Blayde, R.I.P. by John Wainwright

Author:John Wainwright [Wainwright, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

In acreage it was near enough the hundred-thousand mark as to make no real difference. It included what was known as The Tops, and The Tops was a frightening place. The Tops had peaks and overhangs capable of making the finest rock-climbers in the world pause and swallow. The Tops included an ocean of ling and heather; of bracken and stilted, wind-bent trees; a petrified ocean whose waves marched as far as the eye could see in all directions. If The Tops had a call, it was the lost and lonely call of the curlew; if it had a sound, it was the never-ending sound of the wind, sometimes raging in a tempest against which a man must lean in order not to be plucked from his feet and hurled like the toy of a spoiled child, sometimes moaning gently as if mourning the scores—hundreds—of lives it had claimed over the years. Foolish men. Foolish women. Mere human beings who’d thought they could tame nature there on The Tops. In winter the snow had taken them; blinding, whirling snow which more than once had frozen their tired and lost bodies within a hundred yards of some squat dwelling where they could have found shelter. In spring and autumn—yes and in summer also—the sudden mists had claimed victims as easily as the snows of winter; mists which made a mockery of even the best of maps; mists which enticed climbers and fell-walkers away from the well-worn tracks, then forced them to walk in circles until they were exhausted… then left them to die.

The Tops were part of Pinthead Pike Police Division. In effect, The Tops were Pinthead Pike Division. The only other parts were tiny hamlets and villages, sheltering in the folded skirts of The Tops. The only town (so-called) was Pinthead itself; a huddle of shops, houses, pubs, a Methodist chapel and a cattle market at which the hill farmers gathered once a week to sell livestock and to exchange news. And, towering above Pinthead, the Pike—a great, raw, limestone grit outcrop, like the broken tooth of a giant—which, along with the township, gave the division its name.

It had the reputation of being the “punishment division” of the force and this, too, requires some small explanation. Every force has its “punishment beats”, its “punishment sections” and, sometimes, its “punishment division”. Areas of various size which it is almost impossible to police with any degree of efficiency. A beat may be a veritable ghetto of villains, tearaways and madmen to whom the sight of a copper’s uniform is like the sight of a cape to a fighting bull. A whole section may be that also, but a “punishment section” is more often on a par with a “punishment division” and a “punishment division” is where damn-all happens from one year’s end to the next To understand the sheer, blind boredom of such a division—a division like Pinthead Pike—it is necessary to appreciate the fact that every square inch of the United Kingdom is part of some police division, some police section, some police beat.

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