14/5/2008Ex-cop Karen lifts lid on the Red Light district she patrolled
YOU COULD say policing is in Karen Campbell's blood. She's proud of the Victorian police baton once carried by her great-great-grandfather that takes centre stage in her parents' home, both of whom served in the force.
Her husband is a policeman, while Karen herself served for over five years before the demands of bringing up two girls, Eidann, 15, and Ciorstan, 14, took over.
Yet putting Karen's experiences as a police officer in Glasgow into words has shed a different light on her work, as her youngest daughter pores over the more traumatic incidents recorded in the pages of Karen's debut novel.
"There's a lot of talk about what it was like to be in the police, like strip-searching a prostitute, " says Karen, 40.
IT'S not gratuitous, but it's not very pleasant for someone who has only ever seen me as her mum.
"But for her to think that I used to do that makes her stop and look at me differently."
The Twilight Time marks the beginning of a new chapter in Karen's life. Launched on Saturday as part of the Aye Write! book festival, it takes readers on a gritty journey into the city's crime-ridden underbelly of drugs, prostitution, violence and murder.
And part of the storyline has its roots in Karen's high school days on the South Side.
The 1982 case of Carol X, a high profile gang rape case in which an anonymous prostitute succeeded in privately prosecuting her attackers after the Crown refused to back her case, sparked something in Karen.
The facial mutilation Carol X endured shocked her to the core.
"I just thought, how can you be so bestial that you don't see that as a human being?" she says.
"It really shocked me - I don't know why it remained so strong."
After graduating with an English and drama Masters from the University of Glasgow, Karen, then 20, began her police training at Tulliallan college, where she met future husband Dougie who had enrolled on the same day.
SERVING her probation on the streets around Stewart Street police station, life as a beat officer took her around the city centre, Cowcaddens and Garnethill.
She was ticked off while still a fresh-faced new recruit for posing for a photograph with soul divas The Three Degrees outside Goldbergs on Candleriggs, but still has her "fourth degree" photo as an enduring memento.
Nightshifts, meanwhile, could see her drafted into the street offences unit, donning plain clothes to patrol the red light district around the old Anderston Bus Station - the "drag" at the core of her first novel.
"I call it a senseless circle in the book, " says Karen, who nonchalantly states that she was assaulted several times during her year in the police.
"You jail someone, they get fined, then they need to go out and prostitute themselves to pay the fine.
Obviously drugs play a big part in that, too.
"The good thing now is that the law's changed. Back then, the men weren't charged with anything - we'd ask them if they'd like to make a statement about witnessing a crime!"
After progressing onto women's safety issues and Crimestoppers intelligence, Karen left the police in 1992 to concentrate on being a mum, and began writing short stories.
On reading a newspaper article about Anne Donovan, a Glasgow teacher-turned award-winning author, in 2001 Karen joined the two-year creative writing Masters course, then offered jointly between Glasgow and Strathclyde universities. It provided the impetus to flesh out her first novel.
Yet instead of wanting to be a new recruit to Scotland's list of top crime-writers, a crop that includes Ian Rankin, Denise Mina and Val McDermid, Karen is keen that her first book isn't confined to the bloody, brutal, big-selling genre.
"I don't know many cops who read crime fiction. Because you see the results of violence you tend not to find it very entertaining as a pastime, " she says.
"I wanted to show the real people behind the uniform.
There's a character in the book who talks about how he hates hearing about the police and the public as if they are two different groups of folk. He says 'we're the public, too.
WE WANT our houses protected, we want our kids to feel safe at school, we want to be able to drive and walk safely through the town'. We're all part of the same community."
The Twilight Time follows the exploits of two women: Anna is an aspiring police sergeant intent on moving up the ladder and bringing as many bad guys down as possible, while Cath, now a stay-athome mum, is frustrated and isolated at life away from the force.
There are aspects of Karen's own life and personality in both characters: the doting mum and the career-driven, tough-talker.
"Anna is maybe the cop I might have been had I stayed in, " says Karen, "although I think she is a bit of a besom sometimes.
"She is more ballsy. Sometimes when you're in a situation and think I wish I had said that, well I make Anna do that.
"I would never do it in real life, but it's quite cathartic."
Karen has already finished the second instalment of her two-book publishing deal, using the same characters from The Twilight Time.
Having also worked in Glasgow City Council's media office, Karen also does corporate journalism as well as writing fiction.
Gone are the nightshifts and 60plus-hour working weeks, as she's happily settled in her role as a "taxi driver, laundry maid and cook".
"There's a sense of being part of a family in the police, " says Karen, whose father served for over 20 years and whose mother had to resign when she married.
"You've got to know your partner is going to watch your back because you've got rely on them in a dangerous situation.
"There is that bond that you don't get outside."
And having traded the beat of the patrol for the beat of her rhythmical, colourful sentences, are there any lasting police disciplines in her character?
"I'm quite organised about work, " admits Karen. "I'm quite bossy still.
I'm very bossy, actually. Just ask my children. But I don't have the uniform anymore to make people do what I want!"
The Twilight Time is published April 3 by Hodder & Stoughton, priced GBP12.99.
March 12. 2008