Constable on the Prowl (The Constable Nick Series Book 2) Read online

  Another valuable lesson during those early weeks in the Force was the art of concealment at night. The dark uniform lent itself to invisibility and it was easy to stand in the shadows to watch the world pass by. At night, policemen walk along the inner edges of footpaths, close to the walls in order to be unseen, while shop doorways possess excellent concealment properties, as do areas beneath trees and shrubs.

  When concealed, it is necessary to pass messages to one another and in those days before we had personal radio sets, lots of unofficial messages were passed with the aid of our torches. One’s colleagues would stand in the shadows and announce the pending arrival of the sergeant, inspector or superintendent, or the movements of a suspected person or indeed anything else, merely by flashing a torch. We had a code of flashes for supervisory officers — one for a superintendent which represented the solitary crown of rank upon his shoulder, two for an inspector and his pips, and three for a sergeant with his stripes. Coded messages of this kind could be passed silently over very great distances and we would sometimes take advantage of the reflections in shop windows. This allowed us to pass messages around corners.

  All this could be achieved while remaining invisible. In fact, the simple act of standing still often renders a policeman invisible and I’ve known persons stand and talk to one another literally a couple of feet from me, totally unaware of my eavesdropping presence. That’s not possible in a panda car.

  It was considered great sport to conceal oneself in a darkened doorway along the known routes of gentlemen who walked home late at night, having been on the razzle or having supped late in a friendly pub. As the pensive gent wandered slowly along his way, the amiable neighbourhood, constable would step silently from the shadows immediately behind him and in a loud voice bid him ‘GOODNIGHT’. This had the remarkable effect of speeding him along his journey with hairs standing erect and icicles jangling down his spine. The long-term effect was to make him change his route or abandon his lonesome trails.

  Once I unwittingly scared the pants off a late reveller. It was a cold, freezing night and my feet were like blocks of ice. About two in the morning I decided to get a little relief by sitting on one of those large metal containers which house the mechanical gadgetry of traffic lights and which are invariably painted green. The containers are about four feet high and rather slender, so I hoisted myself on to the box and sat there, my large cape spreading from my shoulders and concealing the top of this convenient seat. As I perched there, hugging myself for warmth, along came a late-night reveller, singing gently to himself as he came towards me. It was clear he did not know I was there, and he almost ran into me, I said from a great height, ‘Goodnight’.

  His glazed eyes raised themselves suddenly to heaven and in a beery breath, he cried, ‘God Almighty, a bloody bat!’ and burst into a staggering gallop. I felt sure he would be sober when he arrived home.

  One indispensable accessory to the art of performing night-duty in those stirring times at Strensford, was the Clock. Whether or not the system applied to every police station, or whether it was unique to my first nick, I do not know. It was undoubtedly a very cunning and complicated fabrication where time was altered with the twofold intention of baffling the bobby and thwarting the thief.

  The clock operated as follows. As I have already mentioned, policemen did not possess personal radio sets at that time. Having left the cosy warmth of the police office, they were effectively out of range of patrolling supervisory officers. Furthermore, if anything happened, the constable could not be contacted and dispatched to the scene of any incident. As we had no luxurious methods of communication like police boxes with direct lines to the station, we made use of public telephone kiosks.

  We would stand outside selected kiosks at given times, there to await the arrival of a sergeant or a telephone call announcing that horrific things had happened and that our presence was immediately required. We had to stand outside those red-painted boxes for five minutes every half-hour of an eight-hour shift, moving from one to another in a monotonous, regulated sequence — GPO Kiosk, Fishmarket Kiosk,

  New Quay Kiosk, Golden Lion Kiosk, Laundry Kiosk, GPO Kiosk again… and so on. These five-minute waiting periods were known as ‘points’.

  The situation was that no one dare miss a point. Even if something catastrophic occurred, one must never miss a point — exciting crime inquiries were abandoned for the sake of making points, gorgeous blondes were not chatted up due to the fear of missing points, valuable clues were not examined in case we missed our points. The making of points dominated our lives.

