On a dark and stormy night in the Essex coastal town of Frinton-on-Sea, someone, or something, is stirring in a beach hut. At least, that’s what Stephen Beardsley thinks, and, as the man who has been charged by hundreds of Frintonians to keep them safe in the absence of a permanent local police presence, he is duty-bound to investigate.
“Definitely a sound,” he says, gingerly climbing the steps and giving the door a speculative push, his hi-vis glittering in the moonlight. “Homeless people sometimes break in and sleep in them.” His colleague Martin and I exchange glances. Martin – not his real name – had just shut the car door, and it has crossed both of our minds that this may be the sound in question. But Steve looks sufficiently enthused by the hunt that I haven’t quite the heart to say anything. “Nothing now,” Steve says, his posture demanding our absolute silence. He tries the hut door again, but it won’t open. Not a sound. He knocks on various panels, perhaps wondering if one of them will prove to be a Bond-style secret entrance. Then he frowns judiciously and puts his hands on his hips. “Probably a fox or something,” he says.
It’s shortly after 10PM on Wednesday, and evening patrol for Steve and Martin has got off to a gentle start. But they are fulfilling what they feel to be an essential purpose. When Frintonians learned recently that the closure of their nearest police station, in Walton-on-the-Naze, would mean a considerable reduction in local patrols – this some 20 years after the town’s own station closed due to lack of interest – one man emerged from the void, ready to lead: Stephen Beardsley, veteran of the first Gulf war, anti-piracy security work on tankers traversing the gulf of Aden, and six years as a close-protection officer for Sophie Anderton – all jobs that might have broken lesser men.
(…) Read the full article at The Guardian.
Back in Frinton, as Beardsley drops me off at my hotel, it’s true that we have kicked little ass, and taken few names. And yet it’s easy to see why people appreciate it. As he’s cruised around the neighbourhood – even late at night, with fewer and fewer pedestrians on show, he’s waved at everyone he’s seen; they’ve waved back. I find myself thinking less of Dixon of Dock Green and more of Postman Pat; someone whose very presence knits the place together. And in Frinton, a town so determinedly attached to its past that it keeps the rest of the world out with a set of gates, you can see where Steve might fit in. Whether he’ll ever crack the mystery of the haunted beach hut is an open question. But maybe, for the people inside the gates, it’s not the most important one.
Read the full article at The Guardian.