Читать книгу The Confessions Series - Ash Cameron - Страница 7

All of the new recruits were sent to Hendon Police College. I was young, naive, and full of hope, anticipation and excitement, eager to complete the twenty-week residential course and get out onto the streets.

On the first day we had to swear our allegiance to the Queen. One hundred and sixty of us gathered together in the gym hall that I would come to hate during that twenty weeks.

A female chief inspector spoke, filling our heads with horror, some reality, a few romantic ideals, and a squiggle of ‘What the hell have I done?’

‘Some of you will stick the thirty years. The majority won’t. You’ll love it; you’ll hate it. It won’t always be pretty. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been wounded on duty at least once, so be prepared. You might be injured and it could end your career. You might be shot. Stabbed. Killed. You will get hurt. Get used to it.’

She paused. ‘Some of you won’t make it through training school. Once on the streets you might decide you’ve had enough of being hated by the public, the press, the politicians and the prisoners, for you are nobody’s friend. Remember that.’

My head spun. I looked at her. She was tough. I was soft. How would I cope with being hurt? Being hated? I only wanted people to think the best of me.

‘But you may love it. It’s the best job in the world when you save a life or stop a suicide. When you help people in the most difficult of circumstances. When you find a missing child and reunite him with a distraught family who feared the worst. But don’t forget, you can be a hero one minute and then you’re back out on the streets being pelted with flying bottles and vicious words.’

She looked around the room at the sea of fresh untainted faces in front of her.

‘It’s a good job if you can hack it. Not of all of you will. There are specialist departments to work in like mounted branch, dog section, CID, or undercover, so deep undercover that sometimes you forget who you are. You might decide to go for promotion. Or stay on the beat. Your whole time served might be in one police station, entrenched in a community. The rewards are there if you want them, but watch your back and those of your colleagues because they are the only allies you have.’

Among us were youngsters like me, not much in the way of life experience, starting out keen and vulnerable. There were others who’d decided they wanted a career change and policing had sounded like a good option, with a decent wage, job security and a pension. There were ex-service personnel who’d seen so much more already, and there were graduate entries straight from university.

We stood and listened and wondered why we thought we could do this job. The only dead body I’d seen was a boyfriend’s grandmother in her coffin, but she had been over eighty and it didn’t seem to count.

‘You will come across things you don’t like, things that turn your stomach, deal with offences you didn’t know existed,’ she continued. ‘You will see things you know aren’t right. You will have to decide what to do because when you’re out there, you’re on your own and only you can decide if you can live with the consequences. Only you are responsible for your actions.’

She was done. We filed out feeling like we’d been bollocked, looking anywhere but at each other lest we saw the fear.

In that moment I decided I could, I would do this job. If I survived training school …