Charlie Owen - Bravo Jubilee

Bravo Jubilee

Charlie Owen

Copyright 2008 Charlie Owen

The right of Charlie Owen to be identified as the Author of

the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2008 by

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

ISBN 978 0 7553 4566 3 (Hardback)

ISBN 978 0 7553 4567 0 (Trade paperback)

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For Mum and Dad - with love.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

After two and a half years as a police pensioner, I was worried that my memories of my career would fade and be lost, and I would start to smell of piss. At least in the case of my memory, the reverse has been true. The events of thirty years ago are in fact as clear today as they were then the colours as vivid, the smells as obnoxious, the sounds as clear, and the old men I know today still the vibrant young bucks I knew then.

I'm beginning to forget some things - most often the names of my children and I'm reduced to addressing them as, 'You, that one, the small noisy one,' or, 'You know, your brother,' and I apologise profusely to them, but fortunately I never forget a face.

As ever, I am extremely grateful to so many of my former colleagues who never fail to regale me with long-forgotten stories and anecdotes whenever we meet or talk. Because I can't rely on my memory as much as I used to, I now take notes but they don't seem to mind and I hope they enjoy seeing our stories appear in one form or another in the books.

There is no doubt that the passing of the years puts a rose- tinted perspective on the past. My second book, Foxtrot Oscar, was set in the summer of 1976 which I have always remembered as the hottest summer of my life to date. In fact the real heat wave in June that year lasted a mere fourteen days. The rest of the summer was dry, but the ninety-plus degree heat lasted just two weeks. Yet it has passed into folklore as something extraordinary.

This book is set during 1977 and includes the period of the Queens Silver Jubilee. Again my memories of Jubilee night itself are probably rose-tinted and certainly vague. I know I spent the night going from one street party to another and there was little trouble, but then again, I was absolutely trashed by the time I booked off duty.

My thanks are due specifically to Trish Fleming who transferred my handwritten manuscript into a word document, Paul Dockley for his insight into Operation Julie, Chris Taylor for the chemistry lessons, and Jim Gall, Ken Price, John Bateman, John Sutch, Martin Kosmalski, Rick Moulder and Ken Stewart for an endless supply of outrageous anecdotes.

Lastly, I must again thank my patient editor Martin Fletcher for his support and encouragement during the writing of this book over what was a difficult period. The more I see of Martin, the more I'm convinced we encountered each other during my .service. You weren't at Trafalgar Square on 31 March 1990, were you, Martin? Under the scaffolding by the South African Embassy? I'm sure I remember you there! (Martin's note - I definitely wasn't there; I was on another demo elsewhere.)

Chapter One

Spring 1977

PC Henry 'H' Walsh could smell the blood before he got to the front door of the dimly lit maisonette. As he pushed gingerly at the slightly open door and put his head into the hallway he detected the telltale metallic smell of the abattoir. His heart pumping and with a lump of fear in his throat, he stepped back to the handrail along the walkway and called down to his colleague waiting alongside the area car, call sign Bravo Two Yankee One.

'Don't look good, Jim. Keep an eye on that bastard.'

PC Jim Stewart didn't reply, but glanced down at the man spread-eagled at his feet, ground his boot harder into the side of the man's neck and twisted the wrist he held firmly in his right hand.

'What you been up to then?' he growled.

The man kept his eyes shut and remained quiet though he grimaced in pain.

'I'm talking to you, you little shit,' continued Jim, grinding and twisting harder.

'Fuck you,' gasped the man, briefly opening his eyes which with considerable effort he rolled in their sockets to flash a look of pure hatred at Jim.

He had fallen foul of H and Jim, otherwise known as the Grim Brothers, a few minutes earlier and quickly became a recipient of the violence for which they were notorious.

The Brothers were the original odd couple. On paper they had nothing in common. H, a public schoolboy and the son of a naval officer - albeit with a punch like a sledgehammer - Jim a former paratrooper who had faced shots fired in anger whilst in Ulster; yet they had gelled from their first meeting. They were the coppers that Handstead New Town just north of Manchester deserved. The Brothers possessed almost telepathic abilities, with each able to recognise when the other was about to get their revenge in first and drop a scumbag. Violence was their calling card and it was rare for them to take prisoners who didn't get a good hammering to be going on with. Where they failed, however, was that they never had a plan B. They approached everything with fists and boots flying, regularly inflaming peaceful situations. Their colleagues at Handstead - the arsehole of the world that they called Horses Arse - dreaded their arrival at incidents they had peacefully under control, but welcomed them with open arms when the wheels had come off. The Brothers were isolated from the others by their violence, but they were that way because it was the only way to survive in Handstead. Away from work they were the complete opposite. They were, by and large, honest, hard-working coppers with noses for the wrong'uns. In common with their eclectic colleagues, they had worked out that to keep their heads above water in Handstead, they needed to at least match the local villains in terms of mindless hooliganism and had quickly gained reputations with them as a pair of hard-boiled bastards - which pleased them no end. Nothing pleased a busy street copper more than to see his name scrawled on walls followed by comments about his parentage, and the hooligans of Handstead had used many gallons of paint besmirching the names of H and Jim.

'Hard man, are you?' growled Jim in his broad Geordie accent, applying even more pressure.

From the balcony above the Bishops Gate parade of shops, H took a deep breath to compose himself before he went into the house. Around him the darkened Bishops Gate estate was silent in the warm spring night, the only sounds being an insistent dog barking, a plane passing far above him and, downstairs, the frenzied click-clicking of mah-jong tiles and raised, excited Chinese voices from the now closed Chinese restaurant.

It was just after 1 a.m. and the Brothers had been driving along the service road at the back of the shops, lights off, returning to check their cotton traps across the numerous yards at the rear of the shops. Like generations of night duty coppers before them, earlier in the evening they had stretched lengths of dark cotton across the yard entrances at ankle height and had returned to see if any had been broken to signal an intrusion into a yard. As they cruised quietly into the service road with the shops and yards, and the maisonettes to the left, Jim had suddenly hissed, 'Look at this one, H,' and pointed urgently up to the maisonettes. A man was sprinting along the first-floor walkway, clearly visible in the orange bulkhead lights, away from an open, illuminated door. He flew down a set of metal steps, two or three at a time, the noise of his footsteps echoing in the dark, out into the service road and into the path of the unlit Yankee One. He went to dodge past the nearside of the vehicle but was brought to a dead stop by Jim who threw the door open into him, sending him crashing into a pile of rubbish bags.