CONSTABLE IN DISGUISE a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain's best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 9)

by NICHOLAS RHEA

  The housebreakers, to give them their official name, seemed to know when their victims were away from the premises, and a feature of their work was that they seldom caused any damage inside the houses. They rifled the premises for cash and also took valuables that were not easily identifiable, such as radio sets, binoculars, cameras, ornaments of silver and pewter and other disposable things. Cash seemed to be their main objective, however; we felt they only took those other things if cash was not quickly found. In some cases, the means of entry, through small windows high off the ground, such as toilet windows or pantry windows, suggested someone of agility and youthfulness.

  Added to this was the fact that their area of operation indicated they had transport, but in every case no one had seen the villains and no one had reported a suspicious vehicle. It seemed that our crooks were invisible.

  ‘Nick,’ said Gerry Connolly one quiet morning, ‘get the files on those housebreakings and go through all the reports. See if you can find any common factor we might have missed. I feel sure there’s something glaringly obvious that we’ve overlooked. Find a quiet corner somewhere and give them your undivided attention for today.’

  I enjoyed this kind of research and took all the files into the court house, which was not in use. There I began my reading and drew a chart on some lined paper; on that chart, I listed the day, date, time and estates in question, the mode of entry and all the other basic factors of each crime. I did not come to any particular conclusions, although I did discover that the earliest crime had been discovered at 11.30 a.m. and the latest at 4.30 p.m. Most had been committed on a Monday, although others had occurred on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The victims could not be categorised either, because they included pensioners, young people, married couples, single people, rich and poor. A lot of the attacked premises were bungalows but the attacks did include semi-detached houses, terrace houses and detached properties. The majority, however, were on fairly new estates where the residents might not know all their neighbours. There, a stranger was not unusual.

  I decided I would look at similar crimes in the neighbouring market towns too; while I could not obtain as much detail about them from the circulars we received, I knew I could get facts such as the dates and times, a description of the stolen goods and an idea of the kind of premises. If I needed more facts, I could obtain them from the police stations in those towns. As I worked, Gerry Connolly came in to see how I was progressing and brought me a mug of coffee; he looked at my charts and asked if I had come up with anything new, and when I said, ‘No,’ he smiled.

  ‘We’ve tried too. Anyway, keep looking, Nick. There’s nowt happening just now, so you’re as well doing that. Something might click.’ And he left me to my piles of paper and charts.

  As I worked, nothing of note emerged until I listed the towns where the crimes had been committed together with the days when the attacks occurred.

  The odd thing about Ashfordly’s handful of crimes (twenty-one in the past year) was that they had all occurred on a Friday; when I checked those at Brantsford (fifteen in the year), I found they had all been committed on a Wednesday, But that did not apply to Eltering, because different days have been utilised there, and the same applied to the reported crimes at Malton. Saturday had featured prominently in Mahon’s tally, but so had Wednesday and Friday. Eltering’s crimes had been committed on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. There were no such crimes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays in those towns.

  That seemed odd, I felt, but why? Why was it odd?

  I ended that day’s studies without any firm conclusions, and then the following day, Friday, I got a call from Connolly. It was half past three in the afternoon.

  ‘Nick, there’s been a housebreaking in Heather Drive, No. 18. Name of Turnbull. Cash taken. Can you attend? You’ll be on your own.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I was a little nervous but anxious to show that I could investigate this kind of crime.

  No. 18 Heather Drive was a brick-built, semi-detached bungalow on a corner site; it was on a new estate, completed only two years earlier, which occupied a sloping site on the northern edge of the town. I walked to the address and knocked; the door was opened by a solidly built man in his early sixties, and his wife stood close behind.

  ‘Detective Constable Rhea,’ I said, showing my warrant card. ‘You called the office . . .’

  ‘Aye, lad, come in,’ he said warmly. ‘The buggers have taken our holiday savings. Now if Ah’d been here when they got in, Ah’d have skelped ’em for sure.’

