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Police, Arrests & Suspects

Page 27

by John Donoghue


  It being unlikely that Leadbetter would tell us if we were getting ‘warmer’ or ‘colder’ as we searched for our prize, Ben kept a careful eye on him to see if his body language gave away any telltale signs as the search progressed. However, he sat on the backyard step, as cool as a cucumber, stroking his dogs and smoking a cigarette. We were five minutes into a fruitless quest when someone stumbled into the house calling Leadbetter’s name.

  “Get rid of him, John,” Barry instructed and I poked my head around the door, shielding myself so he couldn’t see my uniform. As I did so, I heard the sound of a phone ringing.

  “Hold on, hold on.” The dishevelled male motioned for me to stay quiet as he picked up his mobile and slumped down onto the sofa.

  “Wassup!” He was now engaged in conversation whilst I looked on like a spare part. “Yeah, I’m still half bladdered from last night… what? You never! You’re an animal! What? I’m here now … yeah… yeah… I’ll pick you up and we’ll get shit-faced in town later…”

  I coughed to get his attention. He responded by looking over and pointing to the phone. He then rolled his eyes before performing an exaggerated wanker sign at whoever he was talking to.

  “Yeah, yeah… anyway, look, Mum, gotta go… there’s some bloke wants to speak to me.”

  “Look, fella,” I told him, “we’re a bit busy. Can you come back a bit later?”

  “What’s happened to the door?”

  “It was a persistent Jehovah’s Witness,” I said solemnly.

  “Ha! You’re mint! Have the cops been ‘round? You know there’s a cop van parked at the end of the street, do you? They’ve been ‘ere ‘aven’t they! The bastards! Anyway, where’s Bedwetter?”

  The questions were coming thick and fast. I told him ‘Bedwetter’ was out the back and that he was also a bit busy right now.

  “The bastards didn’t get his stash, did they? I told him they’d never find it there!” Motormouth winked as he babbled away.

  By now Barry and Gwen were pressed close behind me, listening intently. In fact, they were so close I could feel breath on the back of my neck. I hoped it wasn’t Barry’s. Lloyd, meanwhile, had used his initiative and had led Leadbetter to the top of the yard out of earshot.

  “Those mugs never found it,” I reassured him. “Those lot couldn’t find their bloody arse with both hands!” As I did my own particular version of a condescending laugh, I felt someone dig me in the ribs. I was getting into role – method acting!

  “I told him where to hide it. That was my idea. I’m a feckin’ genius!” Our visitor was becoming more animated by the minute.

  “So where was it, then?” I asked. I’m not sure how ethical it was – not letting on that I was a cop – but it wasn’t like I was a member of the House of Commons, asking cash for questions in Parliament. It was a pretty direct question and I just hoped it wouldn’t put him on his guard; although the way he had laughed at my door-knocking gag, I think he was now a friend for life.

  “Like I said to him: who in their right mind is going to look in a pit bull’s harness for gear?”

  “We are,” I replied, walking into the room accompanied by Barry and Gwen.

  “Oh, shit!”

  Despite all the swearing on the telephone, it was a bit of a turnaround to find out that he was pretty feckless after all. Evidently, he was the sort of person they put instructions on shampoo bottles for; although by the look of him, he preferred to go with the au naturel look. After a little chat, our unwitting whistle-blower decided it was time to meet his mum in town, and we saw him on his way with a cheery wave before going through to the yard and calling the dogs over.

  “They don’t like strangers,” Leadbetter told us, his voice rising by a few octaves as he did so. Lloyd grabbed the leads off him and led the animals over. Gwen and Barry crouched down in the yard and started to pet them. It seemed these dogs were just like my dog, Barney: he barks like mad if someone’s at the door because he thinks that’s what he’s supposed to do, but when they come in he’s their new best friend. The dogs were harmless enough – the muzzles were just part of a smokescreen and to big up Leadbetter’s hard-man persona.

