CONSTABLE BENEATH THE TREES a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain's best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 13)

by Nicholas Rhea

  CONSTABLE

  BENEATH

  THE

  TREES

  A perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors

  Constable Nick Mystery Book 13

  NICHOLAS RHEA

  Revised edition 2020

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  © Nicholas Rhea

  First published in Great Britain 1994

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Nicholas Rhea to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Cover credit: Colin Williamson

  www.colinwilliamsonprints.com

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  ISBN 978-1-78931-588-2

  Contents

  1. Seek and Ye Shall Find

  2. Tricks in Every Trade

  3. By Chasing Two Hares, You’ll Catch Neither

  4. Poetic Justice

  5. Give a Dog a Bad Name

  6. On with the Dance

  7. If You Go Down to the Woods Today

  8. Ladies of the Village

  9. Faith, Hope and Charity

  10. All Change

  ALSO BY NICHOLAS RHEA

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  GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH SLANG FOR US READERS

  1. Seek and Ye Shall Find

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  There is pleasure in the pathless woods.

  LORD BYRON, 1788–1824

  ‘Times are changing, Rhea.’

  Sergeant Blaketon was pensive as he sipped a mug of coffee in Ashfordly police station. We were sipping together in the spacious enquiry office. On that Monday morning, things were comparatively peaceful and he had cleared his desk before 9.30. There had been no reported crimes overnight and no fresh problems to exercise his mind. Now that his in-tray was empty and his telephone quiet, he found time to suggest that I made the coffee — which I did. Thus he joined me for a chat. I had just returned after a fortnight’s leave and had driven from Aidensfield to Ashfordly to collect my mail. Ashfordly was peaceful that morning — but so was Aidensfield. As I’d had no telephone calls before nine o’clock, I had left my hilltop police house for the short drive to Ashfordly.

  ‘Times changing, Sergeant?’ I asked. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Every way, Rhea,’ he sipped from his mug. ‘There’s going to be new procedures, new technology, new forms to be filled in, new telephone systems, changes to beat boundaries, changes to the names of things, changes in the way we do our job . . . did you know that the think-tank at Headquarters is considering the abolition of the policewomen’s department?’

  ‘No, I had no idea,’ I had to admit. ‘I’ve been away for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘The pace of change is hotting up, Rhea. You’ve had two weeks away and in that time the whole concept of policing has altered. With my responsibilities, I can’t go away, Rhea; I might return to find somebody else sitting at my desk. Do you realize that policewomen won’t be specialists anymore? They’ll have to compete for promotion with the rest of us, Rhea, they’ll patrol with the men, working nights, dealing with fights. Can you imagine working for a woman inspector, Rhea?’

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it, Sergeant,’ I had to admit. ‘I would think that if a woman knew her job well enough, there’d be no problems . . .’

  ‘You youngsters are all alike, Rhea, you’ve no respect for the past, for well tried and tested procedures and structures. I can’t see a woman constable sorting out a fight between a bunch of drunken yobbos. If a woman is patrolling the streets at night, the male officers will spend their time worrying whether she can cope and they’ll be caring for her, not the public — and don’t think your cushy rustic beat at Aidensfield will escape the eagle eyes of those at the top either!’

  ‘They’re not going to close me down, are they, Sergeant?’

  ‘Now that you’ve been issued with radio-equipped minivans instead of motorbikes for your patrolling, Rhea, the powers-that-be believe that beats should be larger. There’s going to be amalgamations, Rhea, amalgamations of rural beats.’

  ‘Is there?’ This was news to me.

  ‘Bigger beats will be the rule, Rhea. If a rural constable from say, Pattington, decides to retire or is promoted, then the vacancy that occurs when he leaves might not be filled. That means his patch will disappear — it will be divided between the adjoining rural beats and the police house will be sold. That’s just an example, Rhea, but that sort of thing is going to happen, mark my words. Bigger areas covered by fewer constables, that’s going to be the trend.’

  ‘Are you saying that Aidensfield rural beat might be closed down, Sergeant?’

  ‘When you move on, Rhea, that would be a possibility, a very distinct possibility. I can’t deny it. And as rural beats become larger, village constables will be expected to work in towns too. They’ll do shift work, Rhea, part of which will be in the town and part of which will be on their own patch.’

  ‘Town duties, Sergeant.’ The notion was horrifying.

  ‘If rural beats are amalgamated,’ he had clearly been giving the matter some consideration or had read some documents relating to the subject, ‘if rural beats are amalgamated, several constables in vehicles will patrol the area between them, working shifts. Eight-hour shifts. That would replace the present twenty-four-hour responsibility of constables like you. It would give you more time off, Rhea. Not a bad thing, perhaps?’

  ‘But we rural bobbies need to work our own beats, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘We need to know all the people on the patch if we’re to keep crime down. And the idea is that we live and work on the patch for twenty-four hours a day. I don’t object to that, it’s the best way of giving value for money, you work when the work’s there and relax when it isn’t.’

