by Mike Pannett
Rich dropped the pheasants, propped the gun against the mantelpiece and fell to his knees, comforting her. Then he turned to me, his eyes narrowed.
‘C’mon, Mike. What they done?’
‘You need to ask Jayne here. I’ve only got the barest details. I got a call off duty and came straight over.’
He stood up, and turned to Jayne. ‘Well, what’s happened?’
‘Briefly,’ she said, ‘it seems that three armed robbers entered the shop and threatened the staff including your wife. Then they—’
‘Armed? Why, the . . . bastards.’
Penny cut in, her eyes full of tears, her lips trembling. ‘They just came bursting in. They had masks on. Sort of bags over their heads. I thought they had a gun at first but it was a meat cleaver. Then they rammed this rock through the glass. It all happened so quick. They made us lie down, then they tied us up.’ She paused and rubbed her wrists. ‘They – they gagged us. I could hardly get my breath. I thought they meant to kill us.’ She winced as she spoke and put her hand to her side.
‘What is it, love?’ Rich’s face was creased with worry.
‘I don’t know. My side really hurts where he held me down. Hurts every time I breathe.’
Rich turned to Jayne. ‘You hear that? We need to go and find these bastards, before they kill someone. Where are they? And why aren’t we out there chasing after ’em?’
‘Rich,’ I said, ‘just hang on a minute. Penny, have you been checked over? Shall we get an ambulance?’
‘No, no Mike. Like I said to Jayne, I don’t want any fuss.’
‘Well, I think it’s best if you get checked over just in case. Now listen, Rich, every man and his dog are on the case. There’s plenty of officers out there and it’s been circulated across borders.’
Rich turned to me. ‘What about you and me, Mike? We know our way around. We could join in the search.’
‘Rich, I think we should leave it to the officers searching.’
‘I’ve gone after poachers before now and I don’t see why I shouldn’t get after this bloody lot. I’m not afraid, cleaver or no bloody cleaver.’ He grabbed the gun and went through into the hallway. I followed him. He pulled a key from his trouser pocket and opened the cabinet, grabbing a box of cartridges.
‘No.’ I looked him right in the eye as I reached forward, grabbed the ammunition with one hand, and closed the door with the other. ‘No, Rich. I know exactly how you feel, but this isn’t the way. I want to catch ’em just as much as you do, trust me. But you’re going to stay here and sort that lass of yours out. She needs to get to hospital and she needs you with her. You can see how badly shaken she is. Seeing you like this – it’ll only make her worse.’
For a moment I thought he was going to carry on arguing. It’s not something you relish, having to restrain a friend. We both had our hands on the door, me pushing, him pulling. Then he sighed and let go.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘But I’m telling you, if those buggers show their faces round here again . . .’
‘Rich, I know how you feel.’
‘No you don’t, Mike. They’ve just threatened my missus with a bloody cleaver and probably busted her rib. You telling me you know what that feels like?’
‘OK, Rich. But just be thankful Penny hasn’t been badly hurt, OK? Just try to stay calm. None of the cops round here will like this. Trust me, they’ll be doing their damnedest to catch whoever’s responsible.’
He was still reluctant. ‘All right then, but I’m telling you, the minute they set foot round ’ere again I’ll give ’em both bloody barrels.’
‘Yeah, and go to prison for the rest of your life! Come on.’ I lowered my voice. I didn’t want Jayne hearing any of this. ‘Listen, there’s no reason why they’d come anywhere near you, or your home. So let’s not have any of that talk, OK?’
‘Oh hell, Mike.’ I could see the tears welling up in his eyes. ‘I just feel so bloody useless. When she needed me – I mean, where the hell was I?’
‘Look, this isn’t the sort of thing that happens round here, is it? Eh? How were you to know? We need to concentrate on getting your Penny to hospital. Get her ribs checked.’
‘Right, well, I’ve got all I need for now.’ Jayne had come through into the hallway. ‘I’ve got the best descriptions I can. CID said they’ll be round to take her statement later. If we can just get Penny checked over then I think I’ll be more use out there with the others.’
