Constable Among the Heather (9 page)

‘Have you your certificate?’ the shopkeeper asked.

It is illegal to sell such ammunition to anyone who is not the holder of a firearms certificate, and the seller must endorse the certificate with the amount and type he sells. This does not apply to shotgun ammunition, nor pellets for air weapons, but it does strictly apply for ammunition – i.e. bullets – for use with rifles and such handguns as revolvers and pistols. Clearly, this lad had such a weapon.

I hovered behind a tall display stand and listened. This knowledge would be of use to me.

‘I haven’t a certificate,’ said the youth. ‘I allus uses my uncle’s bullets. He lets me.’

‘Who’s rifle is it?’ asked the shopkeeper.

‘Mine,’ said Noel. ‘Me grandad gave me it.’

‘Well, you must have a certificate for the rifle, so fetch that in and I can let you have the bullets.’

‘No,’ said the lad. ‘I’ve no certificate for t’gun, never ’ave had. I just have it and borrow bullets. But I thought I’d try to buy some for myself. I am over seventeen, so how can I get this certificate?’

‘You’ll have to apply to the police,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘And if they think you are a fit and proper person to possess such a firearm, you will be granted a certificate.’

‘Aye, right,’ said Noel, paying for his odds and ends.

When he left the shop, I followed. I could not let this opportunity pass without making use of it.

As he placed his purchases in the pannier behind the saddle, I said, ‘Hello, are you Noel Patton?’

‘Aye.’ He stood up and looked at me, a puzzled expression on his face. I was not wearing uniform.

‘I’m PC Rhea from Aidensfield,’ I introduced myself. ‘Part of my responsibility is the Hopbind Inn at Elsinby.’

‘Oh aye.’ He looked me up and down but gave nothing away.

‘I have reason to believe you have been making a nuisance of yourself there, playing tricks on cars and things.’

He said nothing. Simple though he might be, he was shrewd and cunning, I realized.

‘All I want to say, Noel, is that it must stop. No more pranks, no more jokes on your family or their cars when they’re at the pub. No more ropes tied to bumpers, petrol pumps and the like.’

‘Who said it were me?’ he suddenly shouted.

‘It doesn’t matter who said it was. I know it was. All I’m saying is that it must stop. Right now, as from today. No more pranks, right?’

‘Nobody’s seen me, nobody knows …’

‘I know it’s you, Noel, and so do lots of other folks. Now, I happen to know you have a rifle without a certificate. I could get you sent to prison for that.’

‘Grandad gave it to me. It’s from the big war.’

‘No matter, you must have a certificate. Now, as I said, I’m the policeman at Aidensfield, and if there are any more pranks outside the Hopbind, I’ll take you to court for having that gun without a certificate. Do you understand?’

‘Prison?’ he gasped.

‘If you misbehave,’ I said grimly. I had over-emphasized the penalties but felt it justified if it stopped his antics.

‘No more pranks then, Mr Policeman. I’m sorry. It’s just they keep getting at me.’

‘I’m sorry, but you mustn’t take it out on them like that, Noel.’

‘OK, I won’t,’ and he sat astride his bike, ready to ride off. ‘So what about the gun then?’

I did wonder whether I should arrange for it to be confiscated but said, ‘You apply for a certificate, and your local bobby will send it to our headquarters. Then you’ll be able to keep that gun.’ I knew that by this procedure he would be carefully vetted by his local policeman.

‘Right,’ and off he rode.

A couple of months passed without incident and then, when I was standing outside the telephone kiosk at Elsinby, awaiting any call that might come, Noel rode up on his red bike. He halted at my side.

‘Mr Rhea,’ he said, surprising me because he remembered my name, ‘that gun o’ mine. Me mum wouldn’t let me apply for a certificate, nor would my Uncle Jack. They said I had no
need, I could use the farm guns for killing rabbits and pigeons …’

‘So you’ll have handed in your rifle, have you? To your local policeman?’

‘No, I’ve buried it.’

‘Buried it? Where?’

