It was while entertaining such thoughts and concern about the future of the village constable that I was on patrol in Ashfordly one autumn morning in 1966. I was standing beside a telephone kiosk, making a point there in case the office wished to contact me (even though I had a radio in the van!), when I noticed the rangy figure of Detective Sergeant Gerry Connolly, who was heading towards me with strong, purposeful strides.
He was the man in charge of the CID at Eltering. Ashfordly and Aidensfield were within his area of responsibility. He was a pleasant man in his early forties who sported a mop of thick fair hair over a face that was as pink and fresh as a child’s. Clad in brown brogue shoes, a Harris tweed jacket and cavalry twill trousers, he looked every inch a countryman, which indeed he was. He bred golden retrievers and seemed to be friendly with everyone.
Of course, he wore a brown trilby hat. It was similar to those worn by men who resort to racecourses; I have often wondered why so many male racegoers wear brown trilby hats. There is a sea of them at any racecourse, where they are a group-identifying feature, in the form of mass adornment or professional lids. Gerry had one too, and I do know he liked attending the races, whether on duty or off.
Gerry Connolly addressed everyone by their Christian names, even those of higher rank than himself, the only exceptions being the chief constable and the deputy chief constable. I knew that his small staff enjoyed working with him; it comprised Detective Constable Paul Wharton, who played bowls and kept tropical fish, and Detective Constable Ian Shackleton, who liked beer, haddock-and-chips and trout fishing. The trio made a good, effective and popular team.
‘Morning, Nick,’ he beamed as he came to a halt at my side. ‘It’s a pleasant day to be patrolling this pretty place.’
‘And what brings the might of the sub-divisional CID to Ashfordly?’ I asked with interest. ‘Have we a crime in town?’
‘Not unless you know something I don’t,’ he returned. ‘No, we’ve been having a few raids on the local Co-ops. A team is breaking in through the back windows of the storerooms and nicking thousands of fags each time. Six or seven Co-ops have been raided in the county since the summer. I’ve just been for words with your local manager; I’ve tried to persuade him to have bars fitted to all his back windows and better locks fitted on the doors.’
‘We’ve been telling him that for months,’ I said. ‘We read about the raids in our circulars, but he seemed to think it could never happen to his shop.’
‘I’m going round all those that haven’t been hit,’ he said. ‘I reckon he’s got the message now; he says it’s a decision which has to be made by higher authority, and they’re a bit tight with their budgets for improvements and alterations to premises. They’re not too concerned about the thefts because the insurance will cover the losses.’
‘The poor old insurance companies, they do fork out for a lot of carelessness, don’t they?’
‘Some are tightening up their conditions now, Nick; they insist on proper safeguards.’
We chattered awhile about professional matters and personal affairs, and then, quite unexpectedly, he said, ‘Look, Nick, you’re about due for a spell as an Aide, aren’t you?’
‘I’d enjoy that,’ I said, for it was true.
‘Right, leave it with me,’ he beamed. ‘I’ll submit your name. It’ll take a few weeks to be processed and considered, but I reckon, if I ask for you, they’ll approve.’
I returned home feeling very pleased at this promise and explained to my wife that CID duties would entail long hours albeit with no night shifts. One difference would be that I should be expected to spend my evenings at work, visiting the pubs and clubs in the area to quaff pints with the best and the worst elements of society. I would receive a small detective allowance to help defray such expenses, but it would not cover the actual cost. Mary was happy for me and we both knew that I would enjoy this kind of work.
And so it was that in the early summer of the following year I received a formal note from the superintendent to say that I was to be seconded to the CID at Eltering as an Aide for a period of six months.
On the appointed date, therefore, I dressed in a sports jacket, flannels and comfortable shoes, kissed Mary and our four infants farewell and set out for Eltering. I was due to start work at 9 a.m. that Monday but had no idea when that first day’s duties would finish. I would be working some very long days during the next six months.
Mary would have to suffer some extended periods alone with our little family, and for me it would be an expensive time.
I did ponder the moral issues of whether I should be spending necessary cash in the pursuit of villains when, all the time, the growing family needed it. But I came to regard my forthcoming period of high expenditure as an investment, believing that, if I did well in my new task, I might get promoted.
But as I drove to Eltering that morning, I decided I would not spend my money on one certain item — I would not buy a trilby hat.
Chapter 2
The two divinest things this world has got,
A lovely woman in a rural spot!
JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT, 1784—1859
MY FIRST MORNING IN the bustling CID office at Eltering Police Station was spent among a pile of old books, because my three new colleagues were each telephoning all over the place, writing reports, interviewing callers and liaising with the uniform duty inspector on current criminal matters within the sub-division. There seemed to be an inordinate amount of frantic activity, but that is often the impression gained when entering the sanctum of another; people always appear to be so busy, and they generally have little time for the newcomer. I simply sat at the end of a desk and observed it all.
I heard them discussing a spate of local motor-car thefts and, of much more interest, a series of confidence tricks on the landlords of local inns.
