I ground the car to a halt next to him, noticing him sweating and panting like a bloodhound.
‘Dad, Dad,’ I shouted, ‘get in, we’ll take you up there,’ expecting him to fling open the back door and gratefully throw himself across the bench seat.
However he broke stride momentarily, took one look and bellowed, ‘You can fuck off, son. I’ve seen your driving. I’m safer risking a heart attack!’ His pace seemed to quicken as if to put as much distance between him and me as possible.
‘That’s bloody charming,’ I remarked to Dave as I accelerated the car away. ‘That’s the last time I offer to help the old timer!’
As I glanced towards him I saw Dave was in no state to reply. He was creased up, convulsing with hysterical laughter, eyes streaming and fighting for breath.
I drove on, silently rueing the lack of respect the older generation was showing me. Even the traffic warden didn’t prostrate himself at my feet with gratitude. His assailant had already been handcuffed and was being squeezed into one of the other police cars.
I got back into the car and sloped down the hill to the police station, feeling distinctly unloved and unneeded. The homecoming warmth that Grace and Branson feel every time they arrive at this strangely welcoming concrete carbuncle escaped me that day.
One of the most common saviours of our sanity is gallows humour, or the hilarity found in the macabre. We hear in the Grace novels dozens of instances of this and all evoke in me memories of how it helped us cope, free from today’s political correctness Gestapo bearing down.
Some of the acronyms that describe the various states or liabilities of those involved in road crashes may seem insensitive. FUBAR BUNDY — Fucked Up Beyond All Recovery But Unfortunately Not Dead Yet and DODI — Dead One Did It are both examples of the dark wit of all emergency service workers, but they serve a purpose in keeping us sane amid the horrors we face.
Like so many of my colleagues, several of the characters in the Roy Grace series would be either the instigator or the target of merciless banter.
DS Norman Potting, with his old-school roots and his crass political incorrectness, shows his colours throughout with his injudicious comments in briefings, some of which are shocking, but many display the hilarity required to survive consecutive murder enquiries.
DI Glenn Branson, with his sharp dress sense, encyclopaedic knowledge of the movies and his background as a club bouncer, receives as much teasing for this as he doles out to his friend and boss, Roy Grace, over his age and musical tastes.
I hate to think what revolting substitutes would have been placed in DS Bella Moy’s ever-present Malteser box, just waiting for her hand to spontaneously grab while beavering away in the incident room.
When I was a patrol officer most police stations had social clubs. Those who never had to face the misery and violence that frontline policing dishes up in spades saw these bars as a luxury.
However, after a frenetic late shift I, and many like me, found them a welcome sanctuary where our unofficial debriefs could be held in relative privacy. We had to unwind and the stuff we needed to talk about was not fit for public ears.
The healing properties of a couple of pints of warm flat beer, supped in the austere surroundings of the fourth-floor Brighton Police Station bar, spiced with an hour of merciless mickey-taking, worked wonders in normalizing the mind after eight hours immersed in human misery.
There was no seniority or pecking order; no-one was immune. I was as guilty as the next person of homing in on those who’d had an unfortunate shift. You were an obvious target if you had been assaulted, crashed a car or let a prisoner escape — all thankfully rare, hence all the more ripe for a torrent of relentless ribbing.
None of this was serious. We all knew that ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ but as it was not us on those particular days, why not give the luckless ones a hard time and everyone else a good laugh?
However, this could occasionally become abhorrent. Some would ridicule their colleagues or members of the public for just being different. Women, gay people or those with a different colour skin had a torrid time at the hands of the ignorant. This wasn’t banter, it was bullying plain and simple. My experience now is that this bigotry is stamped on the second it surfaces. Others may disagree.
It’s a shame, however, that the positive camaraderie that team bonding brings is waning. Some officers feel shy laughing off the trials they have faced in case some clinically minded, desk-bound manager takes offence.
Often, it’s the members of the public we deal with who provide the richest material for laughs. The lighter moments can spark from a particularly dumb villain, a helpless inebriate as well as from the idiocy of a colleague.
Show me a cop who doesn’t relish the sights and sounds of Brighton’s notorious West Street late on a Saturday night when the drunks start to spill out from the countless clubs, and I will show you a misery-guts.
A few punters want to fight but most, in their own woozy way, just ‘wanna be your mate’. Scantily clad women, and men, insist on being photographed with ‘the best bobby in Brighton’. Some confuse the rooftop ‘Police’ sign with one signifying a taxi and demand to be driven ‘Home, James’ while others insist you have ‘a bite of my kebab, mate, ’cos you must be bloody starving and I bloody love the Old Bill, I do!’ The banter is just fabulous and I always imagine their reaction the next morning when reminded of this by friends who would no doubt add, ‘I can’t believe you said/did that to that copper. You were lucky not to get nicked.’ Never a chance of that from me. These people made my evening.
It was rare to see the blueprint for Roy Grace, David Gaylor, lose his sense of humour. He was normally at the centre of most of the pranks but on one occasion, while the rest of us were revelling in a colleague’s misfortune, his was the only stern face.
I was a DS and David was the DCI at Hove CID. I’d known David since we both served in Bognor together, him on CID and me as a wet-behind-the-ears probationary constable. He has always been a very self-assured and superbly gifted detective. His reputation for getting things done earned him many promotions. He would always find a way to reach an objective and that, in the policing culture, is a highly prized gift. He ran a very tight ship and we all knew where we stood. That said he was great to be around, always quick with a joke, and could not resist a wind-up when the opportunity arose.
My very good friend and constant colleague DS Bill Warner was normally very close to David. For years David allowed the office to believe that when he went on holiday, as well as Bill ferrying him to and from the airport, he would task him with various chores at his home such as cutting the grass and keeping the house ship-shape for his return. He would even send him a postcard reminding him. Many thought that this was what actually happened and counselled Bill to stand up to these overbearing and outrageous expectations. It was only when someone threatened to blow the whistle that they both revealed it was all a jape and, as one, everyone had fallen for it.
Bill was a late entrant to the police. His previous careers running his own contract cleaning business, as a Brighton taxi driver and professional boxer gave him a street credibility that was rare among most of us. He was in his late forties when he became a DS but, as he once represented Great Britain at water polo, he was fitter than most of us.
Always immaculately turned out, he struck a fearsome form. His broad frame, flattened nose, pencil moustache and tight buzz haircut gave him the look of a high-class bouncer.
His quick and acidic wit spared no-one. From the Chief Constable to the cleaner, we all had to be on our guard when Bill was around. In my later years I found I was safe from his sharp-witted retorts only when in the relative, yet temporary, protective formality of official meetings. If I managed a swift put-down towards him he would march into my office afterwards and remind me that ‘you are only the Chief Superintendent because I told the Chief Constable to make that so. You know I run this force and you are all subject to my will and I can withdraw rank as quickly as I bestow it!’