The Midden

Chapter 5

In the conference dining-room at the Underview Hotel in Tween the Chief Constable, Sir Arnold Gonders, presided over a celebratory dinner for the Twixt and Tween Serious Crime Squad. Ostensibly the dinner was being held to mark the retirement of Detective Inspector Holdell, who had been with the Squad since it had first been set up. In fact the real celebration had to do with the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions in London not to proceed with the trial of twenty-one members of the Squad for falsifying evidence, fabricating confessions, accepting bribes, the use of unwarranted violence, and wholesale perjury, which crimes had sent several dozen wholly innocent individuals to prison for sentences as long as eighteen years while allowing as many guilty criminals to sleep comfortably at home and dream of other dreadful crimes to commit.

The Chief Constable was particularly pleased by the outcome. He had spent the day in London and had had a private meeting with the Home Secretary and the DPP to hear the decision. As he put it to his Deputy, Harry Hodge, 'I told them straight. The morale of the Force is the priority. "Top Priority," I said. "And if you want to undermine that morale, you just go ahead and drag my lads into court. You won't have me as Chief Constable if you do and you'd better know that now." Well, they got the message and no mistake.'

Which was not exactly what had happened.

The decision had been taken two weeks before and even then it had needed the DPP's strongest arguments to persuade the Home Secretary that a trial would not be in the public interest. He had explained the problem over lunch at the Carlton Club. 'Start opening that particular can of fucking worms,' he said, 'and Pandora's Box will look like the good times.'

The Home Secretary had mulled this over with a piece of lamb's liver. 'You know, I'd never thought of it that way before,' he said finally, running a hand over his greasy hair. 'I suppose they have to.'

'Have to what?' asked the Director.

'Fuck. Must do, I suppose. Stands to reason.'

'Fuck what?' asked the DPP, who was beginning to think his own preference for prostitutes was being got at. For the life of him he couldn't remember one called Pandora.

'Other worms,' said the Home Secretary. 'All the same sex or both sexes, worms are. I suppose that's what bifurcated means.'

The DPP tried to pull his thoughts together. He couldn't see the significance of worms bifurcating. 'About the Twixt 'n Tween Serious Crime Squad,' he said. 'The thing is we've got Sir Arnold Gonders up there and, while I can't say he's my cup of tea, he pulls a certain amount of weight at Central Office. She appointed him and he's something of a favourite.'

'Really?' said the Home Secretary, with the private thought that in that case Sir Arnold Gonders must be extremely bent. 'Did his bit in the Miners' Strike against that shit Scargill, I suppose?'

'Absolutely. Never shrank back for a moment. Wanted to use armoured police horses against pickets and that sort of thing. And water canons with some sort of acid dye in them. Gets his instructions from God, apparently, like that other lunatic. Makes God sound fucking weird, if you ask me.'

The Home Secretary looked at him doubtfully. You never knew with DPPs these days. 'You've got a thing about fucking, haven't you?' he asked. 'Ever thought of bifucking?'

The Director of Public Prosecutions smiled unhappily. He was never entirely sure about the Home Secretary either. There had been some talk about cross-dressing.

Altogether it had been a most unpleasant lunch, but he had finally got the Minister to agree that the Twixt and Tween Serious Crime Squad and the Chief Constable should be left in peace for sound party political reasons. These had to do with a property development company in Tweentagel which Sir Arnold had shown himself to be rather too well informed about during their private discussions over the phone. It had never crossed the Director of Public Prosecutions' mind that the ex-Prime Minister's family business arrangements were so involved. Sir Arnold's implied threat made him glad he hadn't dipped his hand into that particular barrel. In short, Sir Arnold Gonders knew far too much to be trifled with.

Now, sitting at the top table looking down over his lads, the Chief Constable preferred his own blunter version of events. It accorded more with the picture of himself he liked to have in his own mind, that of the kindly father to his men who would cheerfully sacrifice his own career to maintain their belief in themselves as the guardians of the law. Of course God came into the picture too. He would never have got anywhere in life without God being on his side all the time. Well, most of it anyway.

As he'd once put it to his Deputy, 'You ought to take up religion, Harry, you really ought. Beats Rotary any day of the week. I mean, it gives meaning, know what I mean. With God beside you, you know you're right. My golf handicap improved four strokes when I got religion. I'd been on twenty-two for almost as many years and suddenly I'm on eighteen. That's proof enough for me.'

