Deadheads

3

Police Cadet Shaheed Singh too was beginning to have serious doubts about the wisdom of his choice of career.

His superiors were far from encouraging. He had not been surprised to find in his course-instructors that combination of hectoring sarcasm and patronizing familiarity which he remembered from his not too distant schooldays, but he'd looked for something different from the working cops he met on his four weeks' attachment.

Well, he'd found it. Inspectors and sergeants of the uniform branch were not unhelpful but seemed to take it as axiomatic that he was thick and idle. As for the CID, Mr Dalziel terrified him, Sergeant Wield clearly hated him and even the amiable Mr Pascoe seemed to have developed some of Dalziel's brusqueness in his superior's absence.

At the constable level, while he had a friendly, jokey relationship with most of the PCs, he found their instinctive if unmalicious racism very trying. Even George Wedderburn, with whom he spent most mornings sorting out the traffic at the market roundabout, had taken to using him as a kind of personal servant.

'Here, young Shady,' he'd said this morning, glancing at his watch, 'it's slackening off. You cut along, get me twenty Park Drive and a Mirror, and get the teas set up in the Caff, OK? And no sloping off for a bit of how's-your-father!'This jocular injunction dated from his lateness the morning he had visited the car park. After Wedderburn had got over his annoyance, he had affected to believe that Singh's halting explanation was a cover-up for an amorous rendezvous. Constable Grainger, still smarting from Singh's jokes about his weight, had knowledgeably opined, 'Aye, they can't do without it, these darkies. They're at it all the time where they come from. It's the heat, tha' knows, and them loin-cloths.'

A sociologist would have seen this as a classic manifestation of the white man's feeling of cultural superiority and sexual inferiority, but Singh had just grinned and gone on his way, secretly wishing that these allegations about his active sex life were even partially true.

As he came out of the tobacconist's with Wedderburn's paper and cigarettes and began to cross the market place, he encountered two more reasons for self doubt.

The first was a young man with very long hair, wearing faded jeans and a grubby T-shirt printed with a clenched fist and pinned with CND and Stuff-The-Tories badges. He was handing out pamphlets headlined Police Brutality — The Facts. He looked at Singh's uniform and bared his teeth in a defiant sneer as the boy passed.

On the other side of the market place, Singh met another young man. This one had very short hair and was wearing faded jeans and a grubby T-shirt on which was printed a large Union Jack. He was handing out pamphlets headlined Immigration — The Facts. He looked at Singh's face and bared his teeth in a contemptuous sneer as he passed.

The Market Caff with its steamed-up windows and inadequate fan, which seemed to act on the bacon fat odours and loud Yorkshire breath which filled the air as an electric whisk acts on cream, thickening the mixture rather than dispersing it, loomed ahead like a sanctuary this morning. But before he could pass through the door and inhale its turgid incense, he felt his arm seized.

'Hello, Shady. You all right?'

Singh turned and found himself facing Mick Feaver. He viewed him with grave suspicion.

'I'm all right. What do you want, Mick?' he asked brusquely.

'Just a word.'

It dawned on Singh that far from being menacing, Feaver looked as if he could do with some comfort himself. His usual uncertain expression was exaggerated to the point of extra anxiety, though perhaps this was partly due to the physical underlining given by a bruised cheek and a split lip.

Someone came out of the Caff, and through the open door, Singh ascertained that PC Wedderburn had not yet arrived.

'I'm just going to have a mug of tea,' he said. 'Fancy one?'

He didn't wait for an answer but went into the Caff. At the counter, he found Feaver close behind. He ordered three mugs of tea and Wedderburn's usual chocolate wafer bar.

'Fetch them two,' he instructed, and picking up one mug and the wafer bar he went in search of a seat.

Mrs Pascoe was here again, he noted, with her baby. He wondered if Mrs Aldermann was coming too and whether she would recognize Mick Feaver as one of the youths in the car park. But it was too late, or too soon, to worry. Mrs Pascoe spotted him and gave him a friendly smile. The only two empty chairs in the place seemed to be at her table, but fortunately a group of market workers began to extract themselves grumbling from a distant corner and he was able to divert to the vacant seats.

Mick Feaver didn't seem disposed to open the conversation and though Singh's natural inclination was to outlast his silence, he guessed that anything the lad was likely to say would have to be said before Wedderburn arrived.

He indicated the third mug and the chocolate wafer and said, 'He'll be along just now.'

'Yes,' said Feaver. 'Look, Shady, thanks for saying what you did at the nick yesterday.'

'Saying what I did?' said Singh in puzzlement.

