As one of the graduate entrants to the job, PC Gary McCann was what Brownlow, his boss, described as ‘highly promising’. Thirty-year-old McCann had gained a degree in Politics and History at the University of East Anglia before his arrival at the nick. Certainly the young Londoner, whose parents came to English from the West Indies back in the 1960s, had read all the books and thought he had policing sussed. His attitudes were right for the times. But, conscientious though he was, he quickly found that you couldn't always work by the book. One those occasions the confident style masked knots of worry. However, he soon rejected academia in favour of a police career, keen to see action rather than indulge in theory.