‘Aye, go on, me and Rich’ll sort her out. If she won’t have an ambulance, one of us’ll run her to Malton hospital,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you out. Back in a minute, Rich.’ I followed Jayne outside and down the front path.
She paused at the gate and glanced back at the house. ‘He won’t do anything stupid, will he?’ she said.
‘Don’t worry. He’ll calm down. But listen, keep us posted, OK? You’ve got my mobile number, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘See you later, Jayne.’
Back inside Rich was looking a little bit calmer, but he still had his coat on. He was standing there, itching to get out and do something. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I tell you what, I’ll tek Pen to hospital, you can tek me Landy and have a scout around the estate – they could just be lying low, Mike. And listen, tek that shotgun with you just in case.’
‘As much as I would like to Rich, I can’t do that. Apart from anything else the place is crawling with armed response officers. Just leave it to our lot. You get Penny off to Malton.’
‘Aye, I suppose you know best.’
‘Rich, trust me. They’ll be well away by now. I very much doubt they’ll be from around here, so I can’t see them hiding out in this neck of the woods. They’ll be scuttling back to – to whatever rock they crawled out from under.’
He paused, took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘I suppose you’re right. But why do they need to attack defenceless women like that? Bloody cowards, the lot of ’em – by God, if I ever lay hands on them . . .’ He threw the match into the fire, which was now blazing nicely.
‘I know, I know. I’d probably be the same if I was in your shoes. Look, is there anything you want me to do? Do you want me to drive you through to Malton?’
‘No, no, Mike. We can manage.’
‘In that case I’ll be off.’
‘Aye, you get on your way – but listen, whatever you hear, you let me know, will you?’
‘Course I will, mate.’
Outside I lit up a cigarette and stood in the lane for a few moments. After the heat of the sitting room the icy-cold air was welcome and refreshing. There was no moon, but the sky was clear and studded with a million stars. A man was making his way towards me with a dog on a lead. ‘Nasty business at the shop,’ he said, without looking up.
‘Aye. You wouldn’t expect it in a place like this, would you?’
‘It can happen anywhere these days,’ he said, as he walked on by. ‘They’ve got the upper hand, these crooks. We need more policemen on the beat. Stiffer sentences.’
I didn’t answer, and he turned the corner and disappeared.
Back outside the shop Fordy was talking with the scene of crime officer. Stuart had just about finished and was packing his evidence bags and equipment into his car. As he prepared to leave I got a few more details from Fordy. It seemed the gang had struck just as it was getting dark, a little after four. They’d used the rock to smash through into the post-office kiosk.
‘So where was the cash?’ I asked.
‘In the till.’
‘No safe?’
He shook his head. ‘They said they’d talked about getting one, but the guy who owns the place wasn’t sure it was worth it.’
‘This is the trouble in these village shops. You have to wonder, though. I mean, will they try it again if it’s that easy?’
Fordy shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
‘Who knows indeed. But I tell you what, I’m going to make sure all the shopkeepers on my beat are well aware of what’s happened, and get
them to sort themselves out, sharpish. Anyway,’ I said, ‘I’m away home.’
The frustrating part of police work is that you can get deeply involved in a case like that, then have to go home with things still unresolved. It’s like if you leave a book on a train when you’re halfway through it, or have to walk out in the middle of a film – you can’t wait to find out what happened. Except that half the time, for us, there is no outcome, no real conclusion. In this case, of course, I wasn’t actually involved in any official capacity, but Rich and Penny were people I’d come to regard as friends. Ann and I had been for a pint and a meal at the Malt Shovel with them more than once. So of course I wanted to know how the investigations were proceeding – and how Penny was recovering. The next day then, back at work, I made a point of getting across to Hovingham as soon as I could find time.
I was able to take one piece of news, which I’d got from Fordy. He came bounding up to me as I was signing in to tell me they’d found a bundle of ten-pound notes, right under the wheels of the SOCO’s car after he drove off. Four hundred quid’s worth. That brought a wry smile to Penny’s face when I told her. ‘Aye,’ I said, ‘just sitting there in the gutter. Squashed into a puddle and frozen solid. They had to use a garden trowel to dig it out. The useless sods must have dropped it as they made off.’
