Ben Aaronovitch

Not everything that’s unexplained is caused by magic.

“These people are not to be trusted,” I said.

“These people?”

“People with…” I looked over at the poshest person I’ve ever met and tried to think of the right word. “Entitlement,” I said. “They’re not good at keeping promises.

It’s one of those weird truths you learn early on as police that quite a high percentage of the public have all the survival instinct of a moth in a candle factory. They run the wrong way, they refuse to move, some will run toward the danger, and others will instantly whip out their phones and take footage.

It’s like with germ warfare. They weaponise germs for aggression and we say we study weaponised germs purely for defensive purposes. Nobody likes to admit they’re doing it but everybody knows everybody else is doing it.

“Police work,” said Stefan, “is ninety per cent paperwork, nine per cent bullshit and one per cent horror.”

For police officers, “close relative” frequently rhymes with “prime suspect.”

The media always calls this sort of thing senseless, but the motive made sense—it was just stupid, is what it was.

This sort of thing is pretty common—people often draw more attention to themselves trying to hide their activities than whatever it was they were up to would. Plus sometimes the cover-up is more illegal than the thing they were covering up. Still, if people were brighter routine police work would be much harder.

Or my gut was wrong.

Confirmation bias has put more innocent people in prison than malice.

The main purpose of an administrative meeting is to establish collective guilt for whatever fuck-up arises out of its decisions.

The ABC of policing literally goes: Assume nothing, Believe no-one, Check everything.

“Flexible,” I said. “Meaning we’re making it up as we go along.”