‘Hello,’ I said. ‘And who are you?’
‘Janice,’ she said, sucking the lolly without any show of concern.
‘And where do you live?’
‘Number 42 Tayforth Street.’
‘Which town is that?’ I continued.
‘Don’t know,’ she told me disarmingly.
‘And where did you lose your mummy and daddy?’ I said.
‘I didn’t lose them,’ she sucked happily. ‘I didn’t have them.’
‘You didn’t have them?’ I puzzled. ‘What do you mean, Janice?’
‘They never came. I came by myself.’
I halted in my questioning and now realized why she had been so prominent during my initial sighting of her. She had been walking alone; she had not been with anyone, not holding hands or being bustled along by anxious parents. She’d simply attached herself to some adults and children and had followed them . . . I could see it all now. It had meant nothing to me at that first sighting; now it meant everything.
‘Janice, where do your mummy and daddy live?’
‘With me, at home,’ she said.
‘No, I mean which town. You must know which town you live in.’
She merely shrugged her shoulders. At this the woman at my side attempted to gain this information.
‘Janice, how old are you?’
‘Six and three quarters,’ she said.
‘And which school do you go to?’
‘Roseberry Road Infants,’ she said without hesitation.
‘That’s in Middlesbrough,’ the woman told me. ‘I’m from Middlesbrough, but I’ve never heard of Tayforth Street. I wonder if it’s on that new council estate?’
‘What’s your other name, Janice?’ I asked.
‘Massey,’ she said. ‘Janice Massey.’
‘And you came to Strensford all by yourself?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I want to see the sands and the sea and dig sand castles.’
‘Do your mummy and daddy know you’ve come?’
She shook her head. ‘They couldn’t bring me, so I came by myself. I’m all right.’
My heart sank.
‘What about your money?’ I put to her. ‘How did you pay the man for coming on the train?’
‘No, he never asked. I walked near other children.’
‘And you walked near other children when you got here?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘Then I got lost. I’m looking for the sands, so I can dig my castles.’
‘You nearly got there,’ I smiled. ‘But look, I’ll have to take you to the police station, and we’ll have to tell your mummy and daddy where you are. They’ll be very worried. Then I’m sure they will come and take you to see the sea and to dig castles on the sands.’
‘All right,’ and I helped her off the high stool. She was so light and fragile; she looked almost undernourished, but she was a pretty child with blue eyes and that long blonde hair. But at close quarters she needed a good bath; her hair was full of dirt and needed a thorough washing. Her pale skin was grimy too. Her cheap, thin little dress was crumpled and poor, and on her feet were a pair of sandals which were almost worn out. I began to wonder about her background.
I thanked the shopkeeper for taking care of her and also the woman who’d found her, and told them both that I’d take her to the police station. There she would be fed, and there were those games we kept for such occasions, and while she was there, we would ask Middlesbrough Police to locate the parents and ensure they collected her.
Janice held my hand tightly as we walked through the town, and she kept asking me where the sea was and which way she would have to go to find it. I told her but said that first we had to tell her parents. As a small consolation, I took her along the harbourside and showed her the fishing boats and pleasure cruisers, and she loved the gulls which settled on the pavements and roads, seeking titbits from visitors.
She would not say a lot about herself, except that she had no brothers or sisters, and dad and mum were out all day. She did not know what her dad did for a living, or whether her mum earned any money, but it seemed they were both out of the house when she left home at morning. But Middlesbrough Police would find them — the neighbours would know their whereabouts. I felt very confident about that.
I took her into the dark depths of Strensford Police Station where Sergeant Blaketon was the duty sergeant.
‘Hello, what’s this, Rhea? A new girl-friend?’
‘Yes, sergeant,’ I smiled, still holding Janice’s hand. ‘This is Janice. She’s come all the way from Middlesbrough without her mummy and daddy.’
‘Has she, by Jove? And why has she done that?’
