Luckily nobody was very badly hurt, but the van was pretty bashed up (and the car was quite a mess, too).
This is the incredible part, though: I’d only managed to involve myself in a serious collision with an expert from the BBC TV series the Antiques Roadshow (on his way to do a reading in Ilkley from his latest book!)!! And, better still: he was their glass expert!
WHAT AN AMAZING COINCIDENCE!
I naturally showed him the decanter (after we’d exchanged insurance details – his insurance details, since I’m not actually insured: I just made a few up) and he was able to tell me that the decanter was actually very, very rare!!!! It was Norwegian and dated from around 1890. He said it could be worth in the region of £1,700!!!!!
He picked it up to inspect the hallmark properly (all excited!), and then the thing just FELL TO A MILLION TINY PIECES IN HIS HANDS!!!!!
‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘I never much liked the damn thing anyway!’ and we both absolutely howled with laughter (he was great fun, really up for the craic – even with a torn shirt and blood dripping from his ear)!!
There’s so much more I’d love to tell you all (about Poppy’s first word, Dylan’s round-worm infection, Hayden’s incredible, new talent at online gaming and the like), but there simply isn’t the time or the space to do so here…
All there’s actually the time and the space to do is to wish you all A WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS, AND A VERY HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!!!
With HUGE love and hugs from us all:
Paula, Jared, Hayden, Dylan, Madeline and Poppy
PS Madeline just won the talent contest at her local school, armpit-farting God Save the Queen while standing on one foot! Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing that Mr Nolan stole her beloved fiddle after all!
PPS Aunty Jinny is still diligently researching our family tree (on Mother’s side). Turns out that I’m distantly related to William Huskisson, who was a famous British politician in the 1820s! He was apparently in charge of the expansion of the railways (perhaps that’s where I get my itchy feet from!), although it seems his career was cut short after he was unlucky enough to topple under a slow-moving locomotive…
PPPS I’ve just got off the phone to Ramsay’s old accountant, Denton Wade, who has recently uncovered some ‘hidden’ investments which he thinks might be worth a ‘serious’ sum of money!!!!! He told me not to get my hopes up too high, and that (because of various legal wrangles to do with the Estate, Death Duties etc.) it might be necessary to leave cashing them in until later on next year, but we’re all wildly over-excited in the meantime (so please, please keep all your fingers crossed that in 2007 there will be bumper dividends at Kwik-Save and Leeds United FC!)!!
I honestly think this is going to be our BEST FAMILY CHRISTMAS, EVER!!
Up the Whites!!!!!
Lots and lots and lots of love (and cuddles, and good karma etc.)
XXXXXXXXXX
P
Internal Mail
Ilkley,
17/03/07
14.00 hrs
(Via internal mail)
For attn Inspector Laurence Everill, Skipton
CONFIDENTIAL
Dear Laurence,
A most heartfelt congratulations on the Bravery Award (and on the surprise promotion, come to that)! I sent you a fulsome text (two fulsome texts – one on both counts), but I imagine they must’ve got lost in the deluge…
Either way, you really did the boys proud back in December. I watched the Awards broadcast, alone, in my flat, with a nice bottle of cheap merlot and an above-average, ready-made Tesco’s Finest Boeuf Stroganoff. Quite a little celebration it was! ‘That’s Laurence Everill,’ I kept saying to the cat. ‘We went to school together, you know!’
I couldn’t help but notice (during a couple of audience ‘reaction shots’) that Sandy (who was sitting with the chief superintendent and his wife, I believe) had a lovely new hairdo – and a host of pretty blonde highlights in her fringe. Quite a departure! She looked lovely – truly lovely. Dark green is definitely her colour. Do tell her how impressed I was (not that she’ll much care, I’m sure!).
Several people have stopped me in the street (or flagged down the car when I’m out on patrol) to discuss the matter. One old dear (who I generally pop in on during my rounds – just to check she’s all right, and have an amiable chat) said, ‘It honestly helps me to sleep better at night, knowing we have men of Sergeant Everill’s calibre working on the force.’
