by Ray Timms
Chapter 10
Point of fact, Sean and Carl hadn’t driven off. They were in exactly the same spot Art had left them over an hour ago. The removal lorry when it went to pull away got stuck in the soft verge. Sean's frantic revving of the engine achieved nothing more than to dig the wheels in even deeper.
Carl, Robbie and Daniel pushing at the back of the truck, getting covered in mud couldn’t shift it.
On the self same road, five hours into an eight-hour shift, Sergeant Mike Trowers and female PC Lesley Alsop, were bored. The only thing they' had to do all morning was to take a witness statement from the driver of a Nissan Micra who had filed a complaint after he was cut up on the M5 by what he claimed to be: “A hostile convoy of vehicles, hell-bent on overtaking me. The buggers almost saw me and my wife Edith in the ditch.”
‘And this convoy was: a removal lorry - a very badly rusted white Ford Escort van and a White Transit van?’
Trowers had put this down in his notebook and then assured the old couple he would try and find the culprits and then give them a good ticking off. .
‘Hey looks what’s up ahead sarge’ Lesley Alsop said and pointed through the windscreen.
Four males were trying to push a removal lorry out of a trench. Its back wheels spewing out wet mud was splattering the men doing the pushing.
‘Bloody hell! ‘ Trowers had a thing about lorry drivers that ignored the Soft Verge warning signs. He and Alsop would now have to sit around for hours and wait for a tow truck to arrive and pull it out.
‘Jesus, don’t these drivers ever read the bloody signs,’ Trowers said pulling over behind them, his blue lights flashing. 'I bet he's overloaded.'
PC Trowers had his wife to think of... and his police pension just eighteen months off. Abigail, that’s his wife, was still in shock after her husband had got stabbed, last year by a wife beater. She didn’t want to him to go back to work, she told him, and ‘you should do what all them other buggers do, milk your sick leave and then go for early retirement.' He told her, 'Abi, I can't do that. It's not me you know.' Abi, said, 'well I don’t want you going back to work, and getting killed.' He said, 'listen, I will avoid all the Saturday night pub fracas, steer clear of the drunks and the wife-beaters, and leave all that stuff to the young Turks on the job, ok?' Finally he got her to calm down when he said he would move over to traffic division, which is where he was now. Working Traffic, pulling over motorists, he'd seen a few nasty things on the road but mostly it was boring as hell. As long as he got through each shift without getting hurt Abigail was happy. She had big plans for them both. They were selling up and emigrating to Montreal, Canada where her sister and her mother now lived. All he wanted now was to cruise through to the day he had his retirement do, and then go home and never have to wear a uniform again.
‘Look at the state of those jokers,’ said Trowers pointing to the men covered in mud. 'I hope I don’t have to arrest them and take them in my car, I’d have to clean it out.'
When Sean, leaning his head out the drivers window saw the cop car pull up he took his foot off the accelerator and switched off the engine.
Behind the lorry, Lenny, Daniel, Robbie and Carl, caked in mud, hadn’t noticed the arrival of a cop car. They wondered why Sean had turned the engine off.
Robbie was the first to straighten up, having spotted the two cops getting out their car. ‘Cops!’ he said and prodded Daniel who was still pushing a lorry that had its handbrake on.
Wiping their muddy hands on their clothes the lorry pushers went around the truck and gathered at Sean’s window.
Sean watched the male and the female copper pull on their caps.
‘Let me do the talking.’ Said Sean out side of his mouth.
‘Hello chaps,' said Sergeant Trowers. 'Got ourselves in a spot of bother have we?’
‘Not really,’ Sean answered genially. ‘We were just about to drive off, we stopped for a break... didn’t we?'
Following Sean's instructions the others nodded, but said nothing. Carl faked a yawn, Daniel made out he needed to stretch his arms and Lenny lit a cigarette.
As if he was taking this rubbish story in, Trowers nodded. “Really! Just taking a break were you? Just stretching your legs were you? Have you any idea what you look like?'
The four looked at each other and then fell about laughing.
‘Right. Safety-First procedures. For a start,’ Trowers said walking to an open stretch of ground off the road, ‘Let’s be having you all over here. I don’t want any of you getting hit by a car.’
Sergeant Trowers saw the lorry driver hadn’t got out of his cab. 'Oi, you, get down out of the cab. I want you over here with the others.'
Trowers shook his head when the lorry driver threw out a crutch and then hopped out with his leg in plaster. He waited for him to hobble over.
With them all now safely assembled on the grass verge Trowers took out his notebook.
‘Right. Listen to me you lot, and don’t give me any crap, that lorry,' Trowers pointed. 'I think is way over its legal weight limit, which is why I am calling a tow truck and having it taken to a public weigh bridge.' Turning to PC Alsop he said, 'Lesley get on the radio and have central send a tow truck out ASAP.'
