Burning Bacon: Part One of The Dennis Bolam Chronicles

by Naff Writer

  “All you need is a lollipop and you’d be like Kojak too,” said Grant, thinking aloud. “But not Ironside because he was in a wheelchair.”

  “You what?” said Bolam, screeching to a halt, again like one of those 70s cops.

  “Or a mackintosh, like Columbo,” mumbled Grant.

  Bolam grinned. “Just one last thing,” he said, pointing at Grant like Columbo did to the criminals when he’d just sussed them out but they thought they’d got away with it. Bolam and Grant laughed at that, it was one of the many of those bits of banter they performed during the day as you had to laugh sometimes or you’d cry.

  Before Grant knew what was happening, Bolam was out of the vehicle and walking toward a young boy who appeared to be about 13 years old. He was in school uniform and had a back pack slung over his shoulders.

  “Stop right there, sunshine!” barked Bolam, lighting a Cigarette.

  The blonde haired boy looked nervous as he stopped walking and looked at Bolam with a lot of anxiety in his young pale face. Bolam flashed his police ID at the kid.

  “Do you know Asid’s corner shop?” asked Bolam.

  The boy nodded his head, yes.

  “What’s in the bag, son?” continued Bolam, smelling blood.

  “My school books, why?” The boy looked at his bag and back at Bolam and began wishing his mum had rescheduled his dentist appointment after all and that he had taken a different route back to school.

  “Don’t give me that!” Bolam snatched the bag from the boy who yelped as his arm was yanked by the bag strap. Dennis unzipped the bag and began rifling through it. He recognised the boy.

  “I know you know Asid’s corner shop, it was a rhetorical question! They teach you them in school, eh? You’re one of his paperboys aren’t you?”

  “Yes, hey my bag!”

  Bolam now had the bag upside down and was shaking it. School text books, notebooks, a pencil case, an iPod and other boyish items dropped to the pavement.

  “Why’d you spray that filth over Asid’s security shutters?” barked Bolam throwing the bag to the floor and seizing the boy by the arm.

  “Ow. My stuff! I don’t know what you’re talking about! I like Asid!”

  “No you don’t you little ragamuffin! You want him to pay you more on Sundays, am I right? AM I RIGHT!” and he squeezed the boys arm even harder. Bolam knew all too well that some of the paperboys had been asking Asid for a minor increase in pay on Sundays due to the weight and width of the Sunday papers. Most of the boys needed to make two runs to complete their rounds and Asid had been considering paying them more but hadn’t yet made a final decision.

  “Go easy, Dennis, don’t leave any bruises.” Said Grant who was watching while leaning casually against Bolam’s Rover.

  “I don’t work Sundays!” pleaded the boy, “I go to football practice then.”

  Bolam let go of the boys arm. The fear in the kid’s eyes told Bolam he was telling the truth.

  “Alright. Pick your things up and get out of here, move it!” Bolam kicked the boys bag past the kid and into the nearest garden. “I hope you’re not the goalie! Hahahaha!”

  Grant London shook his head from side to side, smiling. Over time he had come to appreciate Bolam’s playful sense of humour and fun.

  It was strange that someone so gruff could also have a jaunty side but there you go.

  Back in the car and speeding towards Asid’s, Bolam lit a cigarette and took a deep drag and then coughed. The car stopped with a wail as the wheels locked outside of Asid’s.

  Bolam, slightly ahead of London, slammed into the door of Asid’s which was again locked. Bolam hammered furiously on the door until he heard Asid coming to open it. “I am coming, I will open it. no need to knock it down!”

  “If you don’t hurry up I’ll spray paint over this place an’all!” yelled Bolam, though actually he was joking. The door opened and Asid waved the two detectives in.

  Bolam wasted no time. He was back at the refrigerator and took another chicken tikka pasty. He opened it and began eating it there and then, his mouth stuffed with tikka and pastry. “You ggawwt thttt mmmazzeeen back thaair?”

  “What did you say, mr Dennis? Your mouth is full of tikka?”

  Bolam swallowed hard. “You got that magazine back there?”

