The Last Linslade Bobby, Chapter Five Part Three & Ch6 Pt 1.

Chapter Five Part Three...

Sudden Deaths.

At the junction of Pig Hill, New Road and the Station
Approach there is a small detached house. It sits in the Vee between
Old Road and New Road with a tiny front garden. When I was the
Linslade LBO an elderly brother and sister lived there. I often met
him either walking to or from the post office in New Road to get his
daily newspaper. We would swop greetings and at that time I assumed
he lived on his own having never seen anyone else leave or arrive at
that address. Then one day as I was walking across the footbridge
over the railway that follows a very ancient public footpath (there
long before the railway arrived), that now joins the park with
Southcott Avenue, I had a radio message to attend a sudden death at
the house above. I assumed it must be the old man who had passed
away. The police are automatically called to deal with any death that
is not expected, just in case it is suspicious. This means that if
anyone is not under a doctor or has not visited one for some time,
the ambulance or doctor attending inform the police. The Coroner's
Officer is the final police involvement, but it was often the beat
officer who actually attends and takes statements and checks the body
(at the morgue usually, unless it is obvious that a knife is sticking
out of them or it is suspicious). I arrived to find the old gent at
his front door. He showed me in and into what was originally the
front parlour, or front sitting room. Sitting at the base of the
double bed that almost filled the small room was a huge lady. She was
on a commode and was dead. During the night she had arisen to go to
the loo and straining to eject faeces she had over strained her weak
heart and had died quietly. She was now cold, grey and very stiff. I
confirmed with HQ via my radio that a doctor had been called. He did
not stay long just confirming death. (The actual death certificate is
a different matter and is issued after the postmortem; many lay
people have thought someone is dead by assuming they are, but only a
doctor can confirm the fact.) I then asked HQ to arrange an
'ambulance' to convey the lady to the mortuary at the L&D
Hospital.

Very soon a hearse pulled up, this was unusual as most
cadavers are conveyed to a morgue in black vans with the word printed
in white and very small on the sides, 'AMBULANCE'. A large
fibre-glass coffin (or cask) is used and the two chaps from
Dillamores (another tea spot) the local Funeral Directors, whom I
both knew carried it into the front room where the lady was still
sitting upright on her commode. She was still a bit stiff with
rigamortice and very large. I assisted the two men to get her into
the coffin and it did not miss my notice that I was in my mid-forties
and these two were well into their sixties. They eventually got her
to lay reasonably flat and we began the struggle to get her out to
the hearse. They took the head end and I got the feet and with
difficulty we maneuvered her out into the hallway, out the front
door, round through the little wicket gate and up to the rear of the
hearse. By now we were all puffing and panting and knew what an
effort a twenty stone dead body was to move. The rear doors of the
hearse were opened and we had to lift her the three feet necessary to
slide the cask in. We tried twice but she defeated us.

As we tried to regain our breath I saw a young man on a
cycle coming down New Road (it had recently been made a one-way
street and he was coming the wrong way!) I pulled him over as he
approached us and told him off for his disobeyance of the rules of
the road. Then I suggested he might get salvation if he assisted us
with this big box. He looked at me and then the cask, then at the
hearse and the two men in black suits who were grinning back at him.
But being a real sport he dismounted and with the two older men at
the rear and him and I at the front, we lifted the heavy cask up into
the back of the hearse. Well, almost. As we lifted the two at the
back were supposed to push her in as we got the cask base just above
the hearse's platform. They shoved hard too early and trapped my left
hand's little finger under the cask. I yelled out in pain as my nail
was squashed (later to turn black and fall out). The lad assisting us
jumped at my yell, nearly dropping his side. But luckily the cask
slid in anyway. I thanked our itinerant assistant and we three got
into the front seat of the hearse and drove off to the L&D after
I had carefully explained the routine to the ladies brother (ie, once
the postmortem was done, the body would be released for the funeral.
There was no charge for the postmortem, the Crown paid for that). One
wonders how many pints that cyclist got with his story of 'helping'
the police!

