CONSTABLE IN DISGUISE a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain's best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 9)

by NICHOLAS RHEA

  ‘He’s run it dry,’ I said. ‘But I reckon there’s enough to get it back to the station. I’ll drive it there for safe keeping.’

  And so we both jumped in and I drove it to Eltering Police Station, where I parked in the compound at the rear, locked it and brought the keys into the office.

  Steve and I made out our reports and settled down to await the inevitable report of a car missing from Eltering. If the Humber had been abandoned here, another one would have been stolen — unless, of course, the TWOC merchant was travelling no further than Eltering. In that case, he could be at home now, gloating over his triumph of travelling free from London. But we felt this was not the case. We felt sure we were part of a relay series of TWOCs and that soon a worried car-owner would turn up to report his or her car missing.

  Sure enough, a couple of hours later, as I was typing some statements in the general office, a man arrived on a bike and came to the enquiry desk. He was dressed in rough working clothes and smelt of pigs.

  ‘Noo then,’ he said as he came in, wafting that awful pig muck aroma around as he removed his flat cap, ‘Ah think this is t’right spot to come, but somebody’s pinched my car.’

  ‘This is the right spot.’ PC John Rogers tried to hold his nose away from the pervading pong, but there was no escape. ‘So, let’s start at the beginning.’

  The man was called Ralph Cross. He was a farm labourer and he lived in Eltering. After taking those details on the form he was compiling, Rogers asked, ‘Now, Mr Cross, the car. What kind is it?’

  ‘Humber Snipe,’ he said. ‘A black ’un. Mucky, mind, but black underneath all t’ muck. Number MHH 200. They’ve took it from that spare land up Penthome Lane way. They won’t get far in her because she’s hardly gitten any petrol in. Anyroad, Ah thowt Ah’d tell you fellers.’

  Upon hearing his description, I came to the counter. ‘Mr Cross,’ I asked, ‘where was it taken from? You’ve not been in Doncaster today, have you?’

  ‘Doncaster?’ he sounded horrified. ‘Nay, lad, not Doncaster. That’s down south, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a long way south of here, yes,’ I agreed. ‘But we got a report to say your car had been stolen from Doncaster.’

  I turned up the relevant message in the occurrence book and read it again.

  ‘Nay, there’s summat wrang there,’ he frowned. ‘She’s nobbut been to Scarborough once and that was six month back, and she’s nivver been as far south as Doncaster, nivver.’

  It now began to look as if a highly improbable thing had happened. I wondered if someone had stolen Cross’s Humber Snipe from Eltering that morning and had then driven it to Doncaster, there to abandon it without this man’s ever realising it had gone missing. And had someone else then stolen it again, and driven it back to its home town, a sheer fluke of circumstance, but not impossible. But no — that was not possible, because who had reported it missing from Doncaster?

  If Cross had not known it was missing, he could not have reported it . . . unless the car had been involved in some other adventure we knew nothing about . . .

  We had a puzzle, and I wondered whether there was some insurance fiddle going on or whether Cross was involved in some other kind of wrong-doing of a very subtle kind. Should we tell him straightaway that his car had been found and that it had been abandoned here in town after being reported missing at Doncaster? Or should we find out exactly what had occurred before releasing it? We continued with our enquiries.

  ‘I’ll ring Doncaster police,’ said John Rogers, and he said to Cross, ‘We had a report of your car being in Doncaster this morning,’ avoiding mention of the reported theft in that town.

  ‘It nivver was!’ he cried. ‘I went up to t’farm in it this morning, drove a few sacks o’ taties about, and a piglet to t’vets, and then it was in t’farmyard till I left at half five tonight. She’s nivver been in Doncaster today, no, nivver.’

  Rogers knew he must check this tale with Doncaster, even before circulating Mr Cross’s car as stolen or TWOC’d. Cross and I watched as he put through his call.

  ‘Ah,’ he said eventually as the call was connected. ‘This is PC Rogers from Eltering. I’m ringing about that Humber Snipe, the black one . . .’

