Charlie Owen - Two Tribes

Two Tribes

Charlie Owen

Copyright 2009 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 2009 by

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law,

this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted,

in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of

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with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7553 4569 4 (Hardback)

ISBN 978 0 7553 4570 0 (Trade paperback)

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To Carol and Richard - with love.

Table of Contents

Author's Note and Acknowledgements

This will be the final novel in the saga of life at Horse's Arse. I have made this decision for a number of reasons. Firstly, the idea was only ever for the series to be a trilogy, but then I decided that it was appropriate to finish the story towards the end of what I have always considered to be the last decade of true vocational coppering - the 1970s.

I had thought of going on to write about the 1980s, but the sequel to the best ever TV series about policing, Life on Mars, confirmed what I have long suspected - that the 1980s just aren't sexy! Not yet anyway. If that changes, then I'll rethink my plans, but the fact remains that young men and women joined the police in the 1970s, before Lord Edmund-Daviess pay review in 1978-9, to be coppers. The pay and conditions prior to that review were poor - so it had to be a vocation. And we certainly didn't join up to become Human Resource Managers, or Policy Implementation Managers, or any of the myriad non-operational posts that now infect the modern police service. We joined to police the streets, which appears to be something that fewer and fewer cops do today.

Hats off to the men and women at the sharp end today who can be sure of only one thing. That behind them, safely cocooned in their offices, are battalions of pencil-pushers busily micro- managing them (9-5 Monday to Friday) and analysing the ins and outs of a cat's arse to assist their own climb up the greasy promotion pole. The policing pyramid is upside down.

However, it is too easy to blame the police service for all the ills that currently affect them and for their alienation from the public they serve. Successive governments of both political persuasions must take the lion's share. In my view, the Labour governments of Tony Blair and now Gordon Brown, introduced more meaningless legislation, targets and bureaucracy than any of their predecessors. The slavish way in which many Chief Officers embraced New Labour also contributed to the malaise. There were few, if any, dissenting voices as politically astute Chief Officers around the country dropped to their knees in the name of Human Rights and Home Office audits.

Whilst I have dedicated this book to my brother and sister, I owe huge thanks to the usual suspects who reminded me of past events and procedures. To Paul Dockley for his invaluable insights into the role of a Senior Investigating Officer in the 1970s, and to Teresa Richardson, Neil Wallis, John Bateman, Matt Holt, Mick Duggan, Andy Williams, Stuart Gibson and Paul Chinnery, who all fall into that category. My eldest daughter, Lucy, transferred my written manuscript into a Word document and saved me hours of work; thanks, darling, the cheque's in the post! I also owe a great debt to Martin and Tracy Kosmalski and their daughters Jo and Gemma, and to Tony and

Val Jourdan and their sons Richard, Charlie, Ben, Toby and Alfie.

Finally, I must again thank my editor Martin Fletcher for his patience and understanding whilst he waited for me to deliver this last book, and Ross Hulbert, the Headline Publicity Manager. Martin, it's been an amazing journey and I've had a blast. Thanks for everything.

This novel is from start to finish entirely a work of my imagination and the characters, companies and their actions in the story are fictional.

Chapter One

The bloody woman was driving him mad. It was a muggy, early-June evening in Handstead New Town, and in common with most of the residents, the Haywards had all the windows in their nicotine-stained terraced house wide open to catch what little breeze there was. But it wasn't the sound of passing vehicles or kids playing outside that kept distracting sixty-three-year-old George Hayward from the television news. It was her fucking shoes.

As he strained forward in his battered armchair to try and catch what the newsreader was saying, he shot a venomous look at his one-armed wife sitting in a similarly decrepit chair on the other side of the room. Fucking great - he'd missed it now. On the main BBC evening news as well, not the poxy local news on Look North, read by that old poof in the cheap wig. The story had reached the main national news channel, and right after an interview with Prime Minister James Callaghan they were showing footage of the trouble at the engineering works in Handstead. Crowds of shaven-headed yobs were pushing and shoving with lines of coppers - and he'd missed every word the reporter had said. All because of her fucking shoes. She'd lit up another fag and was blowing a cloud of smoke up to the naked bulb hanging from the toffee-coloured ceiling when he banged the arm of his chair, violently upending the overflowing ashtray attached to a leather strap draped over the arm.

'Brenda!' he bellowed, leaning towards her, his leathery face puce with anger.

She barely acknowledged him, concentrating as she was on picking at the livid red scabs on the stump of her left arm, her cigarette clamped between her lips and her eyes screwed up against the thin plume of smoke drifting lazily upwards.

'What now?' she said without looking at him, before peering closely at the sores on the stump.

'Your fucking shoes, woman - stop rubbing them together, will you?'

'What you on about?' she replied, looking up quizzically at him.

'You're rubbing your fucking shoes together and I can't hear the telly,' he shouted back. 'I've missed the whole report on that picket line, couldn't hear a bloody thing because of the racket you're making.'

'My shoes?' she asked, laughing as she spoke. 'How can they be upsetting you? Get a grip, you silly old bugger.'

'It's nothing to laugh about, you scabby old cow,' bawled a now irate George Hayward. 'We're on the national news and you're rubbing your bastard new shoes together like some fucking moneylender and I can't hear a thing. Shut the fuck up, will you?'

'Oh piss off, and don't call me scabby, you pissy old twat.'

'Pissy? Who're you calling pissy, you sour-faced, one-armed old bitch?'

'I might only have one arm now, but at least I can control my bladder. Jesus, you smell like a torn cat.'