  “Yes, yes, here it is.” From under the counter Asid retrieved the copy of Asian Babes and handed it to Bolam. “Nice one, Asid.” Bolam shoved the dirty mag under his belt at the back and covered it up with his jacket. He took his black wallet from his pocket and handed Asid a £10 note.

  “We’ve made progress, Asid” said Grant London, wanting to get on with the police work.

  “I’m pleased to hear it, I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” Said Asid.

  “The girl that got raped was called Kylie Potts. Uniform ran a scan over her face off the security tapes at the Filthy Parrot.” Said Bolam, taking another bite of tikka slice and holding his hand up to let the others know he would finish eating before continuing. London and Asid waited patiently for their friend, because they knew that he hadn’t got a wife so didn’t get meals cooked at home and had to eat on the hop. Bolam continued; “Some red haired looking wrong’un was seen lurking about the ladies and then goes in.” Bolam shook his head. “ten minutes later he comes out waving black knickers about and wielding a bloody knife, bold as bleedin’ brass. I just interviewed one suspect but it was a dead end.”

  “What colour hair did you say?” asked Asid, suddenly standing alertly and looking at both Bolam and London.

  “Red, Asid, he was a ginger!” confirmed Bolam, resoundingly.

  “Wait! I know him!” said Asid excitedly.

  “Do you mind, Guv?” Said Grant London, running a hand through his reddish hair.

  “You ain’t a ginger, you’re strawberry blonde, we’ve been through this!” Bolam was gesticulating with his half eaten chicken tikka slice. “Who is he Asid?” said Bolam, turning to Asid and lowering the Chicken tikka slice.

  “He was in here the other day and bought a knife! Look…” Asid walked past Bolam to a display cabinet selling some Zippo lighters and other smoking utilities. The display was a revolving one and Asid turned it until the facing that held pocket knives was revealed. There was a gap where the display was missing one knife. “…see?” said Asid.

  “That guy on the tape is our man!” said London, excitedly.

  “No doubt about it, Grant.” Said Bolam. “Good work, Asid! Now we’ve just got to find this scum bag! Hmm.. It might be an idea to canvas the lingerie shops down the highstreet. A girl out on the town, she might have bought new knickers for the weekend, know what I mean? If we go in the sex shops and see any knicker spaces like we have just seen that knife space, we’ll know where Kylie got her smalls. And let’s not forget gents -” said Bolam, lighting a Rothmans cigarette, -“that a lot of the time, the victim knows their attacker. I think we need to look at the employee list of all the local sex shops and lingerie departments and then canvas anywhere that sells spray paint. We find a ginger employee and he matches any descriptions of someone buying a can of red paint, and he matches the guy who bought that knife here, we’ll know for definite we have our man!”

  “Brilliant guv’!” said Grant London slapping his hands together in anticipation of the justice to come.

  “I knew I could rely on you Detective Dennis!” said Asid. “Please just get him quick so I can tell my wife it is all over.”

  “Put a order in for more tikka slices and you’ve got a deal!” said Bolam and all three men laughed and looked at each other, shaking their heads wryly.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Ginger hair,” said Bolam, confidently and decisively. He was looking a big white board in the operations room and sticking photographs of likely suspects on it. He had one hand in his pocket which made him look casual but also businesslike, and left the other hand free for pointing carefully at pictures in a way that Grant London found very reassuring but at the same time
he felt he could learn from him.

  “Check,” confirmed Grant London.

  “Owns a knife.” Thus spake Bolam. He then stood back and put both hands in his pockets with his jacket sort of cocked over the front of them so it was rucked up at the back, again a very casual look but one that happened by accident because he was not a vain man.

  “Check.”

  “Has been seen in the vicinity of lingerie shops,” said Bolam, gruffly

  “Check.” Grant peered into the aluminium kettle at his reflection to make sure he wasn’t a ginger after all. Just to be on the safe side, he’d got Molly from Facial Recognition to add some blonde streaks to his hair the night before. After which they had made love on the pull out divan. Grant’s testicles were still feeling a little tender but it was worth it to have savoured the sensual skills of Molly.

  “Has bought papers from Asid’s shop.”

  “Check.”

  The wily crime fighters had now compiled a list of possible suspects. One of them included a lad called Trevor Monument. He frequented the Flirty Parrot nightclub, and was at one time a sexual partner of Kylie Potts, the attacked girl. He had also worked at a hardware shop for a while, and that hardware shop sold – spray paint!

