Boracic Lint

by Martin Bryce

notebook which he consulted briefly. He then said I was bang to rights, whatever that was and it would save an awful lot of time and trouble if I just came clean.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Right,’ he sighed, ‘if you want to do it the hard way. Where were you last night?’

  ‘Rehearsals,’ I replied.

  ‘And the night before?’

  ‘Rehearsals,’

  ‘And the night before that and don’t give me rehearsals again.’

  ‘Actually, I was in hospital.’

  Bolingbroke stood up, closed his notepad and turned towards the door. ‘I’ll come back when you’ve decided to be sensible, lad,’ he said. ‘I’ve got all the time in the world and that’s what you’ll have, too, when I’m finished with you.’ He opened the door.

  ‘Habeas corpus,’ I said as he left the room. He turned and looked at me wildly.

  ‘You what?’ he said with a note of viciousness.

  ‘I haven’t been charged with anything,’ I explained.

  He folded his arms, smiled wryly and nodded. ‘I gather you were interrogated not long ago about a bomb threat,’ he said gently.

  ‘Well, yes, but it was an unfortunate misunder…’

  ‘Now you listen to me, you witless cretin,’ he snarled, poking me savagely in the chest. ‘We can keep suspected terrorists locked up for ever such a long time before we have to do anything civilised with them.’ A vicious sneer crossed his face. ‘Don’t worry, when the time comes you’ll find I’ve got enough against you to keep you inside for most of your natural, old son.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, we could start with obstructing the police in the execution of their duty this morning.’

  ‘But I wasn’t. I want to make a phone call,’ I told him flatly.

  ‘Ooooh, so we know our rights then, do we? Been through this before, have we?’

  ‘In some of the roles I’ve played, yes, actually.’ My confidence was beginning to seep back.

  ‘Now this is getting very interesting,’ Bolingbroke remarked. ‘Got a lot of aliases, have we? Tell me about them.’

  ‘I’ve already told you I’m an actor, but either you’re not listening, or you’re incapable of understanding, or…’

  ‘Now you listen to me, son,’ he began angrily. ‘I’ve dealt with too many cocky little bastards like you. They all thought they had it sussed, all had fancy alibis. And when the alibis ran out, the heart-rending stories about how their dads beat them every night in a drunken fit, while mum was out on the game, began. For nearly thirty years I’ve been a copper and in that time I’ve probably heard every fantasy ever invented by the mind of man; not just once, but several dozen times!’ He was almost apoplectic. ‘So don’t come the old lag with me, you fucking little toe-rag. I eat your sort for breakfast! Make no mistake, I’m going to nail you good and proper and it isn’t going to take long!’

  ‘Bravo!’ I applauded. It had been a mighty performance and I had made a mental note of every vocal nuance, every facial spasm, for the next time I was called upon to play a Detective Sergeant.

  ‘Jesus!’ he roared as he left the room.

  I was allowed the phone call which I made to Rowena at Harridges. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to take the call, so I left a message asking her to come to the station to explain about the rehearsals. They would surely believe her.

  Bolingbroke returned an hour later. He handed me a biro, placed a typewritten sheet of paper on the table before me and told me to sign it.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked as I began to read the document.

  ‘It’s a statement, just sign it.’

  ‘It’s a confession!’ I exclaimed. Quickly, I scanned the text – breaking and entering, burglary, drug dealing, various forms of perversion, theft from my employer, the list went on and on. I was laughing like a drain by the time I came to the end.

  ‘But you’ve left out assault, drink driving, criminal damage, poaching, murder, setting fire to Her Majesty’s dockyards, I believe that’s still a capital offence, that one,’ I said through the tears. ‘And then… and then there’s always…’ I could hardly speak at this stage, ‘there’s always walking on the motorway without being a migrating toad! I’m really disappointed by your lack of imagination, Detective Sergeant. Anyway, I’m not signing, it’s ridiculous. You can’t prove a thing and you know it.’

  ‘Right,’ he began through clenched teeth. The veins on his forehead were standing out nicely again, too. ‘We’ve searched your room and there’s nothing. But we can fix that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There are no fingerprints in any of the houses you burgled.’ He broke into a nasty grin revealing grossly yellowing teeth. ‘But believe me, we can fix that, too.’

  ‘What houses? Burgled? Me?’

  ‘Come on, lad,’ he snarled through a fog of spittle as he leaned on the table, putting his twisted face uncomfortably close to mine.’ ‘Two on Sunday night in Nile Street; that runs off Mafeking Avenue.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘One on Monday night in Trafalgar Road; the next street but one along from Mafeking Avenue.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘And two more again last night and you know where, don’t you?’ he bellowed in my ear. ‘On three of those occasions a man wearing a Santa suit was seen running from the scene of the crime.’

  I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. As a child I had been a sleepwalker; perhaps it had started again.

  ‘Now let’s look at you, shall we? You live in the area, you also possess a Santa suit and there aren’t too many of those around, are there?’

  ‘You seem to have plenty,’ I remarked unwisely.

  ‘Shut up!’ He bellowed, banging the table with his fist. ‘And just recently you were telling your landlord about some robberies you’d been involved in. Now what d’you make of that? And don’t tell me you’re a sleepwalker!’

  So, I’d been shopped by the worthy Mr H for something I didn’t do.

  ‘Are we going to be sensible, or do I have to get out the thumbscrews?’ Bolingbroke asked finally.

