Need You Dead

6 Monday 18 April

PC Juliet Solomon was thirty-two, and had been in Brighton and Hove Response for almost a decade; she still loved it, although she was hoping for promotion to sergeant soon. Her slender, petite frame belied a very tough character, her lack of height never a disadvantage in awkward confrontations.

A few minutes into her early shift, she sat at a desk, mug of tea beside her, typing up her report on an incident she had attended yesterday — a local café proprietor had called in that a man had run off without paying and with another customer’s handbag. They’d spotted the suspect a short while later, from the proprietor’s description, and chased him on foot before finally arresting him — and she was pleased to be able to return the handbag to its owner.

Juliet’s stocky, shaven-headed and bespectacled work buddy for this shift, Matt Robinson, two years her junior, was a Special Constable — one of a number of unpaid volunteer police officers in the Sussex force. At this moment he was hunched over his mobile phone, talking to someone at the company he owned, Beacon Security.

Working ‘Section’, on alternating shifts responding to emergencies, is the ultimate adrenaline rush for young police officers — and for some older ones who never tire of it. No officer on Response can predict what will happen in five minutes’ time. The one certainty is that no one — apart from the occasional drunk or nutter — dials 999 to tell the police they are happy.

The team was housed in a long ground-floor space in Brighton police station. The recently refurbished room spanned the width of the building, with windows on one side giving a spectacular view to the south, down to the English Channel, and on the other side the car park and a drab office building beyond. Blocks of work stations were ranged along both sides, the cream-and-blue walls and charcoal carpet giving it a smart, modern appearance. It smelled a lot fresher than its predecessor, which had always had an ingrained reek of sweat, spilt coffee and years of microwaved meals and takeaways.

Most of the occupants were in uniform black tops, with shapeless black trousers and heavy-duty boots. A cluster of stab vests and yellow hi-vis jackets hung on pegs and police radios sat on several work surfaces, emitting incessant low-volume bursts of sound. The room was manned round the clock, the twenty-four hours divided into three shifts — earlies, lates, nights — and there was a briefing at the start of each shift to update the incoming officers on all ongoing police activities in the city, and potential situations.

Some crews went straight out on patrol in vehicles. Other officers, as Juliet Solomon was doing, remained at their desks, filling out forms and reports, transcribing statements from their notebooks, radios sitting just below their chins in their stab vest pockets, listening out for a Control Room request to attend a call, or sometimes a more mundane delivery mission.

Shortly after 7 a.m., Juliet’s radio came alive.

‘Charlie Romeo Zero Five, are you available to attend 73 Crestway Rise, off Hollingbury Road? Distressed call from a woman who says her husband has just pushed dog faeces into her face. He’s threatening to kill her. She’s locked herself in the toilet. Grade One. She’s hung up, but I’m trying to call her back.’

All calls were graded. ‘Grade One’ meant immediate response. ‘Two’ meant get there within one hour. ‘Three’ was attend by appointment. ‘Four’ was no police attendance required and to be resolved over the phone.

Juliet turned to Matt. ‘OK?’

‘Rock ’n’ roll,’ the Special Constable replied. They grabbed hi-vis jackets from the rack at the far end, and the keys to a pool car, then hurried downstairs.

Less than two minutes later, with Juliet driving, they pulled out of the car park in a marked Ford Mondeo estate, turned left and headed down the steep hill towards London Road. Matt leaned forward against his seat belt, punched the buttons for the blue lights and siren, then tapped the address into the satnav, whilst at the same time listening to further information from the call handler. The victim’s name was Lorna Belling.

Juliet knew from her years of experience just how scary and dangerous a situation like this could be.