Confessions of a Police Constable

‘Yeah, yeah. But I can explain—’ the man began.

‘Time of arrest is eleven forty-six,’ Kim interrupted, writing the time on the back of her hand with her biro.

Simon tapped my shoulder and beckoned me to step aside for a second.

‘Cells are full, mate. We just had to take someone to Yankee Romeo, and that was the last of their cells, as well. We’ll be taking bodies25 to Essex next,’ he huffed.

Yankee Romeo is the borough code for Lewisham – and it’s nowhere near our own borough. It was no big surprise that cells were full everywhere: many boroughs had been doing a series of raids at the homes of people identified, thanks to CCTV, as having been involved in recent riots across London. However, having to take our prisoner all the way outside the Metropolitan Police area because of full cells would be a royal pain, not least because there was only 15 minutes left of my shift, and a trip to Essex would mean several hours’ overtime. Usually, I’d welcome the overtime for the wage bump it implies, but after my tenth straight 12-hour shift, I’d gladly have paid to be able to go home and sleep for a few … well … days.

‘I don’t really fancy a two-hour round-trip,’ I said. Simon grunted in agreement.

‘Kim,’ I said, ‘can you put the guy in the cage for now? I’m going to try and find out what we need to do with him.’

Kim lead our prisoner to the van’s back doors, as Simon took the bike and put it in the middle section. I reached for my radio.

‘Is there a duty skipper available?’ I asked.

‘Unit calling for duty skipper,’ replied the CAD operator. ‘Please call up Mike Delta eight-eight.’

‘Received,’ I transmitted. ‘Eight-eight receiving five-nine-two’.

‘Eight-eight receiving, go ahead.’

‘Spare please.’

‘Changing,’ the sergeant replied. I changed my radio to the spare channel.

‘Mike Delta five-nine-two receiving.’

‘Hi skip, I’m here. We’ve just arrested a suspected bike thief, but he claims the bike is his.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, I was just wondering if it would be okay to take him to the bike shop and see if we can square things up there; I don’t really fancy a trip to Essex.’

‘The clock’s running, Matt,’ the sergeant said, his voice garbled with exhaustion.

Someone later told me that this particular sergeant had recently finished an 18-hour shift, had six hours’ sleep, and gone straight in for another 14 hours. Some of the skippers were completely unstoppable; bloody superheroes, the lot of them. The clock he was referring to is the force target of getting prisoners to custody within an hour of arrest.

‘But yeah, knock yourself out,’ he added. ‘Keep me posted.’

‘Thanks, sarge,’ I said.

‘Out,’ he replied, and vanished from the spare channel.

I walked to the back of the police van.

‘What’s your name, mate?’ I said.

‘It’s Case Jacobs,’ he said.

‘Case?’ I replied. ‘Unusual name, where’s that from?’

‘It’s spelled K-E-E-S,’ he said. ‘I’m from Belgium.’

‘Nice to meet you, Kees,’ I said. ‘Normally, we’d have taken you straight to a police station, but I propose we go talk to the bicycle shop owner first. Is that okay by you?’

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Good,’ I said, closing the back doors on the caged Transit van, before throwing the keys to the Astra to Kim and climbing into the van through the side door.

Simon and Kim drove the vehicles to the bike shop, whilst I had a quick chat with Kees in the back of the Transit van.

‘So, what happened, then?’

‘I went into the bike shop to buy a new lock, as my last one was cut in half by the thieves, and I saw my bike there! I told the shop owner, but he said it wasn’t my bike and that I couldn’t have it back. So I took it.’

‘How can you know it’s your bike?’ I asked.

‘Look at it!’ he laughed. ‘Have you ever seen a bike like that? I fixed it up myself. There’s no way that’s not my bike. I changed the seat, and I can tell you every detail of every part of that bike.’

Then began a monologue about the various bits and pieces he had used to make it ‘the perfect bike’.

‘It has Shimano XTR components all around, even the chain,’ he said, ‘but I blasted off the markings so thieves wouldn’t see them,’ he said.

I took a closer look at the bike; true enough, every part was gleaming from having been sandblasted, and no markings were visible anywhere.

‘That puts us in a bit of a weird situation, though,’ I said. ‘You say you’ve done it so thieves won’t know that the bike is valuable, right?’

Kees replied with a nod.

‘But that’s a pretty common thing for thieves to do as well, so owners won’t recognise their own bikes …’

We arrived at the bike shop.