It was only a moment of levity. Rich was still fuming about the whole business. The fact that Penny had been found to have a cracked rib didn’t help. I tried to steer away from the subject. ‘By the way,’ I said, ‘I never did hear – how did you go on in London, on the demo?’
‘Oh, that.’ Rich lit a cigarette and settled back in his chair.
‘We really enjoyed it, didn’t we?’ Penny said. ‘It had a real sense of community. You felt you were part of something.’
‘Aye, it was a strange sensation.’ Rich actually allowed himself a shadow of a smile as he remembered. ‘There we were in t’middle of London and all you could hear was hunting horns. It was like – like a Mexican wave coming closer and closer to us, louder and louder.’
‘And then it went past and sort of faded,’ Penny added.
‘Aye, all down Horse Guards Parade. It was like a train coming towards you and rattling off into t’distance. And all the soldiers were at their windows waving at us. It was bloody marvellous – and do you know, they reckoned afterwards they never had a single scrap of litter to pick up.’
‘At least we showed them how country folk are,’ Penny said. ‘That we know how to conduct ourselves. We never caused a spot of bother.’
I glanced at Penny. She’d said she was already feeling a little better, physically – and she certainly looked perkier – but there was no way she would be ready to return to work for a while yet. As it happened, the post-office side of the shop had been closed down anyway while a safe was installed. But in any case, she said, the idea of going back filled her with dread. When someone’s been manhandled by an armed robber – tied up, assaulted, shouted at, threatened – well, your personal space has been violated. More than that, your familiar surroundings, ones in which you’ve been comfortable, be it the home or the workplace, suddenly feel unsafe; tainted, you might say. As for Rich, he was still fuming, but he was about to go off on a prearranged visit to an estate in the Midlands. Penny’s sister would come over to help out and keep her company at night because, not surprisingly, she didn’t want to be around the place on her own.
I had little to do with the enquiries that followed. As with any armed robbery, the CID took over the investigation, so our involvement as beat officers was limited, and we would only hear indirectly or at briefings about the later developments. Among them was the discovery of the vehicle believed to have been used in the robbery. It had been found abandoned and burned out. I found myself speculating as to who might have been involved. I was convinced it wouldn’t be locals, so where had they come from? York? Leeds? Or maybe the north. Of one thing I was pretty sure: this was not the work of your run-of-the-mill rural villain. Maybe, I suggested to Des the CID man, they were from Middlesbrough way. ‘And what makes you think that?’ he asked.
‘Well, there’s quite a few travel down from there to work at the bacon factory. They travel via Stokesley on that B road, down Bilsdale. And you ask at the shop there – they often call in for cigarettes or a paper on their way to and fro. And at the bakery. They stop there for their pack-up, quite a few of them.’
Des agreed it was a strong possibility, that they were looking at all options along with other similar crimes in neighbouring forces that might be linked. But in the end, it grieves me to admit, we never got to the bottom of this one. I kept hoping something would break, but there was nothing. What did happen was that the post-office facility in the Hovingham shop closed down a few months later. Somebody had decided that the measures required to make it secure were going to be too expensive, and that it just wasn’t worth the hassle any more. They say crime doesn’t pay – but it certainly costs a lot.
Still, there was, as ever, plenty to keep me on my toes, at work and at home. Because that’s another thing about police work – the way you can find yourself one minute dealing with serious and complex crimes, the next helping some little old lady across the road. It was just the luck of the draw that had taken me from that double fatal on Golden Hill to a hostage situation on the same day that August Bank Holiday weekend. It could just as easily have been a couple of kids scrumping apples, or some equally lightweight case; or, indeed, another accident. It all depends where the wheel of fortune stops spinning, as Thommo liked to say. That’s where you can get a real emotional battering – when you break off from an emergency, or some sort of violent confrontation, and go straight to the next call without having had time to unscramble your mind, to rid your memory of the gruesome sights that are part and parcel of our job. This is when your laid-down procedures help, of course. If there’s a prescribed way of going about things, a checklist you can tick off, you’re halfway to coping, no matter how shaky you’re feeling. If you remember those, you can operate to some degree on autopilot and spare yourself another emotional storm.
