The Confessions Series. Ash Cameron

told me it was a white fur jacket with tissues in the pocket. There were three men’s jackets and one white fur hanging on the rack. I found tissues in the pocket.

      Maybe I shouldn’t have given it to her but I did.

      Half an hour later, the Fugly brothers tumbled down the stairs from their exclusive hidden bar, arm in arm with women I knew to be prostitutes, followed by half a dozen regulars – CID officers from the local nick, with their own cackle of voluptuous prostitutes.

      The next night uniformed police came to arrest the elder Mr Fugly, a wiry ex-boxer, for knocking out forged fifty-pound notes. He was back an hour later, no charges and big fat grin. He sat at the corner of the bar, laughing.

      ‘CID sorted me out. A case of mistaken identity,’ he said, throwing back a slug of Scotch: Prisoners.

      A few days later the brothers called me in to see them. The younger of the two had so many rolls of flesh around his neck that he looked as though he was wearing a scarf. With his bald bulldog head and flaccid bottom lip, he was intimidating. He stood over me, drool slavering down his chin as he ate a bacon roll. It made me feel sick.

      Apparently, I’d given away the wrong fur jacket. The nightclub had secret CCTV cameras that nobody knew about, but I did now. It showed a woman handing over a ticket at 11 p.m. I gave her a fur jacket from the corresponding hanger. At 3.30 a.m. it showed me handing over the other fur jacket to the woman who didn’t have her ticket. I could never understand how the first woman came by the ticket of a coat she says wasn’t hers. Or how the second woman identified the remaining jacket, down to the tissues in the pocket. Yet they had the wrong coats. It caused mayhem and that was the end of my beautiful career in hospitality. Thanks to Property.

      Many years later, I dealt with a case involving a family headed by a matriarch who openly declared that back in the day she’d been a prostitute who slept with policemen and gave them information. She knew one of the officers on the case.

      ‘Old friends, sort of,’ she said.

      A short time later the officer took early retirement.

      Aye. Prisoners, property and prostitutes.

       In your face

      After an enlightening time at Hendon I was posted to the heart of the East End. On the night of my passing-out parade I stayed with my parents at the pub they’d just taken over on the border of Essex and London. After the events of that night, I realised that night nothing in my life was ever going to be straightforward again.

      Early in the evening my father ejected a drug addict for shooting up heroin in the toilets. The youth, Tony Atkinson, came back at midnight when the only people left were a small gathering celebrating my day.

      The huge front window smashed into a thousand shards as Atkinson bounded through it, threatening us with a sawn-off shotgun.

      My father didn’t hesitate. He pulled back his old seafarer’s arm and punched him once, knocking him to the floor.

      I grabbed my virgin handcuffs from the bar where I’d been showing them off, and I jumped on top of Atkinson. I didn’t think, didn’t hesitate. Foolish really. Thankfully, he was out cold. I sat on his chest, grabbed his arms and snapped on the cuffs.

      Technically he was my first arrest but I didn’t go down on the custody sheet. The privilege went to the area car driver who was first on the scene. He was a decent arrest, what we called ‘a good body’ because Atkinson was wanted for offences of armed robbery, assault and drug dealing. The local police had been looking for him for weeks.

      But the police didn’t only arrest Atkinson. They arrested my dad, too.

      Atkinson was conveyed to hospital with concussion, my dad to a police cell. I spent the night at the station giving a statement, defending my father against a potential charge of GBH.

      Atkinson could have pressed charges against my dad, and threatened to do so. I didn’t understand. No court would convict him, surely? It was a case of justified self-defence. Atkinson had a loaded gun and could have shot any of us. How was being knocked unconscious disproportionate to being threatened with and being in fear of a sawn-off?

      It was a few weeks before we were informed there would be no further action taken against my father. Atkinson had done a deal and pleaded guilty.

      It was certainly an introduction to policing.

       A man’s world

      In the early days, they tested policewomen in a way they never would, or could, today. I resisted the arse-stamping initiation, something they did, or tried to do, to all new female officers and some civilian workers too. A swift tug of their skirts and down with the underwear, they’d try to brand their bottoms with the station stamp, a sort of ‘you belong to us now’. I was very shy, embarrassed and could think of nothing worse. I wasn’t going to let them get me, but they had me in other ways. Messages such as ‘please ring Mr C Lion at London Zoo re an enquiry’ or ‘Mr Don Key at the local council’. One poor policeman was sent to the chemists to ask for some fallopian tubes. Like in many jobs, you learn to develop a sharp skill and quick wit that wasn’t in the formal job description. I had a good right hook, should it be necessary. But they had me in other ways.

      As the lone female probationer on a shift made up of men, I had to make the tea at the start of every shift and all the other breaks that policemen took. There was another woman on my relief but she was mainly on desk duty and she had much more service than me behind her, about four years more. Two guys started at the same time as me but they were men. It wasn’t their job to make tea unless I wasn’t there, then it was. However, I now make a mean cuppa, even if I can’t stand the stuff, so I have to say thank you boys.

      As in many predominantly male occupations, there was a lot of sexist behaviour. It’s only now looking back that I realise the full extent. There was a lot of banter, some quite risqué, though I think there was general respect from most men and they didn’t go too far. Many had wives, or girlfriends, or daughters and said they wouldn’t want them to do the job, that it wasn’t work for women. Older guys, those who’d done their time and were ready to retire, thought women should deal with the domestics, give out the death messages, look after abandoned or abused children and deal with sexual assaults. They remembered a time when there was a Police Woman’s Department and female officers only dealt with those things.

      When it came to the reporting of dead bodies, known as sudden deaths, the call was usually despatched to the probationers. It was down to them to deal with the families, the doctor, the undertaker, the paperwork and often attend the post-mortem (PM). It’s an ideal way to get used to being a police officer and to learn how to be professional in such circumstances. It’s the same today but back then, the priority went to WPCs. Make me or break me, malicious or mischievous, it was seen as toughening you up, and ultimately, you had to do it. Or get out. But times change and it’s no longer like that. Yes, the first jobs probationers are given are still sudden deaths, shoplifters and civil disputes, but there are as many women officers as there are men, and sometimes more. Any hint of testing the metal in a sexist or racist or any other ‘-ist’ way, and Professional Standards (previously known as Complaints) would come down and haunt you out of a job.

      It might not have always been right, and some would argue there were quite a few wrongs in the way some people were treated back then, but we had a lot of fun and learned to laugh at ourselves as well as others. Earning respect and proving your worth is still good currency and I have no complaints about that.

      But back then, I was given ten dead bodies to report on in my first five weeks and we used to have to attend the post-mortem for every sudden death we dealt with, unless it was a murder in which case it was a job for CID. By the time my probationary group had our official