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Like you, Inspector (quite rolls off the tongue, eh?!), I am somewhat at odds to understand why it was that the BCPBT Case (as I prefer to call it) was transferred from your most capable hands in Skipton to my considerably less competent – if slightly more capacious – ones in Ilkley…
(Although which of us ‘mere mortals’ may hope to grasp the complex array of motivating principles guiding that subterranean army of shadowy forces – that ‘silent, faceless vanguard’ – who seem to inveigle their way into every corner of our working lives, overseeing our every, basic move – our every shallow breath, even – like ominous, lowering, ever-watchful phantasms?)
‘Ours is not to reason why,’ as I said, only this morning, to my part-time factotum-cum-administrative-assistant, Mrs Hope (who also sends you her heartfelt congratulations, by the way), ‘ours is but to complete the paperwork – in duplicate!’
Please accept my deepest gratitude for sending me your additional thoughts on the case. They were immensely useful. It’s an education (of sorts) for a rank-and-file copper like myself (a mere picayune, a booby, a hick, a poor shot, a galoot) to be given ready access to the elevated workings of a renowned (and superior) detective intellect.
I am forced to agree with you that PC – soon-to-be sergeant – Hill’s spelling leaves something to be desired (‘suspisious’ is another one), but I still thought his energy and his commitment were thoroughly commendable – a shining example to all us cynical ‘old stagers’, in other words!
If (when he eventually returns from his extended sick-leave), you’re ever stuck on a boring stake-out together (although I fear you may’ve become far too important for that grubby kind of caper, now!) and have nothing of any remote significance left to talk about, then perhaps you might tell him that I think I may’ve found my (clumsy) way towards solving the BCPBT mystery (audible gasps of astonishment!), and that his early leg-work in December contributed in no small part to this breakthrough.
My approach to the thing has, as always, been characteristically ‘back-to-basics’ (to borrow a much derided phrase from the John Major era); a man of your rank and experience might almost call it ‘entry-level policing’ (although I’m rather fond of ‘bread and butter policing’ myself – for obvious reasons!).
Either way, I slowly worked out (during an especially dull lecture about the benefits of cardio-vascular exercise at WeightWatchers on Tuesday) that there could only ever really be three good reasons for a person to feel inclined to break into a postbox at any given moment in time:
1 The hope of acquiring some kind of financial benefit
2 The desire to accrue private information
3 The desire to stop a letter from being sent (an incriminating one, perhaps, posted on the spur of the moment and now held to be a serious liability by either the letter writer him/herself, or by someone who knows the letter writer – and possibly the contents of the letter – and wishes to protect themselves/the future recipient from the potential fallout from the information enclosed).
It was based on these three, very simple notions that I proceeded with my enquiries.
As to reason (1), it soon became evident that this was not a viable option since the three cheques (sent by Wincey Hawkes) were left behind in the cache. So far as I am aware, nothing else of value was reported missing.
As to reason (2), I was able to discover (on inspecting the seals of the envelopes) that very few of them – if any – had actually been opened by the or
iginal thief. The majority had been opened by Mhairi Callaghan (the loquacious proprietress of Feathercuts, Skipton), prior to her ringing the police to notify them of her ‘sudden discovery’ of this mysterious yet tantalizing haul which had been randomly dumped in the back alley of her Skipton salon (I deduced this by dint of the tiny residue of red hair dye – Mhairi specializes in tints, something Sandy herself will attest to – on the top left-hand corner of the vast majority of the torn envelope seals).
I verified this suspicion during a subsequent visit to the salon, by passing Mhairi a letter, marked ‘urgent’, which I said I’d found on the doormat. This envelope was instantly torn open, using exactly the same technique as all the others in our body of evidence (the style of opening is highly idiosyncratic; a ‘signature’, of sorts).
Luckily, Mhairi didn’t see her way to reading all of the letters in the cache (perhaps conscience overwhelmed her at some point). Baxter Thorndyke’s Sex Hex letter remained intact (although it was in a fairly worn and dilapidated state by the time it reached my desk!), as did several of the other more ‘sensitive’ pieces (Tom Augustine’s, which he still insists he didn’t write, Nick Endive’s and Nina Springhill’s, to name but three).