  ‘But I told you, on Sunday night I was at the hospital.’

  ‘All night?’

  ‘Well, no, not exactly, but…’

  ‘And which particular hospital was it?’ He asked sarcastically.

  ‘I’m not sure exactly.’ I stuttered.

  ‘Oh, you’re not sure. Did you hear that, John?’ he said to the Constable. ‘He’s not sure.’ They both smirked.

  ‘It was near here, a big one,’ I continued.

  ‘The Royal?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ I grasped. ‘The Royal.’

  ‘Pull the other one, son. Why would you go to a hospital round here when you live at the end of the Central Line?’

  ‘Because I was out to lunch and Mandy, she’s a nurse, she said…’

  ‘You were out to lunch,’ he said as he began to pace the floor. ‘Right, so, you were out to lunch and… no, don’t tell me… you got a lobster bone stuck in your throat. Correct?’ he said, rounding on me with sudden ferocity. I noticed that the Constable was now gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling with his left forefinger at his lips.

  ‘No,’ I replied meekly.

  ‘No! No what? No I didn’t get a lobster bone stuck in my throat? No, I didn’t have lobster? What did you have?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never actually got any lunch. And anyway, lobsters don’t have bones.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You don’t know again. He doesn’t know again, John.’

  This time the Constable did not smirk, but slowly, almost painfully started to speak.

  ‘I was on duty Sunday night,’ he said.

  ‘So what?’ Bolingbroke snapped.

  ‘Well, we got this job down at the hospital…’

  ‘Yes, yes, get on with it.’

  ‘It was this nutter
claiming to be Father Christmas who’d been hit by a tank, right, and then sat on by northerners.’

  ‘Northerners? What sort of northerners?’

  ‘Well, you know, people from the north, sarge.’

  ‘I don’t follow any of this,’ Bolingbroke said impatiently.

  ‘We did. We followed him to that Indian takeaway, you know the one, Dirty Hares. And then he got in a mini-cab.’

  ‘What the hell’s this got to do with anything?’ Bolingbroke snarled.

  ‘It was ‘im, sarge.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The nutter.’

  ‘Who, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Him.’

  ‘WHO?’

  ‘Him. The suspect.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Yeah, him.’

  ‘The suspect?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This suspect?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘What time was this? No, don’t tell me! It was the time the robberies were taking place. Yes?’

  ‘That’s right, sarge.’

  ‘And it was him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The one sitting there?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Well why the hell didn’t you tell me this in the first place?!!’

  ‘Forgot, didn’t I?’ he replied with a light shrug of his shoulders. It’s why we have notebooks. To jog the memory

  ‘Jog the memory? Forgot! I’ve spent the entire morning cultivating a prize ulcer and all the time you knew that this… this…’

  ‘Sorry, sarge.’

  ‘And you’re absolutely sure it was him?’

  ‘Got his description in my notebook, haven’t I?’ he said, unbuttoning the breast pocket of his tunic. He thumbed clumsily through the pages. ‘Here it is.’ He read slowly, carefully, methodically. ‘Toe rag with limp mid twenties six foot skinny. That’s him,’ he said finally, pointing at me. Bolingbroke boiled for a while.

  ‘Aha!’ He shrieked triumphantly. ‘He hasn’t got a limp!’

  ‘No, not any more,’ I said. ‘That’s why I went to hospital. You see, Mandy’s a nurse and she said…’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘It’s all healing very nicely now. Would you like to see?’ I asked as I began to remove my boot. ‘I even managed to fix the nail.’ I don’t know what he was about to say, but whatever it was, he was prevented from saying it by the entry of the Desk Sergeant.

  ‘Bloke out ‘ere you ought to see, John,’ he said to Bolingbroke.

  ‘Just so long as it isn’t the bloody tooth fairy,’ Bolingbroke said to no one in particular.

  ‘No, it’s about him,’ the other replied.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Him.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Yes, him, the suspect. Nothin’ wrong, is there, John?’

  ‘No, John,’ Bolingbroke replied as he opened the door. ‘Nothing a lethal injection wouldn’t cure. JESUS!’

  Why were they all called ‘John’?

  A couple of minutes later Bolingbroke burst back into the room followed by… I couldn’t believe my eyes! Brian!

  ‘That him?’ Bolingbroke demanded roughly.

  ‘Yep, that’s him,’ Brian confirmed.

  ‘Right, lad,’ Bolingbroke began menacingly. ‘It seems you’ve got a few friends; even some in the Met!’ He glared at the Constable.

  ‘May the force be with me,’ I quipped. Bolingbroke merely curled his lip.

  ‘Your shoddy story seems to stand up, so I’m going to have to let you go, but I’ll be watching you from now on, sunshine.’ He then told me to get out before he charged me with wasting police time. I nearly said they were quite good at that themselves, but thought better of it when I saw the look on his face.

  I walked back to the store with Brian who after he’d discovered from the Bull why I’d been hauled off by plod, had given up his lunchtime to visit the nick to help me. He was used to dealing with the police, having been a Fireman. Also because the lads down at the Youth Club were always having their collars felt for various misdemeanours.

  By Jove the stranger and the poor are sent

  And what to those we give, to Jove is lent.

  What an absolute jewel Brian is. If only the world was made up of people like him.

  The Bull was unimpressed by my reappearance and told me that the Grotto would remain closed for the rest of the day. Also, I should go and see personnel as they were busy trying to find a