That latter series was based on the simple premise that we all like to get summat for nowt — in this case, the temptation was oceans of whisky at cut price. It was being offered by the con men for cash in advance, with a free bottle as a symbol of good faith. Those landlords with tied houses were not allowed to sell their own selections of beer or spirits, and so this system offered them a few bottles which they could sell without the brewery’s knowledge. This in turn would produce cash sales, so offering the dream of tax-free and accounts-free money for themselves from unauthorised and surreptitious sales. A nice way of earning a bit of pocket money.
As a result, when the trickster called with his offer of whisky at a bargain price, the very favourable terms involving cash in advance, many landlords saw it as a means of earning a quick tax-free profit. They gave cash to the con man, enough to buy several crates, but got one bottle of whisky. They never saw their money again nor any of the other promised bottles. Some had ordered dozens and laid out hundreds of pounds.
Members of the uniform branch were instructed to visit all the local pubs to warn landlords of this ploy, but in some instances their warning was too late. The lure of easy cash had cost them dear.
The three detectives had no time to explain things that morning, and I entertained myself by browsing through old records. Boring as they were, the battered books were of some value. There was a photograph album of local criminals, some of whom must have been dead for at least half a century; it was an ancient volume whose original entries were in splendid copperplate writing and whose contents were a list of MOs of local criminals — an MO being, in criminal jargon, a ‘method of operation’, from the Latin modus operandi.
MOs were an important means of identifying the work of a criminal — one local housebreaker, for example, always broke in through rear kitchen windows of the houses he attacked. He always smashed the glass by sticking treacle and brown paper over it, then hit it with a brick. This muffled the noise of the breaking glass and held most of the pieces together so he could quickly and easily dispose of them. We always recognised his method of operation.
A more modern book contained details of th
ose awful tricksters who wheedled cash out of pensioners and simple folk by their smooth-tongued lies. In North Yorkshire, the dialect term for such evil operators is ‘slape-tongued varmints’ — ‘slippery-tongued vermin’. ‘Slape’ is a dialect word for ‘slippery’, and there are ‘slape-faced ’uns’ too (people with untrustworthy faces).
So far as the slape-tongued varmints were concerned, it was the laying or repairing of drives to houses and farms and the repairing of roofs which were a popular form of deception at that time. It worked like this — a team of rogues would arrive unannounced and offer to tarmac a drive to a house or farm and then charge an abortive sum for their shoddy work. Another device was to inform pensioners that, while driving past their home, they had noticed that the chimney-stack was on the point of collapse or that a hole had developed in the roof. Having thus alarmed the old folks, the villains offered to repair it immediately out of the kindness of their hearts (!). They would then ask for cash in advance, ‘to buy the materials’, or they would fix the defect (which often did not exist) for a fee which was well above normal.
They would either disappear with the advanced cash or do the job and then terrify the pensioners into paying a ridiculously high fee. Every one of us wanted to catch these scoundrels, and so those accounts of their trickery were very closely studied. A lot of these villains came from Leeds, and so the crimes became known as the work of ‘the Leeds Repairers’.
Sadly, in most cases, it was difficult getting a clear story or a description of the varmints from the pensioners. Even if we did get a coherent story and identified the slape-tongued varmints, it was difficult proving they had committed a crime rather than an act which was merely an unsatisfactory business transaction. There were many times when their activities did not come within the province of the police or the scope of the criminal law. It often depended upon the precise wording they used at the time of committing their evil deeds. Hoping to arrest some of them or their ilk, I swotted up lists of outstanding crimes, some going back ten or twelve years without being solved.
I was then shown the finer points of compiling a crime report and how to complete the necessary statistical forms that accompanied such a report. It was all very baffling, and there seemed to be so much paperwork to complete, but I knew it would all become clearer when I had to record my first real crime as an Aide. And that baptism occurred that very same afternoon.
It was three o’clock and I was in the office with D/PC Ian Shackleton. He was explaining the problems of investigating the crime of shop-breaking. He was highlighting the fact that some shop-owners or their managers claimed that items had been stolen because they needed to cover up deficiencies in the stock which were of their own making, through either carelessness or dishonesty. There were some who set fire to their premises in order to claim from their insurance companies, and I was rapidly realising that genuinely honest people seemed to be somewhat rare members of the community, especially in towns. I quickly realised why the CID trusted no one.
Shackleton explained that, when investigating a crime, we had to have a very, very open mind indeed and, difficult though it was to accept, we had to be suspicious of everyone, even the supposed victims. That sounds terrible on paper, but it is a fact of police life — some people do claim to be the victims of crime to cover their own crimes and deficiencies, and sometimes they do so in an attempt to gain revenge upon others. Police officers are taught to be very much aware of this tendency, especially when dealing with reports of rape or indecent assault by some women. We were mindful of Francis Bacon’s works, ‘Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.’
In the police service, one soon learns that, in the world of criminal investigation especially, nothing must be taken for granted. The possibility of deviousness by members of the general public, particularly those with deep secrets of their own, must never be ignored or overlooked.