  The method of patrolling a beat was therefore along well-trodden paths between points. The town was divided into several beats, each of which had a different combination of available kiosks, with points at differing times. When lots of bobbies were on duty with their points staggered around the Greenwich clock, a policeman could be contacted fairly quickly. A plethora of bobbies might, in a speeded-up film sequence, be seen to be whizzing across one another’s paths but never quite making contact. It wasn’t a bad system really, but it had one shocking weakness.

  If a policeman was at any kiosk at exactly the same time every day then the burglars, housebreakers, robbers, rapists and other sundry rogues would get to know this. They would know the movements of the local constabulary and, having worked out their timing and movements, would perpetrate their foulest deeds while we were busy making points. That was the flaw.

  The Clock was therefore designed to beat the villains — it would baffle the burglar, harry the housebreaker and rattle robbers and rapists.

  The Clock itself was a circular wooden board attached to the wall of the Charge Office. It was marked with numerals taken from a police uniform and they were spaced around its outer circumference in exactly the same way as the face of a genuine clock, reading from 1 to 11, and with zero where 12 would normally be. The Clock had a solitary pointer which could be moved around the face to indicate one of the aforementioned numbers.

  Thus the pointer might indicate five, ten, fifteen, twenty and so forth up to fifty-five minutes. In addition, all officers were supplied with a little book containing the dates of every month. Beside each date was a figure from the face of the Clock. Thus on 10 January the Clock might show twenty. On 26 February it might show five, and so on, for every day of the year, including leap years. It didn’t really matter what it showed, so long as everyone knew and worked on the same basis, hence the explanatory book.

  If the Clock showed five on a particular day it meant that all points were five minutes later than scheduled. Thus a 12 noon point shown at the GPO Kiosk would be made at 12.05 p.m. If the Clock showed fifty-five, the point would be made at 12.55 p.m., fifty-five minutes late.

  When beginning a tour of duty, therefore, it was vital to check the Clock and to make a note of its reading in one’s notebook. The sergeant would then allocate us to our beats and off we’d go. This meant an entry in one’s notebook and in one’s memory bank that one was working No 6 Beat with points normally at quarter to and quarter past the hour, but with today’s Clock at fifty-five.

  Sometimes beats were worked in reverse. The Clock could also be given a minus quality. Working a beat backwards with the Clock on minus ten was an hilarious affair, especially when everyone else was working his beat in the normal sequence with the Clock on plus five.

  If the system was designed to baffle the burglar, it did not succeed because the burglar never got the chance to study the sequence of our beats anyway. They were never fully manned.

  In the Clock’s favour, it certainly confounded the unfortunate office-bound constables who spent their time ringing telephone kiosks in the hope that someone might answer. There were times when the whole town was alive with the sound of bells and many a worker has risen early, thinking his alarm was sounding. And many a citizen has answered the telephone to find a puzzled policeman at the other end asking if he, the citizen, could see a policeman nearby. Policemen are never around when t
hey’re wanted.

  In fact, it was probably this system which gave rise to that popular legend when in truth, the policemen couldn’t find a policeman when they wanted one.

  It was with such a wealth of experience in the art of working nights that I was posted to Aidensfield which was considered a progressive station because it did not operate the Clock.

  My arrival in this lovely village coincided with that period of change between the old and the new so far as village bobbies were concerned. The old idea had been to place the bobby on a rural beat and let him work the patch at his own discretion. He was never off duty and no one bothered whether or not he worked a straight eight-hour shift. He did his job as he saw fit; if he fancied digging the garden one afternoon then that was fine so long as he coped with any incident that arose.

  I came to Aidensfield at the end of that casual but effective era, for the new idea was that even country bobbies should patrol for an eight-hour day on set routes.