Upon arrival at the L&D I booked in the body and
removed any jewelery, getting the duty attendant to countersign my
pocket note book of what I had taken charge of. He was half way
through his lunch and put his half-eaten sandwich down on the slab he
was currently using, that had blood and guts on it. He was wearing
thin plastic gloves though, also covered in gristle. I would return
the items to the brother as such things go missing in big hospital
mortuaries. I filled out a little parcel label with her name and tied
it to her big toe. We left with me wondering about the bits of human
gristle that would get onto the sandwich, did that make the attendant
a cannibal? Eventually the old brother also passed away and the house
was sold. A local landlord bought it and a friend of mine, Tony
O'Donnell, moved in. Tony is a town character, always seen about with
a huge camera round his neck.

I have mentioned that the approach at the front of the
railway station was the property of BR. I was contacted via my radio
one day to call on a partially blind gentleman who lived in Camberton
Road. He walked to and from the station each day as he worked in
London and used a white stick. He had got off the train, left the
station (the old one, not the current one) and crossed the approach
road to walk through the park to get home. There were double yellow
lines all around the station entrance and a bit of footpath by the
front. One day he turned right as he always did to use this footpath
and found a car blocking his way. As the front was busy with buses,
taxis and cars he asked the driver, who was sitting in the car to
move. The driver just told him to 'F' off. I took a statement and
contacted BTP who gave me the act and section of their regulations
about obstruction and parking. There is one about obstructing
pavements and access, just like the Highways Act. As the complainant
had taken the registration number of the errant car, I soon found the
owner who had also been the driver, and reported him for the
offences. His wife had been listening and rebuked him for not moving
for a blind man. I sent the file off to the Prosecutions Dept at
Luton, who forwarded it to BTP at Euston. The drivers soon got a
summons, to appear at Leighton Buzzard Magistrates; BTP used the
local court where the offence occurred for their incidents. He was
fined.

Early on in my foot beat duties in Linslade I was warned
by CID that a prostitute had set up her business in Wing Road. There
is no law against this as it is the oldest one in the world. A woman
operating on her own is not a brothel, otherwise there would be
serious problems! I met her one day in New Road as I wanted to get to
be able to identify her. I wrapped our meeting around her car, asking
to see her driver's licence etc. She was very nervous and I confirmed
her home address for our intelligence system. She was never any
problem and I had no complaints so left her alone. I doubt her
neighbours even noticed. I did find out she had very 'upper-class'
clients.

Chapter
Six.

Court Duty.

Let
me say from the first, up until I joined the police at the advanced
age of 41, I had every faith in Great British Justice. Alas the day I
retired in March 2003, any faith I had had been destroyed by the
system itself. Basically, Mr & Mrs Law Abider would plead guilty
if they were caught speeding, with no Mot due to forgetfulness, or
foolishly shoplifting. These were often a first offence and they just
wanted to get it all over with. Where as the experienced criminal
always used a solicitor, paid for of course by the taxpayer under
Legal Aid. The legal beagle would play the system being well versed
with the many loopholes and diversionary methods available to them,
provided by their colleagues in power, MPs in the government
(themselves being mostly ex-legal professionals). It is a game as
well and not one that pleased me either! “My
job is to get the Crown to prove beyond all doubt that my client is
guilty, whether
he is or not does not matter to me,”
I was once told. 'Justice' does not come into the equation.

A lady looked out of her front room window one late
evening, at the end of Grassmere Way, to see the shop opposite. She
noticed two teenage boys were hanging about a white van parked
nearby. She watched as they broke into the van and removed tins of
paint. Then they proceeded to open the tins and throw the paint all
over the van. She recognised one lad and though she knew the other
but could only give a description. I took the statements the next day
and arranged for both boys to be brought in to the police station by
a parent. One arrived who had been named in the statement, admitted
the Criminal Damage but refused to say whom his accomplice was. The
other arrived with his father and a solicitor, and on legal advice
refused to answer any questions. As we only had a description and no
positive identity of one it was decided to charge both. So as a pair
they were charged with 'Criminal Damage' and bailed to the Juvenile
Court we then had at the rear of the (now closed) Magistrates Court
in Hockliffe Road (now the police office). As I was not a witness I
was not given any court warning, that means I did not attend court.
Some months went by and I enquired of the Prosecutions Department
then at Luton, what had happened with my court case? They were
supposed to keep the 'officer in the case' informed but never did. I
was told it had been tried and one found guilty, the other case
thrown out through lack of evidence. I then visited the lady witness
who told me a tale of utter terror in court. She had been
cross-examined so harshly that she had lost her train of thought. The
solicitor questioning her had made her look as if she was lying and
herself the offender. She stated to me that never again would she be
a witness no matter what the crime. It had frightened her off our
legal system and alas is a story many have since told me. The lads
eagle-beagle had simply used a ploy called 'discrediting the
witness', simply make them look as if they are unsure then lambast
them. She had attended in all expectation of being simply asked to
tell what she saw and assumed her honesty would be obvious. She was
easy meat for any defence solicitor, an unsuspecting, normal member
of the public.