  ‘Skelped’ is an old Yorkshire dialect word for ‘hit’. I could well imagine this fellow tackling them and thrashing them for their cheek in invading his home.

  ‘Where did they get in?’ I asked. ‘Will you show me?’

  ‘Pantry window,’ he said, leading me through to the back of the bungalow. Mrs Turnbull followed us, wringing her hands.

  ‘There,’ he said, pointing to the window. It was only eighteen inches wide by two feet tall, but they had pushed up the bottom half from the outside and climbed through. I went outside to have a look and found they had pushed the dustbin from its position near the gate until it was beneath the window. They’d climbed upon it and had squeezed through this tiny space.

  ‘You left the window unlocked?’ I asked.

  ‘Open,’ said Mrs Turnbull. ‘I allus leaves it open an inch or two, for fresh air, you see. It is a larder, you know, young man, and food needs fresh air.’

  ‘It’s sensible to screw it in position, then,’ I said. ‘Put screws through the frame so no one can push it further open. So they got in here, and then where did they go?’

  ‘Into the parlour,’ said Mr Turnbull, leading the way.

  The parlour is what others might call the lounge. I followed the couple in. On the mantelshelf was a white vase.

  ‘I had £85 in there,’ said Mrs Turnbull. ‘It’s all gone.’

  ‘In notes, was it?’ I asked.

  ‘Ten-bob notes and pound notes,’ she said, ‘saved up from my pension. We were going to go to Brighton, me and Lawrie.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I was genuinely sorry for them in their loss, and asked if anything else had been touched, or whether any other room appeared to have been searched.

  None had, but I checked each one just in case.

  ‘Now,’ I said, with my notebook open, for I was recording all the necessary details, ‘what about the other places you’ve got money hidden? People always hide money all over the house, and the burglars know exactly where to look. There’s no hiding place in this house that they would not find — and find easily,’ I stressed. Pensioners in particular hide their spare cash instead of banking it, and it is such a simple matter for a thief to find it. I saw the looks in their eyes, and Mr Turnbull said, ‘You go and look, Norma, while I pour this lad a cup of tea.’

  I was not to be privy to their secret hiding places, but as I sipped tea in the kitchen, Mrs Turnbull returned smiling. ‘He’s nivver found any of it!’ she beamed proudly. I wondered if this meant their return had disturbed the intruder, for it was odd if the intruder had not made a more thorough search of the house. I asked them to show me all around, just in case he was hiding in a wardrobe or in the loft — that was not unknown, even with a policeman in the house. But he’d gone — he’d let himself out of the front door by unlocking the Yale.

  I asked if they had touched anything before ringing the police, and Mrs Turnbull said she’d ‘nobbut done a bit o’ dusting’ to tidy the place before my arrival!

  ‘You might have destroyed any fingerprints or other evidence,’ I tried to explain. ‘I’ll get our fingerprints people to come and check the house — leave the pantry window.’

  ‘He might get in again!’ she snapped.

  ‘They’ll be here later today,’ I said. ‘And then you can secure that window — and all the others. And they’ll want to examine the vase where you had the cash, and the front door — and anything else he might have touch
ed.’

  ‘She allus cleans up afore we have visitors,’ said Mr Turnbull. ‘She’ll hoover again afore your fingerprint fellers get here . . .’

  ‘She’d better not!’ I shook my finger at the old lady. ‘Now, remember, Mrs Turnbull, don’t touch anything else, not until they’ve done their work. It is very important that we get every scrap of evidence they might have left behind.’

  ‘Then you’ll want this!’ she opened the door of the kitchen cabinet and showed me a small block of blue chalk. It was the type used by billiards and snooker-players to chalk the tips of their cues. ‘Now if I hadn’t hoovered before you came, I’d not have found that,’ she said in some sort of triumph.

  ‘Where was it?’ I asked.

  ‘Under t’sofa,’ she beamed. ‘Now it’s not mine and it’s not our Lawrie’s, and it wasn’t there when I hoovered up yesterday, and it wasn’t there when I hoovered up this morning before we went off to Ashfordly market. So he must have dropped it.’