  We could not hear any response but were to learn that the officer said, ‘Forget it, Mr Rogers. It’s been found abandoned in Wakefield. The owner’s gone to collect it.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ he cried.

  ‘No, it’s been recovered. The black Humber Snipe that we circulated as a relay runner, HMH 200.’

  ‘But we have it here, in Eltering . . .’

  ‘No, you haven’t. Wakefield police have it, and it’s safe and sound in their compound, awaiting collection. It was found abandoned there at five o’clock this evening.’

  ‘Well, if you are sure . . .’

  ‘We are,’ said Doncaster, and Rogers put down his telephone, puzzlement showing on his face.

  ‘They’ve found it in Wakefield . . .’

  ‘Wakefield?’ cried Cross. ‘Does that mean I’ve got to go to Wakefield to get it back?’

  ‘Five o’clock it was found, they said,’ continued Rogers. ‘And the owner is already on his way to collect it.’

  ‘Now, hang on a minute, lads, at five o’clock Ah was in my car, driving home, and Ah was here in Eltering, nowhere near Doncaster or Wakefield or any o’ them spots.’

  In the meantime, I had picked up the occurrence book and was looking at the entry relating to the Doncaster Humber.

  And then, embarrassed until my face flushed deep crimson, I said to Mr Cross, ‘Mr Cross, your car has been recovered, but it is not at Wakefield. It is here, in our compound.’

  ‘What the hell’s going on then?’ He looked at us one by one.

  ‘We thought a black Humber Snipe, stolen at Doncaster had been abandoned here. It’s HMH 200.’

  ‘That’s not mine,’ he said rapidly. ‘Mine’s MHH 200. Different number, different car.’

  And so it was.

  Highly embarrassed, we returned his car to him and did our best to explain, but he drove off cheerfully, saying, ‘I’m glad you fellers found mine.’

  ‘All part of our duty, Mr Cross.’ I said.

  And then I asked John Rogers, ‘Where did he park his car after work?’

  ‘Outside his house,’ he said. ‘On waste land at Penthome Lane.’

  ‘That isn’t where we found it,’ I said. ‘We looked at it on waste land just off the Sycamore estate. That’s on the other side of the town.’

  I looked at John Rogers and he looked at me. ‘So it had been nicked after all,’ he said.

  ‘And found abandoned, and returned to the owner,’ I said.

  ‘So the file is closed?’ grinned John.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, with more than a hint of relief. ‘One crime reported and one crime detected, with all the property recovered intact. A nice entry for our records.’

  ‘And a piece of fine detective work,’ laughed John. ‘You know, we were idiots not to have noticed those car numbers were different.’

  ‘Round numbers are always false,’ I said quoting from Samuel Johnson because I could think of nothing else worth saying.

  One of the most peculiar TWOC cases concerned a bus, and we never did find the perpetrator of this cheeky crime.

  A Women’s Institute from County Durham had hired a coach from Palatine Pullman, a local coach-hire company, to take a party of ladies on a pleasure outing to the North York Moors. One of their halts was at Eltering, where they were to be given a guided tour of Eltering Castle, known for its links with the Plantagenets, and afterwards they would have lunch at the White Hart Inn. Their total stay in the town was scheduled to take an hour and three quarters; they arrived at noon and were to leave at 1.45 p.m.

  The splendid coach parked in Castle Drive to disgorge its ladies, and the driver did as most drivers do — he ate his own sandwiches and drank his flask of coffee while sitting on the luxurious back seat, and then curled u
p on the long, relaxing seat and went to sleep. It was something he did regularly on such trips. He left the passenger entrance door unlocked, because he knew the noise and chatter of the returning ladies would rouse him. It always did. His own little cab was also unlocked — and he left the keys in the ignition; again, he always did this because there had never been any bother.

  What happened next is something of a mystery, but, in reconstructing the events, it seems that a cheeky character had seen what he thought was an empty coach and had climbed aboard, seen the keys in the ignition and then driven the bus over the moors to Strensford.

  News of the disappearance of the bus came from the WI’s organiser who had travelled with the party. She came to the police station at Eltering, harassed and red-faced.