Unfortunately Mhairi did see Rita Bramwell’s poignant letter to her alienated daughter, Nadia, something that I feel may well have been a contributing factor to Rita’s unsuccessful suicide attempt in early February (if only she’d been brave enough to tell Peter herself, what a world of pain and heartache she might have saved them both in the long run!).
Naturally, with the realization that Mhairi had opened several of the letters came the suspicion that she may also have been directly involved in the original crime (although her motivation for such an act would have been difficult to pinpoint). I promptly abandoned this theory, however, on discovering that she had a rock-solid alibi for the evening of the 21st, having spent the entire night with Helen Graves – Skipton Constabulary’s charming WPC – watching you and Sandy (whose hair she’d just tinted to such spectacular effect), during a ‘special showing’ of the Bravery Awards in Skipton’s Royal Arms.
So with Mhairi now out of the picture, and with the thief (or thieves) patently having had no financial incentive for the crime, the only available option still remaining on the table (along with two cans of Red Bull, a large pork pie and a cream eclair – ‘brain food’, I like to call it!) was number (3), i.e. that the postbox had been broken into by a local; someone who’d posted a letter and then had thought better of it, or someone with good reason (in their own mind) to want to stop a letter from being sent.
Nick Endive now shot straight to the top of my list of suspects; his passionate but illicit declaration of love to Nina Springhill was, I reasoned, exactly the kind of confession a man might seriously live to regret…
Let me also just say, at this pertinent juncture, that I am not now (and never was) willing to follow the Thorndyke route and blame either Trevor Woods – BC’s long-suffering postman – or his employers at the Royal Mail for this illegal act (had they been truly determined to replace the postbox with a more modern version, I’m certain there would have been countless far less complicated ways for them to have facilitated this process). In fact, so far as I can tell, the only illegal act the directors of that particular organization can fairly be accused of is asset-stripping a perfectly good, ancient and honourable British institution, then blithely running it – with due government approval, nay, assistance, even – into the ground! (As you already know, Inspector, this is something of a pet subject of mine – and one that I’m always only too happy to get exercised about…)
Re option (3): if the thief/thieves hadn’t actually opened any of the remaining letters in the cache, I think we must, by necessity, deduce that the letter they wanted to get their greedy mitts on was – more than likely – subsequently identified, separated from the rest and rapidly disposed of (to behave otherwise would be illogical: why commit a crime and then cheerfully leave the reason for it behind you in the guise of a glaring piece of evidence?!
Love-lorn as Nick Endive obviously was, surely even he wouldn’t have been silly enough to dump a letter containing his innermost feelings in a bin bag behind the salon of one of Skipton’s most famous blabbermouths!).
Bearing all of the above in mind, the BCPBT investigation was now effectively stuck in neutral – facing a metaphorical ‘brick wall’ – because without fingerprints (which PC Hill was unable to acquire, due to the rain, and the necessary distraction of his delicious-sounding fish dinner) or a witness (of which there were none), we were left without any palpable clue as to the thief’s identity (and scant hope of acquiring any, either).
On this basis I decided (as you yourself had done before me) to make a study of the remaining letters in the cache to try and build up a picture of Burley Cross (as a crime scene/ community, on the week/night of the robbery), in the pathetic hope that there might be some subtle clues to this mystery inadvertently sewn into the everyday fabric – the insignificant weft and weave, so to speak – of other people’s lives.
I don’t doubt that we all found out rather more about this small, attractive, relatively well-to-do moor-side village than we had hoped (or, indeed, expected) by this subsequent course of action, Inspector, not least that Astrid Logan was planning to instigate yet another of her surreptitious ‘moonlight flits’ with that troublesome, and evasive, internet pal of hers.