‘There’s a deep bog in Ferrers Wood. I pushed it right down, used a rake handle to make sure it went real deep, then all t’waiter covered it up. Nobody’ll find it there, Mr Rhea, nobody.’

I knew he was telling the truth.

‘Thanks for telling me, Noel. Maybe that was the wisest thing to do.’

‘Mum said it was.’ He smiled and rode off towards Pattington.

And there was no more pranks on the Patton cars when they parked outside the Hopbind Inn at Elsinby.

In the middle years of this century, there existed within the police service – and probably within many other organizations – a philosophy that, if you wanted something which would improve your conditions or make your work easier or more efficient, you should not be allowed to have it.

I am sure that notion still persists, although there has been an improvement in many aspects of the police administration. Once it was believed that those who funded the police service would love and cherish officers who could spend the least. Now the idea is that you spend as much as possible in order to convince the authorities that more money is always needed if efficiency is to be maintained or improved.

I think the logic behind the earlier financially repressive thinking was simply that it saved money. Certainly lots of people asked lots of questions if official money was freely spent; few seemed to realize that a police force has all the financial needs and expenditure of any other large organization. A lot of the blame must rest upon those senior officers who, unlike Oliver Twist, were afraid to ask for more. They were allocated a budget and constantly struggled to function within its limitations. What they should have done is spent more to prove that the funds were inadequate for their needs. But they would never ask for more, because they thought it was an admission of failure, which meant that those of us lower down the scale had to make do and improvise.

One glaring example presented to us immediately upon joining the force was that we were issued with second-hand uniforms. I think the force tailor thought that all police officers
were six foot six inches high, sixteen-stone giants with chests like barrels. Certainly all the second-hand uniforms seemed tailored for men of that ilk, and all recruits were issued with them. It was thought they would never dare complain.

If, for example, your uniform jacket was large enough to accommodate a pregnant hippopotamus, you had to tolerate its shapelessness and size because the effort of exchanging it for one more comfortable involved much expense and paperwork. To point out its defects labelled you a rebel; it also suggested that the man in charge of issuing uniforms (usually a sergeant) had been inefficient in giving you something that did not fit, and such overt criticism could ruin one’s prospects. Original thinkers were considered subversives who had no part in the police service, and such outrageous requests or ideas were not tolerated. The result was that we never complained about our appearance because we dare not.

As a consequence, many police officers plodded around the streets in badly fitting, second-hand uniforms that gave the wearer’s rear end the appearance of a sauntering elephant with an overweight problem. Those who wonder why uniformed policemen suddenly bend their knees and flex their legs to give the appearance of a diamond-shaped ballet pose, while quothing ‘Hello, Hello’, may now appreciate that it has something to do with ill-fitting trousers.

Proud wives, mothers or girlfriends with needlework skills did sometimes try to improve this baggy frippery, but some policemen did not benefit from such caring love. They walked around like pantalooned scarecrows in the belief that the secret of smartness was to cut your hair, clean your boots and press your trousers from time to time; any other aspects of dress were not important. There was, however, an implication that, if your uniform fitted perfectly, you were deformed.

Having been nurtured to this philosophy, it was with some surprise that I once entered the camphor-scented uniform store at force headquarters to find it stocked to the ceiling with brand-new uniforms in a range of interesting and even useful sizes. But I was to learn that these were never issued – they were stored, and I then discovered that that is precisely the function of stores and storemen. Their mission in life is to store
things, not to issue them, and the Storeman Syndrome exists at all levels of the service, and in all departments. This is true in many other large organizations storemen and storewomen make it very difficult to draw items from their cherished stock. They produce a mass of schemes and procedures which are designed to prevent the staff’s having the necessities of their calling.