‘I want to see the sea,’ piped Janice. ‘And dig sand castles.’
‘Hmm, well, what about your mummy and daddy then?’
I explained the circumstances and he rubbed his chin.
‘All right, well, Rhea, you’ve done your bit. Now it’s down to us. You go back to your beat and we’ll find something for Janice to do while we find her mum and dad.’
I bade farewell to the child, and she smiled at me as Sergeant Blaketon took her into the office. There he would leave her in the capable charge of the office constable who would ring Middlesbrough Police to set in motion the search for her parents and her eventual collection.
If they’d arrived home and found her missing, they’d be frantic with worry, but from what she’d told me, they would have no idea she’d undertaken this journey.
I returned to my beat and patrolled the town until it was lunchtime.
I booked off at one o’clock and saw that Janice was having a meal supplied by a nearby café; she was on a tall stool in the main office with her plate on the counter, and she seemed quite content. At least there were no tears, and she seemed to be enjoying the food.
Three quarters of an hour later, I returned to report that I was resuming my patrol — our lunch breaks were of forty-five minutes duration precisely. But Sergeant Blaketon called me to one side for a chat before I left for the town.
‘Nicholas,’ he said, and his use of my Christian name made me wonder what was coming next. ‘That little girl, Janice. We’ve traced her parents — as we thought, they had no idea she’d come on that train. Now, her dad is at work until six tonight and he hasn’t got a car. He’s a warehouseman in Middlesbrough. Mum’s a part-time voluntary worker in an old folks’ home — she gets nothing for it, and it seems the family is not well off. Anyway, they’d arranged for young Janice to go to her granny’s today — but she hadn’t. Granny wasn’t unduly worried when she didn’t turn up because Mrs Massey sometimes changes her mind about going to the old folks’ place, and the parents thought the child was at granny’s.’
I listened to his long story, and wondered what he was coming to.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘The outcome of all this is that her father will have to borrow a friend’s car tonight, after work, to come here for her. There are no trains or buses into Strensford from Middlesbrough after six.’
‘I’m pleased we’ve found them, anyway. So she’ll have to hang about here until, well, nearly eight o’clock tonight?’ I said. ‘That’s a hell of a long time for the child.’
‘Exactly,’ he confirmed. ‘Which is the point of this conversation. Now, she likes you, so she tells me, she thinks you are kind. And young Rhea, you are a family man.’
I waited for his next suggestion.
‘That little bairn has come all this way all by herself just to see the sea and build sand castles; she’s even got her bucket and spade ready, but she’s been sat in our office for hours already, waiting. Just waiting as good as gold. And with never a sniff of the sea or a sight of the beach.’
And I do believe I caught a tremor of emotion in his voice, and just a hint of moisture in his dark eyes. I had never seen him like this before.
‘Yes, sergeant,’ I agreed with him, for I did feel sorry for the little girl.
‘So, go back to your digs, get ch
anged into something light, the sort of stuff you’d wear on the beach if you took your own kids, and then come back here and take young Janice for a holiday on the sands,’ the words tumbled from him; it was almost as if he didn’t believe he was uttering them.
‘As part of my duty, you mean?’ I was amazed that he, of all the supervisory officers would take me away from uniform duties for a joyful task of this kind.
‘Of course, Rhea. But be back no later than eight tonight — that’s when her parents are due, and it’ll be too late for them to take her onto the sands. We can’t let her go home without making a sand castle, can we?’
I had some holiday clothes with me, and I did as he suggested. With little Janice carrying her precious bucket and spade and clutching my hand, I took her down to the seaside.
As I would have done with my own children, I helped her build castles, dams and holes in the smooth, warm sand; I gave her rides on the donkeys and we hunted for jellyfish, starfish and crabs in the rockpools. We found seaweed, shells and rounded stones which she loved, and there was a Punch and Judy show which she thoroughly enjoyed. I took her into an ice-cream parlour for a treat and showed her the lighthouse, the lifeboat and even the machines in the amusement arcades. But the sea and the sands were her great love — we went back and she paddled at the water’s edge and allowed me to dry her feet on a towel I’d brought. Not once did she complain or misbehave. She was a lovely child, and by six o’clock both she and I were shattered.
