CONSTABLE UNDER THE GOOSEBERRY BUSH a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 21)

by Nicholas Rhea

  Just before the service started, however, the Reverend Chandler came outside and announced that the proceedings were about to start. The crowd dwindled as the riders filed in and I could hear the organist pumping forth her music as voices were raised for the first hymn — ‘Ride On, Ride On in Majesty’. But several riders did remain outside, guardian angels for their friends’ valuable machines and I spent some time chatting to them as the service progressed within. I patrolled around the exterior of the church making sure my uniform was highly visible to any lurking felon and eventually, as the church clock struck twelve noon, the service concluded with the final hymn, ‘Return, O Wanderer to Thy Home’. Eventually, the congregation filed out with lots of small groups forming; some cyclists rode off quite quickly, clearly having a long journey home while others debated whether to join forces for further conversations or to have their packed lunches here, or to pop into a convenient pub or café.

  It took them a long time for them all to disperse and although most of them departed within twenty minutes or so, I could not leave until the last cycle had been claimed by the last owner and that did not happen until one o’clock. I watched in some relief as the final rider went to retrieve the final cycle from its place against the railings, unlocked it and rode off with a cheerful wave. Every rider had a bike upon which to ride home! None had been stolen. I issued a long sigh of relief. Then the Reverend Chandler emerged from the church and smiled at me.

  “Any problems?” he called upon seeing me.

  “No, everything went fine! No thefts!” I must have sounded very relieved.

  “Thanks for your attention today,” he called again.

  “And for your help during the week,” I responded. “Clearly, most of them came prepared. But it all went well. I can go home now and enjoy my lunch.”

  “And me!” And so we parted.

  Mary had my Sunday lunch ready although there was no hurry for me to consume it. There was no requirement for me to finish it within my permitted three-quarters of an hour meal break because I was working discretionary duties today. So long as I completed my eight hours on duty, it did not matter how they were organised; consequently, I settled down for a leisurely family meal of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding followed by apple crumble. All very fattening but all very nice for a busy working chap with a big appetite! But at 2.15, just as I was about to tuck into some cheese and biscuits with a cup of coffee, the telephone rang. Because it was a duty day for me, I answered it. Had I been off duty, then Mary would have accepted the call.

  “Aidensfield Police, PC Rhea,” I responded.

  “Ah,” said the voice. “You are on duty, Constable?”

  “Yes, I am . . . who’s that? Can I help you?”

  “You can. You can get yourself down to the Hopbind Inn at Elsinby because I have just had my racing cycle stolen. And it is a valuable one!”

  “Oh dear,” I groaned. “Yes, well, I’ll come immediately. Perhaps if I had a description now, I could circulate it to our patrols?”

  “Yes, right; well, here it is.” And the caller provided me with the brief description of an orange-coloured racing cycle, Jack Taylor make with a 24” frame and fitted with a ten-speed Derailleur gear, narrow racing saddle, black lightweight mudguards, 27” racing wheels with tubular tyres, and a small saddlebag containing tools and a spare tubular tyre.

  “I’ll radio our patrols immediately,” I promised the caller. “And neighbouring police forces. Then I’ll come and see you. You’ll remain at the Hopbind Inn until I arrive?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “And your name?” I asked.

  “Raymond Craddock,” he said. “Sergeant Raymond Craddock.”

  And, inwardly, I groaned.

  Chapter 3

  Sergeant Craddock was a tall and rather slender man with tidy light brown hair, a very fresh complexion surrounding sharp, fox-like features and quick grey eyes which never seemed to be still. He was dressed in a blue and white cycling vest with short sleeves, tight black shorts and black cycling shoes with toe plates beneath the soles. As I eased my official van to a halt outside the Hopbind Inn at Elsinby, I guessed his identity immediately because he was standing outside the pub, clearly awaiting my arrival while his companions were enjoying their drinks and snacks indoors. Even before I could clamber out of my little van, he came to the driver’s door in a state of some suppressed agitation. I did manage to extricate myself from the vehicle, however, and stood beside the van as I prepared to deal with him.

