John Sutherland at his very best.

A year ago, I had never heard of Bristol Crimefest so when my publisher asked me to attend and take part in a couple of interview panels, I really had no idea what I was signing up for.

I arrived at the Bristol Marriott hotel, checked in to a very comfortable room and then went to register for the festival. I’m sure you can imagine my surprise when I asked festival organiser how many people we coming. The answer? Five hundred and fifty! I think he saw my shocked look as he then reassured me that there would be know more than a hundred and fifty at each panel!

First evening was spent with fellow Orenda Authors when our wonderful publisher, Karen Sullivan, took us all out for a nice Italian meal. I had the chance to meet and talk to Michael Grothaus, Michael Stanley, Yusuf Toropov, Kati Hiekkapelto and Paul Hardisty.

Returning to the hotel, I began to notice faces that I recognised. Mari Hannah spoke to me (absolutely charming) and Rod Reynolds (looks so young). Then I saw an ‘old friend’ Michelle Davies, who I met in Glasgow in March when we did our very first interviews together. A great catch up was had.

And then it was time for bed!

Day one dawned. Breakfast – full english, of course – as you should always go into battle on a full stomach, and then off to meet the team for the first panel. Pete Adams (hilarious), Daniel Pembrey (young, talented AND handsome) and the wonderful Lisa Cutts. Lisa is a serving detective and – not a lot of people know – her father was my first DI (detective inspector). Lisa and I had spent the previous evening in the bar talking JOB, as coppers often do!

Lisa and I met up with our ‘moderator’ Caro Ramsey. Caro is from Glasgow and turned out to have a very sharp sense of humour. With another natural comedian in Pete Adams, it didn’t take long before they had our audience laughing. Lisa, Daniel and I simply followed where they led.

The hour passed very quickly, and then we headed off to sign a few books.

Then, a very strange thing happened. At 7pm I joined a large queue of people as we headed for the main hall. There were to be announcements, the Crime Writers Association were publishing the long-lists for the 2016 Dagger Awards. I was aware that my publisher had nominated Wicked Game but, well, let’s get real, there are hundreds of entries and some very talented and experienced authors in the mix. As the announcements started, I found myself chatting quietly to a lovely lady who turned out to be none other than Zoe Sharp. I wasn’t paying as much attention to the stage as perhaps I should have been (guilty m’lord) but I then thought I heard my own name being announced. Zoe confirmed it. A few moments later my hand was being squeezed by more people than I could count. Wicked Game had been long-listed, for the John Creasey New Blood Dagger, along with eight other entries. My publisher gave me a kiss, my phone started buzzing. I was stunned, and speechless.

That night, I celebrated with fish n chips and a cider, at the Catch22 resturant (very good, well recommended – try the grilled fish) opposite the hotel. I met Mick Heron (Spy novelist) and, as he was also listed for another Dagger, we celebrated together.

Next day, I was on the red-eye panel, the one that starts at 9am, the morning after some people were in the bar until the wee small hours. To my surprise, we had a full house again. This time we were under the guidance of Laura Wilson. On the panel were Sara Ward, Yusuf Toropov, Anja de Jager and a certain Mr James Law. James is a former submariner and the author of a big-selling book by the name of Tenacity.

Put an ex-navy man and an ex-soldier together and the inevitable happened. First he took the rise out of the Army, then I remembered a navy joke, and soon the craic was well under way. What the people outside the room must have thought of the laughter, I don’t know. What our fellow authors must have thought, I dread to think!

 

Soon came the time to head home. All too soon as I had made some great new mates and met some fascinating people. I was really quite amazed at how friendly and welcoming the crime-fiction community is.

And will I go next year? If they’ll have me, you bet. James Law and me might just start up a double act.

Great news. Wicked Game is now available from Barnes and Noble and Amazon in the United States.

In previous posts, I have written on how Writing helped me with PTSD and about the traumas that first triggered my symptoms.

Writing and talking to a sympathetic counsellor was a significant step on my road to recovery.

But what is recovery? Is PTSD curable, or is it something we just have to learn to live with?

Recovery from PTSD doesn’t mean forgetting the trauma that triggered it.

What happened, happened, and that will not change. You were there, you remember, you will always remember.

The only part of the PTSD equation that can change is you.

Recovery does not mean cure. What is does mean is regaining control – control of your life.

