“I’m Sergeant Bairstow,” said Charlie.
“Mr Woolley,” he said. “Youth Leader. They said it might be burglars.”
“We think so,” and the sergeant outlined the story. Nervously Mr Woolley approached one of the doors and inserted his key. It opened with a slight squeak and he stood back to let us in. I entered, followed by a tired Sergeant Bairstow, while Mr Woolley came a shaky third, putting on the lights. He led us to the office — sure enough, the telephone had been knocked from its stand and was still dangling at the end of its wire. The desk drawer had been forced and all the cash taken, together with other valuables like drink, cigarettes and sweets. It had been a thorough raid.
Mr Woolley sank to the floor and sighed heavily while Bairstow cried, “God! We’ll cop it for this . . . We could have had them. I could have caught them . . .”
I was curious to know how they’d got in and began a tour of the brightly lit place, seeking the point of entry. And I found it. I found a staircase which led from the centre of the club and twisted high towards other floors, four flights in all. Each landing had a tiny window and one of those had been broken; entry had been via this point, and I realised it was impossible to see it from ground level. It opened across a hollow in the roof and was totally invisible from below.
I wondered how they’d reached that point from the boat for there was no drainpipe at that side of the building. They must have been human flies.
The outcome of our faux pas was that the CID were called in. They came to fingerprint the place, including the telephone, which was eventually replaced on its stand. A check by Mr Woolley showed that some £32 had been stolen, in addition to food and drinks worth about £9. I told the detective sergeant about the boat and he smiled, saying, “Crafty sods, eh? Coming in boat? Can you describe it, Nick?”
“Just a small rowing-boat,” I said. I hadn’t noticed its colour or anything else about it except that it was small, perhaps a two-seater. I did remember seeing a small quantity of water in its bottom and told him that.
“We’ll run a check on all boats,” he promised.
And so we adjourned. We searched the town for signs of burglars wandering about, and I checked all the riverside boats to see if I recognised the one they’d used. I didn’t. Finally I went to bed, tired and upset that we’d missed the villains. When I came on duty the following night I found a note from the detective sergeant. It simply said, “Check the Youth Club again — we’re still interested in that boat.”
I wondered if this indicated information that they might return? CID intelligence must have unearthed some reliable gen. I might catch them red-handed this time! Accordingly, I journeyed to Eltering and made it my business to check the Youth Club once more, very, very thoroughly. I tiptoed through the neighbour’s garden as before and once again crept along the riverside wall.
My heart leapt!
It was there. Lying low in the water was the boat in exactly the same position as last night, and my heart was beating so violently that I felt it would disturb the burglars. I then realised that if the burglars were expected, the CID would have arranged a reception party.
They were probably inside too, waiting . . .
I shone my torch on the boat. It was a battered old craft now that I began to examine it more carefully. And that damp patch in the middle . . . it was mud! Just like the surrounding mud of the river bed, now exposed. It had a massive hole in the bottom. It was derelict. It could never float in a million years and couldn’t have sailed anywhere this century!
And high tide was coming in . . .
Even this far inland the river was tidal and with a sinking heart I realised what had happened. In the time we’d been at the Youth Hostel, the water had risen a few inches, sufficient to cover the wrecked boat.
So they hadn’t burgled by boat.
They must have simply climbed over the wall, shinned up a drainpipe and broken in through that lofty hidden window. And it wasn’t a dwelling-house either, so it couldn’t be classed as burglary.
We wrote it down as office-breaking, but the typist misspelt it as officer-creaking. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake?
In very erudite terms the detective sergeant told me to be more careful with my observations in the future and Sergeant Bairstow was instructed to keep a tight eye on local towns and villages at night. I knew the senior ranks weren’t very happy about our detection rate and did not want a repeat of the Youth Club fiasco. Sergeant Bairstow considered it his duty to teach the constables under his wing something of crime prevention techniques. He taught me how to walk in the shadows, to check suspicious vehicles, to note the movements of suspicious people and to record a host of other minutiae, any one of which could be instrumental in detecting a crime.
Charlie Bairstow became very burglar-conscious and persuaded the Crime Prevention Department to play its part. Together we advised shopkeepers and householders about leaving windows ajar, especially those on the ground floor, and we reminded them not to leave newspapers protruding from letterboxes or allow full milk bottles to remain on the doorsteps for days. We described them all as invitations to burglars.
One of Sergeant Bairstow’s pet themes was “keys hanging on string”. If he had a favourite “don’t”, this was it. He would preach the gospel at schools and Women’s Institutes for it was a very common practice by householders to leave the door key hanging on a piece of string behind the letterbox. How easy it is for the burgling gentleman to locate and use; Sergeant Bairstow failed to understand why intelligent people left their keys for burglars in this fashion. Lots did it, and lots got burgled. It was his antagonism to this practice that caused us a slight problem one night.
I was walking down Partridge Hill in Eltering intent on checking an office block at the bottom when I espied Sergeant Bairstow waiting for me. He stood beneath a lamp standard and smiled warmly as I approached.
“All correct, Sergeant,” I assured him.