We sat and let the hot sand run through our toes, and then she filled her little bucket with her collection of shells and rounded stones.
Shortly afterwards, from a kiosk close to the beach, I telephoned my landlady to ask if I could bring a lady-friend in for high tea and she agreed. When she met Janice and heard the story, she treated the little girl just like an important guest.
By eight the child was almost asleep on her feet. I gave her a piggy-back to the police station, and when we arrived, her parents were already there. Sergeant Blaketon was there too, having returned to make sure they did come for their child. I was more than delighted that they welcomed her with kisses and open arms, rather than subject her to an angry telling-off. I suspect Sergeant Blaketon had something to do with that, and she went happily to her parents. It was clear that they loved her, and that she loved them.
From her father’s arms, she flung her thin hands around Sergeant Blaketon’s neck and kissed him, and then she did the same to me.
‘Thank you for taking me to the sands,’ she said. ‘I love you.’
And then she was gone.
She must be getting on for thirty now. She is very probably a very beautiful woman. I often wonder if she remembers that day with a constable by the sea.
THE END
BOOK 7:
CONSTABLE
ALONG THE
LANE
A perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors
NICHOLAS RHEA
Chapter 1
How shines your tower, the only one
Of that special site and stone!
EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN, 1896—1974
Among the unpaid benefits in the life of a village policeman is that of leisurely patrolling the beautiful lanes which pattern and serve our countryside. Every season has its delights and my patrols took many forms. Sometimes I toured the villages and hamlets in the section car, at other times I depended upon my official-issue small, noisy but reliable Francis Barnett motorcycle. But by far the most pleasant and rewarding way of performing my duty was to meander among the cottages and along the lanes on foot. The seasons did not matter — every day had its own charm, but this allowed precious time to see the sights, smell the perfumes and hear the sounds of England’s living and ever-changing countryside. There were times when my slow pace made me feel part of the surrounding landscape.
By comparison, the car and motorcycle were speedy and functional as they presented the image of a busy police officer going about his vital work with the aid of modern technology. The latter was in the form of an official radio fitted to both the car and the motorcycle. The crackle of that radio, the zooming off into the unknown to go about some urgent mission, plus the polished livery of the police vehicles with the occasional flash of blue light or sound of a multi-tone horn, served to nurture an essential aura of efficiency and style.
Early morning patrols by car or motorcycle were generally spent in the eternal search for cups of tea, people to talk to and the occasional evidence of criminal activity of the rural kind. If I am to be honest, our missions were seldom urgent, unless executed in response to a traffic accident; the truth is that those pastoral wanderings enabled us to see a great deal of the changing landscape and the people who lived and worked there. The car, but more often the motorcycle, carried me through the hills and valleys, across the moors and dales, past ruined abbeys and crumbling castles and along the highways and byways, invariably on a route which had been prearranged by a nameless senior officer.
In fixing our routes, he would try to incorporate several villages and hamlets within, say, a three- or four-hour patrol, where we halted hourly in nominated villages. There we had to stand beside the telephone kiosk in case we were required. Someone in the office would ring us on those telephones if necessary. The fact that we were equipped with radios did not change that ancient routine because hourly points at telephone kiosks had been a feature of rural patrolling for generations. The system could not be abandoned simply because we now had radios! Senior police officers do tend to be belt-and-braces types, especially where their patrolling subordinates are concerned.
In my rural bobbying days, they liked to know what their village constables were doing at every moment of their working lives. It was an admirable method of stifling initiative but it also revealed their lack of confidence in themselves and a corresponding lack of trust in us. Nonetheless, the system did ensure that every tiny hamlet, as well as the more populated areas, received a regular visit from a uniformed officer, particularly at odd hours of day and night. As a piece of positive policing, they were valueless but they did keep our supervisory officers content in the belief that they had us just where they wanted us. And the public did see us going about our endless missions and probably wondered why we were passing at such peculiar times when nothing had happened.
