My First Siege

Before I was a writer, I was a police officer.

And it’s the real life stories from my twenty-five-plus years in the Met that continue to inform and inspire so much much of what I put down on the page.

My first novel was called The Siege – and, with that in mind, I thought I’d tell you the story of the first real siege I ever dealt with. 

It was in late 1992 and I was still in my first month as a police officer. After an initial fortnight at Training School, my classmates and I were sent out for a two-week attachment in the real world – in my case, at the long-since-closed Gerald Road police station. Knowing nothing about anything, I quickly found myself in at the deep end.

The tale that follows is taken from the pages of my first book, Blue: A Memoir.

***

In the second week (of my attachment from Training School), there’s a break from the initial dry routine. I’m offered a back seat in Alpha 2, the local area car. We’re allowed to take calls from further afield and I’m about to get stuck in. It’s a ‘late turn’ – the shift starting at 2 p.m. and running until 10 p.m. – and we’re already out and about when the mainset radio fitted to the car fires up: ‘Units to deal please . . . Bush House, Aldwych, male armed with knives has taken a hostage inside the premises. More details to follow.’

The Scotland Yard operator assigns us to the call and the driver puts his foot down. Alpha 2 are running.

And this is what adrenalin feels like. The whoosh and surge of excitement and anticipation, newly experienced and thrilling biology, punched acceleration and jamming brakes. We’re on the wrong side of the road and we’re coming through at gathering speed, blues blazing and twos wailing. I’m being thrown around in the back. Damn, this is good.

We’re not far off and we pull up at the same time as an Armed Response Vehicle. We’re the first two units on scene and none of us can tell what’s happening inside. Unknown threats.

My driver opens the boot of our car and hands me a large round perspex shield. I’ve never seen one before, but it doesn’t occur to me to ask any questions. I just grab hold of it, sliding the large metal ring on the back over my left forearm, and follow his lead through the door of the famous old BBC building.

Once inside, we’re told that a former employee with a grievance has got into an upstairs office and barricaded himself inside with a female member of staff. He’s armed. And for the very first time, I’m headed straight into the heart of the story. I don’t feel afraid.

Actually, it doesn’t even occur to me to feel scared. I don’t know enough and haven’t experienced enough to know that ‘afraid’ might be a perfectly reasonable response in the circumstances. I’m just wide-eyed and utterly unaware of the implications of what’s happening and of all the ways in which it might end. I don’t think about the suspect. I don’t think about his undoubtedly terrified victim. I don’t think about the weapons. I just head up the stairs and into the adventure.

Our suspect and his prisoner are in a small inner office in the corner of a much larger room. They are just a matter of metres away from us, but silent and hidden from view behind opaque partition walls. There’s no immediate way of telling what’s happening inside.

Within a very short space of time, there are police officers everywhere. They include an important-looking commander who arrives on scene to take charge. None of them knows that I’ve only just started at Training School, and that I don’t actually have the slightest idea what I’m doing. Neither of my Gerald Road colleagues seems concerned enough to mention it.

Whispered plans are drawn up to cover every eventuality, including the possibility of an emergency armed entry. For the latter to work, the advice is that the main room will need to be plunged into sudden darkness. And that, apparently, is where I come in.

My small part in the unfolding incident is to lie in the footwell of a huge old wooden desk – out of sight of the inner office, but within reach of the main light switch. I’m told to be ready for a command that might come at any moment, to leap out of my hiding place and hit the switch. And that’s it, the sum total of my task.

I have no idea how long I’m under there but it’s long enough to get really uncomfortable. I don’t mind one bit though; I have a role, a non-speaking part, in the latest BBC drama. Eventually, someone takes pity on me and another officer gets a turn on the floor.

All ends well later that night and someone tells the commander that the young lad he sent to hide under the desk was a four-week novice from Hendon. He promptly writes me a letter, praising the ‘calmness and professionalism’ I had shown that night. And he tells me how the incident had been resolved:

You would probably like to know that the young lady was released suddenly at at 22.15. The TSG [Territorial Support Group] seized their chance, overwhelmed the suspect and took from him three knives, including a Gurkha Kukri (a large knife with a broad blade about 12 inches long).

He sends a copy of his letter to Chief Superintendent Shew, the man in charge at the Training School. I am summonsed to Mr Shew’s office and I feel the warmth of unexpected (and, let’s be honest, not entirely unwelcome) attention. Are they really paying me to do this?