It was during this earnest and valuable talk with Shackleton that a call came through. Eltering Police Station’s duty constable, PC John Rogers, came into the CID office from the enquiry counter. He was a calm individual; having done his job for years nothing surprised him or troubled him. In his quiet way, he had received calls about matters which would panic the most calm, terrify the fearless and horrify the sensitive. But John was unflappable, and he sailed through it all with characteristic equanimity.
‘Ian,’ he addressed Shackleton, ‘we’ve a funny call just come in. A body’s been found at Lover’s Leap. It’s a male. He’s dead. He’s been attacked, by all accounts. I’ve sent Echo Three Seven to the scene to investigate.’
‘Genuine corpse, is it?’ asked Shackleton.
‘It could be a load of rubbish, of course, a false alarm probably with good intent. It’ll be a tramp or a drunk sleeping in the sunshine; it’s a tourist area.’
Rogers had received many reports of this kind, and I recalled one of my own at Aidensfield. A motorist had reported a corpse lying on the side of a country lane, having apparently been knocked down by a hit-and-run car. When I went to investigate, I found a happy tramp fast asleep with his legs sticking out of the grass into the carriageway. I found it amazing that his legs had not been broken by passing vehicles, for he said he often lay down in this manner. It seems he loved to sleep on the grassy lanes of England. Such calls about corpses were all treated with a little caution, but all had to be dealt with.
‘Where’s Lover’s Leap?’ Ian asked.
‘I can take you there. It’s on my beat,’ I said, recalling an incident involving a naked couple in a van who managed to set fire to the moor at that point.
‘Right, you’d better come with me, Nick,’ said Shackleton, lifting his jacket from behind the door. ‘John, if Gerry Connolly comes in, tell him where we are and what it’s all about. Who found the supposed body, by the way?’
‘A hiker. He rang in from a kiosk. He’s waiting to show Echo Three Seven where it is. They’re rendezvousing at the car park nearby — there’s a picnic site there.’
And so we jumped into the CID car, a small red Ford Anglia, and headed for the splendour of the North York Moors. There were no blue lights to flash during this trip, no sirens to sound and no uniforms to indicate the importance of this journey. To all intents and purposes, we were just two men in a little car going about our routine business.
I showed Ian the route to Lover’s Leap. It is a splendid beauty spot with stunning views across the surrounding moors and countryside. From a small plateau, the ground falls steeply away down a heather and bracken-covered hillside into a ravine. There are young pines and silver birches, and at the bottom of the ravine is a moorland stream of crystal clarity and icy coolness. The views embrace scores of scenic square miles. You can see the radomes of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning Station at Fylingdales, with the North Sea in the background, and in the valleys are tiny villages with church spires and cottages huddled beside streams or clinging to the steep-sided dales. It is a beautiful place and, as the name suggests, very popular with courting couples. They come at night, like moths flying towards a bright light, but this was a mid-afternoon in the early summer.
We arrived within forty minutes, and I could see the little police car, Echo Three Seven, waiting for us; two other cars occupied the parking area. The driver of Echo Three Seven, PC Steve Forman was standing beside it talking to a well-dressed man and to another in hiking gear. We halted, parked and walked towards them. Apart from this little party and the two cars, the picnic area was deserted.
Shackleton took control.
Forman told a simple tale. ‘This is Stuart Finch,’ he introduced the hiker. ‘He was walking up the side of this hill, and when he was a few yards from the edge of the car park, he saw the man lying in the bracken. He spoke to him, got no reply, then touched him.’ Finch nodded his agreement as Forman continued: ‘He thought the man was dead, and so he rang us, and he had the sense to ring for a doctor.’
‘
Good thinking, Mr Finch,’ said Shackleton. ‘Well done.’
‘And I’m Doctor Gregson from Malton,’ the smart man said. ‘I’ve had a look at the man. He is dead. I’ll confirm that, but I cannot certify the cause of death.’
‘How long’s he been dead, Doctor? Any idea?’ asked Ian.
‘Not long,’ said Gregson. ‘A couple of hours maybe. He’s still fresh, no rigor mortis. I can’t be more specific than that.’
‘Any views on the cause then?’
‘I didn’t examine the body for marks — I thought I’d leave that to your experts — but it has all the appearances of a heart attack. The odd thing is that his clothes are in disarray, and that’s a puzzle. Had his clothes been correctly worn, I’d have said it was nothing more than a heart attack, that he collapsed and died while walking here, although you appreciate I cannot certify that without knowing the casualty’s medical history.’
There being no time like the present, Ian asked me to take a brief statement from the doctor before he left; he and the hiker, guided by PC Forman, went to examine the body.
I wrote the brief account of the doctor’s findings in my pocket-book, and he signed it. I allowed Doctor Gregson to leave in his Rover and went to join the others at the corpse.
They were standing near the body when I arrived. I noticed a patch of smooth grass on a small, flat plateau in this sea of tall bracken; until one arrived at the patch of grass, it was impossible to see the body, so high and thick was the surrounding bracken. Finch had struck through the bracken to gain access to the car park and had found the dead man. It was almost pure luck that he had come by this route, for there was no formal footpath. Ian had quizzed him closely about his discovery and felt no suspicion could be attached to Finch.
CONSTABLE IN DISGUISE a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain's best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 9) Page 2