  Her logic was impeccable, so I pocketed the chalk. It could be relevant. The snag was it was one of millions of such cubes — it would prove very little even if we found the owner. But it was of value. Every clue left at the scene of a crime is of some value, however limited.

  I took particulars of all the necessary details, said we would investigate the crime and reassured them that our fingerprint experts would arrive later in the day. And then, as I walked back to the police station, I realised that Mrs Turnbull had said something highly significant.

  After completing my crime report, I went to the files I’d been using the day before. Market day! Market day in Ashfordly was a Friday — and its recent housebreakings had been committed on Fridays; market day in Brantsford was a Wednesday, and its breakings were on Wednesdays. That pattern did not fit Eltering or Malton — but Eltering’s market day was Monday, and a lot of its breakings had been on Mondays, while many of Malton’s had been Saturdays — its market day. And then I realised that Eltering’s and Malton’s other breakings had been committed during market days at Ashfordly and Brantsford.

  So either the villains were stopping off at Eltering and Malton on their way home to commit further crimes or they had found a way of knowing when folks were out of their homes, attending those other markets . . .

  I was excited about this and was making notes when Gerry Connolly came in.

  ‘Well, Nick, how did it go?’

  I explained what had happened at the Turnbulls’ home and before I could tell him about the cue chalk, he asked a few pertinent questions, then he said, ‘Well, while you were out, there was a development. A minor one, but it could be important. I’ve been talking to D/S Miller at Scarborough; they’ve got a pair of suspects for us, names of two local lads who’ve been selling stuff to second-hand dealers and junk shops in Scarborough. They’ve a van which they rig up to look like a window-cleaner’s vehicle with a ladder on top, and they’ve been spending freely lately — but not cleaning many windows. Miller says they spend their days in the snooker hall. I thought we might give them an unannounced call.’

  ‘Then this will interest you,’ I said, picking up the chalk which I had now placed in an envelope, labelled with the crime report number.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ he beamed. ‘It’s amazing how things come together . . . right, tomorrow then? You and I will go to Scarborough.’

  ‘It’s a Saturday,’ I said. ‘They might come out to Malton to do a job.’

  ‘Then I’ll give Malton police their vehicle number and we can keep our eyes open for them. But we’ll do that snooker hall anyway, in the evening.’

  And so we did. There was no reported housebreaking in Malton that Saturday, and we arrived at the snooker hall at six o’clock.

  Gerry booked a table and we had a game of snooker; he thrashed me soundly and I said, ‘You’ve played this game before!’

  ‘Once or twice,’ he smiled. ‘Ah, these are our men,’ and two men in their early twenties came to one of the tables. Before they began to play, Connolly went across.

  ‘Got a bit of chalk I can borrow, lads?’ he asked, holding his cue.

  ‘Sure, mate,’ and one of them pulled a piece from his pocket. It bore the same blue paper covering as the one I’d recovered at the Turnbulls’.

  ‘You are Terry Leedham and Graham Scott,’ he smiled charmingly at them.

  ‘So what if we are?’ responded Leedham.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Connolly from Eltering, and this is D/PC Rhea. We’re investigating a series of housebreakings in the area and think you lads might help us with our enquiries. In fact, we’ve brought some of your chalk back — you left it in one of the houses you raided.’

  And he produced my bit of chalk, still in its envelope marked officially with the crime reference. It was clear from the expressions on their faces that they were the guilty parties, but every police officer knows that knowledge of guilt is not proof of guilt. I could see that they wondered how much we really knew. In fact, we knew nothing that would prove a case against them — we had no fingerprints, nothing.

  It was just supposition and so we needed a cough, as the CID term an admission.

  ‘We know you’re the culprits,’ said Connolly, ‘and we can prove it . . .’

  They looked at each other in amazement at this sudden confrontation, then Scott said, ‘You’ll get nowt from us, mate. No coughs, no admissions, you’ll have to prove your case all the way, every inch . . .’