“You’ve not checked those offices yet?”
“They’re next on my list, Sergeant.”
“Then tell me what you see wrong, Nicholas.”
I checked the door at the entrance and it was locked. All the ground-floor windows were also locked. The place seemed impregnable. Then I recalled his current obsession about keys on string and glanced at the front door. The letterbox was standing open; in fact, it was non-existent and in its place was a large, oblong hole through which letters were pushed. It was high in the door in a vertical position, like a large figure “1” in the centre panel. And behind I could see a piece of string. I smiled.
“This, Sergeant?”
“Well done, lad. Good observation, you know. Yes, now that is a foolish example, isn’t it? We just lift out the string . . .” and he hooked his forefinger behind it and hauled about three feet out. A Yale key dangled from the end. Smiling at the success of this practical tutorial, he said, “and we fit it into the lock.”
Sure enough it worked. The key was clearly shared by all the users of the premises for the door swung open. We went inside to check that burglars had not done likewise. The interior boasted half a dozen locked doors, and upstairs was a similar arrangement. These doors led into small offices rented from the owner of the building, and every office was secure. None the less, he had a valid point. A breaker-in could lurk inside, securely hidden from the outside world, as he carried out a furtive raid on one of the offices.
When we had been right round the internal route we returned to the front door. He paused and said, “We’ll remove it, for safety,” and with no more ado Sergeant Bairstow untied the string from its hook above the letterbox and said, “We’ll fix it to the bottom.”
A large screw protruded at the bottom end of the letterbox gap, and he carefully tied the string to it, saying, “This’ll prevent it being noticed so easily.” He left the key dangling inside the door, but its lifeline was now safely concealed from the outside world. We left, and I slammed the door. The office block was now secure.
I was about three strides away when I realised with horror what we’d done.
“Sergeant,” I called, halting abruptly.
“Yes?”
“They can’t get in now, can they?”
“They can, they know where the key is. The burglars don’t.”
“But they can’t reach it. It’s hanging below the letterbox and it’s impossible to put a hand through that small gap to get hold of the string.”
He stood in silence for a few moments and then said, “Oh, bloody hell!”
We examined the door. Sure enough, the gap was there but it was far too small to accommodate anyone’s fist, let alone a policeman’s. No one could reach that office key. I visualised lots of irate office workers tomorrow morning, all hammering on their door or ringing the Superintendent to complain about interfering policemen. Try as we might we could not reach that string.
“Oh, bloody hell!” he said again. “What can we do?”
“We need a bit of wire,” I suggested. “A stiff bit to hook it out.”
“I know where we can find some.”
He led off at a fast trot and we were soon tramping around the backyard of an electrical contractor’s premises where scrap of all kinds abounded. His torch eventually located a length of thick wire about eighteen inches long. It was pliable enough to bend yet strong enough to remain in any selected shape.
Marching triumphantly through the town with this up his sleeve he and I returned to the door. I now wondered if we were committing a crime of “possessing housebreaking implements by night”. The wording of the offence did qualify it by adding “without lawful excuse”, and I wondered if ours was a lawful excuse? It was too late to worry about our actions because Sergeant Bairstow was already at the door asking me to stand guard in case anyone came. I had to whistle if someone approached.
From my vantage point I saw him shape the piece of wire into a long, straight piece with a large, angled hook at the bottom and a type of handle at the top. Carefully he inserted his improvised key retrieval device into the narrow letterbox. He missed. He cursed. He must have missed several times and he cursed several times before he asked me if I could help as my fingers were probably more nimble than his. I did. I inserted the hooked wire and played around with it inside the door, groping for the elusive length of string. I must admit it took a lot of finding and I missed it several times. Then I felt it. The key moved and rattled lightly against the timbers of the door and I gently lifted my piece of wire. And out it came. Sergeant Bairstow was delighted. He proudly opened the door and we restored the key to its former place.
He wasn’t happy about the key so visibly hanging behind the open letterbox but felt there was little he could do that night. He’d speak to the office workers at a later date.
“Some folks deserve to be burgled,” he said as he strode away.
Chapter Nine
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE — Hamlet
The solitary policeman who patrols the streets and lanes at night regularly finds himself with the time and the opportunity to contemplate. He finds himself thinking about the meaning of life and there are many sage sayings which adequately illustrate his mental attitude during those long, silent hours. The poets have endeavoured to capture the character of night and have produced fine phrases like “ships that pass in the night” or “the shades of night which fell so fast”. Policemen, on the other hand, are much more practical and tend to consider “nights that are lang and mirk” or “long, long wintry nights” or the “longest night in all the year”. If policemen do lean towards poetry, they consider themselves “sentries of the shadowy night” or even “sons of the sable night”.
It may be possible to fill a book with such quotations but police officers are not keen on ratiocinated quotations unless they are created by themselves. Although night-duty does give time for the constable to produce words of wisdom this seldom happens. Instead, the quiet times breed mischief.
