CONSTABLE ON TRIAL a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors Read online

  CONSTABLE

  ON TRIAL

  A perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors

  NICHOLAS RHEA

  Constable Nick Mystery Book 37

  Revised edition 2022

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2015

  by Robert Hale Limited

  © Nicholas Rhea 2015, 2022

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Nicholas Rhea to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  ISBN: 978-1-80405-306-5

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

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  Chapter 1

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  Superintendent Askey was marching towards me as I stood near the Pier Road telephone kiosk. He had a look of fierce determination on his face and I wondered if I was due for one of his critical lectures. I tried to recall what I may have done to warrant this rather unusual visit.

  ‘I’m glad I caught you, Rhea.’

  ‘Good evening, sir.’ I saluted even though he was in civilian clothes and clutching a dog lead, at the end of which was his grey curly-haired poodle. It was always sensible to acknowledge rank even when they were off duty; after all, this man was in charge of Strensford Division. My most senior boss, in other words. I had earlier learned his dog’s name was Whisky. I considered it useful to have that kind of local knowledge at my fingertips, especially when it seemed I was about to be on the defensive.

  ‘Hello, Whisky.’ I spoke gently and patted the little animal, pleased that it wagged its tail and didn’t attempt to bite off my fingers.

  ‘Not a bad evening, Rhea. You’ll be off duty soon?’

  I made a show of looking at my watch. It was half past nine and, as it was June, there was still some daylight left. Soon the sky would darken, and the town’s street lights would burst into life. And there would be noise from the pubs and clubs as heavily fuelled merrymakers tried to find their way home, usually to the sound of car horns and buses trying to clear a route between them.

  ‘Another half hour, sir, provided nothing serious happens. It’s been a quiet shift so far.’

  ‘“What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.” You’ll know that poet, Rhea?’ Superintendent Askey, who we referred to as Arthur behind his back, was fond of quoting Shakespeare. And others.

  ‘Shakespeare, sir?’ I made a brave attempt at an answer.

  ‘No, Rhea. William Henry Davies. Now, there is just time for me to break my news. Sergeant Blaketon said you’d be making your point here. He asked me to confirm there are no messages for you. It’s all quiet in town tonight, so far at any rate. We can all rest safe in our beds, as the poet said. Now, this is what I want to ask — how does the thought of detective work appeal to you?’

  His proposal caught me by surprise and it was a moment or two before I answered. ‘Yes, sir, of course I’d be interested. I’ve always wanted to be a detective; that was one reason for joining the force.’

  ‘We are men of the world, Rhea, and know that a good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later. That’s Dickens, Rhea, as I’m sure you know. So are you courting?’

  ‘I have a steady girlfriend, sir . . .’

  ‘I mention that because working with CID requires dedication and, on some occasions, very long hours. You do not work eight-hour shifts as you do on uniform duties but your senior officers will make sure you get time off where possible. The Detective Allowance caters for those extra unrecorded hours and the expense of the civilian clothes you will be wearing on duty. So if you are courting, would this role create domestic problems?’

  ‘No, sir,’ I said as convincingly as possible. ‘One’s duty must come first! I know my girlfriend will understand.’

  ‘“Not once or twice in our rough island-story, the path of duty was the way to glory.” Not Shakespeare, Rhea, as I am sure you know.’

  ‘Really, sir!’

  ‘Tennyson, as a matter of fact. Now, I will set the necessary wheels in motion but it will take a week or two before you’re transferred. Changes are afoot, Rhea; the force is very seriously considering ways of modernizing the service. After all, it is more than ten years since the end of World War II; many households now have telephones and the police will soon have portable radios. New ideas and procedures will be necessary if we are to embrace those changes; we must not resist but we must adapt. In any case, the station bike is almost worn out and I doubt it will ever be replaced. Maybe an extra car for the station is too much to hope for! Anyway, my own feeling is that Strensford CID could benefit from a young detective with innovative ideas that will help to update the service at local level. You’d be on trial with our local CID for an initial period of six months. How does that sound?’

  ‘Reforms are all right so long as they don’t change anything. I think that was Mickey Mouse, sir.’

  ‘There’s many a true word spoken in jest, Rhea. Well, I must leave you to cogitate upon your future but with a record of CID work on your personal file, your career would be assured. Promotion would surely follow provided you pass the necessary exams, of course — and keep out of trouble.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, I’ll do my best and I appreciate your confidence in me.’

  ‘You’ve earned it, Rhea. After all, recognizing a stolen coat two years after the theft had occurred is a remarkable feat of observation and detection. And the fact you achieved it when just out of your probationary period is quite astonishing.’