‘Hang on here for a second,’ I told Kees. ‘I’m just going to have a chat with the owner.’ I turned to Kim, who’d just finished calling in an update about our situation. ‘Wanna keep our friend company?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, sure,’ she said, and walked to the back of the van, opening one of the doors to give our prisoner some fresh air.

I walked into the bike shop. The owner was there, looking none too pleased.

‘Took you fucking long enough,’ he said.

‘True,’ I said. ‘But we caught the guy.’

The shopkeeper did a double take, then leaned forward and looked at the van. He couldn’t see into it.

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah, we spotted him as he was cycling along, so we stopped him.’

‘Wow, that’s great!’

‘One little thing, though: he says the bike is his.’

‘Yeah, he told me the same,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘But no … no way. Some kid brought it in the other day to get a flat tyre fixed.’

‘In your opinion,’ I said, ‘is that a valuable bike?’

‘It’s a funny one, actually,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘It’s a pretty standard Cannondale. They’re popular bikes, but it’s a mid-range bike, not usually particularly expensive. This particular one has had just about every component upgraded, though – high-end everything.’

‘Did you do the upgrades for him?’ I asked.

‘Nope,’ he replied. ‘I’ve never seen the bike before.’

‘Is it hard to replace a flat tyre?’ I asked.

‘No! Not at all.’

‘It seems to me that this bike would have been owned by a bike lover, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yeah, definitely. It came in super-clean. Seems as if the kid really loved his bike, definitely kept it in pristine condition.’

‘So, forgive me if I’m asking a silly question – if someone is a huge bike fan, wouldn’t they just replace their own inner tubes?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, I suppose so. But people are weird, y’know,’ he shrugged.

‘I don’t suppose you have CCTV, do you?’

‘Are you joking? We’re CCTV’d to the rafters. I’ve got several bikes in here that are worth thousands and thousands of pounds; no way would I not have CCTV,’ he said. ‘In fact, I already took a look at the footage of the guy who brought the bike in, and of the fellow who nicked it.’

‘Can I have a look?’ I asked.

‘Sure,’ he replied, and waved me to the back of the shop.

It took me all of six seconds of the first video to recognise the lad who had brought the bike in for repair.

‘I’ve got some bad news for you,’ I said. ‘That’s Tommy, he’s a drug addict and a notorious bike thief around here.’

‘Seriously?’ the owner said. ‘I’ve seen him around the shop several times. He’s never stolen anything,’ he added, before pausing for several seconds. ‘I don’t think …’

‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ I added. ‘I haven’t heard of him getting nicked for a good while, perhaps he’s taken the straight and narrow …’

The shop owner shrugged and queued up the next video.

‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘The guy had a funny accent. German or something. He came in to buy a lock, but then he spotted the bike …’

The video didn’t have sound, but it was unusually clear for CCTV. Surprisingly so, in fact. A lot of the CCTV footage we see is utterly useless, and some of it looks like it has been scrambled to hell and back, as if the entire file has been run through the blocking-out filter they apply to genitalia in Japanese pornography. Not that I would know what that looks like, of course.

In the video, I could clearly see Kees getting more and more aggravated. At one point, he simply takes the bike out of the rack, rips off a label that was zip-tied to the seat and starts pushing the bike towards the doors. The shop owner quickly blocks his way, but Kees runs his bike into the owner, before taking a swing at him with the lock he is holding in his hand.

‘Stop there for a moment,’ I said, and took a closer look at the shopkeeper. ‘Did he hit you with the lock?’ I asked him, looking at his face carefully.

‘Yeah. He didn’t hit me properly, though. That would have hurt,’ he replied, as he lifted his hand to his face, rubbing his chin.

‘Your eye still looks a bit swollen,’ I said, thoughtfully.

‘Yeah, well, I’ve had worse,’ the shopkeeper said grimly. I looked at him, waiting for the rest of the story.

‘Rugby,’ he said, and grinned.

I smiled back.

‘Hah, yeah, that makes sense,’ I said. ‘Would you excuse me for a moment?’

I went back to the van.

‘Kees, do you have any receipts or anything for the bike?’ I asked.

‘Do you have an iPhone?’ he replied.

‘What for?’ I asked, confused.

‘I love my bike,’ he replied, ‘and I’ve kept a blog of all the work I’ve done on it. The website I keep for my bike has all the receipts on it as well,’ he said.

‘Well, damn …’ I said.

‘I’ve run the bike through the box,’ Kim said. ‘It was reported stolen six days ago, by Kees here, and the serial number of the bike matches up with the police report. Also, when he filed his report, he showed the original purchase receipt of the bike, which matched the serial number as well.’

