I went out to them.
“What do you lads know about Cyril’s car?” I looked at each in turn. Three frightened faces peered at me, so I decided to capitalize on this fear. “If it’s been stolen and if I find the culprits, they’ll be in serious trouble. Our Scenes of Crime Officers are on their way now, to examine the car for fingerprints . . . so let’s suppose I asked for your fingerprints, all of you? I wonder what I’d find?”
“It was us, Mr Rhea,” said the taller one. “But we didn’t steal it, we just hid it, as a joke . . . honest.”
“Ah!” I peered down at them, trying to appear fierce. “Well, it seems your joke has backfired, doesn’t it? I have received a report that the car was stolen, and when you take someone’s property without permission, that is stealing, especially when you hide it so the owner can’t find it . . .”
I was about to lecture them about dishonesty when SOCO, the name we gave to the Scenes of Crime Officers, eased on to the village green parking area in their marked vehicle. The boys’ faces showed their dismay and one of them, whom I later discovered was called Andrew Staples, began to weep.
“I think you lads have learned a lesson,” I said. “Now wait here. I’ll have words with our officers, then I’ll come back to you. Right?”
They waited, huddled in a sorry group as I went to speak to SOCO.
“Hello, Sarge,” I greeted Detective Sergeant Power.
“Stolen car, Nick?” he asked. “Can you show us?”
“Sure, down here,” and I led the way back to the old barn, moved my police van and showed them the car.
“Right,” said Power. “I’ll fetch my troops.”
“Since calling you,” I said. “I’ve found the culprits,” and I told him the story. He listened and smiled.
“I don’t think we can crime this one, Nick,” he said. “Can we have a word with the loser and ask him to withdraw his complaint? They’re only kids, juveniles, and no court would convict them.”
“Suits me.” I was happy to go along with this. “But I think we should teach those lads a lesson.”
“That’s easy,” grinned Power. “Let’s have a word with the owner first.”
“He’s scoring, we’ll have to wait for a break in the game,” I said.
“That’s fine,” said Power. “There’ll be a cup of tea around, I expect, and I like watching cricket anyway.”
Cyril Pulling listened to Sergeant Power’s plan and actually smiled as he nodded his agreement. “I’ll agree to that,” he said. “There’s no damage to my car and no harm’s been done.”
When Power had had three mugs of tea and umpteen scones and cakes made by the cricket team’s wives, we returned to Cyril’s mini, eased it out of the garage and drove it back to the side of the cricket pitch. The three youths watched us with some apprehension. Then Sergeant Power and his two colleagues, both detective constables, set to work.
One was the official photographer, the other a Scenes of Crime officer and under the directions of the sergeant, they literally smothered the car in grey fingerprint powder. There was thick powder everywhere.
Within five minutes, that lovely little vehicle looked like something which had been stored in a dusty shed from the time that Adam was a lad.
“Right, you three,” shouted Sergeant Power before brushing the powder in his search for prints. “Come here.”
The three youths came across, nervous and apprehensive.
“You took this car for a prank, right?”
“Yes, sir,” said Andrew Staples.
“Well, it needs cleaning, doesn’t it? It needs to be as clean as it was before it got covered in all this powder. Now, I have cleaning materials in my van, plenty of dusters and so on, and so that’s your job. Mr Pulling wants his car as clean as a new pin by the time the cricket match finishes. Right? And I’ll remain here to make sure it is. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” said the three chastened lads.
It was a good match. The Chadwicks won by a wicket and ten runs, each of the police officers present, including myself, had a grandstand view of the game aided by endless cups of tea and lots of scrumptious home-made food, while three hard-working lads made a superb job of polishing Cyril’s car.
“It’s cleaner than when I lost it,” said Cyril afterwards — and smiled again.
2. Fiends in High Places
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 1564–1616
The practised confidence trickster is a curious mixture of evil cunning and winsome appeal; by using his combination of characteristics he or she may persuade others to part with gifts, money, accommodation or even to permit use of the so-called secret parts of their bodies. Over the centuries, unscrupulous men have charmed their way into the beds of gullible girls, scheming women have persuaded rich men to marry them for better or for a lot worse, and there is a roaming army of pestilent confidence tricksters who prey on old folks, vicars, charity workers and others who are blessed with warm hearts. This plague of wandering charlatans comprises villains and parasites who live off the generosity of innocent victims in their constant effort to feed and clothe themselves, often in luxury. Con men have been known to charm hard-won life-savings from poor pensioners, only to lose the lot in a moment of high living or reckless gambling. There is deep-seated cruelty in people who will do such evil things and although some would admire their devious skills, the police know their true worth and do their utmost to warn their potential victims, to trap the rouges and to bring them to justice.
But trapping such wily characters is like seizing an eel; no matter how sure your grip, the eel will wiggle in its own slime until it is free from your clutches — and confidence tricksters are very similar. They are as slippery as the proverbial eel but infinitely more cunning and nasty.
