Review of Ugly Bus by Mike Thomas, pub. Heinemann

The Boxing Day match. Football hooligans. Neo-fascists. Casual criminals. And then there's the bunch you really don't want to meet... the ones in uniform.
Mike Thomas is the author and serving policeman from South Wales who in 2011 published a debut novel, Pocket Notebook, about a sardonic police officer called Jake who goes to pieces over the course of the novel and takes to chronicling his own disintegration in his police notebook. One of the characters from Pocket Notebook reappears here in a main role, but I won't deprive you of the pleasure of recognising him.

The "ugly bus" is a TSG van, and this novel features its crew of five officers working a shift in Cardiff on Boxing Day. So it's an ensemble cast, and the story is much concerned with group dynamics, with one person's effect on another and how the mere fact of being in a group can make people act differently. Martin, the sergeant, is educated, idealistic and modern in his outlook. But he is also young and relatively inexperienced in his role, so his authority over the older and more case-hardened four PCs is more nominal than real. And all five officers, being human, have their own problems at home to think about, as well as the drunks, football fans and determined troublemakers who contribute to the day's festive atmosphere. Meanwhile in another part of the urban forest, chance and an excess of drink are propelling another person on to a collision course with them…

Like Pocket Notebook, Ugly Bus is a blend of darkness and humour. There's a priceless moment, early on, when the crew, attending a briefing meeting, are relieving the boredom by playing Bullshit Bingo, in which the first to fill his card with management-speak clichés uttered by the boss is the winner:

‘. . . absolutely crucial,’ Da Silva was saying. ‘But let us not forget that today is for both sets of fans to enjoy themselves and the surroundings our fair city has to offer. We have the resilience and capacity to—’
‘House!’
Vincent turned when he heard the strangled shout.
It was David. Half standing, notebook in his hand. A look of pain slowly emerging on his face as he realised what he’d done, and where he’d done it.

David, a family man with rather too many ex-families and his mind never far from food, is one of the more likeable officers on the bus – certainly more so than Vince and Andrew – but if one thing becomes clear from this novel it is that nothing is black and white. Reader sympathy swings alarmingly as we see both the failings of the five and what they have to put up with, especially during the gripping scene where they are policing the Boxing Day football match and having to keep apart not only two sets of fans but two sets of political activists:

‘You fascist fucking pig!’ the woman screamed at him, the abuse made all the more absurd and troubling by her clipped and refined accent, because if somebody as well heeled as this had turned on them with such venom just for keeping people separated, then he dreaded anybody a little more hardcore showing up. Martin looked her up and down through smeared plastic: forties, neatly dressed in quilted jacket, herringbone trousers, cashmere scarf and light brown bobble hat, a delicate touch of make-up. She reminded him of his old deputy head teacher, except his old dep head never once spat in his face for wearing a uniform.

This is one of the moments where Martin's control of the situation is tested; there will be more, some of which he handles better than others. In the end, his problem is controlling not just four men but the van on which they all work, which changes their behaviour and is in many ways a character in its own right. The repeated mantra "what happens on the van stays on the van" is a crucial indication of what a sealed, hermetic, dangerous world it creates.

Just when you think it has no more twists and turns to offer, the novel's final scene is startlingly revelatory about who and what a particular person is. In a way, this shouldn't matter; in itself it alters nothing of what has happened, but in an odd way it does matter, partly because it gives a glimpse into the future; we can guess what will and will not happen next and we can also see that people who might wish never to have anything to do with each other again will have no choice about it. It also opens up a tantalising possibility; there are characters here whose story could well be continued in a third novel… Bring it on, I say, provided it has the tension, momentum, observational keenness and dry wit of this one.