I recall one police officer who was in charge of stores when ballpoint pens became fashionable. It was deemed by someone in authority that all officers should be issued with an official ballpoint pen. Progress had at last arrived within the service, because ballpoints would write in the rain without smudging the page – and that was a massive step forward for the busy outdoor constable. Making a neat and legible fountain pen entry in one’s notebook on a rainy day was, until then, almost impossible, and so ballpoints revolutionized police work. But this giant stride towards the twentieth century had not reckoned with the Storeman Syndrome. Our storemen did not believe that ballpoints could run dry without warning when out in the town – it seemed they were always supposed to run dry when you were in the office, because you were not allowed a refill until the old one actually ceased to function. How one was supposed to take statements and make notes when on town duty with a pen devoid of ink was never decided, but the storeman said you could have a replacement refill only when the first one became exhausted – and application for that refill had to be made in writing.

‘But, Sergeant,’ I said when I was a mere 16-year-old cadet, ‘how can I apply in writing if the pen’s run dry?’

‘We’ll have none of that clever stuff here, young Rhea,’ he said.

I went out and bought my own supply of ballpoints – which, on reflection, is precisely what the Storeman Syndrome seeks to achieve. If everyone behaved like that, many pens would be stored and never issued. In the older police stations of this kingdom, there must be mountains of unused ballpoint pens of a most ancient style, memorials to past and diligent storemen.

Upon being transferred to Aidensfield, I thought I would experience an end of the Storeman Syndrome, for our local section station was Ashfordly. Surely the sergeants in such a
small and friendly station would look after their men and be willing to issue them with all their routine necessities?

But I hadn’t bargained for Sergeant Blaketon.

When I first arrived, I did not require any stores, because my predecessor had stocked my office shelves – a kind touch, I felt. I had a plentiful supply of official forms, envelopes, a rubber, a few ballpoints, chalk (for marking the road at the scene of a traffic accident), a ruler and other office and operational essentials. Looking back, I have no idea how the previous Aidensfield constable had managed to stockpile such quantities – he must have raided the store while Sergeant Blaketon was on holiday.

I was soon to learn that Sergeant Blaketon took his storeman duties most seriously. He alone kept the key to the stores; it could be used by others only after signing for it in ‘the Store Key Book’, and such signings had to be witnessed in writing by another officer. It had then to be recorded in that book precisely what had been removed from the store, each person present witnessing the honesty of the transaction. Inside the store, there was another book. This one listed every single object in the stores, and the entries created a series of running totals. On one occasion, I saw he had four gross tins of Vim and 250 floor-cloths – I reckoned these would keep our cells scoured well into the twenty-first century. These ponderous procedures were to counteract any suggestion of pilfering by the local constables.

On one occasion I was privileged to sneak a rare peep into Sergeant Blaketon’s store. That was when I realized it was there – what I had originally thought to be a small cupboard in the wall of his office was in reality a spacious storeroom. When the door was opened, it led into a type of cupboard-under-the-stairs. It ran the length of the sergeant’s office wall and was about six feet wide, extending under his private accommodation at Ashfordly police station. It was a veritable Aladdin’s Cave, stocked with everything from mop handles to pencil-sharpeners, by way of ink wells, toilet rolls and tins of furniture polish. A quick appraisal of the contents showed that some stock had been there since the foundation of the North Riding Constabulary in 1856 and were now museum pieces. Examples included acetylene
cycle lamps, pen-holders and nibs, two spare whistle chains, a tin of black lead and other assorted gems.

The only reason I managed to see these cherished stocks was that, at the precise moment Sergeant Blaketon opened the door, his telephone rang. Thus I had a few brief moments of ecstasy as with a worried frown on his face, he watched my antics. My only purpose in being there was to obtain a new notebook, which I did after signing for it. I’m sure he thought I was scheming to pilfer something.

I recall two supreme examples of Sergeant Blaketon’s own individual flair in storemanship. The first involved an electric light bulb.

Those of us with office accommodation adjoining our private houses were instructed to obtain official bulbs for the office. I think this was to prevent some of us making an application for an office bulb allowance. I would have been quite happy to furnish a bulb from my own funds, but orders are orders. Consequently, when my office bulb began to flicker, I thought it was time for a new one. When I was next in Ashfordly police station, I made my request.

‘I need a new bulb for the office, Sergeant,’ I began.

‘Size?’ asked Sergeant Blaketon.

‘100 watt.’