  “At last!” he said. “You must be PC Rhea?” I could see he was striving to remain calm in my subordinate presence. I noted that his fists were clenched as he spoke; clearly, the loss of his precious cycle had severely shaken him. I felt he would now have more sympathy for any victims of crime with whom he may have to deal.

  “Yes, I’m PC Rhea. You must be Sergeant Craddock.”

  “Yes, that’s me. Soon to be a member of this section. So, PC Rhea, tell me what you’ve done to trace my cycle.”

  I began to explain, but he interrupted, “I paid a lot of money for that cycle, PC Rhea, a lot of hard-earned money — and some bloody toe-rag decides he has more right to it than me! I hope you trace it — well, what I mean is, I hope we trace it. All of us. All members of the constabulary.”

  Although his words had a definite ring of North Riding of Yorkshire in them, and their vowels, they contained more than a hint of musical Welsh, an interesting combination. I explained I’d already circulated a preliminary description of his cycle and referred to the previous theft, adding I’d earlier taken measures to bring the crimes to notice of the secretaries of all cycle clubs who were affiliated to the CTC. I stressed our particular emphasis on places where lots of cyclists left their machines unattended.

  “Good, yes, very good. You could hardly have done more. And I was pleased to see you patrolling at the Thackerston service — the vicar did warn us all, you know, but who would think the thief would strike at a quiet pub like the Hopbind? It was my fault — I did chain my bike at the service because that’s where I thought the thief would strike. But no, he did not — he fooled us, PC Rhea, he’s a man of guile, mark my words, therefore we must use guile to catch him.”

  “No one can be a hundred per cent secure against a determined thief, Sergeant.”

  “And don’t we all know it? But if I had followed my own advice and chained my cycle, well, it might have been a different story.”

  “Then he might have stolen someone else’s, Sergeant. Only a few of these are locked, even now.”

  “All very true, very true indeed. Well, the dastardly deed’s been done, so shall we get the formal bit over? For a start, you’ll need my personal particulars for your crime report, won’t you?”

  We sat in the van as I obtained the necessary details and wrote the required statement. Next, I learned that his bike was worth around £180 and it was following those formalities that I discovered our local cycle thefts were not the first or only ones. Craddock told me there’d been a similar series in the north-east — Middlesbrough and County Durham had, between them, experienced a total of fifty thefts over the past twelve months or so, but my two crimes were the first in North Riding of Yorkshire.

  I had not been notified of those distant thefts because they were committed many miles away in different force areas although that information would have filtered to me in due course. Scant details of the crimes would appear on forthcoming Stolen Cycle Supplements which were distributed throughout the region. From what Craddock told me, it seemed all those cycles stolen in County Durham and Middlesbrough had been taken on Sundays from places where large numbers of cyclists had gathered and left their machines unattended. Furthermore, all the thefts comprised of expensive racing cycles. Beyond any doubt there was a pattern to these crimes and equally beyond doubt, they were being perpetrated by the same person or gang of thieves. Now that I was aware of those earlier crimes, I would actively seek further details about them even though they were
not all local crimes — they were regional offences with at least three police forces involved.

  So far as I knew, there was no coordinator for the enquiries with each force dealing individually with their crimes. Things had changed because a police officer was now a victim and I wondered if Sergeant Craddock might collate all the available information. His efforts would necessarily be limited by distance and lack of effective communications, but his current station, Guisborough, was very convenient for the Teesside conurbation. There, cycling was a thriving sport and pastime and he would have lots of contacts and cycling friends to help, but his new station, Brantsford was at the other side of the moors, a small market town some thirty miles or so from Middlesbrough and Teesside in general.

  That would not help Craddock, but he seemed quite pleased with my actions and expressed an opinion that professional cycle thieves were operating. For that reason, the likelihood of recovering any of the stolen machines was remote. They were being stolen for a specific market, he felt; they might even be shipped to the Continent where cycle racing was a major sport. As we chatted, he calmed down and relaxed slightly, although he did continue to smart from the indignity of becoming a victim of crime.

