Guarding a Crime Scene

Crime scenes are an unpopular task for officers and it’s usually the probationers that are rewarded with guarding them.

Quite often you can be dumped outside a house with nothing more than a shaky promise that your colleagues will return with food and drink. Then you hear them on the radio later on getting tucked up with a job and you realise that you’re not going to be relieved for several hours. Usually it’s at night and normally always raining. I look forward to a crime scene beside the river on a warm summer’s day, with a small café nearby so that I can grab refreshments with the crime scene still in sight.

Fortunately, for my first crime scene I had the lucky advantage of having a car which I could sit in. It was a night duty and earlier that day a cannabis factory had been found inside a house down a quiet residential cul-de-sac. A mistake had been made and somehow the man who was living in the house managed to get away. It was suspected that the building had been booby-trapped and so officers were not allowed to enter until the electricity board had been down and isolated the power. That wouldn’t happen until the morning and so for now the house had to be guarded. The Vietnamese gang that had been running the factory had got away and there was a possibility they might return.

I was sat in an unmarked car across the street from the house and told to watch for anyone that may try and gain access. If they did, I was told not to approach them but to call for backup. I sat in the car and was determined not to let anyone slip by. I stared at the house intently, barely daring to blink in case I missed something. I was staring so hard that the shadows from the trees blowing in the wind began to look like people. I squinted as my heart began to race. Surely they wouldn’t dare to return to the crime scene and risk being arrested I thought to myself. I held my radio in my hand and memorised the road name in case I needed to call for assistance quickly. I could see the front door from my position and had a jolt in my stomach when it appeared the door was opening from the inside.

“I’m not getting out,” I said to myself, now rigid with fear. I had already locked the doors to the car and now sat frozen as I tried to make out what was happening. Was the door opening or was it just the shadows I could see?

My radio suddenly lit up and crackled into use.

“All units please be aware that the radios will be going down for about two minutes shortly,” our control room said.

I sat there with the nasty realisation that if anything was going to happen to me tonight, it would happen when the radios went down.

My radio light cut out and it went deathly quiet. The wind in the trees suddenly sounded like people in the nearby bushes whispering. A fox clambering over a garden fence was in my mind an intruder breaking into the house.

If the gang did return and got into the house and I was unable to call for assistance, I was not going to attempt to stop them, I had decided. But if they had spotted me and for some crazy reason suspected that I would attempt to arrest them, they might decide to try and take me out first. My throat was very dry and I sat extremely still, straining to see and hear anything that moved.
I looked in rear mirror and suddenly spotted a car gently purring down the road. My blood ran cold as I saw it had no lights on whatsoever.

Why would a driver be driving with no lights on at all? The only reason I could think of was because they didn’t want to be seen. And the only people in this road that wouldn’t want to be seen were the Vietnamese gang. I watched it pull in behind a car further up the road and then saw no movement for about 15 seconds.

Suddenly both the driver’s and the passenger’s car doors opened and I saw two figures dressed in dark clothing get out.

As I watched them, my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw what they did. They both crouched down low and began creeping up towards the vehicle I was in. I was now in between them and the house and was certain that they had seen me and were going to silence me. A bead of sweat ran down my face as I debated whether I should stay in the car where I would be a sitting target or get out and face them with my baton and CS spray.

The figures grew gradually closer and I realised that I would now not have time to get out. I sat there, praying they would just walk past. They approached the back of the car and then went out of sight. I sat there motionless, barely breathing, waiting for them to crawl past the car. I looked in the mirror but could see nothing. In my side mirror it just showed an empty road. I needed to lean over to the passenger side and look in that mirror.

I shifted in the leather seats slowly as the material creaked and leant over the handbrake to see into the side mirror. I carefully raised my head, my heart now racing. The mirror looked empty.

Suddenly a figure I had not seen in the mirror leapt up behind the window and a man glared at me just inches from my face through the glass.

I went to scream but nothing came out.

Anyway, he looked oddly familiar. And why was he now laughing? I realised it was a guy from my team. He was now rolling around on the pavement laughing as his partner did the same. I opened the door and got out.

“Bastards,” I muttered. “I knew it was you,” I said casually, relief now searing through my body.

Secretly I was overjoyed that it had been them and not some real gang members. But I shall certainly never forget my first crime scene experience.