  ‘It was nothing, sir . . .’ I began.

  ‘Nonsense! It had all the hallmarks of first-class police work. Such an acute sense of observation and an aptitude for crime detection must be properly harnessed, hence your recommendation for a trial period as an aide to CID. You will be known as Detective Constable Rhea once your appointment is confirmed. You will be notified when the vacancy arises — a couple of weeks or so from today. I will keep you informed. Now I bid you goodnight. Come along, Whisky.’

  I watched him walk along the harbourside and thought he looked like a black-winged stilt, a rare wader bird whose enormously long legs are twice the length of those of other species. The stilt has a small body on top and yet it copes without falling over. Superintendent Askey was like that — his uniform had to be especially tailored to cater for this tiny body on top of two incredibly long legs. I wondered how he kept his balance with a pint or two of beer inside him. And I wondered if he had ever ridden a penny-farthing.

  He was called Arthur after the famous comedian but he had another nickname: Hivpo. That came about due to his habit of quoting Shakespeare, one of his favourite lines being ‘So shaken as we are, so wan with care’, which is the first line of Henry IV, Part One. HIVPO in other words.

  As I watched him and Whisky disappear into the oncoming darkness of the peaceful streets, I wondered why my detection and recovery of a stolen raincoat should have been so memorable to my superiors. Then I left my point at the kiosk to wend my way back to the police station to knock off duty prompt at 10 p.m., all the time going over the sequence of rather remarkable events involving that coat.

  First, though, an explanation of the system of patrolling around those ‘points’.

  At that time — the late 1950s — there were no personal radios or mobile telephones, so the only way to contact a police officer while he or she was patrolling in town was to ring on the public telephone at a prearranged visit to a kiosk. For that purpose, the local police had divided Strensford into beats: there were six. Each involved a predetermined route around the telephone kiosks in a particular part of town. The patrolling constable had to visit each of the listed kiosks at stated times and remain there for five minutes before that time and five minutes afterwards. This was known as ‘making a point’ and there was half an hour between each point. The purpos
e was to enable the office to contact any constable either by phone or even through a personal visit — as Arthur Askey had done.

  Those ‘points’ were more formally known by the longer and more important name of ‘conference points’. The system meant that all parts of the town were visited by police foot patrols arranged in the office before the officers went out on patrol. In addition to their availability, their visible uniformed presence provided a sense of security to the people. It seemed as if dozens of bobbies were around, a splendid deterrent against criminality. One old lady told me that seeing police officers patrolling the streets was as reassuring as any insurance policy.

  If you think that such carefully pre-planned patrols meant that a police officer arrived at the kiosks at the same time each day, thus alerting villains to his or her movements and whereabouts, then that was not the case. Each day, the time of the ‘points’ was staggered by up to thirty minutes earlier than scheduled or a like time after the scheduled point. It meant that an officer might arrive, say, at the kiosk standing outside the GPO at ten o’clock one day but the next day his arrival might be twenty minutes earlier or fifteen minutes later — or whatever time was decided by the office.

  Those deviations were predetermined and logged, and they were displayed on a clock-like device in the police station. Not surprisingly, it was known as ‘the clock’ and if the clock’s solitary pointer was on ten past, then our points for that day were all ten minutes after the normal times. Sounds complicated? It wasn’t, once you knew how it functioned — and it did work. Detectives, of course, were supposed to be invisible and so they did not operate that system. They went out on inquiries while the rest of us went out on patrol.

  Now, back to the stolen coat drama which, it seemed, had opened new opportunities in my fledgling career. This is what really happened.

  In the final weeks of my two years’ National Service in the RAF, and due to the fact I needed some smart civilian clothes upon being demobbed so that I could take my girlfriend dancing and enjoy outings to interesting places, I decided to buy a fashionable raincoat. I found a new one in a gentleman’s shop: it fitted me perfectly, it was beautifully tailored and, by chance, it was a pale version of the RAF blue and had a smart silver-coloured lining. It was rather expensive but very handsome and I liked the highly distinctive colour. It cost the huge sum of eight guineas, or in modern money £8.40, but I couldn’t resist it.

  Shortly before my demobilization, I took my girlfriend, Mary, to a dance in the local village hall at Bridgeholme near our respective parents’ homes. It was my new coat’s first formal outing and I was pleased Mary liked it. At the village hall, I hung it in the gents’ cloakroom — there was nothing to pay, no tickets issued and no attendant. Quite simply, I hung it on a hook and went into the hall to enjoy the dancing.

