Goodbye to Beloved Top Brass
On Tuesday the Thames Valley Police said goodbye to its longest-serving DCI. Detective Chief Inspector Philip Sweetman worked within the Thames Valley for his whole career. He’d been battling health issues for some time and has now decided to take his retirement and some much-deserved relaxation.
A well-known figure in our community, amongst his many achievements DCI Sweetman led the team that uncovered the identity of the Hillside Strangler, and played a leading role in breaking the ‘Harvester’ people and drugs-trafficking ring that was operating out of a number of farms within our Buckinghamshire countryside, which resulted in 38 convictions.
In more recent years he’s focused on mentoring his team – earning him the coveted local ‘top boss’ award three years in a row – and on increasing police outreach and community involvement. And his efforts have paid dividends – bringing about significant drops in the violent crime statistics for the Thames Valley that have been sustained, year on year, for the past eight.
So as DCI Philip Sweetman eases into retirement, his successor, DCI Robert Keene, will be taking his place, and he has some big shoes to fill. We’ll be keeping an eye on the crime stats with interest!
Lizzie shakes her head. Their local paper wasn’t known for much more than local puff pieces anyway, but the article is light even by its own standards. And fabricated of course. Not Philip’s service record, that’s accurate enough, and it is true that his team had a lot of respect for him. Had – that’s the key word. But the reason given in the article for his retirement is at best a partial truth.
The real story is very different. The media never got wind of it, but that first year during the aftermath, through to his leaving celebrations and then the beginning of retirement, she lived in fear that they would. But police protect their own, even if they’ve as good as fired them for something hideous. It stopped the media hounding them and their dirty laundry getting aired in public. She supposes for that she should be thankful, but in a way she isn’t. Because the truth was hidden, it let Philip live the lie – the retired hero – when, really, he was anything but.
He was the villain.
She’d asked him for the details at the time. She’d wanted to know just how much of a villain he’d been. What he’d done, and why that meant he’d been forced into retirement – not trusted any longer to lead cases. Now, because of this murder that he’s intent on investigating, she has to assess just how badly wrong things could go.
He hadn’t wanted her to know the details at the time. At first he’d fobbed her off with the same line that had been told to the staff and the press, but she knew him well enough to know he was hiding something. And, anyway, plenty of police go back to work after recovering from a heart attack – why had he been treated differently?
So she’d kept on asking. When he’d eventually told her, a brief outline of the critical incidents – the cause and effect – had been enough for her to stomach. She’d wanted to forgive and forget. Told herself that he’d been under a lot of pressure at the time, what with it being such a high-profile case, and anyone can have an error of judgement. He’d been her teenage sweetheart. She couldn’t imagine a life without him. Still can’t, if she’s honest. She’d thought forgiving and forgetting was the only way.
Shaking her head, Lizzie thinks back to those months immediately before and just after Philip’s retirement. He’d been below par, of course, still recovering from the massive heart attack and emergency heart surgery that had saved his life, but it wasn’t just that. He’d been weak and tired, but also withdrawn. And as his health improved, the dejected demeanour didn’t. She’d tried to talk with him about what had happened, but he’d been in obvious discomfort each time she raised the subject, and on the odd occasion he’d let her ask a question he usually said he couldn’t remember and that the things that happened around that time were all a vague blur. ‘I can’t remember,’ thinks Lizzie, shaking her head. Him saying that was like an American mobster taking the fifth. That’s why she’d kept on pushing.