The Hill

By Chris Cawsey

Sex, drugs and rock and roll. It was all in a day’s work for the police in Notting Hill during the eighties.

‘The Hill’ vividly and dramatically depicts a year in the life of the police station at Notting Hill, London, England. It is viewed through the eyes of Tom Truby, a detective posted there on promotion. The reader is entertained and gripped by the hilarious and often brutal dealings with the West Indian, Irish and gay communities, as well as international rock stars. Prepare to laugh and be shocked in equal measures as London policing of the time is laid open, warts and all. Fights with criminals are nearly as tough as the fights between the junior and senior ranks at a police station with its own set of rules. ‘The Hill’ treats the reader to policing at its rawest and funniest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Conrad Press
• Release date: Jan 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781839785979

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The Hill

Chris Cawsey

The Hill

Published by The Conrad Press Ltd. in the United Kingdom 2022

Tel: [phone]

www.theconradpress.com

[e-mail]

ISBN 978-1-839785-97-9

Copyright © Chris Cawsey, 2022

All rights reserved.

Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk

The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.

1

The new sergeant

It felt good to be alive in 1983, or at least it did to Sergeant Tom Truby. Newly promoted to sergeant at the tender age of twenty-three, he already had a successful two-year stint as a detective constable under his belt. He was heading for a year of uniformed duty before returning to the Criminal Investigation Department, part of Sir Robert Mark’s interchange system designed to reduce corruption within the Metropolitan Police CID.

Tom stood up as the tube train approached Notting Hill Gate. He walked past a spiky-haired teenager who had a Sony Walkman crammed over his hair. The Human League’s Don’t you want me baby? was clearly audible. Tom smiled to himself. The Royal Navy hadn’t wanted him after six months’ training at Dartmouth, but now he had found an organisation that most definitely did. He picked up his military kitbag containing his new uniform, walked off the tube and up the escalator. There was time to relieve himself before reporting for his first day of duty at Notting Hill police station.

A quick flash of his warrant-card (re-issued the week before with his new rank) to a bored tube station guard opened the passenger barrier. Tom walked straight ahead and into the Gents toilets. There were six urinals with four in use so Tom dumped his kitbag on the ground behind him and chose a free one. Looking straight ahead he became aware of a tall man next to him wearing a white sleeveless T shirt. The man looked at him, smiled and then looked down at Tom’s urinal as he was shaking himself dry. It took Tom a second to realise the man was looking at his penis.

‘Old Bill, mate. If you don’t want to get nicked, I suggest you clear off right now,’ he said in a low voice to his new-found admirer.

‘Sorry mate, just having a piss, I’m off,’ bumbled the man as he hurriedly turned around and walked out, doing his up his zip as he went.

Shaking his head in disbelief at what he had just witnessed, Tom washed his hands and walked out of the underground station.

Kitbag slung over his shoulder, Tom headed up the stairs into the bright sunshine of Notting Hill Gate. He was immediately struck by the lack of black faces amongst the bustle of shoppers going about their business. Not knowing the area, but having heard stories of non-stop aggravation between the police and West Indians, he had expected to stand out as white. Apart from the tube station guard, everyone else he saw was also white. Perhaps the stories he had heard had been exaggerated.

Walking down from the shops of Notting Hill Gate, he entered the tree-lined Holland Park Avenue that had some seriously expensive properties lining each side. He turned right into Ladbroke Grove and the police station appeared on his right. A grey-stone building with white windows, the panes of which were blocked out with sheets of photocopying paper. It stuck out conspicuously amongst its genteel neighbours. As he turned right into Ladbroke Road, he stumbled into five or six people queuing down the steps of the police station entrance. Tom had about an hour to spare before his appointment with the chief superintendent, plenty of time to dump his kit and maybe see if there might be someone he recognised in the station canteen. A quick flash of his warrant-card would let him police-side of the front counter.

Looking through the wire-mesh glass onto the counter he could see the front area was full of people. An elderly white woman was banging the front counter shouting, ‘I want them all prosecuted,’ in a refined voice. Next to her were three bored looking young black men leaning against the wall clutching papers. It looked like they were producing vehicle documents for inspection as some were holding small white forms, the dreaded Producer (form HORT/1). This required a driver to produce his documents within seven days at a police station. In Tom’s experience these were often an exercise in messing around those who had in police parlance ‘failed the attitude test,’ by back-chatting or showing a lack of respect to the officer who had stopped them.

There was no chance of getting into the station this way and no sign of any officer at the front desk, so he turned and walked down the steps to find the entrance to the station-yard. It was only about ten yards further up Ladbroke Road, directly opposite the Ladbroke Arms pub. The pub looked picture-perfect with lunchtime drinkers sat outside on benches, surrounded by flowers in wooden-boxes. Tom assumed this would be the watering-hole for the police station. The heavy green wooden gates of the station-yard were open, but there was nobody inside. It looked small in terms of station yards and had no cars inside. What looked like old police married quarters were on the left-side and it looked as if the main body of the station was on the right.