  ‘Our driver’s gone without us,’ she panted. ‘We were not late, there has been no delay, and he has left the place where we parked.’

  This kind of problem occurred a lot in popular tourist areas, and invariably the panic was due to a misunderstanding of some kind. Either the ladies had not understood where the bus would be upon departure or they’d taken the wrong turning on the way back to it, or it would be in the coach park in town. Invariably, in such cases, we managed to reunite bus and passengers.

  So, well-practised in this art and with the aid of the town’s uniform branch, we searched every likely parking place, but there was no sign of the distinctive coach.

  PC John Rogers, who knew every inch of the town realised the lady was right — her coach had gone and so had the driver.

  ‘I’ll ring the owners,’ he offered.

  He rang them and said, ‘Oh, this is Eltering Police. I’m ringing on behalf of a WI outing; they’ve come here on one of your coaches. Yes, today.’

  He waited as the receptionist plugged him through to someone else, and then he repeated his story, adding, ‘Well, there is now a problem. The bus has gone, but its passengers are still here. We have about forty-five ladies marooned in Eltering. All wanting to catch their bus to its next destination. But there is no bus. We have searched the town, and there is no sign of it. And they were not late, not lost, not rude to the driver or anything like that. The bus has not been dismissed and it has not caught fire anywhere. Now, has the driver called you at all? Is there any explanation from him? No, he’s not reported it missing because he’s missing as well.’

  From what we could overhear, it seemed the driver had not been in touch with his head office, and they could offer no explanation. It was now 2.15 p.m. and the ladies were getting anxious, either wishing to travel onwards or, in some cases, wanting to get back home. With the co-operation of the WI organiser and the coach company, John Rogers managed to persuade them to wait for an hour. His calm, unflappable response had a soothing effect upon the WI organiser.

  ‘Things might sort themselves out,’ he said, raising his eyes to Heaven. ‘I’m sure the driver has not forgotten you.’

  The company agreed to this compromise, threatening to discipline their driver if and when he turned up, and they agreed that, if he did not return to the pre-arranged place by 3.15 p.m., they would despatch a duplicate coach. But it would take an hour and a half to reach Eltering. The ladies were heading for a lot of tea-drinking, some delightful window shopping and a fair bit of queueing at loos. The organiser said she would go and explain things to her clients, then return at 3.15 p.m. to see if there was any further development.

  When she’d gone, I smiled at John Rogers. ‘What do you make of all that?’ I asked.

  ‘He’ll have gone off to the loo himself, or for a meal somewhere. Mebbe got a puncture on the way back . . . He’ll turn up. They always do.’ He was philosophical about it. ‘We get loads of problems like that.’

  As the bus had not been reported stolen and as the driver was evidently still with it, we did not circulate it as a stolen vehicle, nor did we think it had been taken without consent. In fact, that is what had happened. A man had driven it across the moors to Strensford, and all the time the driver remained asleep on that rear seat, blissfully unaware of his predicament. The warmth and the gentle motion lulled him, and so, as the bus motored its expensive way across the heights towards the coast, the driver went into an even deeper sleep.

  Having arrived safely at his destination in Strensford, the thief (or, to be precise, the Taker-Without-Consent) simply drove the bus into a quiet street, parked it and walked away. There is every reason for believing he had no idea he had taken the driver with him.

  The driver, a man called Jimmy Porritt, was aroused by the cessation of the relaxing motion. A few moments after the bus had stopped and its temporary driver departed, he yawned, stretched his arms and awoke from a very pleasant dream. He left his place and walked down the aisle to his driving seat, never at this stage thinking he was in the wrong town. He settled down and then looked at his watch. It was 3 p.m.

  Puzzled that his ladies had not returned on time, he looked outside and then saw he was in an unfamiliar street . . . and there was no sign of Eltering Castle. Jimmy was baffled. He felt sure he’d parked near Eltering Castle and yet, in this place, he could hear seagulls screaming, and between the houses he could see the tall shape of a lighthouse.

  He clambered out of his bus, puzzled and somewhat alarmed, thinking perhaps that he had lost his senses or had a blackout of some kind. He hailed a passing lady with a baby in a pram and said, ‘Excuse me, but what street is this?’