  Finally, I asked if he had any problems in returning home without transport. He said his wife was driving across the moors to Brantsford today, her mission being to measure the windows for curtains in their new home at Brantsford Police station house, and the rooms for new carpets. If a message could be sent to her to wait for him, then perhaps he could beg a lift to Brantsford with me? After all, he was not a member of the public wanting a taxi service, but a police officer.

  It might even be said he was investigating a crime during the trip! Not wishing to argue about carrying off-duty officers in official vehicles on non-police business, first I drove him to my police house at Aidensfield from where I telephoned Sergeant Bairstow at Brantsford Police Station. Mrs Craddock, it seemed, had not yet arrived and so the arrangements were made for her to await her marooned husband. I drove Sergeant Craddock to Brantsford, still clad in his cycling outfit, from where he would be conveyed home minus his precious bike.

  “So it’s big-time crime, is it?” boomed Sergeant Blaketon at Ashfordly Police Station when later I broke the news to him.

  “So it would seem, Sergeant,” I had to agree. “If all the stolen bikes are worth as much as those taken from my beat, we’re talking of over twelve thousand pounds’ worth of stolen property. That’s a big sum for our ‘Undetected Crime’ statistics.”

  “Well, we don’t want those kinds of crimes in our section, Rhea, so we’d better get ourselves organised to prevent them. Right, I’ll have words with the rest of the men, and I’ll get them to visit every CTC café and every haunt of massed ranks of cyclists. The least we can do is to frighten off our phantom bike thief.”

  “And send him to work into another area? Maybe that’s why he’s given up in Durham and Middlesbrough?” I said. “Maybe their preventative efforts have driven him down to Yorkshire?”

  “Then we’ll drive him back, Rhea! No itinerant cycle thief is going to ruin my crime figures!”

  Later that day, I conducted further enquiries in and around Elsinby but no one had seen the thief or noticed anything suspicious. Most of the Sunday regulars at the Hopbind Inn had seen the party of cyclists arrive, itself not an unusual event in the village, but none had seen anyone surreptitiously making off with a bike. As one regular said, “Blokes on bikes were coming and going all the time. Some alone, some in twos and threes, others in bigger groups.”

  I tried to elicit any information about lone cyclists who had been seen riding away, but gleaned nothing of value — after all, Craddock’s orange-coloured bike should be easily noticed, I would have thought, but no one could remember it. In the eyes of most beholders, it seemed, a racing bike was just a racing bike, rather like trying to identify one sheep from another in a large flock. I searched the lanes and likely hiding places in and around Elsinby, but there was no sign of the bike, and I made sufficient fuss about it so that if anyone did find it abandoned in their fields or gardens or barns, they’d contact me immediately. But, like Sergeant Craddock, I felt we’d seen the last of the orange-coloured Jack Taylor cycle, at least in its current form.

  When I returned home, I made a note to ring the admin departments of the Durham Constabulary Crime Prevention office and its counterpart in Middlesbrough Borough Police Headquarters on Monday morning (such departments did not operate at weekends) with the object of being sent personal copies of their Stolen Cycle Supplements. Copies were distributed to Ashfordly Police Station but I wanted my own so that I could spend time, even my own off-duty time, studying them.

  There just might be some valuable clues tucked away in those reports which, as Craddock had said, now went back a whole year.

  With this kind of mystery to occupy my mind and my time, along with the more routine work I had to complete as a rural constable, I gave little thought to Joseph Marshall and his forthcoming retirement from the world of giant gooseberries. I did, however, see him regularly at mass on Sunday, although on most occasions I had to dash away without chatting to him. I did note, however, that he continued to lose weight — it was very obvious because his clothes were hanging so loosely about him. When I asked how he was feeling, he said he was fine and made no complaint about his health. As a passing thought, I did wonder if he was on a diet of some kind but didn’t press the matter.

