Tales of a cop - Part 1

What would you have done?

It was just another night on duty. He was placed as receptionist at the main gate and was going to be there for the whole eight hours. Normally it was two but due to some of his colleagues being sent to the Island stations and some being sick and some whose talents were too much to be wasted on reception duty, he was stuck there for the whole of his shift.

It did not faze him that much. He liked the idea of being alone on duty and having some quiet time for his writing. Pretty much nothing of any consequence happened at the main gate other than the occasional visits from officers from the other sections. But as it was the late shift these visits were not going to happen until the early hours of the morning. By them he would be all too ready to be relieved.

So it came as a surprise that the man who was brought in that night was brought in through the main gate and not through the back one which is normal for any arrestee. It was an even greater surprise that the man was in handcuffs and that he smiled at him and offered his hands to be shook all the while referring to him by name.

He was much too amazed to do anything but smile back and shake hands with this man. All too quickly he was ushered up the stairs to the holding cells and he was left there wondering what the hell just happened. He had shaken hands with a man who was in handcuffs and who seemed to know his name. He scratched his head and sat back down behind the desk still wondering.

The man was not familiar. He looked the same as most of the people from the islands did. Dark, sun-burnt skin. Scraggly black hair that were turning grey in places heralding that he was past middle age. His eyes had looked kind but the overgrown beard gave the appearance of a mildly deranged caveman. He was wearing a green tee shirt and brown pants.

He was still trying to remember whether he knew the man when his colleague came back downstairs after handing the man over to the cell guards. As he was sitting down he asked him who that man was. He replied that the man had been a cop about two years ago and had retired and gone back to his island. He had been in this same patrol.

It dawned on him who the man was when he was told his name. He remembered the time he was a recruit and was placed in this patrol and the man had been a senior officer. Senior, as in older. He did not have any stripes which did not mean much as folk from the islands did not have a good education. And without a good education it was hard to get promoted.

But he still remembered the guy as being kind and nice. What had happened to have this man in handcuffs and in a cell in the same place that he had worked for most of his life?

His colleague came out with the story that the man had cut up another man with a knife, so bad that he had bled to death. This other man was the man’s father-in-law. It seemed that the man had a daughter about ten or twelve years old. He had found out that this other man – his daughter’s grandfather – was molesting her. And had been doing it for sometime.

He had waited for the old man to finish his prayers at the mosque and waylaid him on his way back home. He had used a kathivalhi for pretty much what that knife had been made to do – and carved up the old man.

After telling this story, his colleague went on that he would have done the same if faced with the same circumstances. He, himself was not too sure what he would have done. But then people were driven to do some crazy things in difficult situations. He just hoped that nothing of that sort would happen to him and force him to decide.