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JC: It was a promotion is what it was.
FM: Has policing been the right career choice for you do you think?
JC: It’s what I always wanted to do. There was never another way for me. Like I said it’s in the
blood. It has to be in the blood.
FM: Why ‘has to be’?
JC: Because you see it all. You see the dirtiest, blackest side of life. You see what people inflict on
each other, and it can be brutal.
His gaze is steady now, focused entirely on me. I feel that he’s challenging me to contradict what
he’s said, or diminish it. I remember that I’m not the only person in the room trained to read the
behaviour of others. I decide to move on.
FM: Your record states that you took an English degree before joining the force.
JC: It’s expected to join the force with a degree nowadays. Not like it used to be when you went in
straight from school.
FM: Did you enjoy your degree?
JC: I did.
FM: What did you study? Was there anything you especially enjoyed?
JC: Yeats. I enjoyed Yeats.
FM: I know a Yeats poem: ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the
falconer…⁠’ Do you know it? I think it’s by Yeats anyway. I forget the title.
JC can’t help himself, he carries on the poem.
JC: ‘ ⁠… Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…⁠’
FM: ‘ ⁠… The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere…⁠’
JC: ‘ ⁠… The ceremony of innocence is drowned’.
FM: There’s more.
JC: I can’t remember it exactly.
FM: He’s a wonderful poet.
JC: He’s a truthful poet.
FM: Do you still read poetry?
JC: No. I don’t have time for that sort of thing now.
FM: You work long hours?
JC: You have to if you want to get on.
FM: And do you? Want to get on?