Christmas Eve – Thursday, 24th December, 1987. My wife and I had separated a few months earlier. We had sold the house and with her share she bought a houseboat in Kent where she lived with our two young daughters. I was due to drive down there early Christmas morning to take presents to the girls and stay for Christmas dinner.

It was a cold rainy evening as I drove to my in-laws house to pick up any presents they wanted me to take to Kent the next morning. My wife had called her father and explained that, after the move to Kent, she couldn’t find any large, sharp knife to carve the turkey with the next day. He gave me a knife to take there and as I put the presents into the car, I dropped the knife into the compartment on the driver’s door and thought nothing more of it. I then drove to my father’s house on the same present gathering run.

While driving back from my father’s house to head for home, I drove along a small stretch of dual-carriageway. I was going to turn right at the next roundabout, a couple of hundred yards ahead, so moved into the outside lane. At this point another car came alongside and was trying to overtake on the inside lane. Not wanting to give him the satisfaction of completing his illegal manoeuvre, I put my foot down and kept ahead of him.

Due to the rainy weather and slightly misted windows, I couldn’t see the vehicle too clearly and didn’t realise it was a police car until it was behind me on the roundabout.
I swore under my breath and continued on, driving at just below thirty mph and making all the correct moves and indications. The police stayed behind and let me continue for half a mile until we reached another small stretch of dual-carriageway outside the Kodak factory.

The blue lights flashed and I duly pulled over, cursing more fervently, but resigned now to the fact that I would have to waste time at the side of the road and likely have to make a trip over the Christmas period to produce my documents at a local police station.

I smiled and wound down the window as the police officer approached. He suggested that the reason I had been stopped was because one tail-light on the car was dimmer than the other. I knew it was because I didn’t let him overtake on the inside, but I wasn’t going to argue about it – just remain pleasant, accept the ‘producer’ and be on my merry way.

“Switch off the engine and get out of the car please sir!” It was obvious he spoke the same words several times each day. I obliged, leaving the keys in the ignition as I opened the door and stepped out. As I did so, a flash of steel caught the officer’s eye and he immediately stepped back and asked me to step away from the vehicle. The second officer had now got out of the car to join the first as he questioned me about the knife.

I told the truth, but it sounded lame even to my ears. While one officer searched me as I stood splayed against the factory wall, the other asked if he could take a look in the boot. I of course said he could, having nothing to hide. Having looked in the boot, he immediately spoke to his partner who commenced to slap the cuffs on me. I could hear several clicks and hisses as the first officer radioed frantically to his switchboard.

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On the 19th August, 1987, some four months earlier, 27-year-old Michael Ryan shot dead 16 people and wounded 14 others in the small farming community of Hungerford. Armed with two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, Ryan went on a “Rambo style” attack through the streets of Hungerford, he barricaded himself in a school building where he killed himself with a single gunshot to his head. Ryan, loved guns and television violence.

His killing spree had started in a forest just outside of Hungerford; wearing combat fatigues, Ryan moved through the town, randomly killing or wounding anyone he met.

Ryan’s mad rampage ended at the Local High School. Despondent over having killed his mum and dog, Ryan commented “I wish I had stayed in bed”. After 4 hours and several talks with the police, he ended his life with the last round in his 9-mm. pistol. After his deadly rampage the British government took steps to end the right to have firearms, and to curtail television violence.

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In the boot of my car sat the combat fatigues I had worn the previous weekend on a day out in some woods in Hertfordshire, paintballing with friends. It wasn’t something I did regularly, just a one-off that someone in the pub had arranged. My newly acquired single status had put sorting and washing clothes way to the back of my priority list. The combat trousers and jacket in the boot were covered in red paint splashes (ok, so I wasn’t much good at paintballing). The police, of course, saw the red stains as having a far more sinister origin.

More and more police arrived in cars, vans and motorbikes. Even dog-handlers arrived and let the dogs sniff all over the car. I gave them the paintball alibi, but was useless at answering any questions they threw at me about it as it was the one and only time I had done it. They asked me about the types of gun used, the barrel sizes, the chamber capacity, the velocity of the rounds, the time needed to reload, the type of gas used …. What did I know?

The area was now lit up like a blue flashing Christmas tree. The traffic was building up as people slowed down to gawp. The police numbers meant there were plenty around to move the traffic on, but the officers kept glancing in my direction, themselves having a gawp at what they were sure was another mass murderer caught red-handed.

I had no ID on me. It was Christmas Eve and most people were out at friends’ houses or in a pub somewhere partying it up big style. The first mobile phone for use by the general public was produced in 1985 by Motorola. By 1987, they were still rare in the UK. The handset was the size of a brick and the batteries were separate and the size of a briefcase. No one I knew owned one. This meant supplying the police with phone numbers to try to contact someone to prove my identity. Eventually, my mother was contacted at her friend’s house and confirmed who I was. My father-in-law was tracked to a local pub and corroborated the knife story. The dogs failed to find anything suspicious and ignored the paint stains completely. The rain had caused the paint to get wet again and it had stained the fingers of one of the policemen.

After almost an hour, the police realised the truth of the matter and began to drive away with a look of disappointment on their faces. The original officers apologised for the delay, but explained the necessity to make such checks. They advised me to keep the knife wrapped securely in the boot of the car and to get my deficient tail-light seen to.

I drove home with a tale to tell, happy that I had not received a ‘producer’ and would not have the bother of taking my documents to a police station over the Christmas period.