Resuming his interrogation of the muddied men Trowers said. 'Now, which of you owns this vehicle?’
Sean raised his hand.
‘And you have been driving this vehicle with a broken leg!’
Sean said. ‘Yeah. I can drive fine. Is there a law saying someone with a broken leg can’t drive?' The remark wasn’t intended to provoke the copper and Trowers didn’t take it that way.
‘Truthfully, I don’t know, but quite possibly, I could do you for not having the vehicle under proper control.'
'Ah, said Sean, 'but that would be difficult to prove.'
Trowers thought about that. The driver might have a point. 'That’s neither here nor there. I am more concerned about the fact this lorry is sitting low on its axles and I rather suspect when I get you to open the back doors we shall find out why.'
The female cop came back. 'Dispatch reckons the tow truck could be up to an hour.'
'Terrific,' said Trowers. He pointed at the rusted Ford Escort van and said, 'Alsop, find out which of these characters was driving that heap of rust and take them over to it and check it over.'
Carl raised his hand. 'Sir, I was driving it. I only got it this morning. It was registered to my Uncle Art, who said I could have it and he signed it over to me.'
‘Name?’
‘Carl Blakely’’
‘Well Carl Blakely, I want you to go with Officer Alsop over to your van. The officer is going to see how many traffic offences you might have made. The rest of you don’t move. I want names, and I want addresses, and I want no trouble… we clear on that?’ He looked straight at Sean. ‘Lets start with you Captain Hook?’
‘Sir…’ Daniel interrupted with a raised finger. ‘I believe Captain Hook had lost his hand! Did you mean, Captain Ahab in Moby Dick? He lost a leg?’
‘I’m watching you sonny.’ Said Trowers pointing his pen in Daniel’s face. 'Don’t get smart with me.’
Lesley went off with the van driver. She sensed he was hiding something the way he was in no particular hurry. The first thing she did was peer through the murky windows in the back doors.
Trowers was interrupted by a shout from his female partner.
‘Hey Sarge,' she called out, 'There’s a vicious looking dog in the back of this van. I am not opening the door. You had you better come and deal with this.'
He turned to look over at Alsop who was now inspecting the wood and wire cage tied to the roof rack.
'And I can hear animals moving about in this cage on the roof rack.’
Trowers looked round at the faces doing their best to look angelic.
‘That will be Solomon, our dog’. Daniel said. ‘He
’s very friendly. He wont bite, and neither will the two Guinea pigs who are in the cage.’
Looking across to his colleague, Trowers yelled back. ‘Don’t worry about that, just check the vehicle for defects, check his license, and if hasn’t got it with him, hand him out a producer.’
‘What’s a producer?’ Carl asked the female cop.
By way of an explanation Lesley handed the van driver the slip of paper she had been writing on.
‘You have one week to produce your vehicle documents. You can do this at any police station. You must produce your driving license, a current MOT certificate, and your Insurance certificate. Alsop looked directly at Carl. ‘Is that going to be a problem?’
‘Well, no. I don’t think so, only I just took it on this morning, off my uncle Art.'
‘And is this Uncle Art, one of those characters standing over there?' Lesley pointed to the other males talking with Sergeant Trowers.
‘Er, no,' Carl said. 'Uncle Art said that his wife had gone missing so he had to run off.'
'When you say missing, Lesley said, thinking murder. ‘What do you mean by missing?'
'All I know is she disappeared. Art said he thought she was taken by aliens.'
'Did he indeed?' Lesley had always imagined, what with her being a female, she had better intuitive powers than her male counterparts. She wasn’t always right, but she thought she did pretty good at sniffing out crime. The guys in the nick had a name for her: "Spaniel." Lesley wasn’t to know she earned this moniker because of how she wore her hair, messy like.
Carl said. 'You wont be able to talk to him because he had to rush off to look for her. He is driving a Transit van. But I don’t think that belongs to him either.'
‘Wait here.’ Alsop snapped and walked away.
Alsop caught her sergeant’s attention and with a sideways tilt of her head indicated she wanted to take him aside for a quiet word.
‘Sarge, there may be a missing female! This could be a murder investigation!’
Trowers stiffened and looked back at the huddle of males twenty feet away. ‘What makes you say that Alsop?’
‘The one over there,’ Alsop pointed to Carl. ‘He said the guy who was running this show, his uncle Art. Apparently, his wife has gone missing.’
Trowers felt the scar on his chest twinge. A wife beater!
Mike Trowers looked hard at his partner who had led him down a few of these garden paths before. He also knew she had the box entire box set of Starsky and Hutch. He thought of his wife, Abigail and their retirement plans. He groaned. If Alsop was right, and a woman had been murdered, and he didn’t act on her suspicions, he might just kiss goodbye to his pension.