  If anything cropped up after those eight hours or before they began, the duty of attending to it would be passed to another officer who was patrolling the district. That’s if he could be found…

  The result was that, along with my colleagues, I had to work night-duty shifts in a rural area. This was not a very frequent occurrence, certainly not as often as one week in three, the system to which I had become accustomed at Strensford. On average, it worked out that I patrolled a full week of nights once in every seventeen weeks during my term at Aidensfield. One advantage was that instead of using the motorcycle, I was allowed the luxury of a motorcar in which to patrol. It had no heater and no radio, but it did have a roof and a windscreen. It was an ancient Ford of doubtful reliability and it had a well-tested tendency to proceed in a straight line at bends in the road, especially when the driver was asleep.

  I wasn’t sure whether I would enjoy night-duty on this large rural patch, but one fact was certain — there was no way of avoiding it.

  Chapter 2

  Humour is odd, grotesque and wild,

  Only by affection spoil’d.

  JONATHAN SWIFT — To Mr Delany, 10 October 1718

  *

  On a late autumn night I left Mary and the infants in bed, locked the door of my hilltop police house and drove my motorcycle four miles into the sleepy market town of Ashfordly. This quiet place housed my Section Office and as I coasted the final ten yards into the garage to avoid waking nearby children, I noticed the tall, ramrod figure of Oscar Blaketon waiting outside. He was unsmiling and at his most severe.

  I parked my machine in the garage and made sure it would not tumble over before lifting my sandwiches and flask from one of the panniers and my peaked cap and torch from the other. Thus equipped, I walked along the side of the police station and entered the tiny office. Blaketon was already inside, waiting for me.

  “You’re late, Rhea! Ten o’clock start, you know. Not quarter past,” and his fingers tapped the counter to emphasise his words.

  “I booked on at ten, Sergeant, at Aidensfield. It’s taken me ten minutes to get here. I was on duty during those ten minutes…”

  “Clever sod, eh? Look son, when I was a lad, policemen began their shifts ten minutes before the starting-time, not ten minutes after.”

  “I did a few minutes in my own office, Sergeant, before I set off…”

  “Ten o’clock start means ten o’clock. Here. Not at home. Right?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.” It was impossible to argue when he was in this mood.

  Having diplomatically settled that point, he went on to inform me of my responsibilities over the next eight hours, not forgetting to remind me of that disputed fifteen minutes. It transpired that I had to patrol the district in the official car and was expected to make points on the hour, every hour, at nominated telephone kiosks. I had to take my meal break at Eltering Police Station, the local Sub-Divisional Office, a key to which was on the car keyring. That being the halfway stage. I must then make the return journey via the same kiosks. It seemed simple enough. My eleven o’clock point would be at Thackerston Kiosk, my midnight one at Waindale and my one o’clock at Whemmelby. During the period 1.45 a.m. until 2.30 p.m., I would be in Eltering Police Station enjoying a meat sandwich and a cup of coffee from my flask. After that I had to return via Whemmelby at three, Waindale at four and Thackerston at five. I would book off duty at Ashfordly at six and travel home, bleary-eyed, cold and undoubtedly hungry, to knock off at 6.15 a.m.

  “There’s a book of unoccupied property,” he shoved a huge leather-bound volume across the counter. “Check ’em all. Houses, golf clubs, shops — the lot. Poachers’ll be abroad, I reckon, and late-night boozers. Don’t go to sleep in that car — it runs off the road if you do. There’ll be a supervisory rank on duty in Malton — a sergeant or possibly an inspector — and he might pop out to meet you somewhere. So be there. Also, the Malton rural night-patrol will be doing the southern end of the patch — you might meet him at Eltering. The lads usually meet there for a chat — nothing wrong in that so long as you don’t exceed your three-quarters of an hour meal break. Don’t abuse the trust I place in you, Rhea.”

  “There’s no radio in the car,” I said inanely, wondering what the procedure was if the car broke down in a remote area, or if I needed assistance of any sort.

