an emergency callout began here, in this room. Whether it was a suspicious man posing as a gas meter reader, a road traffic accident, a mugging, a bank robbery, a rape, a suspected terrorist, a firearms incident or an air disaster, any 999 call would be answered and assessed in this room. And he would have the responsibility for handling the first stages of any major incident resulting.

UBB.

Huh.

No way! If he could have just one juicy job sometime between now and retirement, he’d show them just how damned good he was!

He wasn’t going to have to wait very long.