Part of me regrets the fact that the force was unable to take any kind of decisive action in this regard (perhaps we might have posted the letter on, in the hope of setting up a trap and catching the filthy bugger, red-handed… But the timing – as you comment in your ‘further notes’ – was, of course, way too tight).
It later transpired that the contact address, alone, proved very useful. I’ve since been told (in subsequent conversations with the Portsmouth Constabulary) that Marc Pym’s home was raided (for a third time) in January and his computer confiscated, although little incriminating evidence was found on it (aside from a lengthy correspondence – mainly focusing on the subject of diet – and the contact addresses of forty-three underage girls, all of whom he had met on eating disorder websites as ‘Gabriel’, or in the form of his avatar, ‘Skinny Lad’, a nineteen-year-old boy suffering from chronic bulimia).
As we currently stand, the gentleman in question still remains ‘at large’.
A further codicil to this story: after you contacted Penelope and Angus McNeilly with the news about Astrid (and told them that they were at liberty to do with it what they would), I have been reliably informed that they immediately made contact with Mr Wolf (he being the one person whose reputation might, quite reasonably, have been perceived as being the most damaged by Astrid’s deception) and duly apologized to him on Astrid’s behalf. He subsequently insisted – being ever the gentleman – that the matter should remain strictly under wraps. He was much less concerned about his own social standing, it seems, than for Astrid’s long-term mental and physical well-being, especially in the light of her mother’s tragic death from cervical cancer at the start of the New Year.
(I don’t know why, but I have a nagging feeling that this won’t – by any stretch of the imagination – be the last we hear of this particular story, more’s the pity…)
But let’s get back to the real gist of the matter, now, shall we? Like I said before, there were many things I learned from my perusal of those twenty-six letters, Inspector (many things – enough to fill several notebooks, in fact), yet the piece of correspondence that drew me the most (the one that my eye kept on returning to, come what may), was the letter to Miss Squire (Miss Courtney Squire, ‘personal assistant’ to Mr Gerald Booth), from Mrs Brenda Goff (of Buckden House).
I have known Mrs Goff for many years, and she has never particularly struck me as the most forthcoming of women (it’s sometimes as much as I can do to elicit a grudging ‘Good morning’ out of her!), and yet here she was, the busy proprietress of an extremely successf
ul bed and breakfast, committing the time and the effort to writing a letter (ten pages in length!) to someone she’d actually never met – someone with whom she’d previously enjoyed only the most rudimentary of telephone conversations.
This Miss Squire certainly must have a very successful and dynamic cold-calling technique, I mused, since not only had she clearly impressed Mrs Goff during this short, introductory chat of hers (to the extent that Mrs Goff was willing to offer her reduced rates on two rooms at hardly any notice), but she’d had what sounded like a similar kind of impact on Wincey at The Old Oak – and who can guess how many others in the local vicinity?
During her letter, Mrs Goff mentions, in passing, that Wincey had been told that Mr Booth (‘a practitioner of the Esoteric Sciences’) was ’the by-product of a secret tryst between a prominent individual from the Salvation Army dynasty and one of the legendary Trebors…’
Well, I don’t think it takes too much of a stretch of the imagination to work out which prominent individual from the Sally Army we are automatically meant to think of here: there surely can’t be many individuals more prominent than the Salvation Army’s founder: Sir William Booth, himself (the clue is in the name, I suppose). Although the connection’s never made completely explicit (how could it have been? As an illegitimate son, Mr Booth’s theoretical ancestor would have had no right to claim membership of the family).
But how about the Trebors? A little harder to pin down. I did some research on the internet and found myself unable to find out anything about this ‘legendary’ clan – to the extent that I have now begun to have serious doubts as to whether they even really exist (might Trebor not just be the name of the sweet company itself? Also, quite coincidentally, the name Robert, back to front?).
What I do know is that the company was formed in 1907, that the famous Trebor Extra Strong Mint was launched in 1935, that shortly afterwards they merged with Bassett’s (the Liquorice Allsorts people, formed by George Bassett in 1842) and then still later on with Cadbury’s Schweppes.
Burley Cross Postbox Theft Page 31
