Burley Cross Postbox Theft

Ever the consummate professional, I have seen fit to contact Messrs Thorndyke, Endive Jr, and Augustine personally (by email, at www.hystericaltosspots.com) to inform them of the fact that this case is now being passed on to the Ilkley Constabulary. I don’t doubt that you will be hearing from them very shortly. In fact you have probably heard from them already. In fact you are probably hearing from them right now, if the phone in your office is ringing…

Is it ringing, Rog? Thought so. Did you answer it, Rog? You did. And was it Mr Thorndyke’s solicitor, Rog, ‘keeping up to speed’ on things, while jabbering away, inanely, about heaven only knows what? Of course it was.

Since I have a few minutes to spare before tea-time (who tiptoes ever closer on her sweet, icing-sugared feet) and because I consider you ‘an old mucker’, Rog, I’ll give you a quick précis of my activities in relation to this case over the past six weeks (although, if you prefer, there’s always the enclosed file: a whole 474 pages-worth of completely pointless paperwork, duplicated thricely, as regulations stipulate).

Credit where credit’s due, Rog: PC Hill actually did much of the early legwork. His initial visit to the crime scene was on the morning after the theft (on the evening of the 21st – the night of the crime – we were all somewhat preoccupied in Skipton, as I’m sure you will recall, by my televised appearance on the National Bravery Awards – live, from the Café de Paris in London – following those tragic incidents surrounding the blaze at Tilton Mill; the fascinating denouement of which has been closely followed – and faithfully recorded, with accompanying photos and lengthy panegyrics from a grateful public – in the local and national press. Although, as I said at the time, Rog, ‘The label of “hero” sits uncomfortably on me. I’m just a typical, northern copper doing an extremely difficult – and often dangerous – job to the very best of my blah, blah, blah…’).

We have reason to believe that the break-in took place at approximately 21.00 hrs. The local vicar assured PC Hill that he posted a letter (case letter 15) at about 20.55 that evening, when everything appeared ‘just as normal – in fact, if anything, more normal than normal’. (PC Hill comments in his accompanying notes that he found this ‘more normal than normal’ statement, ‘slightly odd’, but that he didn’t press the reverend any further on the point because ‘he had just started a nose bleed and only had one tissue’.)

The crime was reported to us (with almost indecent alacrity, Rog) at 21.12, by Susan Trott – of Black Grouse Cottage – who had been, I quote: ‘out looking for hedgehogs when I was horrified to notice the postbox door had fallen off and was just lying there, on the ground’.

The report PC Hill submitted was, to put it generously, a tad perfunctory (you will notice that some of his ‘extra thoughts’ were jotted down on to torn shreds of chip paper – that fool in Supplies has so much to answer for!).

No serious attempt was made to dust the crime scene for fingerprints because – as you can read for yourself – it had been ‘bucketing down with rain all morning’.

His search for any kind of tool or instrument which might’ve been used to engineer the break-in was limited to ‘a quick peek in a nearby hedge’, where he was surprised to discover ‘a rusty, old biscuit-tin containing two slightly mildewed pornographic magazines: Trumpet for Boys (Issue 13, June 1998), and Golden Horns (Issue 4, December 2002)’. As you can probably detect from the titles, Rog, they were directed towards the specialist brass band enthusiast’s market, and aren’t currently included in the body of evidence because PC Hill took them home for ‘further detailed scrutiny’ (he plays a wind instrument himself; possibly the clarinet), and has yet to bring them back.

While it obviously pains me to level criticism at an officer from my own division, Rog, I don’t believe, in all candour, that PC Hill initially appreciated the true gravity of the Burley Cross Postbox Theft scenario – a serious schoolboy error for a young bobby of his obvious talent and considerable potential (and talking of errors, Rog, I think you’ll agree that he really does need to learn the correct spellings of ‘necessary’ and ‘instigated’).

Even so, there’s a perfectly passable description of the condition of the box itself. (‘Overall, the thing’s in a pretty terrible state. I’m surprised it’s still functional. It’s falling to pieces… There’s a bit of botched-up paintwork covering several inches of rust around the base, and another bit around the door’s hinges… To break into it, all you’d’ve really needed to do was jab at it for a while with a flat screwdriver or a putty knife…’)

You will doubtless already be aware of the backstory re the postbox, Rog. The Royal Mail – or Consignia (or whatever jumped-up moniker they’re giving themselves nowadays) – have been trying to replace it with a modern box for the past three years and have been repeatedly foiled in their attempts by a shadowy – but nevertheless deeply influential – pressure group in the village called The Burley Cross Preservation Corps.

