RAY Mallon wishes he was a criminal. The policeman, who is known as "Robocop" because of his strict adherence to the law, wishes he had done something wrong.

"I have now been suspended for four years and I was cleared of perverting the course of justice 18 months ago," he says in an interview to mark his anniversary - an anniversary which is now an established date in the North-East calendar.

"If I had been charged with a criminal offence within the first year, I would have done my prison sentence and would be out by now. Even horrific criminals like Harold Shipman have been dealt with more quickly.

"I would just like to be treated like a criminal - it would be better, it would be quicker. I want the rights of a criminal - my own rights have been abused."

It's strange to hear the pioneer of Zero Tolerance policing talking about rights when, as a police officer, he enforced people's responsibilities. Is this the human side of the robotic cop?

He says: "When I was a young police officer, all I cared about was protecting the public and putting criminals in jail. I wasn't particularly interested in a criminal's rights, and I didn't have a lot of compassion either.

"As you grow older and wiser, you realise that a person's rights have to be upheld. As a detective inspector, I was involved in some horrific murder investigations. Young detectives would just be interested in getting the evidence, but I was more circumspect.

"Take Shaun Armstrong. There was a great sense of feeling in Hartlepool when we arrested him, and I instructed the officers who were about to interview him that, even though Rosie (Palmer, the three-year-old girl Armstrong was convicted of killing in 1995) was found in his house, he had not been found guilty yet and so we had to deal with him absolutely as per the law.

"It is a myth that I am a hardliner. I wasn't a tough cop, I wasn't Robocop. I was more of a moderate than a lot of people think."

In the fog of war, it has been forgotten what the two sides of Lancet are fighting for.

Four years of the most exhaustive, extensive and expensive of police investigations have cleared Mr Mallon of criminal wrong-doing. Now the abuse of process hearing, a prelude to the internal disciplinary proceedings, has ground to a halt, due to restart some time in the New Year.

Six other officers remain suspended by Lancet, their names as forgotten as the casus belli.

Operation Lancet is beginning to look like the Battle of the Somme: both sides are dug in deep in their entrenched positions, bitterly slugging it out over the same ground again and again, regardless of the human - and taxpayers' - cost, and with no prospect of anyone emerging victorious.

Even Mr Mallon looks a little shell-shocked.

"There is an element of frustration," he concedes, calmly, "but when you have the kind of mind I have, you accept that this is a long battle. You can't expect quick results. The one thing I've learnt, although I had an idea about it before, is that patience is a virtue, so I just sit and wait.

"I've drawn inspiration from battles in the past - sometimes it isn't the big army which wins; sometimes the small, well-equipped, well-motivated army wins. And I have a small, well-motivated army of people with me.

"You either fight or flee. From day one, I decided I was not going to lay down and die. I immediately started building my own case and I became totally focused on the war.

"This is a war and the enemy gets up to all sorts of things. You have to expect to take hits and some of them are not fair - but that's life.

"But I refuse to become bitter and twisted, or aggressive, because if you do, you lose your focus. You have to control your feelings. It is total discipline."

It is a discipline Mr Mallon says he learned as a child.

"I was a competitive swimmer from the age of ten to 23, and when you are swimming up and down, four hours a day five days a week, you learn about being focused," he says.

But in his heart of hearts, Mr Mallon also knows he cannot win.

The battle has so far cost his insurance company, the Police Superintendents' Association and his family £180,000. He has eight days of legal fees left.

"I am an outcast now," he says. "They have millions and millions of pounds. They are the establishment."

In fact, he is resigned to defeat. In August he handed in his notice, determined to take up a new battle to become Middlesbrough's first elected mayor.

Cleveland Police refused to accept the resignation, and so the battle of Lancet lumbers on, fighting over the same ground with the same witnesses recalled to give the same evidence to the internal hearings.

"It isn't a pleasant situation and I'm very much looking forward to having a normal life," he says. "This life is very much abnormal, especially for the people around me. On a daily basis I have been able to do productive things in regard to my case, but my family can do very little."

He shifts a little in his chair to reveal cufflinks given to him by one of his daughters. The left wrist says "chill", the right "out".

"What's given me inspiration to take on the fight is the massive support from the public and my colleagues. If the public, or my colleagues, had turned against me, this would have been even more horrific."

The interview, the fourth of its kind, draws to its close with the time-honoured question: Will you still be suspended in a year's time?

Mallon replies that he is focused on moving on. Somehow, he says, he will extricate himself from Lancet, even if it means leaving an empty chair at his disciplinary hearing while he concentrates on May 2's mayoral elections.

"In August I said I would stand, and I will stand," he says. "The public will decide my destiny. They will decide what kind of person I am."