LITMIR.BIZ

       Willy warmers

      It’s cold on night duty. Freezing on occasion. I suggest thermals. Or thick tights. But being cold was not the reason I was knitting at four in the morning when posted as station officer.

      I was station officer because I was biding my time, waiting for my posting to Surveillance and trying to keep out of trouble. I’d already had a month on the dreaded clamp van and now it was my turn on the front desk. This included fielding the drunks, redirecting the lost, and taking reports from those wishing to make complaints of thefts or lost property. After midnight it usually fell quiet.

      My case files were up to date and the correspondence in my tray had been dealt with, as much as it can ever be. I’d read the daily bulletins and made regular cups of tea for the custody office and CAD room, the hub of the station where all messages were received and allocated, hence Computer Aided Despatch. I’d checked the missing persons binder and the lost dogs, of which there were none; the kennels were empty. My thumbs had been twiddled until they were sore.

      As night duty was a week long, it became boring. By Wednesday I decided to take in some knitting. If I followed the pattern, I found it was one of the few craft-like things I could do without winding myself into a knot. I was knitting baby clothes for a friend of mine who was pregnant. Little mittens, socks and baby cardigans are small, easy to do and quick to make, an ideal filler during the night once the city had settled down.

      At 2.30 a.m. a call came out about a disturbance in the upstairs room of an exclusive restaurant in the St James area. It was a private party that had ended with a family at war – drunken, argumentative and causing a breach of the peace. Five men and one woman were arrested. The rest of the party turned up at the front desk, irate, drunk and demanding solicitors. They insisted their loved ones had to be released, now, this instant.

      My attempts at calming them down failed. The sergeant in the CAD room heard the raucous carry-on and came to my assistance. Two of them ended up arrested for causing a disturbance and swearing at the sergeant and me. One of the remaining crowd tried to reason that his family had been falsely arrested. I listened, nodded and asked him to take a seat while I made tea and coffee for them while they waited for news. Feeling generous, I threw half a packet of digestives onto the tray too.

      By 4 a.m., those in the cells were sleeping, as were some of the rabble loitering in the lobby.

      One of the arresting officers, Joe Fenelli, stopped by the front office for a coffee and a chat. I was busy – knit one, purl one, knit one, knit two together – working on the sleeve of a baby cardi.

      ‘That’s them settled down,’ he said. ‘All over a bit of posh totty.’

      I laughed.

      ‘What you knitting, Ash? Willy warmers?’ he asked, pulling a thread of wool.

      ‘Hey, get off!’ I tugged it back. ‘Yeah, I got white, lemon and baby blue,’ I joked, knit knitting away.

      The following morning some of the prisoners went to court for breach of the peace and the others were kicked out, sheepish and hungover.

      A couple of weeks later I was issued with a Regulation 9, a form 163, that the Complaints Department (now Professional Standards) issue to give notice that someone has made a complaint about you. Everyone on duty when the Hooray Henrys were arrested was served with a 163. The whole shift had been subject to complaints from the wealthy and influential family. The allegations comprised a variety of things including unlawful arrest, insubordination and abuse of force. Mine was for ‘performance of duty’ issues.

      It was alleged that while on duty I was knitting willy warmers, neglecting my post when I should have been conscientious and diligent. What nonsense. I couldn’t believe it. And to think I’d been kept inside the station to keep me out of trouble!

      An independent panel was convened to interview every one of us.

      ‘Officer, why were you knitting at five a.m. in the morning?’ said the chap on the left.

      ‘It was four o’clock, sir. And I took my knitting to work because it was very quiet and nothing much was happening.’

      ‘During work time, officer? Surely there was some paperwork you could do? We’re always hearing about how much paperwork there is these days.’

      I confidently told him, ‘All my paperwork was up to date, sir.’

      He looked surprised.

      The woman on the panel looked down her nose at me and said, ‘What exactly were you knitting, miss?’

      I hated being called ‘Miss’.

      ‘Baby clothes, ma’am. For a friend. One of my colleagues, PC Fenelli, joked I was knitting willy warmers but I wasn’t, it was a baby cardigan.’

      The older man on the panel woke up and said, ‘Willy warmers? What are they?’

      No one answered.

      I filled the uncomfortable silence by adding, ‘I was knitting the sleeve of a baby cardigan, sir. It can become tiring on night duty when you’re posted to the front desk. Nothing much happens past two in the morning during the week but we still have to man the front office. I hadn’t had a refreshment break and you can’t really expect to be relieved for an hour by another officer when it’s so quiet indoors and they are busy out on the streets. I sat and ate my sandwiches and did some knitting at my desk during what would have been my break.’

      That must absolve me, surely?

      I was wrong.

      The lady of the bench glared at me. ‘Could you not read law books? You don’t know it all, officer. There are plenty of updates and changes in policy and law to become familiar with, I am sure.’

      My quiet protestations of, ‘But that would well and truly put me to sleep!’ were ignored.

      They had me.

      I was given words of advice and told that in future I should read Blackstone’s police manuals during the nights when I was bored.

      And to think, I’d given that family our last packet of biscuits. That’s gratitude. It put me off knitting, too. I never did finish those willy warmers.