It was September 1982. I had been in Oxford CID for five months, working as part of the team headed up by the legendary DCI Richard Paige. At least, I always think of him as legendary, but he had only been a DCI for just over a year then, so probably he wasn’t particularly well-known at that stage beyond the officers at the central Oxford police station on St Aldates. His sergeant (and my line manager) Peter Johns, was on leave following the birth of his second child, and I was fortunate enough to have been picked from among the dozen or so DCs under Richard’s command to be his bag carrier until his return.
That warm, sunny morning we headed back to the station shortly before lunchtime, having been in north Oxford interviewing witnesses to an arson attack there. Well, they should have been witnesses, seeing as they admitted to having been out on the streets on the night when it happened, but they all insisted that they’d seen nothing. It’s funny how the people who know something about a crime are often reluctant to come forward and tell the police, while there are others who are so keen to be part of a real-life investigation that they imagine that they have information pertinent to the enquiry when in fact they really do know nothing!
But that’s all beside the point, and it isn’t the setting on fire of a row of lock-up garages in Cutteslowe that I want to tell you about in this memoir. As I was saying, we returned to the police station between eleven and twelve that morning. The sun was shining and it was unusually warm for the time of year. The university term didn’t start for another three weeks or so, which should have meant that the street was less busy than normal, but that morning there were plenty of people about, and not the usual groups of Japanese tourists admiring the architecture of Christ Church College, which is almost next door to the police station, or peering in at the “Old Sheep Shop” opposite, holding copies of “Alice in Wonderland” and comparing what they saw in front of them with Tenniel’s illustration.
These visitors were mostly younger than the tourists, and they were predominantly female. They were wandering around in small groups, some of them looking a bit lost, as if they didn’t know where they were going. Some of the slightly older ones looked rather like hippies, with full skirts, long hair and ethnic-patterned tunic tops. The younger ones were mostly in jeans and tee-shirts topped by patterned jumpers. I noticed one woman wearing a heavy woollen poncho and another with a hat covered in badges.
‘Those’ll be the anti-nuclear protestors,’ Richard remarked as we made our way through the clusters of people.
Then I remembered that we’d been briefed about this planned demonstration earlier in the week. The organisers had been very co-operative. They’d informed the authorities that they were going to meet on Christ Church Meadow and then process to Carfax in two groups: one starting from the botanical gardens and proceeding along the High, while the others approached along St Aldates, setting out from Folly Bridge. They promised that it would be peaceful and that there would be no trouble of any kind.
Of course, that was easier to promise than to deliver. However good your intentions, bringing together a large number of people always carries certain risks, especially if you’ve publicised in advance that you want as many protesters as possible to march down already busy streets, hemmed in by buildings on either side. For one thing, although your intentions may be peaceful, there is always the danger that your demonstration may be infiltrated by hotheads in search of an excuse for a fight. For another, the sheer quantity of human flesh pressed together in a relatively confined space can be dangerous.
I don’t know exactly how the trouble started on this occasion. There was talk afterwards of a bus striking the corner of the makeshift platform that the organisers had set up in front of Carfax Tower for speeches that were to be made once both arms of the procession had assembled there. Attempting to turn right off the High into Cornmarket, the driver had misjudged the corner – or perhaps the platform had been built too close to the road – and knocked one of the boards out of alignment. Someone had fallen off; some equipment had been damaged; harsh words were exchanged and the road was blocked by the bus and several cars, some coming up behind it and others from St Aldates.
Whatever actually caused the blockage, the consequence for the crowd of demonstrators heading up St Aldates from Folly Bridge was that there was nowhere for them to go. The people at the back could not see what was going on at the front, but they could hear what they imagined to be the speeches beginning as one of the organisers tried to calm the chaos at Carfax by speaking to the crowd there on the public address system that they had rigged up.
Richard and I were oblivious to what was going on outside. He set me typing up the results of our morning’s interviews while he checked with other members of his team to find out how they were progressing with other investigations. Then, after lunch in the canteen, we sat down together to collate what we knew about the arson attack and to plan our next move. It must have been around mid-afternoon that we were called to help quell what by then amounted almost to a riot in the street outside.
The main crush was near the top of St Aldates, outside the Town Hall, but the road was packed with jostling bodies, right down as far as the police station itself. We joined the army of uniformed officers who were attempting to relieve the pressure by diverting some of the protestors down side streets or into the quadrangle of Christ Church College. It must have been round about half past three when we finally managed to get the crowd to disperse. We were setting up a police cordon to keep pedestrians off the road so that the traffic, which by then was backing up down the Abingdon Road beyond Folly Bridge almost to the by-pass, could start flowing again, when one of the demonstrators called out to us.
I ran over to see what she wanted. She was standing over a young man who was lying motionless on the ground. Another girl was kneeling down beside him slapping him on the cheek and calling out, ‘Are you alright? Wake up!’
Both girls looked to be in their teens and my immediate thought was, ‘why aren’t they in school?’ However, I was more concerned about the young man whose face looked strangely grey and whose eyes seemed to be staring into nowhere. As I watched, his limbs suddenly began jerking in rapid spasms and his face took on a series of weird expressions. I’d been told about epileptic seizures during my training, but I’d never seen one in real life. Was this what it looked like? What was it that you were supposed to do?
‘It’s alright,’ I found myself saying, putting as much authority as I could muster into my voice. ‘I’m a police officer. Just move back a bit to give him more room.’
I took off my jacket and folded it up to act as a makeshift pillow. Then I turned him over into the recovery position, placing the jacket under his head. The convulsions seemed to be decreasing in strength and becoming less frequent. Perhaps he would recover by himself in a few minutes. I certainly hoped so.
‘I’ll call an ambulance.’ I looked round and saw Sergeant Fuller standing over me. ‘Carry on with the first aid, Porter. You’re doing a great job there.’
