As the car screeched to a halt and the wail of the siren died away, one of the PCs emerged from the passenger door and ran over to the figure on the pavement. The other remained at the wheel and used the radio to confirm that an ambulance was on its way. Mr Patel could see both officers looking across the street towards his shop, checking the address source of the 999 call, but neither of them came over to him. That could wait. The officers’ gaze turned away as the ambulance, lights flashing and siren wailing, came round the corner. A few gawpers had congregated up and down Paradise Way, but they kept their distance. The police would later try to interview them for witnesses, but merely waste their time. On Meadowdene Grove you watched for fun, but you did not help the fuzz.
There were two paramedics, skilled and experienced men. For them, as for the police, procedures are procedures and must be followed to the letter.
‘It looks like a mugging and a kicking,’ the constable kneeling beside the body remarked. ‘Possibly a bad one.’
The paramedics nodded and went to work. There was no blood flow to staunch, so the first priority was to stabilize the neck. Victims of crash and beating trauma can be finished off there and then if the cervical vertebrae have already been damaged and are then abused even more by unskilled manhandling. The two men quickly fitted a semi-rigid collar to prevent the neck from wobbling side to side.
The next procedure was to get him onto a spine board to immobilize both neck and back. That was done right there on the pavement. Only then could the man be lifted onto a gurney and hefted into the back of the ambulance. The paramedics were quick and efficient. Within five minutes of swerving into the kerbside they were ready to roll.
‘I’ll have to come with you,’ said the constable on the pavement, ‘he might make a statement.’
Professionals in the emergency services know pretty exactly who does what and why. It saves time. The paramedic nodded. The ambulance was his territory and he was in charge, but the police had a job to do, too. He already knew that the chances of the injured man uttering a word were out of the window, so he just muttered, ‘Stay out of the way. This is a bad one.’
The constable clambered aboard and sat well up forward, close to the bulkhead of the driving compartment; the driver slammed the doors and ran to his cab. His partner bent over the man on the gurney. Two seconds later the ambulance was racing down Paradise Way, past the staring onlookers, its high-pitched siren scream clearing a path as it swerved into the traffic-choked High Road. The constable clung on and watched another pro at work.
Airway, always clear the airway. A blockage of blood and mucus in the windpipe can choke a patient to death almost as fast as a bullet. The paramedic used a suction pump which yielded a small amount of mucus, the sort a smoker might contain, but little blood. Air passage free, breathing shallow but sufficient to sustain life. To be safe, the paramedic clamped an oxygen mask with attached reservoir bag over the swollen face. It was the rapid swelling that worried him; he knew the sign too well.
Pulse check: regular but already too fast, another possible sign of cerebral trauma. The Glasgow Coma Scale measures the alertness of the human brain on a scale of 15. Fully awake and completely alert gives 15 over 15. A test showed the patient was 11 over 15 and falling. A figure of 3 is deep coma, under that – death.
‘Royal London,’ he shouted over the wail of the siren. ‘A and E plus neuro.’
The driver nodded, went through a major crossroads against the lights as cars and trucks pulled over, then changed tack towards Whitechapel. The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel Road has an advanced neurosurgical unit; one nearer to the ambulance’s position did not, but if ‘neuro’ were needed, the extra few driving minutes would pay dividends.
The driver was talking to his control, giving his exact position in South Tottenham, estimated time of arrival at the Royal London, and asking for a complete Accident and Emergency trauma team to be ready and waiting.
The paramedic in the back was right. One of the possible call signs of major head injury, particularly after an assault, is that the soft tissue of the entire face and head swells rapidly to a great, bloated, unrecognizable gargoyle. The face of the injured man had begun swelling back on the pavement; by the time the ambulance swerved into the A and E bay at the Royal, the face was like a football. The doors crashed open; the gurney was lowered into the care of the trauma team. There were three doctors under the command of the consultant, Mr Carl Bateman; these were an anaesthetist and two juniors; there were also three nurses.
They enveloped the gurney, lifted the patient (still on the spine board) onto one of their own trolleys and wheeled him away.
‘I’ll need my spine board back,’ shouted the paramedic, but no-one heard him. He would have to collect it the next day. The policeman scrambled out.
‘Where do I go?’ he asked.
‘In there,’ said the paramedic, ‘but don’t get in the way.’
The constable nodded obediently and trotted through the swing doors, still hoping for a statement. The only one he got was from a senior staff nurse.
‘Sit there,’ she said, ‘and don’t get in the way.’
Within half an hour Paradise Way was a buzz of activity. A uniformed inspector from the Dover Street police station, known simply in those parts as the Dover ‘nick’, had taken charge. The street up and down from the attack site had been cordoned off with striped tape. A dozen officers were quartering the area, concentrating on the shops along the parade and the six floors of flats that stood above them. The apartments across the road from the scene of the crime were of particular interest, for anyone looking out and down might well have seen it all. But it was uphill work. Reactions varied from genuine apology through bovine denial to outright abuse. The door-knocking went on.
The inspector had quickly called for a fellow-rank officer from CID, for it was clear this was a job for detectives. At the Dover nick DI Jack Burns had been summoned from a half-drunk and much-treasured cup of tea in the canteen to the presence of Detective Superintendent Alan Parfitt to be told to take over the Paradise Way mugging. He protested that he was handling a chain of car thefts, a hit-and-run and was due in court the next morning. To no avail. Shortage of staff, he was told. August, bloody August, he growled as he left.
He arrived at the scene with his partner Detective Sergeant Luke Skinner just about the same time as the POLSA team. The Police Search units do an unlovely job. Dressed in heavy-duty overalls and protective gloves, their task is to search the areas round crime scenes for clues. Clues are not always obvious at first glance so the general rule is to grab it, bag it and find out what it is later. The job can also be very mucky, involving crawling on hands and knees in some rather unpleasant places. The Meadowdene Grove estate was not a pleasant place.
‘There’s a missing wallet, Jack,’ said the uniformed inspector who had already spoken to Mr Patel. ‘And one of the assailants had his nose bloodied. He was holding the hem of his T-shirt to his face as he ran off. May have sprayed blood on the floor.’
Burns nodded. While the POLSA searchers scoured the smelly passages of the concrete blocks on hands and knees and the uniformed men tried to find another eyewitness, Jack Burns entered the shop of Mr Veejay Patel.
‘I am Detective Inspector Burns,’ he said, offering his warrant card, ‘and this is DS Skinner. I gather you were the one who made the 999 call?’
Mr Patel surprised Jack Burns, who came from Devon and had been three years with the Met, the whole time at Dover nick. In his native county he was accustomed to citizens helping the police where, when and as they could, but north-east London had been a shock. Mr Patel reminded him of Devon. He really wanted to help. He was clear, concise and precise. In a lengthy statement taken down by DS Skinner, he explained exactly what he had seen, and gave clear descriptions of the assailants. Jack Burns warmed to him. If only all cases included a witness like Veejay Patel of Entebbe and Edmonton. Dusk was settling over Meadowdene Grove when he signed DS Skinner’s handwritten statement.
‘I would like you to come down to the station and look at some photographs, if you would, sir,’ said Burns at last. ‘You might be able to spot these two men. It would save an awful lot of time if we knew who we were looking for exactly.’
Mr Patel was apologetic.
‘Not tonight, if you please. I am alone in the shop. I close at ten. But tomorrow my brother returns. He has been on holiday, you see. August. I could get away in the morning.’