But from my point of view, I did enjoy the early morning routes, as we called them, especially in the spring and summer, even if I had to drag myself out of bed at 5 a.m. at least once a week. But when the sun was shining, the birds were singing and the air was redolent with the scents of new blossom, it provided experiences I would not have missed for the world. I saw nature and the countryside at its beautiful best and the freshness of the morning made me glad to be alive and to be working in such amenable surroundings. To patrol with an accompaniment of the fabulous dawn chorus; to see young animals and birds enjoying their first taste of life and to hear the season’s first cuckoo never ceased to thrill.
But even in such bucolic circumstances, it’s nice to dodge the official system. As I started those routes from my hilltop police house at Aidensfield, I did so in the happy knowledge that there were several calling places on my patch. There I could enjoy a break from the routine or a spot of refreshment and human companionship. Farms and bakeries provided early morning buns and cups of tea which were most welcome during a tour of duty. In addition, the tiny police station at Ashfordly also provided sanctuary.
So far as Ashfordly Police Station was concerned, I had to be very careful; like all my rural colleagues, I had to enter without the resident sergeant hearing me, because if Sergeant Blaketon was woken by one of his tea-seeking constables, he would rapidly and effectively make his displeasure known and we would thereafter be denied that calling place.
For an erring constable, life would be hell for a short time thereafter, and so we all adopted a simple technique. We would park our motorbikes some distance away and walk to the police station. This
silent approach was most effective. After 6.30 a.m. however, the doors were open because that’s when Polly, the station cleaner, arrived. Approaching sixty-five, she was iron-haired with grey eyes and the clean, fresh complexion of a countrywoman. She fussed over our little station as if it was her own immaculate home; she polished the furniture and brasswork; she cleaned out the fireplace; emptied waste-paper baskets and, if the cells had been occupied, she cleaned them and aired the blankets. And if Alwyn’s chrysanthemums were in the cells, she would make sure they were tended.
Polly’s strength lay in the fact that when one of the rural constables was performing an early morning route, she knew he was abroad because she could decipher the contents of the duty sheet. Knowing he’d love a cup of tea, she always had the kettle ready.
This little ritual meant that at some stage between 6.30 a.m. and 7.30 a.m. (when Sergeant Blaketon usually left his bed), Polly would put the kettle on and brew a pot of hot tea, as a result of which the early patrolling constable would pay a visit to the police station. There he would enjoy tea, biscuits and a chat with Polly.
If Sergeant Blaketon happened to wake early to try and catch us, Polly would hear him moving upstairs and would stand her mop in the front porch as a warning that Blaketon was likely to appear. This was the signal for us to head into the lanes of Ryedale and to the next kiosk on our agenda, thirsty but devoid of any slanderous criticism from our supervisory officer.
Sometimes, though, Sergeant Blaketon would surprise everyone by creeping downstairs in his slippers. To cope with that eventuality, we always carried some reports or papers which provided us with an excuse for being indoors. “I’ve just popped in with these papers, Sergeant,” would be our excuse, at which he would retort, “Well, don’t hang about here, stopping Polly from working and don’t loiter when on duty!”
But by and large, those many little subterfuges worked to our advantage. The police office at Ashfordly became a regular haven of refuge, one which was particularly welcome during winter patrols. During those dark and chilly mornings, when our fingers, toes and ears were frozen, Polly always had a blazing fire and her splendid cups of tea to warm us. But through every spring, summer, autumn and winter for years, Polly had been there with her fire, her cups of tea, her awareness of the sergeant’s movements and, in times of need, her warning mop at the door.
CONSTABLE NICK BOX SET 6-10 five feel-good village cozy mysteries Page 17
