There Are People Who Can

I Think That Brighton, For A Crime Writer, Is Almost Like A Character.

Stalin Was Experimenting With Telepathy In The 1930's. Winston Churchill Had A Paranormal Office, Trying To Get People To Travel Out Of Their Bodies And See Behind Enemy Lines In The Second World War. And The Pentagon... The X-files Is Based On A Real Department In The Pentagon, That's Still There Now. Pretty Much Every Government, Probably As Far Back In Time As We Can Go, Has One. And The Police Will Quite Often - And When I Say Often, I Mean Often - They Will Go To Mediums If All Else Fails In The Enquiry.

If You Go Into A Bar Or Restaurant With A Cop, The First Thing He Does Is He'll Stand In The Entrance, And He'll Look At Every Single Face In That Room Because He Doesn't Want To Spend An Hour Having A Drink Or Lunch And Didn't Spot Some Villain They've Been Looking For, For Two Years.

There's A Really Classic Cliche Every Time You Switch The Tv On - You See Cops Arguing. I Have Spent A Day A Week For Many Years In The Presence Of Police And I Have Never Seen Them Argue. It's A Military Hierarchy. They Do What They're Told. There's No Bickering.

Police Do Get Obsessed With Solving Crimes. You Know, Particularly If There's Been A Murder, It Becomes Personal For The Police Officer Very Quickly, And It Gets To The Family. Even After They've Retired, They Carry On, Not Letting Go.