The celebratory party was undoubtedly an excellent one. There was plenty of champagne and half a dozen cases of brandy had been donated by the main drug dealer for the area. It had been nicked from the cellar of a well-known connoisseur of fine wines and was known to be good. There was even a kissogram girl, naked except for painted convict's stripes, who had been paid for by the ex-Prime Minister's son with the message, 'To the dear old Bill. Keep it up, lads, and top the bastards.' This was much appreciated, although Sir Arnold, who, having started the evening on gin and tonics, had gone onto whisky, and had then been prevailed upon to drink a couple of pints of Newcastle Brown with some detective constables before progressing through the champagne to a particularly virulent Côtes de Provence and finally brandy, wasn't altogether sure about having naked women with stripes on them strutting about the room waving their fannies.

'Wouldn't have done in my young days,' he told Hodge. 'Still, it's only fun and it helps keep morale up.'

'Keeps other things up too, I dare say,' said his Deputy, but the Chief Constable chose not to hear. He was wondering whether he was up to putting his own thing into Glenda or not. Probably not.

In the meantime Chief Inspector Rascombe was making a speech. Sir Arnold lit another Montecristo No. 1 and sat back contentedly to listen. 'You can't expect a good detective like Rascombe to be a bloody orator as well,' he had told Hodge before the dinner, and Rascombe was proving him right.

It was only towards the end of his allotted ten minutes that the real meat of the speech became apparent. Until then the Inspector had concentrated on the excellent work the SCS, and particularly the retiring Detective Inspector Holdell, had done and the crimes they had 'solved'. But then he changed tack and spoke with surprising eloquence about the unbridled campaign of vilification the media was conducting against the finest body of men and women he had ever had the privilege to work with in defence of law and order. 'What the public have got to understand,' he said by way of conclusion, 'and what the fucking do-gooders are going to bloody learn, is that we are the Law' (cheers) 'and an Order means just that and, if they don't like it, they can piss in the pot or get out of the kitchen!'

The applause that greeted this analysis of the police role in society delighted the Chief Constable so much that he helped himself to another brandy and rose to his feet a truly happy man. In his own speech he praised Holdell for his dedication to making Tween a safer city which, since it was graded second in the league for violent crimes among all provincial cities, would hardly have reassured a sober and unbiased audience. One of the younger waiters did in fact have a coughing fit. But the Chief Constable went on, and on, and ended by reminding 'all you officers present that our island nation stands on the very brink of a new and terrible invasion, this time by organized international crime. Already the criminals and we all know who they are are trying to subvert our great traditions of justice and fair play by undermining the very foundations of morality which as we all know lie in family life. The so-called single-parent family a non sequitur if ever I saw one because you can't have a mother without a father and vice versa this so-called single-sex family is the dry rot of everything we Britons stand for. And I for one can tell you I am not having women with short hair and men with you-know-what and the out-of-town monkeys' (here he looked with facetious caution round the dining-room) 'with the big johnnies sticking their noses into the way we've always done things in this country.' He finished with his usual prayer to 'Almighty God, Father of all Things, help us in our struggle against the Powers of Evil, and those of impure heart who seek continually to hamper the Serious Crime Squads everywhere, to do Thy will. Amen.'

He sat down to the applause he expected and looked more favourably on the kissogram girls. Very favourably indeed. Oh yes, it was good for morale to have some properly sexed girls at a party like this. The tables had been pushed back and a space cleared and it was obvious there would be some dancing. Well, that was fine for the younger folk, but the Chief Constable had better things to do. In particular he was going to spend the rest of the night with Glenda and get her to show him some new tricks. That was one of the advantages of having the Old Boathouse up by the reservoir that his wife liked so much. Gave him the opportunity to get to see Glenda here in town. He had bought the boathouse at a very favourable rate when the Twixt and Tween Waterworks had been privatized and had spent a lot of money doing it up and modernizing it. Nice little bolt-hole was the way he'd seen it then but, now that Lady Vy had adopted it as her own, he tended to stay away as much as possible. And this weekend he had special reasons for staying out of the way. Vy had been over to Harrogate to pick up her so-called Auntie Bea and they'd be up at the boathouse by now and doing God alone knew what. Not that he cared any longer. Glenda was a good girl and knew how to give a man the sort of thing he liked. Yes, he'd go over to her flat and...He was just considering this happy prospect when Sergeant Filder came over and bent down. 'I'm afraid there's that fellow Bob Lazlett from the Echo outside asking for a statement, sir,' he said.