‘We don’t stock hundreds. You’ll have to make do with a 60 watt,’ he said.

‘That’s not very bright if I’m working at night,’ I said.

‘Economy, Rhea, economy. We can’t go around dishing out big bulbs when smaller wattages will do. Now, you’ve brought your old one in?’

‘No, Sergeant. It’s not finished yet, it’s flickering. I think it might go out soon. I want to be prepared.’

‘But if your present one is still working, why do you want a replacement?’

I groaned inwardly. Here was the Storeman Syndrome in all its perfection.

‘It’s nearly done, Sergeant. It’s been used ever since I came to Aidensfield, and it’s flickering, like they do just before they pack up. I thought I’d be prepared for when it does fizzle out.
I don’t want to be caught out at night with no bulb if you’re not around to issue one.’

‘You know I can’t issue a new bulb without taking in the old one,’ he said. ‘That is my system. New for old.’

I knew his system. He thought that if he issued something new without inspecting the expired old equivalent, the new thing would be purloined for the private use of the officer, who would later return for another new one. And so production of the old was an indication of total honesty. Men like Oscar Blaketon don’t even trust themselves.

‘So what happens if it goes out when I’m in the middle of an urgent report?’

‘You’ve got bulbs at home, haven’t you? In the house? Borrow one of those until you get the official one replaced.’

‘That’ll mean my family might have to cope with the dark!’

‘But that is not my problem, Rhea,’ he smirked. ‘I have no interest in your domestic problems. So that’s it – when your bulb blows, come to me for a new one, and fetch the old one in, as proof.’

And having said that, he refused to change his tactics.

The next example involved No. 1 cell. There were two cells at Ashfordly police station, No. 1 being the male cell and No. 2 the female cell. They were rarely, if ever, used by prisoners, because we seldom arrested anyone at Ashfordly, but we did make use of the toilet in No. 1, because the cell toilets were the only ones in the police station. While on duty one day, I had occasion to visit the loo in No. 1 and noticed that the toilet roll was almost exhausted.

‘Sergeant,’ I later announced to Sergeant Blaketon, ‘we need a new toilet roll in No. 1 cell.’

‘Is it finished?’ he asked.

‘No, there’s about three sheets left.’

‘Then I’ll issue one when it’s exhausted. When it runs out, fetch me the cardboard tube from the roll.’

‘But if you get a prisoner in who needs more than three sheets, he’s going to be in a bit of a pickle, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘Or it could be one of us, alone in the station. If we put one out now, in reserve, like they do in hotels …’

‘This is not an hotel, Rhea. This is a police station, and I issue new toilet rolls only on production of the used tube. Otherwise everybody would be asking for them.’

‘Do you think we’d take them home or something, Sergeant?’ In my exasperation I was cheeky to him.

‘It has been known, Rhea,’ was his cold reply. ‘Just ask British Rail or any of your hotels …’

‘I can’t imagine any of our men wanting to make private use of this paper,’ I laughed. ‘It’s nearly as bad as cutting up squares of the
Daily
Mirror
.’

‘I care not for your opinions or sarcasm, Rhea. My job is to maintain stocks of equipment and to issue it when needed. It is not my intention to squander official supplies. A new toilet roll is not needed yet.’

And that was that.

Ten minutes later I returned to the loo, used the three sheets and beamed at him as I held out the cardboard tube.

‘I do trust you have not wasted official toilet paper, Rhea, in order to make your point,’ he said as he handed me a new roll and booked it out.

‘No, I’ve thrown it down the toilet, Sergeant,’ I assured him. ‘But before I left the cell, it did serve a useful purpose.’

For me, and indeed all the other constables in Ashfordly section, it became something of an ongoing challenge to persuade Sergeant Blaketon to part with any official stores. We used all sorts of devices and excuses in our attempts to win our deserved odds and ends, but his system reigned unconquered.

And then, to our delight, one market day, his stores were superbly raided.

I was on duty and was patrolling among the colourful stalls, savouring the atmosphere that is generated by this weekly conglomeration of fish, fruit and fancy goods, when a uniformed police constable hailed me.