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.

Severely injured WPC Yvonne Fletcher being helped by colleagues

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.

In writing terms, probably one of the most significant I will ever make.

Those of you who have been following my twitter and facebook pages will be aware that I have been in protracted negotiations with a new London-based publisher. I’m pleased to announce that I have agreed terms with Orenda Books.

And here is the result

The Press announcement from Orenda Books

and… the new cover for Wicked Game

Press Release

9 October 2015

Karen Sullivan is delighted to announce the acquisition of World Rights for debut author, Matt Johnson’s Wicked Game, in a deal negotiated with James Wills of Watson, Little Ltd.

Matt says, ‘When I was introduced to Karen Sullivan from Orenda, I realised that we had found a publisher with the experience, drive and editorial vision to help me develop my embryonic writing career.  Orenda Books is an exciting new publisher. I am immensely fortunate and privileged to be joining them. I look forward to enjoying a long and rewarding future together.’

Wicked Game is the first in the Robert Finlay series, and will be published in ebook on 24 December and print on 15^th March 16. Matt will be appearing at a number of festivals and events in 2016.

And before I go any further, I want to say thanks, a big thanks, to all the people who have read my work and who have been kind enough to review it and to tell me how much you have enjoyed it. And I also want to say a special thanks to Antony Loveless, who on seeing a soldier in Afghanistan reading Wicked Game on his kindle, decided to buy the book and then, when he enjoyed it, was kind enough to introduce me to his agent. It’s that kind of luck and kindness that is the fine line between success and failure.

Australia, Canada, India, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Mexico

There won’t be many people who are unfamiliar with the incredible phenomenon that is the ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ trilogy.

Fifty Shades (E.L.James) is a book that has sold by the million in both e-book and paper versions. E L James has over 818K followers on twitter. Despite the well-publicised criticism that has been levelled at both the content and the author, the books continue to sell well and have proved extremely popular.

So, why do I refer to this as a ‘Grey/Grey’ phenomenon? That is because of the success of a lesser known series of books that follow the adventures of a character called Tom Gray, an ex-soldier who is the central character in a fictional world created by author, Alan McDermott.

The first book penned by McDermott is called Gray Justice. As with Fifty Shades, this book has attracted large numbers of reviews with a very mixed reception from readers, some hating it but many, and the majority, loving it.

Critics of both series of books make similar comments. They do not like the standard of writing, they don’t like the style, they criticise the grammar and the punctuation, even if most enjoy the story.

The potential of McDermott’s writing was recognised by the Amazon publisher, Thomas and Mercer, and since then his books have sold in very large numbers, just as the Fifty Shades books do.

And yet, both series of books come in for the same kind of criticisms. The experienced readers may well ask, how can this happen? How can it be that books that do not mirror the accepted norms of writing are so popular?

I have a theory, not proven, and with little other than anecdotal evidence to support it.

My theory is this. E L James and Alan McDermott have both displayed the kind of original thinking and style that the reading public have been crying out for. In some ways, both writers have shown genius in their skill at creating work that appeals to people looking for books that are exciting, easy to read and give great value. Those readers are not interested in classical works or in writing that appeals to ‘literary experts’ or academics, what they want is entertainment.

Both E L James and Alan McDermott have identified a reader market and written to meet that market and, in many ways, they have done all authors and publishers a huge favour as they have encouraged a lot of people to read books who might otherwise have stuck to other forms of entertainment.

So, when I see a critical review appear for one of these books, I do think to myself that the reviewer is, possibly, not understanding the phenomenon that these works represent.

A new audience and a market trend for other authors to follow suit.

E L James and Alan McDermott, I salute you.

More from ‘Police Commander’ to make us think

Many, many thanks to ‘police commander’ for these short stories. It tells it how it is. I know, I’ve been there.