'At this time of bloody night? What sort of statement?'

'He says he's heard the prosecution has been dropped...'

The Chief Constable stubbed the cigar out angrily in the remains of his Camembert. 'How the fuck did he hear that? I haven't issued any statement and they said in London they were waiting to release one on Monday to miss the Sunday papers.'

'I wouldn't know, sir, but there's a whole pack of the buggers out there, including Channel Four and the BBC. I told them the dinner was only for Detective Inspector Holdell's going away but they wouldn't buy it.'

Sir Arnold Gonders pushed his chair back and stood up lividly. 'Harry,' he shouted at his Deputy, 'get those fucking girls dressed fast and see the lads don't go too far with their high jinks. No, better still, leave that side of things to Rascombe. You and me are getting out of here fast. I'm not having the bloody media photograph me this weekend. Let the sods rot. We'll go out the back way.' He went out into the foyer while the Deputy Chief Constable spoke urgently to the Chief Inspector. One glance over the balcony into the entrance hall below told Sir Arnold things were far worse than he had anticipated. The newsmen were everywhere, and it was only the presence of several uniformed policemen that was holding the mob back from swarming up the stairs.

Sir Arnold went back into the dining-room. 'Where's the back entrance?' he asked Sergeant Filder.

'They've got some of them round there too,' the Sergeant told him. Sir Arnold helped himself to another large brandy and handed the bottle to Hodge. He was tired, and he was buggered if he was going to face a horde of reporters and muckrakers in his present condition. The bastards would have it splashed that he was pissed.

'Right, Filder, see the management and get Hodge and me rooms here for the night,' he said. 'Those shits can spend eight hours in the street and more. As far as everyone is concerned Hodge and I haven't been here tonight.'

'I'm not sure that's such a good idea, sir,' Hodge told him. 'I'm told they've nobbled one of the waiters and he's told them about the kissogram birds.'

Sir Arnold stared bleakly into a publicity hell almost equalling that of some of the Crime Squad's victims. He knew only too well what the media could do to a man's reputation. He'd used them often enough.

He finished his brandy at a gulp. 'We've got to establish deniability,' he said, and called Rascombe over. 'We haven't been here tonight, right? Hodge and me weren't here. You organized this do for Holdell and, as far as you know, I'm still in London. Yes, I know they know we're here. They can't prove it if we all keep our traps shut. Right?'

'Right,' said Inspector Rascombe, who knew the drill.

'No interviews. No statements. Nixnie. A complete shutdown. Hodge and I haven't been here and, if that fucking hotel manager wants to keep his drinks licence, he'd better go along with the story. Make sure he knows which side his bread is buttered. Now then, Filder, call up an unmarked car and have it ready in Blight Street.'

'I can take you in mine,' said the Sergeant. 'It's back in the multi-storey.'

The Deputy Chief Constable looked anxious. 'But how are we going to get out of the hotel?' he asked.

'Well, there's always such a thing as a little diversion,' the Inspector told him. 'Couple of cameras broken and that bugger Bob Lazlett gets a few loose teeth. Can't be bad.'

'Be bloody disastrous,' said Sir Arnold. 'Nothing I'd like better than the little shit would break his neck but we don't do it for him.

Not tonight, any rate. Some dark alley and no one around would be different.'

Twenty minutes later, with the manager's eager compliance, a large van drove up to the service entrance, the tailboard went down and the conveyor belts began to unload the hotel's morning supplies. As it finished, Sir Arnold and Harry Hodge in white lab coats slipped over the tailboard and disappeared.

'What a bloody mess,' said the Chief Constable drunkenly. The brandy bottle was empty. 'I'm fucked if I'm going home now. Those shits will be besieging the house.'

'You can always come to my place,' said Hodge. But Sir Arnold was in no mood to come under the caustic eye of Mrs Hodge, thank you very much. And Glenda was definitely out of the question now. One whiff of that little number and an entire sewage works would hit the fan.

'I'll get Filder to take me up the boathouse. Those bastards come up there, I'll set the dog on them.'

It was nearly three when the Chief Constable finally climbed out of the van, slumped exhausted into the police Rover, and set out for Scabside Reservoir.