  ‘You are sporting lads,’ he smiled again. ‘You like a game of snooker?’

  ‘Yeh, course we do. We practically live ’ere.’

  ‘I’ll take the pair of you on,’ offered Connolly. ‘Me against the two of you. If I win, you admit those crimes, you give us a cough to save us proving the case, If you win, you don’t need to give us a cough — but we’ll go off and prove you’ve done those jobs — and mebbe lots more.’

  ‘Gerraway, that’s stupid!’ laughed Scott.

  ‘No,’ said Leedham. ‘We can beat a cop any day, Graham; that’ll get him off our backs.’

  I could see that Leedham was anxious to take on this challenge, and then, as I glanced around the walls of the hall, I knew why. He was a club champion, a winner of several trophies. I tried to warn Connolly but was too late because he said, ‘Right. It’s on, is it?’

  ‘Best of three frames?’ chuckled Leedham. ‘Tell you what, this is the easiest interrogation I’ve ever had . . .’

  Scott was not so willing, but he could not let his partner down and so the game was on, with Gerry Connolly playing each in turn, their scores counting as one man’s. I acted as marker. It is not necessary to go into the details of that game, except to say that Gerry Connolly trounced them. He won the first two games and insisted they play the third — which he also won.

  ‘Right, lads, time to cough those jobs, eh?’ he said.

  And to my surprise, Leedham agreed. He sat down with Connolly and admitted a string of housebreakings, with Connolly showing him a list of outstanding ones in Malton, Eltering, Ashfordly and Brantsford. Scott joined in too — he had no alternative. It was a most surprising gesture by these two criminals.

  ‘What made you make that weird offer?’ I put to Connolly in the car after the pair had been bailed at Scarborough Police Station.

  ‘I was relying on a bit of gen I got from the local lads,’ he said. ‘They said Leedham was a superb snooker-player, a real talent, but he couldn’t afford to go professional. He wasn’t in work, so he couldn’t pay his way in most amateur games. He took to crime to help him continue playing — and they say he’s the most honest of sportsmen, he’ll never cheat in a game. A curious mixture — so I issued that challenge.’

  ‘You could have lost,’ I said.

  ‘I could,’ he smiled, ‘But I didn’t.’

  I was to learn soon afterwards that Gerry Connolly had been the National Police Snooker Champion for five successive years and runner-up on no fewer than three other occasions. He’d also won many conte
sts outside the police service.

  (.Author’s note: Some seventeen years after this incident, I found myself breakfasting at a police training centre with the then Director of Public Prosecutions. I told him of this strange case and asked him whether, in his opinion, such a confession would be admissible in court had it been challenged by the defence. He expressed an opinion that it would be admissible because it had been freely given without any duress.)

  If the actions of Terry Leedham were surprising, those of a lady, the victim of a housebreaking, were touching. She rang the police station to report the theft, for someone had sneaked into her home during the morning and had stolen several items. I was sent to investigate.

  ‘Well, Mrs Harland,’ I said as she showed me into her parlour, ‘what can you tell me?’

  ‘Ah nobbut popped out for a minute.’ She was a lady in her sixties, the widow of a retired farmer. ‘Round to t’corner shop for some flour and lard. Ah mean, Mr Rhea, up on t’moors, there’s neea need ti lock doors or owt, is there, and folks nivver come pinching.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I agreed. ‘But this is a town, you know, and you should lock your doors, even if you’re out only for a moment or two. Now, what’s been taken?’

  ‘My housekeeping. I keep it in yon box on t’mantelshelf. Nobbut £8 and a few coppers. A pair o’ brass candlesticks from t’piano top, a silver mug that my dad left me when he died, and three black cats, ebony they are. Now, they’re t’worst loss, Mr Rhea, a family heirloom, they are, very old. They were my grandmother’s; she worked for Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace, as a cook, and the Queen gave her those cats. They’ve come right down through t’family, daughter by daughter. Not worth a lot, mind, but, well, I’m right saddened about them being taken.’