It means learning how not to have the debilitating emotional and physical reactions that have become part of your life.

It means learning about PTSD, what it is and why it effects you in the way that it does – Understanding brings strength.

It means learning to relax, to reduce stress levels and to sleep, and not just any type of sleep, I mean that quality, restful un-interrupted sleep that you used to enjoy before the dreams.

It means finding ways to ease your symptoms, such as ways to limit your reactions to trigger events.

It means regaining self-confidence and self-respect.

The journey

For me, the road to recovery has been like the game of snakes and ladders.

But with some differences.

In the board game, you move forward, starting on square 1, to eventually aim to end the game at square 100. On the way, if you land on certain squares there will be a ladder to help you up or a snake that will send you further down the board. Some ladders are very helpful, others not so. Some snakes are a small setback, others much greater in effect.

The reality.

On the road to recovery you don’t know which ladders are going to help you or how far they will help you climb. At the point where you step on the rung, your upwards journey may be very short or even go nowhere, or it may be just the ladder you were seeking and end up taking you a long way forwards.

Similarly with the snakes. At first, on your journey, you cannot see them. They take you by surprise, shock you, and slip you very quickly towards where you started. But, as you experience the snakes, you get better at reacting to them. You learn how to jump off, so you don’t slide so far. And, as your recovery improves, you learn how to spot the snakes and how to step over them as you move onwards and upwards.

Winning the game.

Making effective progress means seeking help, and being brave enough to accept that you cannot do it on your own. It’s a long upward climb, a mountain, one that nobody should undertake on your own.

To climb it, you’ll need equipment that’s up to the challenge and guidance from those that know how.

And to get that guidance, you’re going to need support. Not just the support of those close to you but professional support and peer support.

There are many sources of help, from Combat Stress through to the NHS, and many types of treatment.

Not all will work for you. We are all different, with different trauma, different memories and different symptoms. And we all respond individually to the range of treatments available.

Writing was my ladder.

Go find yours.

PTSD – let it be a mountain that you turned into a molehill.

 

 

A reason to write.

 

Matt Johnson.

 

I’ve spoken many times on how a form of therapy that included writing helped with my treatment for PTSD.

And I’ve explained that it was a comment made by my counsellor that first planted the idea in my mind that I might write a book.

What I’ve never explained is why I agreed with the suggestion to the degree that I was sufficiently motivated to go along with the suggestion.

To explain, I need to take you back to 1985. I was a PC in those days, and had just passed the promotion examination to become a sergeant. I was posted to Tottenham and Hornsey police stations for a short period to work as an ‘acting sergeant’ while I waited to go on my pre-promotion course at Hendon police college.

On my first evening at Tottenham, a young black lad came running in from the street, screaming and shouting. He jumped over the front counter towards me and collapsed in a heap on the floor. I moved towards him and saw blood, a lot of blood spreading out on the floor around him. He had been stabbed and had run into the police station to escape his attacker. This was my first introduction to Tottenham in the 1980s.

I also spent some time at Hornsea Police station where I met a sergeant called David Pengelly. David gave me some tips about the job and about what to expect on my sergeants course. He introduced me to some of his community beat officers, we called them ‘homebeats’ in those days, including PCs Keith Blakelock and Richard Coombes.

I left Tottenham when my course started. As I did so, I was aware that trouble was brewing in the local area. Mobile car patrols had been stopped on certain estates and foot patrolling in those area was only being done by well-known local PCs and, even then, they were always in pairs. There had been some sporadic outbreaks of hostility towards police officers and some vehicles had been damaged by stone-throwing youths. It seemed that the area was a powder keg just waiting to explode.

On 5^th October 1985, the Broadwater Farm riots started. David Pengelly, the sergeant who had befriended me at Hornsey, was deployed with several of his homebeat officers into the fray. They were ill-prepared, inadequately equipped and completely unaware of what they were going into.

Police during rioting on the Broadwater Estate in which PC Blakelock would be killed.

That evening, in the darkness and confusion on an estate they were unfamiliar with, they were stoned, petrol bombed and, eventually their position was over-run and they were isolated. They ran for their lives. Keith Blakelock slipped on wet grass, fell to the ground and was set upon by the rioters. He was killed, stabbed and hacked to death. Showing immense bravery and armed with ridiculously inadequate wooden truncheons, PC Coombes and others attempted to rescue PC Blakelock while Sergeant Pengelly fought alone with the rioters to try and buy some time for his colleagues.