I had been involved in an arrest at Dunstable Police
Station where a youth had run into the enquiry office shouting abuse
at everyone. He became violent and began trying to break the security
door into the office open whilst screaming abuse at the police. He
was terrifying the members of the general public seated and awaiting
their turn at the counter. Disorderly Conduct in a Police Station is
an arrestable offence and this lad resisted my arrest. Along with
another officer I put this lad to the floor with a Home Office
Approved hold, put my quick-cuffs on him and the two of us carried
him through to the cells. He was going mad, wild with anger and
screaming obscene language that occupants all over the building could
hear. What I did not know then was his mate had been arrested in a
shop in Houghton Regis for public order offences, witnessed by other
customers threatening staff. Both his mate and he were high on some
drugs and virtually out of their minds. I wrote my statement and gave
it to the officer dealing with the shop offence, as it was all a
Dunstable crime.

Months later I received a court warning to attend
Dunstable Magistrates Court, (another that has now closed). When in
the witness stand I was cross-examined by a very expensive London
barrister about the arrest in the shop. I stated that I had nothing
to do with that, I had simply assisted an arrest of a youth in the
Police Station. The barrister continued to ask me about Section 5
Public Order offences, ignoring my statement. So I ignored him and
told the story of what happened in the enquiry office to the bench. I
was then asked by the barrister why I had charged the lad with the
Public Order offences. I said I had not done so, it was done by the
officer in the case. This barrister was deliberately confusing the
three Magistrates and I was determined to say my bit. Then the very
young WPC who had arrested the youth at the shop and the officer in
the case went into the stand. The barrister did the same trick with
her by asking totally inappropriate questions about the arrest I had
done in the enquiry office. He then summed up the defence for the
Bench by telling them the police had deliberately baited his client,
who were by now so confused and so found the lad innocent. I was
livid but an Inspector told me not to worry, the two lads were well
known and would soon be in court again.

One day I attended a road accident on Stoke Road and
issued a 'producer' to a driver' This is a form (a HORT/1) telling
them to produce their driver's licence, insurance and MoT at a police
station of their choice within seven days. (An anomaly of this law
says insurance within five days, but we ignored that.) I then forgot
all about this as we issue these things like confetti, made a pocket
note book entry and send the duplicate HORT/1 off to Dunstable.
Dunstable would tie up our duplicate with the completed form when the
driver attended his local police station, which could be anywhere in
the UK. Months later I got a court warning to go up to Coventry. I
had to wrack my brain to even remember this HORT/1 (Home Office Road
Transport Form 1) but I duly booked a rail warrant to go. I travelled
up on the train, walked to the court, sat there all day, was called
in to only be asked, “ Did you issue this HORT/1?”, to which I
replied “Yes”. That was it. I then went home by train. It turned
out the driver I had issued the form to was the son of a Lord, who
had engaged a barrister to defend his son in a magistrates court (a
bit OTT). The barrister was looking for anything to get the lad off
the charges, which included all the admin stuff as well. He had been
charged with Careless Driving. A whole day off my beat area just to
appease a son of a Lord, the cost of the train being paid by the
taxpayer. As I may have mentioned before, justice in our courts is a
game between the lawyers, it matters not who is and who is not
guilty. They look for any loophole, error, mistake, no matter how
small irrespective of the strength of any evidence.

To be fair, the vast majority of legal-beagles are
decent people and it is oh so very true that only a fool tries to
defend themselves in a court of law. If I ever get arrested I will
most certainly use the services of a solicitor.

Continued.....