One passable form of activity is to play jokes upon one’s colleagues. One advantage of this is that it is possible to use the whole district as a playground, but a distinct disadvantage is that one becomes so involved and excited that one forgets that the public sometimes suffer from a lack of sleep and peer out of their windows. Another important factor is that sergeants, inspectors and even superintendents have a nasty habit of creeping up on the frolicking policemen and this leads to all kinds of disciplinary trouble.
In general, though, the pranks are harmless. One very popular prank was to creep around the police officers’ bicycles, which were parked all night outside the station, and remove their saddles. These were concealed, and the morning witnessed several poor bobbies, tired after their night patrols, cycling home in curious positions, not daring to sit on the dangerously protruding seat-pillars. By the next night the seats had returned. Another trick was to remove one pedal so that the constable had to cycle home by using only one leg. Alternative caps would be switched on the hat rack so that it was a most difficult job to find one’s own headpiece. All good, harmless fun.
In addition to these internal pranks many tricks were played in the streets. It was the misfortune of most new constables to be the victim of such pranks, but at a small station like Aidensfield or Ashfordly it was very unlikely that I would become a victim because our night-duty stints were often solitary affairs. None the less, the possibility always remained, particularly when patrolling the streets of nearby Eltering or Strensford. When working in a strange area one had always to be alert to such possibilities and I bore this in mind when working at those stations.
I remember one poor constable, newly arrived from the City of London. At the tender age of twenty he had only a few months’ service in that Force and had transferred to the north to be near his fiancée. He was given the task of patrolling a beat in Eltering, and had the misfortune to encounter Ben and Ron, the two traffic terrors. Over one of our mid-shift breakfasts they casually mentioned that it was the duty of the town night-shift man to arouse the local keeper of the dogs’ home. They told that constable that the keeper liked to be up at five o’clock in the morning in order to exercise and feed all the inmates. Because he was notoriously bad at getting out of bed, he had left a standing request for the night-duty policemen to rouse him at five. The police had agreed because his father was a magistrate in York.
That is what they told the poor young constable. It was, of course, a load of rubbish. Even worse was their recommended method of rousing him. These merrymaking constables coolly told the youngster that the only way to rouse the sleepy keeper was to kick and hammer loudly on his door for a full five minutes. They carefully told him which door to use.
And so the diligent youngster had gone about this duty. The result was that the entire town was roused by the continued and irate barking of dozens of stray dogs, an action which did arouse the puzzled keeper.
Another prank was perpetrated by a sergeant who dressed as a road sweeper and cleaned the streets in the early hours of the morning. He performed his dramatic role whenever a new constable was patrolling, and it was a comparatively simple operation. He borrowed a barrow and broom from the Highways Depot and, dressed like a tramp, swept the town at 3 am or thereabouts. He did this to test the reaction of the constable concerned. But what does a constable do when he sees a road sweeper at work so early?
Sergeants, I suppose, are just as guilty as their men for playing tricks on one another or upon their subordinates, although it must be said that many of these were done with valid reasons. For example, many night-shifts tolerate one constable who cannot remain awake, especially when on office-duty. Tricks were played on him in an attempt to keep him awake.
One of the funniest of this kind involved my pal Dave at Brantsford, who nodded off in the middle of a long report about an alleged case of careless driving. I had been on night patrol with Sergeant Bairstow and he decided to call at Brantsford Police Office on a
routine visit. Dave was on duty. The lights were on and we made no pretence about being silent. It would be around five o’clock in the morning.
Inside we found Dave fast asleep. He was sitting at the typewriter with his elbow on the desk and his head resting on his upright hand, fast asleep. More amazing, there was a cup of cold tea dangling from his upright hand, the handle hooked upon one of his fingers. The cup was about half full and somehow his hands supported both a cup and his head. The unfinished report was in the typewriter.
“Look at that!” grinned Sergeant Bairstow. “It’s bloody amazing — he’s out like a light.”
“Shall I wake him?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he grinned. And Sergeant Bairstow crept into the office and climbed onto a chair. He carefully opened the face of the wall clock and moved the pointers forward from 5 to 7.30. Then he beckoned me to stand where I was. He joined me.
For a moment he watched the snoozing Dave and his amazing cup of tea, then shouted, “Morning, PC Watts.”
Dave jerked into instant life. His tousled head shook into wakefulness as he struggled to open his eyes and the cup now jolted so much that he poured its contents all over the blotting-pad.
“Sorry,” he apologised. “You surprised me.”
“Is that important?” asked Bairstow, indicating the unfinished report.
“I’m going on holiday, Sergeant, when I finish at six, and wanted it done by then.”
“Six?” a puzzled expression appeared on Bairstow’s face and I realised he was no mean actor.
“Nights,” Dave replied in all innocence. “I’m on nights — I finish at six, Sarge, and we’re going straight off in the car. We’ve a ferry to catch at Hull . . .”
“I thought you were on Early Turn,” said Sergeant Bairstow, frowning and looking at his watch.
This action caused Dave to turn and look at the clock behind him, and he leapt from the chair. “Half past seven!” he cried. “Bloody hell, I should be driving through York now . . .”
CONSTABLE NICK BOX SET 1–5 five feel-good village cozy mysteries Page 37