David Pengelly was awarded the George Medal for his bravery that evening.

But there were many other police officers at Broadwater Farm that night. As with the officers from Hornsey, they were also ill prepared for what they faced. Many were injured, all were traumatised.

Some of them were from Barnet police station, where I was posted on promotion. In the aftermath of the riot, an enquiry team was set up and all officers who had been present were told to write statements including as much information as they could about what had happened to them, what they had seen and any evidence they could include to help bring rioters to justice.

In many cases, the statements produced by the officers from my station were woefully inadequate. Often they said no more than “I went with my serial to an estate in Tottenham. We stood behind plastic shields while hundreds of people tried to kill us with petrol bombs, knives and rocks.”

I was given the job of obtaining better statements from these officers. It wasn’t easy. Many of them were resentful, angry and upset by what they had been through. Many simply didn’t want to talk about it, let alone write a statement.

I remember one particular PC, I’ll call him Andy. Andy was in his early twenties. In the months that followed the riot, Andy steadfastly refused to write a full statement. He was interviewed by senior officers and even threatened with disciplinary action but nothing could persuade him. He was thought of as a bad egg, not a good police officer. He had started drinking, often to excess and was regularly late turning up for work. He seemed to have an ‘attitude problem’ was insubordinate to senior officers and surly. One day, he was arrested for drink-driving. He was disciplined and sacked. Nobody missed him.

I forgot about Andy until many years later. I was undergoing counselling for PTSD and I began to realise that young Andy, and many of the PCs who had been at Broadwater Farm had been displaying similar symptoms to my own. I hadn’t recognised it at the time, indeed I had never heard of PTSD.

Nothing was done for them by way of counselling or post-trauma care. They were simply left to fend for themselves.

It was too late to help Andy, but I was left thinking ‘if only I had known, if only I had been aware, maybe I could have helped him’. I felt guilt as I knew that I had failed him, as had the organisation I worked for, when we allowed his behaviour to deteriorate to the point where he was arrested and kicked out of the police.

I promised myself then that I would do my level best to make amends for my failure. So, when my counsellor suggested the idea of a book, it sparked an idea. An idea that one day I might write a book that could educate and inform people about PTSD and about how it affects people’s lives.

But I knew that as one individual former soldier and police inspector, I had neither the power or the influence to bring about change, to ensure that all men and women in all the armed and emergency services are prepared for the trauma they will face and properly supported when they do. But, it occurred to me that what I might be able to do is introduce people who can influence change to the realities of PTSD, through the medium of creative writing.

And so… I began to write. And ‘Wicked Game’ was born.

 

 

 

 

Losing a friend.

© Matt Johnson

17^th April this year sees the 32nd anniversary of one of the worst days I have ever experienced. It is a day when a friend and colleague was shot and killed. Three decades later, despite the identity of the killer being known, he remains a free man.

On 17^th April 1984 I was a 27 year old advanced car driver working in central London on a police traffic car.

On 17^th April 1984, WPC Yvonne Fletcher was a 25 year old officer on the Vice Squad at West End Central Police Station. My wife of the time served on this same squad. Yvonne was one of her best mates and part of our circle of friends.

Yvonne had been at a house-warming party at my home a few weeks before this fateful day. My lasting memory of her is of seeing her sitting at the bottom of the stairs in my house, looking relaxed and chatting with friends.

At 10.18 am Yvonne was with a small contingent of officers supervising a demonstration outside the Libyan Peoples Bureau in St James Square, London. Her fiancé was among the officers with her. Yvonne had her back to the Bureau.

Without warning, someone in the Libyan bureau fired a Sterling submachine gun into the group of protesters and police officers. Eleven people were hit by bullets, including Yvonne.

An ambulance was quickly sent to the scene and my patrol car was sent to escort the ambulance to the Westminster Hospital.

Anyone who has worked in central London will know just how quickly a major incident can cause the streets to become blocked. Main roads rapidly snarl up and the side streets and rat runs that the taxis and locals use, soon follow. Gridlock is the result.

Getting the ambulance to the hospital proved to be a nightmare. We were forced to drive onto pavements and, on several occasions, we had to get out of the car to get vehicles moved so we could get through. At that time we were aware that the casualty was a police officer, but didn’t know who.

