Welcome to the Heady Heights

By David F Ross

Welcome to our regular feature showcasing the talents of the nation’s best writers.

April 1976.

It had been four months since that New Year’s Day shift. Barbara Sherman’s police colleagues had held her down, lifted her skirt, pulled down her tights and knickers, and branded her backside with E-299; her collar number stamp. “Just a daft wee Ne’erday prank,” in the words of her commanding officer. “Let it go, f*** sakes. High spirits,” he had continued. “The men needin’ tae let off some steam after the pressure ae a tough Hogmanay shift.” Platitudes and worn clichés from a sergeant who seemed to base his policing on the new TV series

The Sweeney.

WPC Barbara Sherman had filed a complaint, against her commanding officer’s advice. “Dinnae go makin’ a target ae yerself, hen,” he’d cautioned, his complicity only making her situation worse. In the weeks that followed, none of the men she’d cited would speak to her. Her daily beat was still limited to the streets around the station HQ. She was paired with the same “buddy”, Don Braithwaite.

Don cared less that she was a woman than he did about her being yet another of the “Heilan Mafia” – the influx of new cops from the Highlands and Islands. In his view, if she’d been born in a tightly packed Tollcross tenement, like him, she’d know the rules of the game here. But she hadn’t been, and she didn’t. If Barbara Sherman had grown up in Barra, then the vast open spaces of the Western Isles are where she should have been sent, not straight into the scalding sectarian heat of the former second city of the empire. In some respects, though, he could understand Sherman’s desire to escape the quiet of her home. The tedium alone must’ve been like a five-stretch in the Bar-l, but with fresher, colder air. He just didn’t see why it should be his responsibility to show her the local ropes.