They rely upon their silver tongues and well-rehearsed charm to get them out of trouble. It is a sad truth that many of them do evade justice. They know how to use the letter of the law and the sympathy of their victims to their full advantage in some cases, their charm is such that even the victims refuse to believe that their new ‘Friend’ is a wrongdoer. In many cases, the victims do not wish to prosecute and while this protects that victim from the scorn of their neighbours, it leaves the villain free to prey on others.
In Yorkshire, we call such people ‘slape tongued’, which means slippery tongued; I believe it was the Red Indians in cowboy films who called such people fork-tongued because a snake’s tongue is often forked — and who can trust a snake? God made the serpent the lowest of the low, a beast destined to crawl for ever on its belly, and this is an apt comparison with the guile of a confidence trickster. They are among the lowest of humanity’s low and I believe there is a famous quotation, whose origin escapes me, which says, “There is no heart below the head of a serpent.”
The famous nineteenth-century criminologist, Dr Hans Gross, had a lot to say about confidence tricksters too — in one paragraph he describes them as “Generally men who have received a good education in their youth, or who at least have had the opportunities of picking up the appearance of such. Without exception, they are men of ability, full of dexterity and presence of mind, but with a love of easy and idle life.”
He offers a picture of a typical fraudster and it is perhaps worthy of inclusion here:
Fashionably dressed, he steps into a jeweller’s shop and steals while pretending to select, or he causes the valuable selected to be brought to his hotel, takes delivery and disappears through another door; he goes to the banker and collects the amount of a forged cheque; he manages to get introduced to the highest social circles, runs up heavy debts and disappears; he cheats at play and that on a large scale; he becomes engaged to one or more wealthy young ladies and makes off with money borrowed from presumptive fathers-in-law; he buys houses and estates without paying for them, mortgages them and disappears; he gets into business relations with a merchant and runs up debts in his name; in a word, he know
s marvellously well how to play upon that weakness in mankind that allows itself to be bluffed by a high-sounding name, fine clothes, and easy and self-possessed manners; he knows there are fools to be found always and everywhere, and lives at their expense until he is caught.
While a constable at Aidensfield, I was often in receipt of police circulars, which warned of tricksters on the move. In such cases, we would then warn any potential victims who lived and worked on our beats. Bed-and-breakfast establishments were commonly targeted by travelling con men who slept and ate, then left without paying, and so we would tour those on our respective patches to alert them. Some confidence tricksters would specialize in visiting vicarages where they told a sorrowful and harrowing tale of some kind, following which the vicar gave them tea, sympathy, a pocket full of money and sometimes a bed for the night. Off would go the fraudster to another vicarage where he would repeat the yarn and the sneaky side of such acts often remained unknown until one clergyman chanced to be talking to another about their daily work and compared notes about helping the poor.
The tale that had been told so well to both was usually enough for the vicars to realize they had been well and truly tricked out of their hard-earned money; they would ring the police and we would circulate a description of the wanted villain, by which time, of course, he was usually miles away in another diocese doing exactly the same thing. No matter how widely we circulated his activities, he usually managed to select a vicar who hadn’t been warned or who, if warned, did not believe that the charming fellow in his study was indeed the biblical wolf or false prophet in sheep’s clothing.
In one case, a con man was actually arrested in our area and he had to be transported to the Midlands where he was wanted for serious offences in the Birmingham area. He was taken to Birmingham by train, being handcuffed to a detective en route, but during the journey he even managed to persuade the detective to give him £5! He said he had no money but wanted to buy some flowers for his granny who would be most upset at his arrest. Of course, there was no upset granny . . .
This incident shows that policemen are human too, and that some of us can be persuaded to believe the sorrowful stories of a skilled confidence trickster. Of course, that sort of thing would never happen to me . . .
Clever disguise was sometimes resorted to by confidence tricksters and a favourite was a clergyman’s dog collar. This was one of the most simple to effect. If one is approached by a man in a dark suit and a back-to-front collar, then one is usually tempted to believe that he is trustworthy. As a consequence, there are many travelling rogues who dress up as priests or vicars, nuns or monks but perhaps the most interesting of the clerical con men within my knowledge was the one who came to Aidensfield to establish a monastery. To be honest, I am still not sure whether or not he was a genuine man of God with a desire to perpetuate his faith or whether he was a charlatan.
When the impressive figure of Father Severus Sanandaj, a priest from the Patriarchate of the Karakumian Branch of the Orthodox Adiaphoritic Apostolic Church arrived in Aidensfield, we all warmed to him in a spirit of ecumenical love, hope and joy. He was a majestic figure some six feet five inches tall, with long black hair aided by a heavy black beard and moustache. Underneath all that hair, his age was difficult to determine, but I guessed he was in his middle forties. He was a fit man who enjoyed physical activity; he walked miles and from time to time would disrobe and enjoy a hectic swim in the local swimming-baths.
During his daily routine, he wore the long, all-embracing black vestments of a priest of the Orthodox Church, the kind which can still be seen in Greece, and upon his head he wore a tall tubular black hat with a rim around the top. To see him, fully robed, walking down the main street of Aidensfield was indeed a memorable and remarkable sight.