  It turned out that the dogs were used to being handled by anyone and everyone as apparently that was the way that Leadbetter conducted his business. Nothing changed hands between the dealer and his customers; instead, under the pretext of patting the dog, the buyer slipped payment into his customised harness before turning his attention to the other dog in whose harness the wraps of drugs were kept hidden.

  “Bob’s your Monkhouse!” Barry announced as he produced a handful of heroin wraps from one of the harnesses. “You’re coming with us, Mr Leadbetter!”

  Two and a half hours later, and with everybody pitching in to help, the job was finished: Leadbetter was in the cells, statements were done, the evidence had been booked in and the dogs had been rehoused in the council kennels. It seemed unlikely that our dealer would be celebrating Christmas on the outside and besides, when his suppliers found out that he had lost so much stock, I think he might actually prefer to be safely tucked away from them!

  Anyone who tells you that the happiest moment of their life was the birth of their first child has obviously never been told that they can go home early on Christmas Eve. When Barry came in to inform us that we’d achieved our objective and were free to salvage the remains of the day, we decided to do what any other decent, civilised group would do: we decided to go down the pub for a lunchtime drink.

  Putting my coat on I went back into the parade room to collect Gwen; she was holding court, telling the day shift how she had stumbled on Leadbetter in his compromising position.

  “I just came… and saw!” she informed them innocently.

  As coincidence would have it and judging by the pornographic DVDs lying around on his bedroom floor, it was the exact same thing that Leadbetter had done only a few hours earlier… except perhaps in the reverse order.

  Chapter 17

  Schrödinger’s Cat

  Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance: the five stages I went through while getting ready for my early shift on Christmas Day. Unfortunately, added to this, I tend to suffer from an acute form of procaffeinating in the morning: the tendency not to start anything until I’ve had at least two cups of coffee. As I sat on my couch in a trance-like state, cup in hand, I came to the conclusion that the seven dwarfs were either on medication or taking hard drugs: who in their right mind sings ‘Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go’, especially when it’s cold, dark and miserable outside? At least getting up at 05:30 this morning had seemed like a lie-in compared to the early start to yesterday’s drugs raid.

  Meanwhile, Barney, my dog, seemed to be going through the same dilemma that he goes through most days: wondering if I was just going to work or abandoning him for ever. After finishing getting ready, I patted him on the head, told him he was a good dog, gave him an apple, and then set off. I’m sure he thinks I’ve been out hunting all day when I return and give him his dinner. This evening he’d think I was a crack shot as I was planning to swing by Miss Jones’ house on the way home to collect some leftover turkey for him.

  After saying my goodbyes, I then sat for a further ten minutes in my freezing car waiting for the ice to melt on the outside of the windscreen and the condensation to disappear from the inside. It would be too awkward to go back inside after all the fuss I’d made of him – a bit like when you chat to someone in the street, bid them farewell, and then find they’re walking in the same direction as you. It’s just embarrassing!

  I was shivering by the time I eventually set off but, despite the freezing temperature, I still tried to garner some enthusiasm for the day ahead; after all, today was the anniversary of the birth of Christ, when someone had grandly announced that: ‘from this day forward, we shall count the years’ … and everyone had agreed… but then thought they’d give it a week first.

  I arrived at the police station along with G
wen, Lloyd, Jessica and Andy; early enough to give the night shift a flyer so that they could at least make the most of the day with their families before returning again that evening. Merry Christmases were quietly exchanged as they sleepily slipped out and we sleepily slipped in: I say ‘quietly exchanged’, but with one notable exception:

  “Greetings, gentlefolk! How the very goodness are we? Tidings of great joy to you on this auspicious day. You’ll observe that it’s been a not so ‘Silent Night’, and that there are currently two young ruffians languishing in our boutique hotel. A minor brouhaha outside one of the town’s splendid watering holes has resulted in them accompanying Her Majesty’s constables back to this fine establishment.”