We were now only a few days from Christmas, coming up to the shortest day. It was well past midnight and I’d just come from sorting out a dispute between neighbours, way out above Rosedale, the sort of spot where you’d imagine life would be all peace and tranquillity. It was late at night, and there I was standing between opposing neighbours who were arguing over whose kids had kicked a football that had then knocked over the illuminated reindeer in the garden. It was an argument that had started earlier in the evening and escalated as the stresses of Christmas, combined with alcohol, set in. Both sets of parents had been drinking, and both of them were mad as hell. But once we’d established that the reindeer was not in fact beyond repair and could still take pride of place on the front lawn, things calmed down. I saw the parents back into their respective homes and left with a glow of satisfaction, and the warm red reflection of Rudolph in my rear-view mirror.
I’d taken a circuitous route, largely so that I could bring myself back down to earth and normality. I skirted the forest plantation above Cropton and took a back road into Pickering. I was just passing through a patch of woodland when I spotted some sort of creature lying on the road in front of me.
At first I thought it was a young rabbit, the way it seemed to be crouching there. You often get them at night, grazing on the verges and oblivious to the traffic. But as I approached it I realised it was in fact some kind of bird. I stopped the car a few yards short of it, dimmed the lights, and got out.
It looked just like an owl, except for one thing: it seemed far too small. I’d seen plenty of barn owls and tawnies over the years and they’re a fair size, a foot and more in height. This little fellow – well, let’s say it wasn’t much bigger than a thrush. But as I got up close to it I could see that it was, unmistakably, an owl. And it was injured. It sat there quivering, sort of hunched up but with one wing hanging loosely by its side.
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br /> I went back to the car and opened the boot. I put on my leather gloves, picked up one of the blankets I always have with me and went back to where the bird sat staring at me. Small it may have been, but on each of its feet it had three long curved talons. I reached out with one hand, dropped a corner of the blanket over it with the other and quickly scooped it up, wrapping the cloth tight enough to stop it from lashing out. ‘Right,’ I said, ‘you’re coming with me, lad.’
I soon had the injured owl securely wrapped in the blanket in the boot of the vehicle. I glanced at my watch. Two forty-five a.m. Now what was I going to do? There was no way any vet would come out at this hour, and anyway I wouldn’t be able to justify the expense. This is the problem when you come across injured wild animals. During the day it’s not such a problem because either of the two vets that I knew would have known what to do. But I couldn’t go dragging them out of bed at this hour. Then I thought about what Jean Thorpe, the badger lady, had said. She’d told me that if I had an injured animal I should call her any time, night or day – and I’d kept her number on my mobile.
‘Jean Thorpe?’ I was taken aback at how quickly she picked up her phone. It had only rung twice.
‘Yes?’
‘PC Mike Pannett here. Sorry to get you up at this time of night but I’ve found an injured bird at the side of the road – looks like some sort of owl. Right little thing, it is.’
‘Oh? How little?’
‘I’d say a quarter of the size of a normal one, maybe a third.’
‘I see. And where are you now?’
‘About three miles above Pickering. I can be across in twenty minutes, if it’s not disturbing you.’
‘No problem. I was up anyway. Been bottle-feeding a litter of pups.’
I got back in the car and made tracks. Thank goodness for people like her, I was thinking. I wouldn’t have had the faintest idea what to do on my own. I suppose I could’ve just ignored the bird, left it to its fate, but that would have gone against the grain.
Jean was at her gate waiting for me. She came to the rear of the car and carried the bird into the house. In the kitchen she unwrapped the blanket. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘a little owl. There aren’t many of them around these days. There used to be plenty, years ago before the war. So they tell me,’ she added.