Andrew Porter steamed up the passenger window of the police Transit as he looked towards the crowd on the clifftop.
The mood was changing. The atmosphere had a little more crackle than before, the laughs and shouts more raucous.
He wasn’t surprised, it always did around this time, but he’d hoped this year might be different. The country was filled with optimism, or at least that’s how the papers were pitching it. Tony Blair was challenging the Tory old guard to become prime minister, everyone sick of back-to-basics morality spewed out by politicians living immoral lives. Even the royals were looking like their worst days were behind them; the papers once too full of transcripts of private phone calls, Prince Charles wanting to be Camilla’s tampon, their reputations trashed, but now Diana’s divorce was finalised and everyone was hoping that she’d find love again soon.
Yes, the year was a good year, and Porter reckoned the good times would see the crowd behave.
Easter Monday in Brampton was a tradition going back decades, some thought centuries. Fires burned along the clifftops, sparking rumours that it was an old Viking festival, reminiscent of old Nordic burials. Others speculated that it was a hangover from the Armada, when beacons would be lit along the English coastline, providing advance warnings of an attack by sea. Whatever the origins, Porter doubted those theories. Go back two hundred years and Brampton was nothing more than a cluster of cottages around a fishing harbour, and it was only with the advent of Victorian tourism that it had grown into a town big enough to merit an annual festival.
Whatever its origins, it hadn’t taken long for it to turn into a booze-up and a focal point for the drunks and troublemakers. At least it was early this year, the last day of March, so the cool weather kept many people indoors.
The day had started innocently enough, with a skipping race along the seafront, followed by a fairground on the far tip of the headland, by the pristine white lighthouse, where the noises from the generators bounced between the small coves. As dusk settled in, bonfires were lit along the headland, revellers walked along the clifftops and back towards the town, with villagers offering sweets for the children in each small cove and inlet. The lighthouse sent a beam sweeping across the bay. Four sweeps and then a pause, and then another four, and on it went.
The largest bonfire was nearest the town, on a clifftop, along a wide strip of green, the town glinting further along, the reds and blues of arcade lights shining brightly.
During winter, Brampton stood isolated and cold against the brisk North Sea, its harbour jutting out into the sea. Easter was the time when the town came back to life. The sun got brighter, the sea a little bluer, the flat sands more golden. The water in the long sweeping bay, created by the headland to the north, became dotted with windsurfers and dinghies rather than the cruel white tips of waves that crashed against the sea wall in huge thumps. Seagulls clustered around fishing trawlers and the air was filled with the music and screams of the fairground on the seafront.
Easter Monday always kept the police busy though.
The local children loved the early part of the day, as they munched on candyfloss until the sun started to fade.
It was later that the mood always became more dangerous, when the men who’d been propping up the bars in the town centre made their way to the festival.
Sometimes they were just groups of fishermen spoiling for a fight, those small-town rivalries spilling out over cans of beer and the crackle of burning wood. Other times, it was groups of young men who didn’t know how to limit their exuberance. Those police officers who’d been strolling the crowds and posing for pictures with smiling children retreated to vans and waited for a call to action.
That was the thing with Brampton. It thrived on fighting, and even the pubs had a hierarchy.
Those in the town centre, closest to the harbour, were for the young bucks, those who loved to tumble onto the streets with their fists flailing. In winter, they fought out minor spats, and in summer they banded together to brawl with the groups of men who came over from the working men’s clubs of West Yorkshire.
A young constable spoke up. ‘It seems quiet this year, sir. Do you think it’s because Easter is early?’
Porter looked across. It was John Hodgson, all eager eyes and flushed cheeks, too tall to be squashed behind a steering wheel, the sort of person who felt the need to fill a silence. Someone muttered behind him, four constables itching to join whatever fray erupted. Porter knew they still had the van-door rule in Brampton, something unofficial that said that if they had to open the rear doors, they weren’t closing them again until someone was dragged into it for the short ride to the station.
His presence might change that: no one bends the rules in front of a chief inspector. That’s why he was there. Chief inspectors don’t normally sit in the vans, waiting for the fights to start, but he kept the younger hotheads in check.
If he was honest with himself, he was there because he missed the front line. The winter had been a quiet one and he wanted to do more than shuffle paper back at the station. He’d risen through the ranks at the end of the seventies, before they were sold out by PACE and suspects’ rights. For him, the old rules worked best, because everyone understood them. Yes, sure, some people got a bloody nose, and worse, but no one who didn’t deserve it. But the new rules were the ones they had, so he had to keep order.
Porter turned. ‘You sound disappointed.’
‘Just wondering. It would be good if it passed off peacefully for a change.’
Porter paused before he answered, looking out of the van window towards the flames, sparks caught in the fading sunlight, faces lit up, small children twirling sparklers, writing names in mid-air. ‘The cold might keep some of the idiots inside. Why come up here to drink from cans when they could stay in a warm pub? Leave it to the kids.’
He wasn’t convinced though. He’d worked in Brampton for most of his career and had grown up in the town. He knew what made its heart beat.
There was a commotion ahead. People looking round and then moving to one side, the crowd parting.
Porter leaned forward. ‘What’s going on?’
A man ran towards the police van. Ginger-haired, his face flushed, his eyes wild. Someone in the back gripped the door handle, ready to burst out, but Porter held out his hand.
‘No, wait.’
The man thudded against the van door, his hand banging on the window.
Porter wound it down. ‘Can I help you, sir?’
The man fought to speak, but he was breathing too hard.
‘It’s all right, take your time.’
The man took some deep breaths to calm himself. His voice cracked, and Porter’s routine duty changed when the man said, ‘It’s my son. I can’t find him.’