  It was jarring to hear someone so rambunctious at this hour, but we were used to it by now.

  “Sandford and its environs are now in the capable hands of the glorious men and women of E shift,” he continued, theatrically. “Compliments of the season to you all, but, alas, I must depart!”

  The ACK-TOR informed us that his carriage now awaited and, as he bid us all adieu, he tossed his cape over his shoulder and disappeared into the swirling fog. Well, he went and got his anorak on, climbed into his Ford Fiesta and drove off onto the by-pass. I genuinely think he was born a hundred years or so too late as he would have fitted perfectly into 1880s’ Whitechapel. Personally, I liked The ACK-TOR; he added a bit of colour to proceedings, but he wasn’t to everyone’s taste, especially at this time in the morning.

  “Has Lord Olivier gone yet?” asked Barry, poking his head round the corner. When he saw that the coast was clear he came through, clutching the file for the suspects in the cells. On public holidays staffing is pared down to a minimum, which meant that today there were only five of us on duty in total, and none of us particularly relished the prospect of spending half the day down in the cells interviewing suspects. Reading our faces, Barry decided that the fairest way to determine who would be dealing with the prisoners would be to put names in a hat.

  He carefully tore a piece of paper into five strips and handed one to each of us, waiting patiently while we all scribbled down our names and then crumpled up the scraps and threw them into his cap. We sat quietly as Barry made a big show of mixing them up; ostentatiously swirling the names around. We waited with baited breath as, with a flourish, he produced one of the scrunched up pieces of paper and opened it.

  “And the loser is…” Lloyd and Jess improvised a drum roll as our sergeant kept us all in exaggerated suspense. “And the loser is… Andy!” Ba dum tssss!

  We all made conciliatory noises, feigning disappointment that it wasn’t our name that had been plucked from the cap. We then commiserated with our colleague, patting him on the back as he grabbed the paperwork and despondently slunk off down to the cells. Meanwhile, the rest of us went to top up our caffeine levels before helping ourselves to the cakes that Gwen had kindly brought in to share. As we made our way back to the parade room, we debated whether or not Father Christmas had shared our views on which of the townsfolk had been naughty or nice this past year.

  “Do you like Kipling?” asked Barry as we all sat down.

  “I’m not sure, I’ve never been kippled,” I answered, wondering where this was leading.

  “Rudyard Kipling – the author,” clarified our leader. He appeared to be in a very reflective mood today. “Maybe we should take a leaf out of his book – literally. He said: I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble.”

  “Well, I guess it would for Santa,” I conceded, although he was always welcome to check our intelligence briefings if he was in any doubt who’d been bad. The others laughed, but not our sergeant. We were only having a bit of fun in deciding who in the town should be awarded a gold star and who deserved a black mark against their name.

  Our leader solemnly looked down; toying with the crumpled strips of paper. He appeared deep in thought and we glanced at each other questioningly as we ate our Danish pastries. This wasn’t like the Barry we knew. He had a disappointed look on his face, as if his son had just told him that he wanted to ride unicycles professionally for a living. We wondered what could be wrong. Eventually, he glanced up. The room fell silent: the stage was his.

  “An old Cherokee Indian once told a story to his grandson,” he began, “about the battle between two wolves that rage inside us all.”

  We all leant in, our curiosity piqued.

  “One is Evil: it is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lying, laziness and ego,” he continued. “The other is Good: it is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, hard work, empathy and truth.”

  We shuffled our chairs closer, not wanting to miss a word.

  “The boy thought about what his grandfather had said. He spent seven days and seven nights dwelling on it.” Barry left a pause for dramatic effect. It worked: we were hooked. “Eventually, he approached his grandfather and asked him which wolf wins this battle.”

  A longer pause followed as Barry looked down, again shuffling the papers. At long last he stopped and looked each one of us directly in the eye. We all stared back, every one of us keen to know the answer: which wolf triumphs?