  “This toe rag is our man,” said Bolam, confidently. “Let’s go get him!”

  On the way they passed Superintendent Lightfoot’s office. The Super was at his desk eating a scone; he didn’t approve of the savoury snacks favoured by Bolam and London. Sandra, the WPC, was busy pouring him some tea into a china cup with a saucer.

  “You make sure you get that warrant before you search his house!” Lightfoot called after him. He looked very smart in his uniform and very much the controller of the busy Larchways Constabulary. “Follow established procedures at all times!”

  “Yeah yeah yeah,” swaggered Bolam, flicking cigarette ash into a plant pot on the way past. “Procedures, Schmocedures.”

  Grant looked at Bolam admiringly. Would he ever feel confident to laugh in the face of ‘the rules’, like the maverick Bolam?

  “Yeah!” Grant said, shakily. “Rules, schmules! Beaureaucracy, Schmeaureaucracy!” He didn’t feel confident saying it but he wanted Bolam to feel attuned to his aura.

  “You’re getting the ‘ang of it, kiddo,” said Bolam.

  Soon the Rover Finesse was capering out to the Larchways Estate where Trevor Monument lived.

  “Let’s get this slag banged up,” said Dennis Bolam, as they approached the front door, confidently.

  Knock knock knock

  The door was opened by a woman with her hair in curlers and a nylon housecoat. Peering out of the door, she said, “Cor blimey, if it ain’t you two again. Whatcha want now? Ain’t it enough that you got our Kenneth sent down?”

  That was when Dennis Bolam realised. Trevor Monument was in fact the son of Kenneth Monument, a scrote he’d had banged up for working the numbers racket only the last year.

  “Come on, Eileen, luv,” said Bolam, articulately. “It weren’t me what got Kenneth sent down. I told ya, he was keeping the wrong company, know what I mean?”

  “It’s bin hard since he got put away,” Eileen said, wheedlingly. “It’s just me and my Trevor, I try to keep food on the table by taking in sewing but it’s ain’t no life for a boy. A lad needs ’is father.” She rung her hands together in despair. Past her in the hallway the detectives could see that the hall carpet was threadbare and in need of replacing with a new one or even taking up and having the floor boards polished, which would have been economical but also looked nice.

  Just then, who should appear in the hallway but Trevor Monument himself. “Eeee, what’s going on, Mam? What are these coppers doing here?”

  “They just come to see how we was getting’ on, our Trev,” surmised Eileen.

  “They’ve nae bloody right comin’ doon our hoose,” said Trevor. “I ain’t done nothing! I didn’t go there that night, I wasn’t even there!”

  Oh, ho! Grant London chuckled, furtively. “Weren’t where, sonny Jim?” he whispered, so quietly you could hear a pin drop.

  “Er – I don’t know – I mean – I weren’t nowhere – I didn’t mean nuffing by it – “

  You could see the terror in Trevor’s eyes as he realised he’d dumped himself right in it.

  Dennis Bolam folded his arms, smoothly. He smiled with a certain punctilious satisfaction. “Well, now, young ’un,” he said. “How do you know we were even going to ask if you were somewhere? Guilty conscience, eh?”

  Dennis Bolam and Grant London looked at each other with all the knowledge of ten years working on the Larchways manor. “Been up the Flirty Parrot lately, young Trevor?” asked Bolam, with finesse.

  “He went up on Saturday night,” said Eileen. “But that ain’t a bleedin crime, is it?” Now if you don’t mind, I must get on with my jobs.”

  She picked up a laundry basket full of laundry, which was when Bolam saw the vital clue he’d been looking for. For, sitting on the top of the pile of clothes was….

  ….. a pair of black lacy knickers!

  “Gotcha!” he cried, winsomely. “You’re banged to rights, my lovely.”

  Bolam clapped a pair of handcuffs on Trevor and led him out to the car. But Grant was hanging back.

  “What you waiting for?” Bolam cried out.

  Grant looked sheepish. He ran a hand nervously over his strawberry blond hair. “Um, I thought I would see if Eileen needed a hand with the laundry.”

