Even at the next EDO MBM demonstration, a full twenty months since we had arrested those forty-three, although it was characterized by animosity and antagonism, we experienced no disorder, no arrests, no damage and no injuries.
I managed to use this evidence to persuade Chief Officers and the Police Authority that this new method should be the default style for all public order policing in Sussex. It has grown and thrived since and, through like-minded officers in this and many other forces, is now in place across the UK.
I’d like to think that I have left a number of important legacies since retiring from the police. This mature approach to protest and the more humane drugs strategy are the two I am most proud of. Both required me to think differently and — with a degree of bloody-mindedness — to persevere in getting others to think likewise. Both, I firmly believe, left Brighton and Hove in a better state when I hung up my handcuffs than it was when I had started my wonderful journey, thirty years earlier.
I know that those who follow me will have the same passion and drive to make the city even safer. It gets to you that way.
Epilogue
I had said farewell to my last visitor as I checked my watch: 6 p.m., Friday, 1 March 2013. The time that I had been both dreading and working towards since I was eighteen had arrived.
I gently closed the door and took a deep breath. I turned and absorbed the sights that had been my backdrop for the last four years. The office was suddenly less a place to work, more a symbol of where I had come to and what I had achieved.
I reached to my left shoulder and, with a heavy heart, slowly unbuttoned one of the epaulettes that I wore with such pride. The Chief Superintendent insignia it bore represented the fulfilment I felt. How typical that it came off far easier now than when I first struggled to fix my shoulder badges on three decades ago. Taking the right one off I placed both on what, for just a few more minutes, was my desk.
Policing had defined me for all of my adult life. I waited in vain for the lump in my throat to swell and the tears to flow. This was supposed to be emotional. In their place, however, was just an overwhelming sense of pride and of a mission accomplished.
Peter James’ good friend Pat Lanigan, a detective in the New York Police Department, once said that being a cop was like having ‘a lifetime ticket for a front-row seat to the best show on earth’. I could not have put it better myself. I had seen the best and worst of human nature. I had been there for people at their lowest moments and hopefully made a difference. How could I feel tearful at all that I had experienced?
I loved every minute of my career but have now moved on. As well as writing and helping Peter with his books, I use the skills and experiences from my extraordinary vocation in other ways, supporting people, organizations and partnerships to go on protecting the good from the bad.
Julie and I can now enjoy some wonderful time together. I have been around far more for Conall, Niamh and Deaglan during the precious years as they enter adulthood. You can’t have that part of family life back, so to be there before the children fly the nest has been phenomenal and immensely important.
I was very fortunate to have served with so many fantastically dedicated people and during such a period of change. So much of the technology we take for granted, DNA, the internet, CCTV and mobile telephones were confined to science fiction movies when I started. Conversely, the challenges policing now face through the explosion of drugs, cybercrime and international criminality underpinned by swingeing budget cuts, lower public satisfaction and a twenty-four-hour news media, which seeks to blame first and listen later, all make the job far harder.
As smarter criminals exploit the latest developments, such as through phishing or using the dark web, the police are forever playing catch-up. Within three weeks of Peter James and a couple of his friends setting up Pavilion, one of the UK’s first internet service providers in the early 1990s, West Midlands Police were complaining that the Information Superhighway was being turned into a dirt track by paedophiles downloading child abuse images.
Many criminals and ex-criminals I have spoken to, while in the police and during research for this book, say ‘I couldn’t do your job’, citing the abuse and violence cops have to endure and the rules that constrain them. Some of those offenders lived a very comfortable life, ill-gotten but comfortable nonetheless. Many had bigger houses, better cars and more cash in their pockets than I ever would.
The flip side though is that although they turned a blind eye to the misery left in their wake, they never knew when we would come knocking nor when the Proceeds of Crime Act would take it all away. I know which lifestyle I preferred. There is no softer pillow than a clear conscience. I guarantee I sleep better than Messrs Bloomstein, Sherry and Chiggers.
It is hard leaving a life that has defined you for so long. Not being part of something so unique and honourable takes some getting used to. The camaraderie, the unifying sense of purpose and the instinct that we would all lay down our lives for each other create a powerful bond.
I could never imagine Roy Grace, Glenn Branson or their colleagues shedding the values that define them as people when their time comes to leave. Neither have I. As the adage goes, ‘You can take the man out of the police but you can never take policing out of the man.’ I would still run towards danger rather than away and would prefer to give my time to help someone in need than to make a buck.
I don’t regret one day of my service. Nor do I regret retiring from the job that fulfilled me and made my family so proud. I loved policing Roy Grace’s Brighton. Now it’s someone else’s turn.
Acknowledgements
This book is the culmination of thirty years of policing combined with twelve Roy Grace crime novels. However, the experiences we both have could not have compiled such a rich compendium of policing tales without the support of a huge number of people. Some of those mentioned in the book chose to have their names changed and we will use their pseudonyms here too.
Many former colleagues have been so generous with their time and recollections of events and investigations of years gone by. Amongst the retired officers who showed that memory does not always fade with age are the real Roy Grace, Detective Chief Superintendent David Gaylor, Detective Superintendent Russ Whitfield, Detective Chief Inspector George Smith, Detective Inspector Malcolm Bacon, Detective Sergeants Don Welch and Jim Sharpe, Detective Constables Debbie Wood, Dave Swainston, Nigel Kelly, Andy Mays and Dave Cooper and Police Constable Bob Elliott. They provided substantial detail on a number of crimes and showed why each of them was a force to be reckoned with in their day.
The support from the highest level in Sussex Police, from Chief Constable Giles York QPM and Olivia Pinkney QPM, now Chief Constable of Hampshire, has been invaluable, not least in allowing David Tonkin to check the manuscript on their behalf to ensure no secrets were revealed.
Our very good friend Chief Superintendent Nev Kemp, Brighton and Hove’s Divisional Commander, has been enormously helpful as has Detective Inspector Bill Warner, who was only too happy for his crazy ways to be laid bare for all to read. DS Julian Deans and PC Darren Balkham, who in their own very different ways make Brighton and Hove so much safer, have provided a rare insight into their unique worlds. Inspector Matt Webb and PC Mark White of the Police Federation have provided fabulous support in researching people and events gone by.
The courage of the victims of crime who helped cannot be underestimated. To ask them to relive traumatic events seemed an intrusion but Dr Alison Hewitt, Glynn Morgan and Fiona Perry were so incredibly helpful and we will be forever in their debt.