The Corps is controlled by Independent local borough councillor (and gibbering idiot) Baxter Thorndyke. Thorndyke is also a staunch mainstay of both The Burley Cross Public Toilet Watch (est. 2005), and The Burley Cross Road Safety Committee, a group whose chief aim is to encourage motorists to stick to the busy A road that bypasses the village, rather than taking the – admittedly, rather tempting – short-cut straight through the heart of it (they have their own luminous, faux-military uniform and functioning speed gun – which they bought on the internet – and spend many a pleasant hour each week pointing it at random drivers and intimidating them with it).

You will know yourself, Rog, that the postbox at issue is actually situated in Ilkley Constabulary’s policing territory (I rue the day some pea-brain on Wharfedale Council found themselves with a spare half-hour to waste before lunch one morning, and saw fit to spend it cheerfully reallocating the police boundary for Burley Cross, dividing it, haphazardly, between our two adjacent forces. For the record, I still don’t know who’s responsible for the barn and outbuildings at Deep Fell or the small housing estate on Hollow Nook Farm… So far as I am aware, they currently police themselves).

The girl at the call pool who registered (and then allocated) Susan Trott’s emergency call (Cindy Withers. Are you familiar with Cindy, Rog? Incorrigible shrew. Terrible chip on her shoulder – probably acquired from lugging that phenomenal pair of Double-D cups around everywhere with her) still stridently maintains, in her own defence, that while she appreciated the fact that the box was on your watch, the caller – Susan Trott – phoned from a land-line inside her home, which is directly adjacent to the box, and therefore on ours.

A bag of evidence being unearthed in the back alleys of Skipton – a mere ten hours thereafter – was also considered pertinent to where the case ultimately ended up.

Of course the people in charge of these life-and-death decisions (hard to believe they actually have a whole department dedicated to this kind of guff, Rog, manned entirely by the idiot sons and daughters of Police Commissioners, I don’t doubt), always reserve the right to change what we laughably call ‘their minds’ (thereby effortlessly generating yet another skip-load of paperwork), and have apparently resolved to do so in this instance (I honestly don’t know why this might be, or what they can possibly hope to gain by it, Rog, I just try my damnedest to keep my head down, and take all their stupid, petty, pointless – not to mention hugely disruptive – subterranean political manoeuvrings with a very, very generous pinch of salt).

Returning, if I may, to the issue of the theft itself; it might interest you to discover (and this is not something PC Hill made an official note of, but he happened to mention it to me, afterwards) that during his cursory, five-minute perusal of the postbox, he was approached and engaged in conversation/ loudly interrogated/helpfully advised/subtly lampooned/openly insulted (take your pick, Rog) by at least twelve different individuals, including the aforementioned Thorndyke (don’t these crackpots have jobs to go to, Rog? Or lives to lead? Or hedges to trim? Or Raku classes to attend?), who was wearing a T-shirt bearing the legend ‘Your Vehicle is a Loaded Weapon!’ on one side and ‘Watch out World – I’m a Highwayman!’ on the other.

PC Hill said Mr Thorndyke became ‘quite hysterical’ during their brief exchange, and at one point virtually screamed, ‘This is exactly what they wanted! Are you blind?! Can’t you see?! This is exactly what they wanted! If you actually have any serious intention of investigating this crime – and catching the cowardly vandal who committed this atrocity – then stop dawdling around here like a wet weekend, stuffing your face with battered cod, and go and speak to the man behind it! Talk to Trevor Woods! Talk to their henchman, if you’ve got the balls! He’s up to his scrawny neck in all of this!’ (I feel I must just briefly note, in passing, that there have been no actual road fatalities in Burley Cross since 1917, when, according to town records, ‘an inebriated flower-seller – of poor repute – slipped on some filthy cobbles, fell under the wheels of a cart and was instantly killed.’