Taking that option, Tom dropped his bag as he looked at the metal push-button combination lock. Trying the standard numbers of one and three together then two and four without luck, he began to wonder how he was going to get in. He could hear shouting from inside. He stepped back as the door sprung open and two uniformed officers came running past. One was looking back shouting, ‘Reception committee!’ over his shoulder and he heard voices inside repeating this. A young-looking sergeant was next to pass Tom and grabbed his arm shouting, ‘Get the gates, mate!’ A startled Tom obviously did not respond quickly enough as his next instruction was less civil. ‘Get the bloody gates, it’s a reception committee!’ Tom jogged to the gates he had walked through only moments before.

As Tom reached the gates, he was joined by a striking uniformed figure walking briskly from the other part of the station. A constable in his mid-sixties with cropped white hair and built like a tank. Unusually for the hot weather, he was wearing a uniformed tunic with a row of medal-ribbons on his left breast. He motioned Tom to one gate as he stood by the other. A screech of brakes was now audible from outside.

The drinkers sat outside the Ladbroke Arms stared over as a white police van turned sharply into the police station yard, leaving some tyre rubber on the road. As the van passed, Tom helped close the gates and pull down the heavy wooden brace that secured the yard from the outside world.

A thumping sound of something hitting metal could be heard from inside the van. The driver jumped out and ran around the back and opened the rear doors. Tom was now at the rear of five officers stood behind the van. As the doors opened a bundle of fighting bodies fell out. It was hard to make things out in the melee but at the centre of it was a uniformed officer with a torn white shirt holding a middle-aged dreadlocked black man in a headlock. Their fall was cushioned by the hands of the group of officers and Tom could then see the man was trying to pull himself out of the head-lock with both of his hands and was kicking out with his feet.

‘Get the fucker’s legs!’ shouted the van driver, but Tom was beaten to it by those in front of him. The group then manhandled the struggling man across the yard and up the steps, to what Tom assumed must be the charge-room.

As the door slammed behind the group Tom’s fellow gate-closer approached him and shook his hand. ‘Welcome to the Hill,’ he said. ‘You must be the new skipper. I’m PC John Farragher, the governor’s clerk.’ Motioning at Tom’s discarded kitbag, he asked, ‘Are you ex-forces, skip?’

Tom was honest in his reply, ‘For a very short time, mate.’

Farragher pointed to his medal-ribbons and said, ‘Paras, jumped at Arnhem, but after thirty-five years in the job they won’t let me out on the streets anymore, too many complaints. In my time you only got complaints if you were doing your job properly.’ He picked up Tom’s kitbag and motioned for him to follow.

Tom was well-used to the slang terms. The Met uniquely called sergeants Skippers, shortened to skip. Inspectors and above were referred to as Governors or guv for short. Shifts were called reliefs and each station had four. Three reliefs would cover early, late and night shifts whilst one was on a rest day.

They entered the administration block Farragher had just emerged from. He gave Tom the door code, ‘six and seven then eight and nine, unlike everywhere else in the job,’ he explained. Tom wondered if that applied to anything else at this station.

Farragher motioned to a door and dropped the kitbag, ‘You’ll find a locker there and once you’ve changed come upstairs. My office is first on the right.’

Tom walked into the locker-room. An airless room without a window and smelling of stale sweat. It contained about two-dozen grey lockers, most of which were covered in stickers and semi-nude magazine pictures. It could have been a locker-room anywhere in the Met. Tom searched for a vacant locker and as he walked round the central square bumped into a fat officer changing out of uniform. ‘The name is Monk, they call me the large sarge,’ he said, extending a sweaty hand in greeting. Tom gripped his chubby hand firmly and said, ‘Tom Truby, any spare lockers?’ His new colleague nodded towards one with a key in the lock, ‘That was Collins, he’s moved on as an inspector to west end central, bit of a tosser in my book,’ he said grinning, ‘a real governor’s man.’

Tom quickly unpacked his uniform, hung his new tunic onto a wire coat-hanger he found inside the locker and began brushing it with a clothes brush. Monk laughed and said, ‘That will soon wear off mate and you’ll be a scruffy bugger like the rest of us. Anyway must rush there’s a pint with my name on it round the corner.’ He closed his locker, pushed past Tom, and left.

Heading up the stairs Tom found Farragher sat behind a desk in a small office full of filing cabinets. At a desk opposite sat a pretty young blonde looking at a file, she smiled at Tom as he walked in. ‘Sergeant Truby, reporting for duty,’ Tom jokingly announced as stood to attention in front of Farragher’s desk. Farragher laughed and said, ‘You will do just fine here, skip. Grab a seat next to Sandra there and I’ll tell the chief superintendent that you’re here.’ He picked up a large file, dropping it on the desk and