Policeman’s not able to hold back short engineer (9)
I believe the answer is:
construct
'engineer' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'policeman's not able to hold back short' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'not' could be 'con' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'con' is located in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for construct that I've seen before include "Build; theory" , "Build or put parts together" , "Build, fabricate" , "Build, make" , "Put together out of components or parts" .)