Helping With an Enquiry

A longish tale of Martin's adventures in police work; it details my somewhat peripheral role in a murder investigation. This all happened a long time ago in a Northern City that will obviously remain nameless. I'll try and keep the rest of it anonymous too.

Unlike most others, this anecdote is rather large (weighing in at well over two thousand words). It's the product of a the amalgamation of a couple of bits-n-bobs, e-mails, and a bit of extra rework by way of explanation. As you may not want to read all that at a single sitting I've split it up into a number of sections: An Attempted Robbery * An Interview * A Bottle Hunt * A Line-up * Epilogue.

I promise not to write so much in a single anecdote again, honest.

An Attempted Robbery

I was working on a large OLTP project and, alas, such is way of such things the project was a bit late. I was this compelled to also stay late and work on the working-up; the debugging and the last minute frantic coding that such things endure. And so it was that one evening, having completed some goal or other I decided to go an have a Pizza. Work was on the edge of the city centre and I was living in digs in what was the student quarter. Suffice it to say the area was not very genteel. In fact it could exude an air of low menace. But I am of somewhat humble roots, myself and it didn't bother me.

[Picture: The Usual Suspects
movie poster]

Helping with enquiries involved a line-up, but not like this

It was a pleasant summer evening and I walked a slightly unfamiliar road toward a busy main road were Pizza and the like could be found. About a third of the way toward my destination when I became aware of three youngish men walking toward me. One of their number lobbed a small bottle at another. It described a gentle arc and was caught by the man in front of me. The bottle-less pair crossed the road, grinning at some private amusement. The one in front of me, now with a bottle seemed to steel himself to some pre-elected task.

"Give me your money".

I said "what?", slightly incredulously.

"Gimme your money", he said again, a little more emphatically, but still with a faint tone of desperation.

It dawned on me what was happening, and I quickly looked around. His confederates, if that's what they were, had disappeared. He went on to repeat his request; all the while waving his little lemonade bottle.

He was smaller, scrawnier than I, probably in his early twenties. In one swift move I twisted the bottle from his grasp; grabbing him by the throat I flung him into a low wall. He seemed suitably stunned. So, I discarded the bottle and started walking up the road again. I'd gone maybe thirty metres and I heard running.

My erstwhile robber had reappeared, this time be looked even more agitated and desperate. And he had a house brick.

"Give me your fucking money", he repeated. The tone was now frantic.

"You'll get seriously hurt", I said, matter of factually. I looked around, he had no support, but a women across the street had stopped to look at the commotion.

This stand-off continued for a short while. He waved his brick and I waited for him to pull his arm back. His throat, initially, I thought, then the back of the knee. Get him on the ground, give him a good kicking. He'd had his chance.

Then, from nowhere, a small, elderly black man appeared.

"No fighting!", he shouted, waving his walking stick at both of us. He had a slight West Indian accent.

Initially I was alarmed. I now had a would be rescuer who was old and frail. But there was an almost magical change on my would-be assailant. He visibly relaxed, and looked positively relieved. It was though he was the one being rescued.

"No fighting" my rescuer repeated. And when it was clear that I was not going to proffer any, both my assailant and he start walking down the road. The older man seemed quite animated and the younger still had his house brick.

I looked around, the woman had decided that she didn't want to be involved and was walking rapidly up the street.

All very weird, I reflected, but then I felt hungry. I remembered what I was about and carried on the the rather run-down Pizza restaurant on the main road.

An Interview

So, with my strange attempted mugging behind me I returned to work. The following day, or was the day after that, one of my colleagues was late for work. I asked him casually for a reason. He told me that his normal way to work was blocked by an on-going police enquiry, the footpath and subway underpass blocked with blue and white tape and do not pass signs. There has been a murder and that was now a crime scene. Some old bloke had been done over in an attempted robbery. It gave me pause for thought. Was this my would-be muggers doing? Was my walking stick wielding rescuer the victim? I rang the police and the said they'd send somebody around.

A little later that day, in the afternoon, I was called to reception. There were two well, but casually, dressed young men with short hair. They looked like they should be selling something but they were policemen. Together we went for a walk.

As we visited the nearby scene of my little altercation, I described as accurately as I could the events of a few days before. We arrived at the spot where I was threatened with the bottle, and I noted that the bottle could now no-longer be found. This was important, for it would have both mine and my assailants' finger prints on it. Having shown the policemen both the places where I'd been threatened, and almost with some secret agreement signalled between them, they appeared to decide that I was credible and that a proper statement should be taken. I agreed to this and we went back to their small green car. They decided to take the statement in the car, in a pub car park, some distance away. I went with them, and as we made our way through the streets, one of the young ladies that habitually could be found there-abouts, with slightly too-little dress and slightly too-much makeup, waved cheerily at us.

"Oh, lets not make it obvious", one of them commented, removing a sheaf of witness forms from the dashboard. We duly arrived at the pub car park and my statement was taken. One of them expressed an opinion of the pub, which was less than complimentary, particularly of its denizens. I thought this unfortunate, for it, to me, was a pleasant and congenial place to take a beer or two.