  ‘Albion Terrace,’ she said.

  ‘Ah.’ He did not wish to appear foolish, but had to ask, ‘And what town is it?’

  ‘Strensford,’ she said, puzzled by his question.

  He returned to his coach utterly confused by this turn of events, and in his bewilderment decided to ask the police to enlighten him. The police at Strensford listened to his odd tale and decided to seek our help in sorting out this Jimmy’s dilemma.

  John Rogers took the call, and I heard him chuckling. ‘Yes,’ I heard him say. ‘We have lost a bus; it’s left a load of women in town. They’re overcrowding all the loos after drinking gallons of tea till we got things sorted out.’

  ‘I’ll get him to come back to Eltering,’ said the Strensford constable. ‘Shall I ask him to park near the castle where he was before?’

  ‘Yes, do that,’ John agreed.

  When the WI organiser returned, within a few minutes of this call, we could say that her bus had been found in Strensford, but we had no idea why it had gone there. The driver was full of apologies and he would return within the hour. We also rang his head office to say the ladies and their coach had been re-united, but we left any explanations to the driver.

  We never did receive a formal complaint that this coach had been the subject of a ‘take and drive away’ offence, but I did wonder if there was an offence of taking a driver without consent!

  One vehicle which caused some legal head-scratching was the caravan.

  If people lived in it, either temporarily or permanently, was it a dwelling-house? Or, if it was used only for holidays, was it a storehouse when not in use, for it then contained only furniture and crockery? Were those caravans used as temporary offices classified as offices, or was a caravan merely a trailer, as defined in the various road traffic regulations? One caravan at Aidensfield had an onion-shaped edifice on its roof and was used for Greek Orthodox Church services, so was that particular caravan a church? If so, it would be sacrilege to break into it, or burglary when such a vehicle was used as living accommodation.

  We would pose questions such as: if someone stole a residential caravan, did they steal an entire dwelling-house? But stealing a dwelling-house was legally impossible, because it was attached to the realty, i.e. the ground. To be legally guilty of stealing a real dwelling-house, it was necessary for the house to be demolished and abandoned, and then someone who stole the stones might be found guilty. So, for theft purposes, we felt a caravan should be regarded as merely a trailer. Was it a just thing to change the nomenclature of a caravan in orde
r to accommodate particular laws? And what about the contents? If a stolen caravan contained 250 different items of furniture, crockery and food, was the thief guilty of stealing all those as well as the caravan itself?

  These little puzzles were cast into the pool during our initial training, just to alert us to the legal fiction which was then so much a part of criminal law, and to attune our minds, through argument and illustration, to the wiles of both lawyers and villains in their desire to find ways around the various rules and regulations. It was interesting to realise that lawyers could spend lots of hours poring over lots of books to solve this kind of problem while earning lots of cash, but we poor constables had to carry the information in our heads. Instead of taking days or weeks to arrive at a decision, we had to act promptly and fairly in our execution of the law, without bringing the wrath of public opinion down upon our heads.

  Although some of the answers to these knotty issues could be found in statutory form, others never received a satisfactory answer. But our discussions did cause some mirth and some interest while we were learning the law.

  One thing we did know, however, was that a caravan could not be the subject of a TWOC charge. As TWOC then applied only to motor vehicles, there was a legal puzzle if someone took without consent a car with a caravan attached. The car could be TWOC’d, but the trailer could not. In its case, it was either theft or nothing.

  However, at Eltering we were presented with another puzzle associated with a caravan.

  David Crossley was a self-employed builder in his middle thirties who undertook odd jobs in and around Eltering. He could build a fine stone house if requested but seemed to spend most of his time repairing old buildings, roofing farms and cottages, constructing walls and renovating a wide range of rural edifices, from pigsties to church steeples. He was a competent workman, and we never had complaints about either his craftsmanship or his honesty. He would never be rich — he lacked the entrepreneurial skills necessary to be a tycoon, but he did earn a reasonable living for himself, his wife and two sons.