I remember that the ambulance overtook the police car just before we reached the hospital. We had to get out of the car to clear traffic from a junction and the crew seized the opportunity to make progress and get through. When we pulled in behind the ambulance, Yvonne had already been taken into the emergency area. I remember seeing the fantastic efforts and the work that was being put in by the nursing staff to help her. They were fantastic and couldn’t have tried harder.

Yvonne died from her wounds one hour later. She had been shot in the back and abdomen.

After escorting the ambulance, my car was sent to help with the traffic chaos that followed the start of the resulting siege.

I went home that afternoon and switched on the six o’clock news. It was only then that my former wife and I learned that the murdered officer was our friend.

The following day, I was assigned as a driver to the SAS team that had been brought in and stationed at a nearby RAF base. My job was to run the lads around, in short I was a gofer and taxi driver. I made frequent trips to the infamous ‘blue screen’ that was built to block the view into the square and I was present on the night that something amazing happened.

Yvonne’s hat and four other officers’ helmets were left lying in the square during the siege of the embassy. Images of them were shown repeatedly in the British media. They came to represent something quite iconic as a symbol of unarmed police officers who had been attacked so ruthlessly.

What happened was that a PC, acting completely on his own, ran into the square and snatched Yvonne’s hat. There were shouts of ‘get back, get back’ from the firearms officers but the unarmed PC was determined and fast. As he returned to the blue screen, he was bundled away by a senior officer and a firearms officer. I never did find out what happened to the PC but I suspect he got into trouble.

Fact is, what he did was a reckless thing to do. It is quite possible that the hat may have been playing a part in the hostage negotiations that were going on behind the scenes. We will never know. But what I can tell you is how much that PCs actions lifted the spirits of people like me who were sitting watching while the ‘powers that be’ seemed to be doing very little. Grabbing Yvonne’s hat from under the noses of the terrorists stuck two fingers up to them and told them what we thought of them.

To that anonymous PC, I say thanks.

The ‘Peoples Bureau’ was surrounded by armed police for eleven days, in one of the longest police sieges in London’s history. Meanwhile, in Libya, Colonel Gaddafi claimed that the embassy was under attack from British forces, and Libyan soldiers surrounded the British Embassy in Tripoli.

No satisfactory conclusion was reached in the UK, and following the taking of six hostages in Tripoli, the occupiers of the Bureau were allowed to fly out of the UK. The Tripoli hostages were not released for several months, ironically almost on the exact day that the memorial to Yvonne Fletcher was unveiled.

In July 2012 Andrew Gilligan of The Sunday Telegraph received reliable reports that Salah Eddin Khalifa, a pro-Gaddafi student, fired the fatal shot. Unlike a previous suspect named as the killer, Mr Khalifa is known to be alive and may, one day, be arrested. He is currently living in Cairo, a city to which he moved as the Gaddafi regime crumbled.

Yvonne’s death is still the only murder of a British cop on UK soil to remain unsolved. But, we haven’t forgotten.

 

Events page updated with dates and places for 2016

Auction now ended. Both bottles sold for £250 each.

Very grateful to the two winning bidders.

 

On Monday evening I announced the auction of the first of two bottles of SAS port. These are the real deal and come from the 22 Regt Benevolent Association.

The response has been overwhelming, with the top bid now at over £200. Today, I’m adding a second bottle, with the second highest bidder winning it. Yes, the top two bids both win.

This would make an ideal buy to impress your mates or, perhaps as a once-in-a-lifetime xmas present.

The first bottle auction bid is for the benefit of the Armed Forces Bikers Charity who were recently kind enough to make me one of their patrons. The second is now for the Shoeboxes for our Heroes fundraising group based in the north-east of England.

The auction will run until midday, sunday 13th December. The main auction will be administered using my facebook page . If you don’t have facebook, then enter a bid on here or through my twitter profile and I will put your bid onto the facebook auction listing.

Highest bid wins. Highest bid payment to be made to Amanda, the sec at AFB as soon as reasonably practicable. The second highest bidder will need to contact me for email details of SB4OH. Only once payment is received will the item be sent to you. Remember to add £10 to your bid to cover the courier and packaging. This is the charity, after all.

NB; now that bids are over £200, I will pay the p+p myself. Well done and thanks for your generosity.

Any questions, or hints on where to mention this auction, please let me know.

 

 

This scam of a charity needs to be exposed and stopped.