During the statement taken I was advised to be cautious in the area where the attack took place. There were unpleasant people, with weapons, about. I misinterpreted this, yes, I agreed the young man was taking some risks, he could have gotten himself killed pulling a stunt like that.

After the statement had been taken they ran me back to work, where I remained circumspect and my colleagues didn't interrogate me too closely. Work on my slightly delayed project continued apace.

A Bottle Hunt

I'd had my attempted robbery and made my statement and that seemed to be that, or so I thought. The next day, however, I received a phone call from the police, again; well, I believe it was the following day. Could I revisit the scene, this time with some uniformed officers and give them a hand with looking for the bottle. I said I would and immediately I arrived I saw several policemen poking about under bushes with longish poles. They did so with without any great enthusiasm and an air of resigned boredom. I reported to the Sergeant, who seemed to be in charge. We went over the now familiar story and territory. Naturally we didn't find the bottle, but curiously several people found us.

Initially, they mistook me for a policeman, myself, which was possibly understandable, for I was still a youngish man of neat, fit appearance. There was a discussion the Sergeant, I and one of the people who approached us. It was about the young man and my rescuer, who it was speculated, might have been Somalian on the grounds that he was carrying a walking stick. I described him a little more closely and an air of recognition soon permeated our new witness. There was a suggestion that we should visit him, for this chap knew where he lived. He and the Sergeant then went to seek out the rescuer, I was to stay with one of the remaining policemen and continue the bottle hunt. After a little more ineffectual looking under bushes, I was given leave to return to work, my duty discharged.

A Line-up

The next thing to happen in this sequence was the lineup.

Nothing happened for, I think, the best part of a week and then I received a phone call at work. On the phone was a very exasperated sounding man who identified himself as a policeman. Telling me, in passing, that I was hard to track down, something that surprised me, he invited me to attend a lineup at the police station in the centre of town. I agreed and was given a time. I attended punctually and as shown in to a small room were a number of other people were ensconced. We were joint by stragglers and one of our number was a policeman. His role seemed to be to ensure that there was no collusion or collaboration between us, for we were all clearly witnesses to something involving the events that had occurred, and were possessed of memories that were now about a week old.

The room was small and stuffy and sparsely furnished in best civil-service Formica. Most of which was showing its age. We settled into an uncomfortable silence after the initial greetings and I sized some up the people in the room. We were a mixed bunch, but all male. There were some obvious victims, a small nervous man, a pugnacious but frail and elderly pensioner and a number of folk like I. This surprised me, for although we weren't pantomime hard-men from a TV soap-opera, we didn't look that feeble and obvious robbery candidates, to my mind at least.

Time dragged on. The appointed time came and went with little note. Our police baby-sitter did his best to keep us engaged without us talking about the case and our role in it. There were endless cups of tea, and discussions. The policeman described, in some detail the makeup that was employed to ensure that all the participants looked the same. I rather thought that doing that defeated the object of the exercise. He never the less described how tattoos could be applied, and made to look 'aged'. The tattoos could look like they were acquired in some amateur fashion, including something called "borstal dots".

The continuing discussion ranged over a number of topics, we talked about car registration plates and how they were somewhat geographical in nature. I learnt that I had once had a car that had been first registered in Inverness.

Eventually, all that tea took its toll. I was shown to a toilet that was clearly for the officially detained. There was a minute amount of interesting graffiti and none of the stalls had doors. I was accompanied back to the waiting room, where happily I didn't have to wait for much longer.

One by one we were called forward and introduced into a long glass-walled gallery. Behind the glass, in the brightly lit bit, a number of identically dressed men stood in a line. I started to study them, and recognised one. I was quickly called to a lectern, however, facing in the opposite direction. At this, a fully uniformed Inspector stood, two pips on his shoulders. He formally introduced himself and explained a little of the procedure. He asked me if I knew anything of the case. I replied that I only knew of things I'd seen in the local press, but this was not what was desired. A simple yes/no answer was wanted and I replied that I knew nothing more, and that seemed satisfactory.

I was asked to identify two of the people that I'd met that fateful afternoon. I was to take my time, I could ask them to turn and remove their hats and so forth. They were all waring woollen hats.

I picked out my bottle-waving would-be robber, but no other. Or somebody who looked very much like him. With that I was taken out of another door and quickly found myself thanked and back on the street.

Epilogue

What now? I resolved not to satisfy my curiosity. The lack of knowledge seemed important to the Inspector, so I stayed my hand, lest I be called as a witness at any trial. One didn't want to prejudice anything.

And that was that. I was never called. And these days, and quite a few years down the road, I'm still none the wiser. I did see a local newspaper discarded in a local pub, some month or so later, however. That had a story about the conviction of one person and the release of another. The background could have been the murder enquiry I was on, so perhaps something did happen and my contribution was valuable after all.

I still puzzle over any conclusion that I can draw from this, even now after writing the above narrative. At the time I thought that my relative inaction had allowed my would-be assailant to continue on, and be involved in something far worse. At the time I thought that perhaps I should have been a deal more, shall we say, proactive in my dealings with him. Time has lead me to believe that I more-or-less got it right, given that I didn't know what he was going to do subsequently. These days I'm older, and less fit, I'd have simply ran away to the safety of the main road.

Cockermouth, 30 January, 2011

~Z~