‘Oh,’ said Kees, ‘and if you still doubt it, take the seat stem out of the bike’.

I walked around to the bike, unlocked the quick-release clasp, and took the seat off the bike. It looked pretty normal to me.

‘What am I looking for here?’ I asked.

‘Look inside,’ Kees said.

I felt around the bottom of the seat stem with my finger, and found something. I took it out and took a look. It was a piece of laminated paper that read: ‘Property of Kees Jacobs’, with a telephone number.

‘It’s a normal thing to do in Belgium,’ Kees said, with a shrug.

‘Hang on a sec,’ I said, and went back to the bike shop.

‘I’m starting to believe that the bike belongs to the “thief”,’ I told the shopkeeper. ‘He reported it stolen six days ago. When did the lad drop it off to have the tyre fixed?’

The shopkeeper picked up the piece of paper that Kees had torn off the bike, and read it.

‘Six days ago,’ he said.

‘So it seems as if someone stole the bike whilst the riots were raging, and Tommy dropped it off at your shop to get the tyre fixed soon after,’ I said.

‘Well … Fuck,’ the proprietor contributed, summarising the culmination of our predicament perfectly.

‘Yeah,’ I agreed.

‘We’ll take the bike to the station, as it’s stolen property. The owner can come and claim it when they produce their receipt,’ I said.

‘I bloody hate bike thieves,’ he said.

‘Yeah, I imagine you must do,’ I replied. I paused, and looked at the shopkeeper for a few moments. His eye had swollen even further. The words ‘Crikey, that’s gonna hurt in the mornin’, son’ from that annoying Fosters advert echoed around in my head.

‘That leaves only one thing,’ I said. ‘The bike owner assaulted you. We have all the evidence we need to prosecute him, I think. All we need is your video footage, and a statement …’

‘Ah,’ the shopkeeper said, rubbing the side of his head. ‘You’re positive he’s not a bike thief?’

‘You can never be sure,’ I said. ‘But he does seem to have all the receipts to back up his claims. He bought most of the parts off eBay and put the whole bike together himself. He showed me a blog of the work in progress; it looks like it all checks out.’

‘Can I talk to him?’ he asked.

I hesitated.

‘Not really, to be honest. If we’re going to charge him, we need to interview him at the police station.’

‘Can I go stand by your van and just think out loud for a bit, then?’ he asked, with a conspiratory smile on his face.

‘Do you have a bathroom?’ I asked.

‘I do,’ he said, pointing with his thumb towards a door in the corner of his workshop.

‘I’m going to go use the loo, then, if you don’t mind. What you do whilst I’m gone is up to you, really,’ I said, and walked to the bathroom.

When I came back out, the shopkeeper was standing next to the van, laughing with Kim.

Kim came up to me.

‘The shopkeeper is refusing to make a statement about the assault, and says that he may have “accidentally” deleted the footage of it,’ she said. ‘What should we do?’

‘Well, if there’s no evidence of an assault, no allegations of any sort …’ I said, adding: ‘Obviously, Kees can’t have stolen his own bike.’

Kim let our suspect out of the caged van but kept him in handcuffs.

‘So, just to confirm, I’ve written here: “I, Dan Smith, proprietor of the Bike Shack on seventy-three Main Street, confirm that I do not allege any crimes in connection with my 999 call. CAD eight-seven-four-nine refers”. If that sounds accurate, all you need to do is to sign here, and we’ll be out of your hair,’ I said.

‘Yeah, no worries. Turns out Kees and I have friends in common, and to be honest, I’d punch anyone who got in the way of stealing my pride and joy as well,’ he said, laughing.

‘Just for future reference,’ I said, ‘I probably wouldn’t say that to a police officer if I were you. What he should have done is to dial 999 himself; that would have solved the whole incident without anyone getting any black eyes.’

‘Yeah, of course. Of course,’ the shopkeeper said, as he signed and dated my pocketbook. ‘Keep up the good work, officer!’ he added, and walked off.

‘Get some ice on that eye,’ I called after him. He raised a hand and waved a thank you, as he strolled back to his shop. I doubted he would actually bother with the ice.

‘Kees,’ I said, turning to the young man, who was leant against the police van, flirting with Kim.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘We’ve got a bit of a problem,’ I said. ‘The shopkeeper showed me some CCTV footage of what happened in the shop. You took a swing at him with a bike lock and hit him across the face.’

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