  A month passed without any further cycle thefts in our area although there was one at Ripon in West Riding of Yorkshire, one in the suburbs of Middlesbrough and another at Barnard Castle in County Durham, all with the hallmarks of the previous crimes. As with the other cases, all were expensive racing cycles taken from popular CTC eating-houses at Sunday lunchtime. Having studied the circulars I’d now begun to receive from Durham and Middlesbrough, I realised these thefts, like my two crimes, were part of a very sophisticated operation. Broadly speaking, one bike per week was being stolen, each being worth up to fifteen times the weekly salary of the average person. From that I deduced the thief was making a handsome profit from his enterprise. I began to think he wouldn’t ride a bike as a hobby — through earning such huge, tax-free sums he’d be able to afford a flashy car.

  As the brisk and chilly winds of March gave way to the milder weather of a beautiful green April, I happened to be passing Joseph Marshall’s cottage. Glancing over his garden wall, I saw that his berry trees, carefully pruned, were sprouting their new foliage and that the earth had been neatly hoed between them. There was not a weed to be seen and it was evident that Joseph was preparing for his coup de grâce at the forthcoming show. It was around 10.30 on a Monday morning and I decided, on the spur of the moment, to pop in for a chat — I could always ask his advice about pruning my own berry trees!

  But Joseph was not at home.

  “He’s gone to the doctor, Mr Rhea,” Mabel explained, and I could see the concern in her face and eyes.

  “The doctor?” Although I’d never known Joseph to be ill, I was not too surprised at this news. His weight loss, if it was not a voluntary act, must be causing concern.

  “He’s not one for going to see the doctor as you know, so I had to force him to go,” she told me. “He can be very stubborn at times, Mr Rhea, but there’s summat not quite right with him. I thought he ought to get himself looked at.”

  “A wise decision. So what’s the problem? Any idea?” I asked her gently.

  “Well, we don’t rightly know, Mr Rhea.” She was already filling the teapot from the kettle on the hob. “It’s a bit of a puzzle, I must admit.”

  “I don’t want to pry.” I settled at the kitchen table as she pointed to a chair. “But recently, I’ve noticed he’s lost some weight and didn’t think he was dieting.”

  “You’re not prying and he’s not dieting.” She was moving around the kitchen, lifting a couple of cups and saucers from a cupboard, then a pair of matching plates and she arranged t
hem on the table before me. Next she found some buns in a tin and a jug of milk from the pantry and soon, there was an appetising spread in front of me. I decided not to force the pace of my questioning about Joseph’s condition and waited for her to react.

  “I know you’re concerned,” she said eventually. “And it’s nice for me to talk it over with somebody who’s not family, someone who might be able to advise me. He’s lost pounds and his clothes look all loose and wrong. He looks as if he’s wearing somebody else’s things. Anyway, help yourself to a bun, Mr Rhea.”

  Knowing Yorkshire country folk as I did, I felt she would tell me whatever she wanted me to know and so I poured a cup of tea with milk, then helped myself to one of her buns.

  “He’s lost his appetite,” she said, as she settled in front of me. “That’s the funniest thing of all. He’s always had such a good appetite; he loves roast beef and Yorkshire pudding but he doesn’t want to eat his dinner nowadays and can’t even face his breakfast. He even turns his nose up at black puddings and pork sausages.”

  “It’s not flu, is it?” I did not know how to react to her news, but in my limited knowledge of medical affairs, things did look very ominous. I must admit that I wondered if he had cancer.

  “No, he’s not got flu. I know flu when I see it. Anyway, Mr Rhea, he’s got himself down to the doctor’s.”

  “There’s no bleeding anywhere is there? Sickness? Internal pains?”

  “No, Mr Rhea, I thought of all that sort of thing and asked Joseph, but he said no. I did have words with the district nurse as well, and she talked to him. Apart from going very thin, he says he’s perfectly all right — no headaches, no sleeplessness, no dizziness, nowt like that, except now he gets very tired whereas before all this he was very active. He could garden all day without a break.”