  Bolam shook his head in amused disbelief, but in such a way that anyone looking would know that he didn’t mind too much. “You’re like a rat up a drainpipe!” he chuntered, good-naturedly. Then he looked at Trevor. “We’re taking you in for questioning – and we may not follow procedures!”

  Trevor shivered. His dad had told him all about Dennis Bolam’s lack of respect for procedures!

  ***

  Back in Asid’s shop, he was feeling more confident about the whole racial slur thing. He was busy dusting the shelves and displaying fireworks in the window ready for Bonfire night and talking to his wife, Heena.

  “Oh Asid I am so worried, I thought we were part of the community but now this has happened to sully our feeling of community spirit,” Heena said to Asid. She opened a box of savoury pastries and started to arrange them in the fridge. There were lots of chicken tikka slices not only for Dennis but there were lots anyway as they were a very popular range. They also did cornish pasties and sausage rolls but they weren’t so popular, though the cheese and onion slices were actually quite popular and Dennis would have them if ever they ran out of chicken tikka. He never had Scotch eggs as he thought the egg bits smelt horrible when you opened the cellophane wrapping.

  “I am sure that the goodly kind Detective Dennis will put the perpetrator behind bars, do not worry,” he reassured her, tenaciously. For indeed, he had only just had a phone call from Sandra the woman policeman to say that Dennis Bolam had got someone in custody who he believed to be not only the rapist who’d raped Kylie Potts, but also the dauber of the racial smears.

  But had Dennis Bolam got the right man?

  Was his unorthodox modus operandi going to work for him this time, or would he have been better going down the proper channels?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dennis slammed shut the door of the interview room. Outside a police officer called Nigel kept vigil.

  Trevor Monument was sat at a desk with a notepad in front of him. His hands were still handcuffed together. Bolam walked over and stood next to him.

  “You’ve got the wrong man, Dennis.” Said Trevor, mendaciously. “You’re not gonna bang me up for nowt like - like you did my old man!”

  “Shut it and stand up!” ordered Bolam. With a sarcastic shrug, Trevor stood up and looked at Bolam. “Sit down, Trevor.”

  “What?”

  “I said sit down, Trevor!”

  As Trevor went to sit down again Bolam kicked the chair away leaving Trevor to topple to the side and fall ov
er as he was unable to sort his balance out because of the handcuffs which were still on around his wrists.

  “Get up, you slag!” barked Bolam.

  Trevor manged to get himself up. Dennis Bolam picked the chair back up and held it for Trevor to sit down again. Cautiously Trevor sat.

  Dennis walked across the room and looked through the blinds and out of the window in silence. He knew Trevor was watching him over his shoulder. After several minutes, Bolam picked up the potted plant that was sat on the window sill and carried it to the interview table, setting it down in the middle.

  “Do you like gardening, Trevor?” asked Bolam.

  “You’ve just seen where I live, I don’t have a garden do I?” said Trevor shaking his head.

  “You’ve got a hanging basket, I saw it!” shouted Bolam.

  “It’s not mine, it’s mum’s.”

  “I said, do you like gardening, Trevor?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Dennis yanked the plant out of the pot and threw it to the floor. Then he grabbed Trevor by the back of the head and forced his face into the soil within the plant pot and held the two together as if he was welding them. Trevor let out some muffled cries and when he started coughing Bolam released his grip on Trevor’s head. Trevor came up for air, gasping.

  “Well, I don’t like rapists and vandals!” and Bolam slapped Trevor across the back of the head with his hand. Trevor cried out from the slap and then started rubbing the dark soil from his face and spitting it out of his mouth.

  “I didn’t hurt that girl! And vandal? I don’t know what you’re talking about! Is this how you got my dad to confess?”

  Bolam’s arm shot out and he wagged a furious finger in Trevor’s face.

  “Nah, your dad sang like a canary before he was even out the squad car!”

  This stinging remark gave Bolam a thrill and he was dying to use his fists on Trevor even more. He knew his words had hurt and having drawn blood he wanted more.

  Trevor leapt to his feet wanting to hit Bolam in the jaw for the belittling of his father but he had forgotten about the cuffs for a second or two and then just snarled in frustration at Bolam.