  That’s how things were in rural Yorkshire at that time. When I left the dance and went to collect my coat, it was missing. Its peg was empty, so I waited until everyone had left, hoping that whoever had removed it would have realized his error and returned it. He didn’t. There was one coat left — it was a filthy brown one, worn, tattered and stained, and also far too small for me. I had to accept the awful truth that my brand new raincoat had been stolen.

  I went outside to report the crime to the constable on duty. He was the local bobby from my home village a couple of miles away, and he knew me well, both as a schoolboy, then as a police cadet and, at that time, an RAF National Serviceman. He took down details but said it was unlikely my coat would be recovered. He suggested I take the dirty old brown one home, which I did; I hung it in Dad’s garage to moulder. A few weeks later, I was demobbed from the RAF and returned home as a civilian, whereupon I rejoined the North Riding Constabulary. After my thirteen weeks’ training at a police training centre, I was posted to Strensford. I would be on probation for two years to determine my suitability as a constable and for most of that time I would patrol the town while accompanied by a senior constable, who would be my guide and friend. His name was Joe.

  Towards the end of my probationary period, a friend asked if I would exchange shifts with him. He wanted me to undertake his night shift — 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. — on New Year’s Eve. I agreed; Mary was also agreeable. His shift, however, was known as ‘office nights’ — in other words, he would not be patrolling the streets but would spend his duty time in the office with a roaring coal fire and ample coffee-brewing facilities, not to mention a glass of champagne at midnight if Sergeant Blaketon, our shift sergeant, was agreeable. Happily, he was!

  It was a quiet night with lots of celebrations in town but no complaints of trouble or excessive noise. Then, shortly after 1 a.m., the office phone rang. At that time, some of the patrolling officers were in the muster room, having their mid-shift break.

  ‘Strensford Police, PC Rhea speaking,’ I answered.

  ‘Stan from the ambulance station, Nick. We’ve had a call-out to the summit of Four Mile Hill; it’s snowing up there and the road is treacherous. A car has spun off the road and overturned on the moor. No other vehicle or person is involved. Our unit has arrived and the driver is wandering about dazed but he seemed uninjured so we thought we should bring him into town in case he needs hospital treatment. If not, we’ll bring him to the police station for you to deal with. We got the report from a passing motorist but the car isn’t driveable and there’s no shelter up there.’

  ‘Right, we’ll see to him,’ I replied. ‘We can arrange a breakdown truck in the morning. He can always sleep in one of our cells if necessary.’

  It would be about twenty minutes later when I noticed the lights of the ambulance easing into the parking area near the police station and soon I heard the front door open and the sounds of two men walking along the passage towards the inquiry counter.

  When I went out to meet them, I immediately noticed the man accompanying the ambulance driver was wearing my stolen raincoat! The colour was so distinctive that I could not mistake it and, besides, it was too large for the wearer. And worse still — I knew him! He’d once had a crush on my sister. I shall call him Bob; he was an itinerant trader or scrap metal dealer as some would have described him, and unerringly dishonest. Dishonesty ran through his family’s veins.

  Thinking quickly, I decided not to mention my suspicions just yet and offered the visitors a cup of tea and some cake we’d brought for our New Year celebrations, bringing the pair into the office to get warm near the fire. I wanted Bob to relax and not leave the police station while I decided what to do about the coat.

  As I was still a probationary constable, and as Joe, my tutor, was in the next room having his mid-shift refreshment break, I decided to seek his advice. Sergeant Blaketon was somewhere in town, visiting one of the patrolling officers. What concerned me was whether it was proper for me to arrest a suspect for stealing my own coat. I wasn’t sure. Plus the thief could claim that thousands of coats had been made in that colour and to that design — if he claimed he was the rightful owner, I would have difficulty proving otherwise. I made an excuse to leave Bob and the ambulance driver for a second or two as I went to the toilet but in fact hurried to the muster room to find Joe.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt your meal break, Joe, but there’s a man in the inquiry office and he’s wearing a coat of mine. It was stolen two years ago.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ and I explained.

  He listened and frowned. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, Nick. If I go and accuse him of stealing your coat, he’ll deny it, especially as it was two years ago. He’ll say he bought it. How can you prove it belongs to you? That’s the big question.’

  ‘It’s too big for him, he’s a small man . . .’

  ‘Still not good enough. If I’m going to accuse him of stealing your coat or even arrest him, I need to be sure that it really is yours. And you haven’t convinced me. That means you’ll not convince others, especially in a court of law.’

  There was a long pause as I struggled to convince Joe, but he was right. I had no proof. Not a scrap of evidence . . . and then I remembered something.