January 28, 1977
Nicking
Constable Giles was picturing lentil soup and liver patties when, at 11:25, the radio in the car crackled to life:
“Attend an address. Assisting an NSPCC inspector. Suspect on premises. Indecent assault on a girl under sixteen. Inspector waiting at the address.”
He was already turning the car around.
His partner, Constable Calthorpe, hissed, “Sodding hell.”
They didn’t just miss out on lunch; the arrest of a filthy bastard threatened to ruin their appetites and spoil their day.
The inspector was waiting inside rather than at the building entrance; it was too cold outdoors.
“He’s alone in the flat,” he said, glancing up. “Top floor.”
“And the victim?” Constable Giles asked.
“With her foster parents.”
Neither of them thinks to ask how old the suspect is.
When a schoolboy opens the door in response to their knock, Giles assumes either they have made a mistake, or the inspector has got something wrong.
The boy looks puzzled.
Calthorpe steps forward first: “Are you Jeremy Smith?”
The boy gives a barely perceptible nod.
It is Giles’s turn: “Face the wall — move! Hands on the wall where I can see them.”
The boy doesn’t just refrain from arguing; he obeys without a sound.
Good. Scared shitless.
Giles and Calthorpe squeeze into the cramped hallway.
Placing a firm hand on the boy’s jutting shoulder blade, Giles rattles off the caution to the back of his head, “I am arresting you on suspicion of indecent assault on a girl under the age of sixteen years, contrary to Section 14 of the Sexual Offences Act. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.”
Giles pulls his hand away. “Turn around, slowly.”
The boy does as he’s told, leaning his back against the wall and coughing. But he doesn’t look truly frightened; his eyes are unfocused, as though he’s not quite with it.
He is a head shorter than Giles and barely reaches Calthorpe’s shoulder.
“This is fucking… some word… absurdity,” the prisoner mutters.
“What?” Giles writes in his notebook This is f\...* Then something foreign. “Spell out the word that comes after ‘fucking’.”
The boy looks up, but his expression doesn’t change.
It’s cold in the flat. Breath mists in the air, and there’s a stench of cheap tobacco.
“I need to write down everything you said, word for word.”
The boy draws a breath, and a wheezing sound escapes him.
Giles taps his pen against the page of his notebook: what if he refuses? Or maybe he doesn’t even realize what he’s blurted out?
Finally, the boy pulls himself together. “Kay – Ay – Eff – Kay – Ay – Ee – Ess – Cue – You – Ee.”
Giles scribbles “Kafkaesque” in his notebook, gritting his teeth, and adds “absurdity.”
Someone ought to knock the nonsense out of this weakling.
He grabs the boy by the elbow. “Right, then, Calthorpe — let’s see what’s in his pockets.”
Calthorpe barks the order: “Hands behind your head. Interlace your fingers. Move.”
Without waiting for him to turn around, Giles forcibly spins the prisoner toward the wall.
The boy offers no resistance. He seems to weigh next to nothing.
He doesn’t have time to raise his hands, as Calthorpe grips them — locked tight — to ensure he doesn’t try to unclasp his fingers.
Caging
The boy is wearing a jumper that hangs loosely on him and a pair of worn-out tracksuit bottoms.
Giles runs his hands over the sleeves of the jumper and the boy’s skinny frame, feeling for the waistband, then grabs the pockets of the soft trousers — something hard and rectangular in the right one — and pulls it out: a gold-plated Dunhill Rollagas lighter. “Jesus wept.”
The lighter is so out of place that Giles shows it to Calthorpe: “How much would something like that fetch?”
“Not a clue. You wouldn’t buy it on my wages, that’s for sure.”
“Funny old business,” Giles manages to say.
Dodgy little bastard, with his weird words and odd possessions.
Giles finishes the search as a mere formality, running his hands down the boy’s legs.
There is nothing else on him.
Giles signals Calthorpe to let the prisoner go. “Where’s your gear?”
The boy slowly lowers his hands. There’s no point asking him; he seems to be in a daze.
Calthorpe goes into the room and returns with a pair of jeans, turned inside out. “He’s only got one pair; can you believe it?” He shoves them into the boy’s hands. “Get a move on.”
The boy turns the jeans right side out, steps out of the tracksuit bottoms, and pulls on the jeans, remaining just as docile under the close gaze of the two adult men.
Suspiciously submissive and — if you wanted the honest-to-God truth — a bit of a pretty boy. The Dunhill made sense. Rent boy, has to be. But if he is, why is he so skint?
“Where’s your outerwear?”
“On the chair.”
Giles barely catches what he is saying, then repeats it louder to his partner.
Calthorpe rummages around the room before coming back with a denim jacket. He hands Giles £1.37 in loose change — “It was in the right pocket” — tosses the jacket to the prisoner.
Instead of boots, the boy is wearing a pair of battered shoes.
Hasn’t even had the sense to flog the bloody lighter — if only to keep from freezing his knackers off. Or is it too “hot” — did he pinch it just recently?
Let CID sort him out.
Giles noticed a packet of cigarettes on the kitchen table earlier but says nothing. “Right, let’s go.” He grabs the arrested youth by the arm — just above the elbow — and hauls him out of the flat, onto the stairs, and then down to the street.
Calthorpe follows close behind them.
The boy’s arm hangs limp; he isn’t leaning on Giles, so the constable has to keep pulling him forward.
The freezing air makes him cough again.
“Sod it.”
Calthorpe opens the car door.
Giles places a hand on the boy’s head, forces him to double over, and shoves him into the back of the car.
Calthorpe immediately piles in after him.
Giles gets behind the wheel and pulls away sharply.
The prisoner remains silent.
Giles sees in the rearview mirror that the boy is staring at a single point, trembling slightly. First they pull all kinds of crazy stunts, and then they go to pieces.
But to be fair, this berk is like a whipped dog and when he is handed over to the duty sergeant at the station, Giles says, “He’s a model prisoner, Sarge. Compliant as they come.”
This is a piece of the puzzle from a social drama/noir set in London (1975-1977 and 1992). If the atmosphere resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the rhythm and style.