  ‘That’s not considered the way to do things in the new style of thinking, Rhea. Bigger beats shared between several constables is the new concept — and that’s a new word in police jargon! Concept! And if you’re on duty when someone else is patrolling your normal patch, you’ll be drafted into town for additional urban patrols!’

  ‘I don’t think it’s good idea.’ I could see that if this scheme was adopted, the rural areas would be deserted by patrolling constables. In the minds of supervisory officers, towns were always short of constables and they would always be supplemented by rural officers. The demands of town-policing would always take priority.

  Blaketon went on, ‘You’ll be working more hours in Ashfordly, Eltering and Strensford, Rhea, supplementing the officers in those busier places. Being motorized means you can cover a bigger area in the time available
and being equipped with radio means you’ll be in contact with Control all the time. You must admit there isn’t much crime in Aidensfield, Rhea, there’s no real need for a police presence there.’

  ‘But if the village constable is removed from Aidensfield, Sergeant, crime will break out the minute he’s gone! And there’ll be no one around to deal with it, or report it to. It’ll start with the kids vandalizing things, then they’ll rise to petty thefts and even break-ins . . . remove the constable from the streets and crime will increase, Sergeant. With no one in authority to prevent them, the kids will do as they like, and once they do as they like, they’ll start to do wrong.’

  ‘I know that, you know that and all police officers know that, but the Home Office doesn’t see it our way. They never give us enough men to achieve our ideals. So we must make do with what we have and we can’t halt what some regard as progress, Rhea,’ he drained his mug. ‘So we do as we are told. We’ve always done that, we police officers, even if it means being subordinate to a senior officer who is a woman. Well, I’ve got that off my chest so what are your plans for today?’

  ‘I shall return to Aidensfield, Sergeant, and I’ll probably do a foot patrol in the village. Meet a few people, chat to a few of the locals, make enquiries about Claude Jeremiah Greengrass to find out what he’s up to these days . . .’

  ‘Well, don’t let me keep you, Rhea.’ He rose from the chair and returned to his office. It was time for me to depart too. As I was leaving, Alf Ventress entered to begin his shift in the office; his first chore would be the washing-up!

  ‘Hello, Nick. Did you have a nice leave?’

  ‘We rented a cottage near Ullswater,’ I told him. ‘It was lovely, sheer peace — even with four youngsters!’

  I told him about our family holiday. Then, nodding towards Blaketon’s closed office door, he asked, ‘And how’s Mein Führer?’

  ‘He’s worrying about changes,’ I smiled. ‘He’s been chatting to me about it — something’s set him off. He seems to have a chip on his shoulder about women police inspectors.’

  ‘It’ll be the arrival of that new inspector,’ smiled Alf. ‘Fresh from the special course at the police college. Somebody said it was Christine Pollock; Blaketon thinks it’s a woman who’s coming to Strensford but it’s a chap, Crispin Pollock is his name. He’s due to start this morning.’

  ‘No one’s told Blaketon it’s a feller, then?’ I smiled.

  ‘No, not yet. We thought we’d let him sweat a bit,’ grinned Alf, lighting a cigarette as he took his chair. ‘It’ll be interesting to see the preparations he makes for “Christine” when she makes her first official visit! So you have missed all the news! Strensford’s divisional boundaries have been extended to include Eltering and Ashfordly, which means we are answerable to Strensford’s hierarchy. And we might be doing seaside patrols too! That new inspector’s been brought in to modernize the system, so they say. He’s coming to implement new ideas and procedures, our division’s a sort of testing ground for changes at force level. We’re to be used to see if the new ideas and changed boundaries will work in practice.’

  ‘But Pollock only joined a few years ago!’ I cried. ‘He’s got less service than me!’

  ‘He’s got less service than most of the bloody members of this force,’ grimaced Alf. ‘Five years. He’s still wet behind the ears! He’s only twenty-six years old . . . Blaketon’s old enough to be his father but he’ll be telling Blaketon what to do! He’ll be telling us all what to do . . . I don’t know what the force is coming to, Nick, really I don’t.’

  I left Ashfordly police station with a sense of foreboding. Those of us with a few years’ service to our credit were always conscious of our lack of promotion, but in those days it was normal to be promoted to the rank of sergeant after some twelve or fifteen years in the job. Having reached the exalted heights of being a sergeant, promotion to inspector might follow after a further five or six years — if one had passed the promotion exams. But this Pollock had passed his exams with very high marks, after which he’d spent a year at the police college on a course designed especially for those selected for accelerated promotion. And now he was back . . . as a senior officer at Strensford. And he was to put into action a host of new, and probably very unpopular, changes. I shuddered.

  But in spite of one’s personal opinions and prejudices the job has to go on, and one of the blessings enjoyed by me was that Aidensfield was a fairly remote village. The fact meant it was well away from the constant supervision of senior officers. I was often left alone to get on with my job.