  “The old man then sat him down,” he continued, “and told him that in the battle between Good and Evil, the wolf who wins is the one that you choose to feed.”

  We sat back in our chairs, slightly disappointed. I think we had all thought that there would be more to the tale. Moreover, I don’t think any of us could work out why our sergeant had decided to enlighten us with this pearl of wisdom on today of all days.

  “And by the look of things,” added Barry sarcastically and just when we had thought it was all over, “it appears that all your evil wolves are partial to cakes.”

  “Ah,” we all repeated quietly. The purpose of his anecdote now dawned on us – we’d been rumbled.

  Barry laid out all the pieces of paper in front of him to reveal our deception: Andy’s name was written on each and every one of them. It was the old joke on the probationer. I’m sure Andy would eventually see the funny side of it… when he wasn’t a probationer anymore… and there was a new probationer on E shift.

  Quickly, we each took a set of panda keys from the board and hurried out of the room before he could call us back to admonish us further. I drove all the way to the deserted town centre before pulling over and allowing myself a little giggle over our failed prank. My mind then wandered to how today’s shift would pan out. It was Christmas Day: the most unpredictable day of the year, in my policing experience. Who knew what the day might hold, but I had brought a banana with me just in case.

  In Belgium, it’s legal for children to throw bananas at police cars on Christmas Eve, but, on Christmas Day, the police are allowed to get their own back and it’s legal for police officers to throw bananas at children. Goodness knows how that all started, but we are part of the European Union now and so we might as well get some benefit from it.

  However, even if we were to ever leave the EU, we still have some peculiar laws of our own: to this day, in our own capital city, it remains illegal on any day of the year for someone who knows that they have the plague to wilfully flag down a taxi or ride a bus. That’ll be a long walk to the hospital, then… and as for the rest of the country, you still can’t order your servant to stand on a windowsill to clean the window, you can’t operate a cow when intoxicated, it’s forbidden to handle a salmon in suspicious circumstances and, finally, woe betide you if you die in the Houses of Parliament – it’s against the law!

  Nevertheless, I still think the Europeans beat us hands down when it comes to eccentric legislation. We often get called to noisy parties, but in Switzerland they seem to take things one step further: not only is flushing a toilet in a Swiss apartment after ten o’clock at night illegal, it’s also against the law for a man to relieve himself standing up, although I’m not sure how they find out – unless they check the toilet mat.

  Still, not all the bizarre an
d idiosyncratic laws are stupid. Maybe we could learn from police in Helsinki who sometimes save on parking tickets by letting down the offending car’s tyres instead.

  I was still daydreaming about which criminal’s tyres I’d let down first when the radio sprung into life, making me jump. It was a call to the old part of the town where a squirrel was going crazy. A squirrel at this time of the year! Shouldn’t they be hibernating? So, it was going to be one of those sorts of days!

  Usually, it wouldn’t be deemed a police matter, but the creature was running around in circles in the street and one of the residents was afraid that it might attack a child; as is the want of crazed rodents. I drove over post-haste and pulled into the cul-de-sac, but couldn’t see any sign of the little furry maniac anywhere. I rang Comms to ask if the caller was still on the line and whether they could tell me exactly where the animal was, only to be informed that I could now cancel the job as, according to the informant, I had just run over it.

  Before I had a chance to get out of the vehicle, a large, rugged-looking man appeared at the side of the car, holding a spade menacingly in his hands. I reached for my pepper spray but, instead of caving in the windscreen, he gently tapped on the window. I lowered it and he told me his name was Gordon Bennett. I responded and told him I was PC Donoghue.

  “I know,” he replied. I found his admission slightly unnerving. I hadn’t fully recovered from my encounter with the Taxil brothers and was still on edge.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” he questioned, bending down so that his face was level with the window.

  He was right – I didn’t.

  “The man who was slightly upset at the insurance office on Gladstone Street?” he prompted. “The one you wrestled to the ground? That was me.”

 

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