Wednesday, March 12, 2008

I phoned the law

Last night I was driving us all into town, I came to a crossroads at the same time as another car. He was going the way I had come and so there was that moment where we both paused to see what each of us was intending to do.

He and the woman inside were struggling, and as I looked, he whacked her across the chest and sped forwards, tyres squealing. I looked in my side mirror and saw her door fly open then be pulled back abruptly as their car vroomed on.

Quite shook me: whacking doesn't really cover the force I saw.

I drove on a little on automatic pilot and then we turned round and went to follow them: I hadn't seen the number plate and M hadn't noticed what was going on, but knowing that the road didn't go to very much and there was only one way in or out of that one-horse town, we thought it was a fair bet we could find them again. We got to the car-park and there was the car, empty. There were a lot of people about, so that eased my mind a bit, but I still insisted on checking the public loos!

We hemmed and hawed about whether to phone the cops, having a possibly inaccurately cynical view of their attitude to potential domestics and of police numbers in the area. Still, we did phone the local ones and gave the registration number, and they took it seriously.

Later we got a call back to say they'd found the couple. Apparently she was sozzled and during an argument had been trying to leap out of the car and he had been trying to restrain her. I suppose it fits, but what I saw looked really vicious on his part. How much force is required to restrain a drunken woman? I suppose it's difficult to tell from a snap-shot moment looking into someone else's car what was actually going on and it may have looked worse than it was.

If there's more to it (and there may not be), he may have been pulled up short by having a copper pop round and at least she knows that they will respond to reports of violence and had an opportunity to make a complaint.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's nice the way the cops tell you how they got on these days, it's nice to get a sense of closure about these things. Well done for phoning, I don't think I would have.