My writing
The truth behind the uniform.
For years I wore a uniform. I stood in the aftermath of violence, death and trauma. I held the lives of others in my hands while my own was quietly falling apart. Blue Lights, Dark Mind is not a book about policing—it’s a book about being human when the world expects you to be unbreakable.
I wrote this book to tell the truth behind the uniform—the part no one talks about. This extract is from the beginning of my journey, when I still believed I was unbreakable.
The first thing that hits you isn’t the blood or the violence — it’s the silence. The silence of the reality that you are standing in a crime scene, a place where only a few hours before, a violent attack had left a victim dead, and now, crime scene investigators, donned in white suits and masks, stand trying to figure out what had happened.
The television was still playing in the background, the plate of half-eaten food on the table, the pots in the sink waiting to be washed, a life that not so long ago was normal, but had been interrupted and changed in a few moments, bringing to an end that normality and starting a chain of events that would change so many lives —including my own.
As I stood there, taking in what was around me, looking for evidence, clues, and signs, I felt the weight of the responsibility on my shoulders. I was the Crime Scene Manager—I was coordinating this crime scene and the scene of crimes officers in it; I was liaising with the Senior Investigating Officer and had the media outside watching me.