  With a bit of luck and some applied ingenuity I could still work the beat in the way I thought best. At least, I hoped I could! I remembered one old constable who often said, ‘Reforms are all right — so long as they don’t change anything.’ There were times and occasions when one could agree with that sentiment — and this was one of them!

  * * *

  I was mindful of the impending alterations to my mode of policing while going about my routine duties that summer. Working a rural beat as a police constable was a most pleasant means of earning a living, provided one was left alone to perform one’s duties in one’s own style. But when senior officers started to impose their own, often impracticable ideas, the routine quickly lost its appeal. Such an occasion occurred during the abnormally chilly, foggy and wet month of June that year.

  I was patrolling Aidensfield on foot, enjoying the relaxed style of life in the village. I had parked the police van on the green and had spent the morning chatting to the locals, checking the homes of several old folk to see if they needed any help and visiting local businesses during the course of routine crime enquiries. Villains sometimes tried to offload their ill-gotten gains in village stores, for example, and these visits were all part of my routine enquiries. Besides, the sight of a uniformed bobby in a shop did act as a deterrent to shoplifters — and we did have shoplifters in Aidensfield!

  Following these visits, I was walking towards the post office when a harassed-looking young woman ran up to me. In her early thirties, she was a sturdy young woman of medium build and had neat, dark hair cut short. She wore a light plastic raincoat and carried a small umbrella to ward off the persistent drizzle. I recognized her as Mrs Shaw, Joy to her friends, and it was very evident that she was in some distress.

  ‘Oh, Mr Rhea, I’m glad I caught you. It’s our Stephanie, I can’t find her. I’ve looked everywhere . . .’

  ‘Shouldn’t she be at school?’ was my first reaction, knowing the girl to be eight or nine years old.

  ‘Yes, but she never got there . . . they rang me. Oh, I’m so worried . . .’

  ‘Come and sit in the van,’ I said. ‘We can talk there.’

  In the warm shelter of the police minivan she explained how Stephanie had set off for Aidensfield primary school just after 8.30 this morning, her normal time. She’d been carrying a satchel containing some bird books because they were having a lesson about nature later in the day. Mrs Shaw had watched Stephanie walk to the end of the garden where she’d closed the gate behind herself as usual, waved and then hurried off to school. She had been wearing a yellow plastic mac with a hood. Mrs Shaw had then returned to the house to clear away the breakfast things and do her normal household chores.

  The school had telephoned at half past ten to say Stephanie had not arrived. The headmistress, a Miss Blacker, had not been too concerned at first, thinking perhaps that Stephanie had been poorly, but when one of the other children said she’d seen her alone near the war memorial with her satchel, Miss Blacker had begun to experience some concern. The war memorial was not on Stephanie’s direct route to school. A search of the school grounds and buildings had drawn a blank and so she’d called Stephanie’s mother. Mrs Shaw explained how she had searched her own home with its bedrooms and outbuildings before going to her mother’s house. Stephanie often went to visit her grandmother’s cottage, especially after school, where she helped to feed the hens and geese, but granny h
ad not seen her that morning. Joy Shaw added that she had searched all Stephanie’s usual haunts but had not found any trace of the child.

  Among the places she’d visited were the tennis club where Stephanie’s mum often played (Mrs Shaw was secretary of the club), the village hall where she attended a junior youth club, the church hall where she went for her Brownie meetings and various other places in and around Aidensfield including the homes of her school friends. And now, having searched without success and having wept alone, she had found me. Her husband was a lorry driver and he was somewhere on the road in Northumberland well out of contact. Outside, she had put on a brave face but in the privacy of the police van she was weeping quietly to herself, a brave but very worried woman.

  ‘Has she done this before?’ I asked. ‘Played truant, I mean?’

  ‘No, never,’ she said. ‘She likes school, I’ve never had trouble getting her there. Today there was to be a nature lesson, and they were going on a walk beside the river this afternoon if it was fine. She was looking forward to that.’

  ‘Did Mrs Blacker say if any other child was missing? I mean, has she gone off with a playmate and forgotten the time, or what day it is? It can happen!’

  ‘No, I asked. All the others are accounted for.’

  ‘You know she was seen near the war memorial?’ I put to her. ‘Is there any reason why she should go that way?’

  ‘None, I can’t understand that. It’s not on her way to school, I can’t think why she would want to go that way.’

  ‘She never said she was meeting anyone? A friend?’

  ‘No, nothing,’ wept Mrs Shaw.

  The more I questioned Mrs Shaw about her own search for Stephanie, the more evident it was that the child’s disappearance was both a mystery and a matter for concern. All the normal reasons for not attending school — bullying, a dislike of lessons, a dislike or fear of the teacher, inability to cope with reading or writing — had been considered and discounted. Stephanie was a clever child who loved school and who would never disappear like this under normal circumstances. This suggested the circumstances were not normal, which in turn demanded a fully co-ordinated search by professionals.