I didn’t feel I was doing anything much, but Fuller’s words spurred me on and I started talking to the young man, telling him that he was safe and that the ambulance would be here soon. Up above me, I could hear Fuller questioning the two girls.
‘Are you friends of his? Can you tell me his name?’
‘No. Sorry,’ they mumbled back. ‘We’ve never met him before today.’
‘I think he was with some other people,’ one of them volunteered after a few moments, ‘but they aren’t here now.’
‘We all got mixed up when the pushing started,’ the other added.
‘Did you happen to see which way the others went?’
‘No. Sorry,’ they repeated in unison.
‘It was all just, such a – a mess!’ came the first voice again. ‘We were just concentrating on not getting separated.’
‘We don’t know anyone else here,’ the other explained. ‘So we wanted to keep together. We weren’t expecting it to be like this. We thought it was just a rally, to show we don’t want nuclear weapons here.’
‘Alright. Never mind,’ Fuller said kindly. ‘It probably doesn’t matter. I expect he’ll come round soon and he’ll be able to tell us who he is himself and who his friends are. But please stick around. The ambulance crew may want to ask you some questions about what happened to him.’
The two girls retreated to the side of the road and stood leaning against the honey-coloured stone wall that bounded Christ Church College. They appeared very uncomfortable. I’m guessing they weren’t looking forward to being cross-examined about what they knew of the unfortunate young man, who was now lying still as if he had fallen asleep with his eyes open.
Fuller kneeled down next to me and started going through the lad’s pockets, looking for something that would tell us who he was. He started with the inside pocket of his anorak, presumably assuming that that was the most likely place for valuables such as a wallet or driving licence. No luck there, so he tried the outer pockets.
‘Well lookie here!’ he exclaimed, holding out a transparent plastic syringe with a hypodermic needle still attached. ‘I’d say that puts a different complexion on things, don’t you?’
‘What’s going on here?’ Richard had come up behind Fuller and was standing over him staring down at the syringe.
‘He passed out in the crush,’ Fuller explained. ‘I thought it looked like an epileptic fit, but now I’m not so sure. It could well be drugs-related, sir.’
‘Hand that over,’ Richard ordered, holding out his hand with a clean handkerchief draped over it. ‘I’ll take care of it for now.’
He wrapped the syringe carefully and stowed it away in his jacket pocket. I rather fancy that even at that stage he suspected that there was more to this than met the eye.
It wasn’t long before the ambulance came and took the casualty away. They did their best to revive him at the scene, but none of their efforts had any effect as far as I could see. He remained apparently lifeless with his mouth lolling open and his eyes glazed over, staring at nothing.
As Fuller had predicted, while his colleagues worked on attempting to resuscitate the young man, one of the ambulance men went over and spoke briefly to the girls who had been next to him in the crowd when he collapsed. They gave their names as Tina and Jacqueline. I remember particularly because there had been a Tina in my class at Primary School. Tiny Tina, we called her because she was so much shorter than any of the other girls. This Tina was a “big strapping lass” as my wife would have said, with long brown hair that flopped all over her face as she talked. Her friend Jacqueline was smaller and quieter. I wondered why her parents had chosen such a sophisticated name for such an ordinary-looking girl. She had mousey hair cut in a pageboy style and brown eyes that stared round anxiously reminding me of a frightened deer.
They both insisted that they’d never met the man before and had no idea who he was. They’d only really noticed him at all when the crowd started to thin out and he slid to the floor next to them. Could he have been unconscious for some time before he collapsed, then? Well, yes, they supposed he might. They really hadn’t been paying him any attention.
The ambulance left and Richard took over the interrogation. Eventually he teased out from them some sort of picture of the events leading up to the young man’s collapse.
He had been in a group with about four or five other people. The rest were all women, the girls thought, but they weren’t quite sure about that. There might have been one other man, but probably not, or at least … well he may not have been in the group at all. When the people behind them in the procession started pushing forward, the group had split up. Two – or it may have been three – of them disappeared to the left. Maybe they went down a side street to get away from the crush. The others all stayed together until the police came and started telling everyone to disperse. Then most of the others slipped out to the right and the girls never saw them again.
The crowd carried on pushing from behind and the girls ended up pressed up against the man. He was just standing there with his hands at his sides. Then someone else moved away from in front of him and he fell down on the floor. Jacqueline got down on the ground to try to revive him – she was in the Girl Guides and had a First Aider badge – and Tina shouted out to the police to come and help.
We thanked the girls for their assistance, took down their names and addresses in case we needed to speak to them again, and then Richard looked round for a WPC[1] to drive them home. His eyes lighted on Alison Brown, a bright young officer who had only been in the force for a couple of years.
Seeing him looking at her, she hurried over.
‘Sir!’ she began. ‘I’ve got some people here who want to speak to the officer in charge.’
‘That’ll be Chief Inspector Eddleston,’ Richard told her. ‘He’s responsible for policing the demonstration. What is it they want with him?’
‘They’ve lost one of their friends and they saw someone being taken off in an ambulance and they thought …’
Richard immediately turned to address the small group of people that was standing at a respectful distance behind Alison.
‘Your friend?’ he asked briskly. ‘Can you describe him to me?’
‘He’s got dark hair,’ one of the two women volunteered, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘and dark brown eyes. He’s a bit taller than John.’ She waved her hand in the direction of a young man with straw-coloured hair and pale blue eyes wearing a leather jacket over jeans.
‘And he was wearing?’ prompted Richard.
‘Jeans and a CND tee-shirt,’ the other woman answered promptly. ‘And a blue anorak.’
Richard looked towards Fuller and me. We nodded back. The description fitted.
[1] Woman Police Constable. This term was finally discontinued in 1999.