  “True,” he said, turning into his office. “True, there is no radio in the car.”

  Realising that my statement of the obvious would excite no further comment from Oscar, I turned my attention to the Occurrence Book. It revealed nothing of immediate interest, save a stolen car which had already been found abandoned in Scarborough. I noted some unoccupied premises from the leather-bound volume and, anxious to be off, I lifted the car keys from their hook. I checked that the office fire was stoked up sufficiently to remain burning until my return and said, “I’m off, Sergeant.”

  There was no reply.

  I dropped the latch as I made my exit, making sure I had my door key to re-enter at six. In the garage the little Ford Anglia awaited me. I unlocked the driver’s door and climbed in. It was a very basic car with no trimmings, the only interior extra being the official logbook which had to be completed after every journey. Every purchase of oil or petrol had to be entered and I checked the book to ensure that my predecessor, whoever he was, had complied with that instruction.

  Happily, the log was up to date. Before venturing out I remembered another essential check, a visual examination of the exterior. This was done to check whether the vehicle had suffered any damage that might be blamed on me.

  During that era policemen seldom drove cars regularly on duty. That was considered a privilege rather than a right and the exceptions were the crème de la crème who had been selected for Motor Patrol duty. It was considered a luxury to have the use of a mechanically-propelled conveyance, owned and paid for by the ratepayers. If any of us accidentally marked an official car by reversing into a gatepost or scratching it in any way we were grounded for ever. The result was that policemen who damaged cars never admitted it. The cunning offenders parked in garages or tight corners so that an unsuspecting driver would take out the vehicle without noticing the blemish. Once you were driving the vehicle was your responsibility, which meant that any scratches, dents, bumps or bruises were deemed to have occurred through your carelessness. No arguments or excuses were entertained. It was even pointless arguing that the car had been damaged in your absence — it was your fault for leaving it in such a vulnerable position. Every driver therefore carefully checked every nut, bolt, screw, indicator light, panel, glass etc., before turning a wheel.

  Various intellectual giants within the Force considered it wise to bump the night-duty car on the grounds they’d be forbidden to drive for eternity and thus unable to perform night-duty. Even greater intellectual giants felt this was not a wise move because they would have to patrol at night either on foot, on cycle or on motorcycles. The point was well taken. Apart from the chilliness of the latter possibility, motorcycl
e patrols in rural areas at night were guaranteed to make dogs bark, hens cackle, residents to arouse early and poachers to learn of our whereabouts. Being conscientious individuals we were careful with official vehicles.

  Primitive though it was, the car was pleasant and undamaged, so I started the well-tuned engine and began to drive from the garage. Suddenly Sergeant Blaketon was right in my path and flagging me down with his torch. I stopped, wound down the window and asked, “Is there a message, Sergeant?”

  “There is,” he said.

  I sat in silence to await the words he wished to impart, but he merely stood by the car, immobile and severe. It dawned on me that he wanted me to get out, which I did.

  “Oil, water, tyres, lights, indicators,” he said woodenly. “Elementary. Always check them. Always. Before every journey. It’s laid down in orders. You didn’t.”

  I didn’t argue. I knew he always checked such things. He would stride around the car, looking at the aforementioned points before moving off. He performed this ritual every time, so I now did the same. Up went the bonnet and I found the oil and water levels to be fine. Indicators working, tyres at correct pressures…

  “Goodnight, Rhea,” he said, turning on his heel and vanishing into the office. I drove off, thinking about him. I remembered watching him reverse the little car from the police station drive a few weeks earlier to allow a visiting inspector to remove his car. Oscar Blaketon had got out of the Ford, performed a fleeting moment’s traffic duty on the street to guide out the inspector, and then, before driving the police car back into the garage, he had performed his ritual of checking oil, water, tyres, lights and indicators. Such was his devotion to the rule-book, even though his ten-yard journey had been broken by only half a minute.