It should also be noted that Cllr Thorndyke was wearing a T-shirt – and only a T-shirt, in temperatures of 20 degrees and under – during his exchange with PC Hill. PC Hill said, ‘His teeth were chattering as he spoke. It was actually quite difficult to decipher what he was saying at some points. I don’t know why he didn’t just go home and put his coat on.’)

A short while later, as he was climbing into his patrol car, PC Hill apprehended the aforementioned Mr Woods (the source of all this unbridled hysteria), driving up to the box in his postal van. PC Hill said he was ‘to all intents and purposes a broken man, skulking around the place like a beaten dog…’

On being questioned about the theft, Woods was quoted as saying, ‘They can’t pay me enough to do the collection here, mate. They’re nutters. They should have me on danger money. They’re all sodding lunatics.’

Suffice to say, following PC Hill’s initial investigation of the crime scene (and following the discovery of the refuse sack of letters found dumped in a back alley in Skipton – a mere two doors down from the bijou residence of notorious local petty criminal, Timmy Dickson), I contacted all those individuals whose letters now form a part of the official evidence, informing them that their post couldn’t be returned – or forwarded on – until it had been formally declassified as such.

Next, I initiated an official mail-out to the entire village (also enclosed, Rog, translated into the obligatory three languages – I chose Portuguese, Mandarin and Xhosa) to try and discover if anyone had posted a letter on the evening of Dec. 21st, which had not – for some reason – been retrieved in the Skipton cache.

Nobody had, although Rita Bramwell couldn’t be entirely certain. She said she thought she might have sent something, but that she wasn’t sure what it was, or to whom it was addressed (she’s several wires short of the full radio, Rog). As it transpired, she had actually sent something (case letter 13).

When I then asked her if she had received my earlier communication (informing her that exactly such a letter was being held by us, as evidence), she hotly denied that I had sent her one – although her husband, Peter Bramwell, later found it stuffed down the back of a chaise longue, and was kind enough to apologize to me for his wife’s behaviour.

I subsequently sent Mrs Bramwell a photocopy of her own letter (in an attempt to dispel her confusion). Her response was not at all as I had expected it to be. She hotly denied having sent it – in a long and erratic email – making a series of wild, unsubstantiated claims and accusations – one of which was that it had been ‘forged’, and that I myself was ‘in the frame’ as one of the suspects for the crime (we all had a good chuckle at that in the staff canteen)!

Several people were, you will be stunned to discover, Rog, a little peeved by the news that their post would not be immediately returned to them (you may have seen the bilious squall of angry letters in the local rag, Rog), but this is Burley Cross, after all: a tiny, ridiculously affluent, ludicrously puffed-up moor-side village, stuffed to capacity with spoilt second-home owners, southerners, the strange, the ‘artistic’, the eccentric and the retired (most of them tick all of the above boxes, Rog, and several more besides – although I’m sure I don’t have the natural intelligence, fine vocabulary or social acuity to do them all justice here… Matt Endive (Sr) – case letter 4 – who perfectly exemplifies those latent, Burley Cross characteristics of tragic retard and unalloyed fat-head combined, called me a ‘bumped-up little northern grammar-school oik’, only yesterday on the phone, and then, when I laughed him off, said I was ‘tragically out of my depth’ and ‘riddled with contumely’. I responded – quick as a flash, Rog. I said, ‘Are you sure you don’t mean “contumacy,” Mr Endive – from the Latin com = intense + tumere = to swell?’

A long silence followed, Rog, and I don’t mind admitting that I enjoyed every damn second of it – although, in retrospect, I think he probably did mean contumely).

Of course you know better than anybody, Rog, what kind of problems we’re up against here: to say Burley Cross is ‘Little England writ large’, would be like saying Stilton is ‘a dairy product with blue bits running through it’ (i.e. an understatement, Rog, and a considerable understatement at that).

This is, after all, the same place where the local council’s decision not to install a speed-bump last year caused a mini-riot on Pancake Day which was later ‘Recorded for Posterity, that Future Generations Might Read and Weep’, in a seven-hundred-line epic poem, (still pinned up on the notice board outside the local shop, with copies available for sale inside):

The butcher got the worst of it, when spade and axe did fall, The baker put up quite a fight, when caught up in the brawl…

(Ironically, there is no baker in Burley Cross, Rog, and never has been, either, so far as I am aware.)

