Neil Grimstone, crook-taker

Detective Senior Sergeant Neil Grimstone is a firm believer in gut instinct - something he says cannot be taught in police college. He has never had an unsolved case. Picture / Brett Phibbs

For a bloke who's been up all night, Detective Senior Sergeant Neil Grimstone doesn't look too rough. He's put on his nice pinstripe suit and knotted his tie properly for the press conference. His shoes are shiny. These aspects of his public profile are on display.

Later, in his office, when he reaches for the phone, the sleeves of his jacket ride up to reveal his cufflinks. "That's the Scales of Justice. There you go. I put them on today because there was going to be a bit of justice, perhaps. They're special occasion cufflinks." Then he laughs, his standard short, sharp "Ha," because he would really prefer not to be seen taking himself too seriously. Which is hard in a serious job, and when your nickname is, inevitably, Grim.

Everyone, except his mum but including his wife, calls him Grim. Usually when we see him he's putting on his public face, fronting serious, horrible crime investigations. In every picture of him in an extensive archive he looks like his name. Once he's back in his office, away from the tangle of microphones and tape recorders and the cameras, he tugs at the knot of his tie and says, "Well, do you think I'm grim?" I think that if we'd been to see him the day before he might well have been. But now he - or rather, his team, he says again and again to make sure I've got it - have made the arrest in the case of the Pukekohe rapist.

Today he should be allowed to be a bit cock-a-hoop - but that wouldn't be a good look either. So, he's happy, but restrained with it. He (with the team - Got that, Grim) has just done his job after all. Before meeting, we spoke on the phone, and he said: "I catch crooks." I loved this so much - it's just what you'd hope an old-style copper might say - that I ask him to say it again into the tape. He does his seal bark laugh again, and obliges. He can be an obliging chap. He's good with the media and says he tries not to piss us off - as long as we don't piss him off.

I thought about sucking up by taking him bad coffee and doughnuts - except this would have been too much of a cliche. "Oh, no, you're probably not too far off the mark there." He has a bottle of Coruba rum in his office which, I say, should be Scotch. The bottle is three-quarters empty. He hasn't, until this moment, noticed. He'll have to do some detecting. "I might just have to. I must send it to the lab." This is not a good look: Top cop has rum stolen from own office. "I think it may have been borrowed." He's a diplomatic man. "Can be. Can be. A lot would say not."

I'm sure he has a hunch about the perpetrators. He believes in hunches. "Gut instinct is exactly what it is and I don't know how you describe it but all good investigators have it. I don't think you can train it."

Some things you can't train out. He was a Catholic boy - the only one in his Sacred Heart College seventh-form year not to go to university. He opted for police college because, he says with typical understatement, "I'd had a gutsful of studying and I thought, 'Well, I could do worse than be a police officer'." He may no longer go to church but "I still regard myself as Catholic".

So he knows what I'm getting at when I ask him about that old-fashioned concept of good and evil. "You might equate bad to evil, depending how you look at it, yeah. I'd probably go more with mad or bad. Some crooks are mad - that's the psychological side of things - and some crooks are straight out bad." He's met many crooks "that are actually quite likeable rogues and I've often had a good yarn with them at close of play. The gloves are off, nothing's being recorded and it's just you and the crook having a good yarn."

I worried a bit, in advance, about how to ask him whether a good cop has to have a criminal mind. Part of the paradox may be you have to be a compassionate tough guy, as he points out, to be a good detective. Still, compassion is dressed in a thick hide around here. So he just laughs and says, "What do they say? Send a thief to catch a thief. Yeah, definitely in some cases. You've got to think, 'Well, if I was the crook what would I do now'?" Which doesn't mean he lets the bad guys, likeable or not, get inside his head. He hasn't let what he does alter his belief in the good in people. He stays sane by playing sport - cricket and rugby. His rugby team-mates include "a CEO of a major company right through to a crook who's done time for fraud. It's just a great bunch of lads."

His style of policing is "firm but fair".

I'll bet he can be firm all right. He's very nice to me. It's nice of him to do the interview. He must be exhausted. "Yeah, a bit knackered, you know." Having made the arrest he doesn't actually need any help keeping the case alive in the media, which might have been a reason for doing an interview. He thought about calling it off, but he said he'd do it, and so here he is. Also, this is a good moment for the force - "we have our critics like any other outfit" - and while he's not going to crow, "I'm proud of the job we do."

He looks a bit tired around the eyes. But he's holding up pretty well, I think. He has other ideas. He says to the photographer, "Just go easy, mate. Cos I've been up all night. She's a bit shabby, mate." Actually, he looks as well groomed as always and - in contrast to all those other pictures where there appears to be a small black cloud hanging over him - his face is lit up with, well, what? A mix of exhaustion and elation? Is that the right word?

"It's probably more relief. That's the best way of putting it."

That he's so relaxed may also have to do with relief at having the press conference over. "Well, put it this way: I still get nervous. Yeah, no doubt. You want to make sure you don't make a fool of yourself."

He is not much given to making a fool of himself. He does have a reputation for being blunt. He has had his fair share of "umm, how would you put it? My fair share of brushes with the administration. But one of my first senior sergeants said that if you weren't in the shit with the bosses you weren't doing your job properly, and that was how it was back then."

He is on his best behaviour, which is a little disappointing. He is certainly not going to say anything intemperate. There are matters before the courts so we settle on saying that he is pretty plain spoken, and sometimes outspoken. "Yeah, I am. I call it as I see it and ... some people find that quite refreshing and other people don't and I don't make any apologies about that." He doesn't do PC. "Some say I'm a dinosaur." This makes him not the slightest bit unhappy. "I think the results speak for themselves."

This is not boasting. Just the facts. He has never had an unsolved case, although he didn't volunteer this information - I had to ask.

He is capable of being very blunt and partly this is because he's a busy man. But he is, like most very good detectives, I suspect, something of a paradox. I think you must need imagination, and patience. He entertains my crime fiction meanderings without so much as a raised eyebrow. And I'm sure he can do a very intimidating eyebrow indeed.

What he does is catch crooks, and you might have thought that this latest result was just another day, another crim.

But he said at the press conference, and says again now, that breaking the good news to the victim was a highlight of his career. She wept. "Yeah, she just broke down with relief." And Grimstone? "Oh, well. You know, I'm supposed to be the hard man ... But ... it was certainly a good moment."

Would he take it as a compliment if I called him an old-fashioned policeman? This is a rhetorical question.