He was a quiet man who seemed to be totally content with his religious life and he lived in a rented cottage along one of the quieter lanes of the village. I was never sure precisely when or how he arrived; he just seemed to materialize upon the village scene but with Maddleskirk Abbey only two miles away, the sight of a foreign priest, monk or nun in the area was not regarded as unusual. Many came from all over the world to Maddleskirk Abbey for retreats or spiritual renewal, or to attend conferences relating to church matters.
Thus Father Severus was regarded as just another foreign and interesting priest who had been drawn to this place of religious succour.
When I asked George in the pub if he knew about the Orthodox priest, George confirmed those thoughts by saying, “He’s summat to do with the abbey, Mr Rhea, he walks along there to see the monks, joins them in church and for meals and things. They’re supporting him, he fled from the Soviet Union by all accounts, got away from the Communists and made his way across Europe to England. He’s from some obscure branch of the Orthodox faith and reckons he’s trying to keep his church alive. He wants to establish a small monastery in Aidensfield.”
It all made sense. The Roman Catholic monks of Maddleskirk Abbey did encourage those of other faiths to join them and I did know they were very active in keeping Christianity alive in various Communist countries. This man had undoubtedly contacted them when he was in dire need of help — and he had come to live amongst us, at least for a short time. I knew the villagers would make him most welcome.
Soon after his arrival, a caravan appeared in the garden of his cottage and within a week or so, it had sprouted something that looked like a huge onion with a leek standing beside it. The caravan was his church, the central point of his new monastery, and the onion-shaped thing was its dome; the leek beside the dome was a small decorative copy of a minaret.
Soon, the dome was painted with gold paint, the minaret was gilded in parts, and a splendid icon of the Virgin Mary appeared on the side of the caravan. The entire complex looked like a cross between a miniature Kremlin and model of Brighton’s Royal Pavilion but when I saw what had appeared in that lane, I wondered from where he drew his congregation and how he intended to support himself. But such problems were no real concern of mine — I knew that many monastic establishments had had very modest beginnings and had survived through the faith of their founders and the devotion of their supporters. Perhaps the Orthodox Adiaphoritic Apostolic Church of Aidensfield would similarly flourish?
My duties and those of Father Severus never came into contact. From time to time, however, I did have to visit the administrative offices of Maddleskirk Abbey and sometimes found myself talking with the abbot. On one such occasion, I took the opportunity to refer to Father Severus and his onion.
I discovered that he was already well known in the abbey. The cottage he was using was owned by the abbey trustees; it was a spare house which could be used by guests to the abbey. One common use was for Anglican priests who had left their own church to become Catholics, but who needed a period for contemplation away from all religious influences. They would stay there to gather their thoughts; Catholic priests facing a crisis of faith would also use it, as would any other deserving person.
Father Severus, I was told, having fled from oppression and Communism, was one such deserving case. He lived there free of rent, his food was supplied by the abbey and he could join the brethren for lunch and evening meals whenever he wished. He was even given a small allowance of cash for his daily essentials, and had been allowed use of all the abbey’s comprehensive facilities and contacts. Hence his caravan, onion and icon.
Neither I nor anyone else had cause to suspect he was not genuine. But, eventually, tiny hints began to appear. He took up swimming in the local baths where he presented a splendid figure and attracted the interest of many women, some of whom, I am sure, felt sorry for the celibate man and his onion. I do know that he took one or two ladies out for expensive meals.
Or perhaps they took him out? I never found out who paid the bills but I reckoned it might be either the abbey trustees or the ladies in question. On another occasion, he ordered a case of wine from the Brewer’s Arms and told George to send the bill to
the abbey. Later, I saw one or two ladies journeying individually to Aidensfield to attend his monastery and admire his minaret; once or twice, I saw well-dressed ladies emerging with a smile from his church and wondered if they had been on a pilgrimage or a therapeutic visit to the handsome priest.
Father Severus expanded his range of powerful physical activities, going for long, fast runs, swimming or playing rugby football with a local team.
He performed other feats of strength and endurance too, such as running a marathon and weight-lifting. He once joined some TA volunteers on an exercise involving abseiling, rock climbing and a fearsome assault course, and left a lot of the younger men breathless. In time, tales of his prowess became commonplace and there was no doubt that he was a strong and very fit man. Rugged, powerful and tough, he was not the conventional image of a man of God.
But as I received no complaints about his behaviour, I could not therefore take any specific action against him. Besides, his way of life was none of my business. If he was living off the generosity of the local abbey and some local lonely women, then was that wrong? Certainly, it was not wrong if they volunteered to support him as he came to terms with his exile, but was he using deceit and trickery to achieve those comforts? I must admit that I did have some anxieties about him, particularly as his use of English was so good.
Conscious of my duties towards the people of Aidensfield and district, I did try to find out a little more about the Karakumian Branch of the Orthodox Adiaphoritic Apostolic Church. But the more I delved into the complexities of the historic links between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, the more confusing it became. I did learn, however, that there had been a branch of the Eastern Orthodox Church whose followers were known as Monophysites; there was a breakaway group of this sect, and they were known as Adiaphorites.
CONSTABLE AROUND THE GREEN a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain's best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 12) Page 3