'Yeah. That copper, not the ugly one, the other, he said someone had put in a good word for us and I knew it could only be you.'

'Oh aye,' said Singh. 'Well, that's all right.'

'Nothing's going to happen, is it?' pursued Feaver.

'What about?'

'About scratching them cars.'

'Oh no,' said Singh who had received his assurance, albeit in what he regarded as a typically grudging fashion, from Sergeant Wield.

'We both admitted it. That Pascoe fellow said we both admitted it. He stressed it, like.Both of us, not just one.'

Singh listened to the protesting tone and began to get some feel of what this was about.

'That's right,' he agreed again.

'That wanker, Marsh, he told the others it were just me. He said it were me as blew the whistle on all of them.'

'Aye, that's Jonty,' said Singh philosophically. 'Always liked to look big.'

His philosophy was not infectious and Feaver said angrily, 'Big mouth, that's what's big about him. He's been saying things about you as well. He says you're dead friendly when you're chatting to your old mates but then you go straight down the nick and tell 'em everything you've heard.'

'Is that what he says?' said Singh.

Feaver was obviously disappointed in the reaction and said viciously, 'The black pig, that's what he calls you. The black pig.'

Singh sipped his tea. It was strong and rather tannic, nothing like the delicate infusions which his mother would be serving up at regular intervals during the day to his father in the shop. His father was a gentle but strong-minded man who took family obedience as his natural right and Singh had no quarrel with that. But something in him, or perhaps something outside of him in his Western environment, had resisted the idea of being a lifelong underling, which was what helping in the shop would entail, so he had joined the police cadets. To turn back now would be difficult, almost impossible. But as he sat here in this miasmic atmosphere and learned how short a step it had been from 'old Shady Singh' to 'the black pig', he yearned to be in his father's shop, receiving meticulous instructions on the best method of stacking tins on the long shelves.

'You put 'em right, though, Mick?' he said. 'About what really happened.'

'That's a laugh,' said Feaver, fingering his cut lip. 'This is what I got when I saw them wankers last night. You're all right, but. They daren't touch you.'

His tone was envious, accusing, scornful. It left Singh no route back to their old, casual, uncomplicated schooldays friendship.

'Do you want to make a complaint,' he said formally.

'No, what good'd that do?' said Feaver surlily.

What good indeed? wondered Singh. Over Feaver's shoulder he saw Mrs Pascoe who had been glancing impatiently at her watch rise suddenly and organize the baby into her papoose basket. She caught his eye, smiled a farewell, and made for the door. As she passed through it, Singh glimpsed the solid frame of George Wedderburn talking to some old acquaintance on one of the open vegetable stalls facing the Caff.

'My mate's on his way,' he said. 'He'll be here in half a minute.'

‘It's Jontv Marsh,' said Feaver in a sudden rush. 'You know how he's always going on about his brother, Arthur, what a hard case he is and all that?'

'Yeah, I remember.'

'Well, a week back, while I was still knocking around with that lot, Jimmy Bright said something about Arthur, like, what's he doing now? something like that. And Jonty said, keeping busy, but like, he meant more. And Jimmy said, you mean he's nicking stuff like before? And Jonty said no, that lark's for kids like you; you know, sounding big again. And it got up Jimmy's nose and he said, well, he got nicked doing kid's stuff, didn't he? So how's he managing to do something really clever all by himself? And Jonty got narked and said there was a few of them in it and it was big operations they did, not just breaking kitchen windows and nicking a few transistors, but big houses with good stuff they needed a van to cart away.'

He paused and Singh looked into his tea mug because he couldn't look at Mick Feaver, this weak, uncertain but basically good-humoured lad whom they'd all tended to protect a bit, and who was now his first grass. His silence worked where words might not have done, for after one deep breath, Feaver took the final large step, from the general to the particular.

'He said that Arthur had invited him on the next job. He said they were short-handed because there'd been a bit of an accident. Jimmy said it was all a load of crap, anyone could say that, and next time there was a big job say they'd been on it. So Jonty said all right, it was the first weekend in July and if Jimmy could read the papers, he'd read all about it. The first weekend in July and the house was called Rosemont.'

He was finished. The door opened and Wedderburn came in. Mick Feaver stood up and Singh raised his eyes till they met the boy's gaze.

'See you,' he said abruptly and turned and left, pushing by George Wedderburn violently enough to make the big policeman glare after him.

'Mate of yours?' he said, sitting himself in the chair vacated by Feaver.

'That's right,' said Singh, looking at the closed door. 'Just an old mate, that's all.'