Before I finally wind up, Rog, here’s a little something extra that might just pique your interest: while nobody was willing to admit to having had a letter stolen during the theft, two people were determined to make it publicly known that the letters written in their names were not penned by their own hands (the first, Rita Bramwell, as mentioned previously; the second, Tom Augustine, whose letter about a little incident at the public toilets I found especially informative, Rog – if deeply unedifying).

A final, brief aside, Rog: I couldn’t help remarking on how many letters had been sent on the day of the robbery. The number seemed unusually high in these text- and email-friendly times (even taking into consideration the pre-Christmas rush). I was about to launch some half-cocked investigations re The Royal Mail (Consignia, et al.) when PC Hill happily set my mind at rest on the issue.

It transpires that an extremely attractive, young lady – Nina Springhill – has recently started work in the post office, and, since her employment there, the volume of post being sent from the village has significantly increased (not only that, but an unprecedented number of pensioners – all male – have reverted to the traditional way of receiving their bi-monthly pay-outs: at the counter, as opposed to having it paid directly into their bank accounts).

I was only too happy to check the veracity of this tip-off myself, Rog, a week or so back, when I dropped into the PO to buy a book of stamps (in fact I bought three – two more on successive visits) which Sandy later came across – on wash day – while going through my pockets.

When I staggered home from work that night, there they all were, formally arranged on the kitchen table, like pieces of evidence – in fact I think there may have been five of them, in total – and Sandy standing next to them, pointing, with a face like thunder, demanding to know who I was planning to write to, and why.

(I mean all this fuss and nonsense over seven little books of stamps, Rog! Whatever next, eh?!)

So that’s pretty much the sum of it, Rog. I do hope my paltry insights have proved moderately useful as I step graciously aside – severing the spell-binding umbilical of this case once and for all – and redirect my energies to solving Skipton’s ever increasing backlog of run-of-the-mill murders, arsons, rapes, indecent assaults etc. (and, of course, in case I ever get too smug and complacent: the perennially fascinating mystery of Mrs Compton-Rees’s nomadic recycling bin; they found it in Hurston on Friday, then, on Sunday, a bemused call from the Laundromat in New Leasey…).

Hush, my boy! Hush! What’s that I hear? Is it the trusty rattle of Mrs Spokes’s tea trolley?

Before it arrives, Rog, I should probably alert you to the fact that Timmy Dickson, our main suspect for the crime (this type of activity is right up his street, Rog – or should I say ‘right up his back alley’, Rog? Arf! Arf!), has a perfect alibi. He was bedridden in hospital in Leeds that week, after his electronic tagging device rubbed up against the delicate flesh of his calf, generated a blister, and provoked a nasty case of cellulitis (transpires he’s allergic to penicillin, Rog, and blew up like a balloon when they pumped him full of the stuff!).

Fishing Saturday week, Rog? It’s been too long! How are your shifts? I’m free in the p.m. from one, if that’s any good to you. The following week I’m thinking of heading off to Royal Dornoch for a round or two (they say it has the same latitude as Moscow!) with Richard Usbourne (always useful to have a shrink handy on the links, eh, Rog? Although in your case, a pathologist might be more in order!).

I do think I’ve earned it, Rog, all things considered. PC Hill’s little problem put the kibosh on me joining Sandy on her annual pilgrimage to County Wicklow to lay flowers on her father’s grave (I was planning to join her for the first time this year – possibly taking the opportunity of popping in on Druid’s Glen, afterwards, on the sly!). Sandy’s still bearing quite a grudge after making the trip on her own.

When I mentioned that I might be heading off to Royal Dornoch over breakfast this morning (which, for the record, I made myself – there’s still quite an atmosphere of rancour in the house over the ‘stamps issue’), Sandy suggested that I might enjoy ‘taking a short trip up my own backside’, instead, then added, as a vague afterthought, ‘Although that might be a little difficult, Laurence. I’m not sure if you’ve actually returned from the last one yet.’

Ho ho!

The truths we speak in jest, eh, Rog?

All the best,

Sergeant Laurence Everill

PS To touch, Rog: tango, tangis, tangit, tangimus, tangitis, tangunt…

PPS Hmmn. A lovely warm slice of Treacle Spice Tray-bake and a steaming mug of tea! Yes. That’ll do nicely, thanks.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.