Misty has a little story about how, in certain occasions, cops will fuck about with the evidence if it suits them. In this specific instance, the local Super had a recently deceased person shifted into the next door force’s area, just so that he could go to a wedding.

Not being in posession of all the relevant facts, I’ll just say this: it sounds believeable to me.

A similiar story was told to me not too long ago, about a body found floating in a river in Norn Iron. This would have been many years ago, before the recent unpleasantness, and police work was much more ham fisted than it is now*. So when the body was found tangled in the bank by a local farmer, he went in search of his friend the constable. Who put down his pint and attended.

As it happens, the constable was rather young and inexperienced, so he asked the local sergeant to attend. And both noticed that the local primary school was but a stones throw away, adn that a body might get in the way of the day’s lessons. So the sergeant spoke up to the constable:

“Here there, young Billy, the weans haven’t seen it yet. How about you climb down there and shift it round the corner so they don’t get wound up about it. We’ll get the doctor to look at it in the next field.”

So young Billy does as he’s told. Except for the slipping bit, that was all his own work. And the falling in, again his own idea. And the moving of body into the current, leaving it to wash up several miles downstream was nothing but a bit of good fortune.

The sergeant, being the brains of the outfit, was behind the plan to not mention it to anyone. And being both the brains and the senior of the two, he gratefully accepted the constable’s generous offer of getting the drinks in while not writing any reports.

Not quite the way it would be done these days, methinks…

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* – And, of course, much less iron fisted than it was when I was a young ‘un.