Constable by the Sea (16 page)

‘With all this money?’

‘I might find someone who welcomes my generosity,’ he said. ‘Those farmers were handing it all back.’

‘They’re honest men, Mr Farrand. They deal in cash all day
and every day, and they know the value of money. They’ll score points over each other quite happily in a deal, but they won’t
steal
another’s cash. You were lucky it was them, and not a crowd of villains. They were just enjoying the game.’

‘But I wanted them to have my money,’ he said. ‘Why don’t people want my money?’

‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘But look, if you want to give it away, why not send it to a charity, something like Red Cross or the lifeboats or the church, somewhere it will do a lot of good?’

‘I do,’ his voice was definitely slurred. ‘And when I’ve a lot left over, I give more away. Now, what’s wrong in that, constable? Tell me why I cannot give away my own money.’

There was no reason, of course. I could not think of anything logical to say, so I merely shrugged my shoulders then added.

‘Well, when you do give it away, don’t let it hurt people, eh? Don’t let it cause fights and greed or trouble of any kind, Mr Farrand.’

‘If you say so, constable,’ and he wandered off, heading for the railway station with his case of notes clutched in his hand.

Later I heard he’d been to a village pub high in Strensbeck Valley where he’d given away hundreds of pounds to everyone in the place, and had bought drinks all night. On another occasion he’d gone to an agricultural show in the valley and done the same.

I saw him once more before my tour of duty was over. Dressed in his flowing cape and with a Robin Hood type of hat on his head, he was standing at the west end of the bridge which split the town as it spanned the harbour. He had what appeared to be a cinema usherette’s tray held before his tall figure by a cord slung around his neck, and he was offering pound notes to everyone who crossed the bridge.

But no one took his money.

He noticed my interest and beckoned to me. I strolled across and greeted him.

‘Hello, again, Mr Farrand. How’s business?’

‘Would you believe no one wants my money?’ he said. ‘I’ve heard about this sort of thing happening – I did it on Westminster Bridge, you know, right in the heart of London, and no one would accept my money. Now the same’s happening here in
Yorkshire. I find life is very odd.’

‘It is very odd,’ I agreed. ‘You just can’t understand people.’

Another fascinating Strensford character was a policeman, a grizzled old constable who was almost at the end of his service. I saw little of him because his shifts and mine seldom
corresponded,
but like many officers in the North Riding I had heard of his exploits, and his name was something of a byword in local police folklore.

He was Max Cooper, a heavily built and very jovial character who had seen his fortieth birthday some years ago. He was what we termed an old-stager, a man totally satisfied with life. He was totally content with his lot and had never even attempted his exams; for Max, promotion was regarded as greasing up to one’s superiors.

He had the chubby, pink face of a countryman with a
strikingly
clear complexion, although his hair had thinned almost to the point of extinction. His hobbies were fishing, which absorbed him almost totally, and drinking, which he undertook with gusto. Overall, Max had an infectiously carefree attitude to work and to life in general. In other words, he did as he liked, and he was one of those men with whom ‘nowt could be done’.

No one, not even the sternest superintendent, could dictate to this stolid Yorkshireman. It was possible to persuade him to adopt a certain path but never to drive him. When he executed his night-shifts, for example, he took with him some extra comforts, which included a small alarm clock, an inflatable rubber cushion and a flask of coffee. The rest of us left our flasks at the station, but Max didn’t. He carried his around his beat and claimed it kept him awake as he patrolled throughout the night hours.

Max’s propensity was to fall asleep in strange places, and I did learn that, over the years, the locals had come to know him and his odd trait. Most of them therefore refrained from calling out the ambulance or the police when they found a hefty policeman apparently dead or drunk or possibly asleep in their greenhouse or coalshed.

Strensford’s seasonal visitors were not to know this, of course,
and so it was not uncommon to receive reports of dead policemen in fishing cobles, touring buses, back alleys and telephone kiosks. In all cases, the ‘corpse’ was Max. It was this incurable habit which compelled him to carry the alarm clock and the cushion.

When making a point at a telephone kiosk, Max would go inside, inflate his cushion, place it on the floor and sit on it. As he waited in that comfortable position, he would set the alarm clock to rouse him just in time to walk to his next point, timed for half an hour later. Unfortunately, he regularly forgot to set his alarm, which meant he forgot to wake up as he sat curled up in his telephone kiosks. His absence from sundry appointed places meant that a search was made by his colleagues, just in case he had been assaulted or attacked or had even died.

It followed that Max was a problem to his supervisory officers, but somehow he avoided disciplinary charges for sleeping on, or for being absent from, his place of duty. Most of the time his colleagues covered up for him, for in the daylight hours he was a fine fellow, a very good policeman and a jolly asset to the town.

Now that I’ve left Strensford, two memories of him stand out in my mind.

One bright July morning, I paraded for duty at 5.50 a.m., in readiness for my early turn shift which ran from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. We always reported ten minutes before the official start of any shift so we could be briefed about our forthcoming duties. By six, therefore, we were all ready to patrol the town, when the outgoing shift sergeant, a thin fellow with poor teeth, came into the Muster Room. He spoke to our sergeant, Sergeant White.

‘Chalky,’ he said so we could all hear. ‘Max has done it again. He hasn’t come in to book off duty. He’ll be asleep somewhere. I’m sending two of my lads around all the likely places on his beat, but I thought your lot might keep their eyes open as well. I’ll skin the bloody man alive, so I will. Why can’t he come home to sleep like the rest of us, instead of kipping in kiosks and keeping us all out of bed?’

With no personal radio sets, we had to maintain contact with the police station through the network of telephone kiosk about the town and were told to ring in the moment we found him.
Then the search would be called off. But no one found him. I patrolled my town centre patch and checked pub toilets, cottage outhouses, garages, waste land, telephone kiosks, shop
doorways
, buses, cars – everything and everywhere that might have provided a bed for the slumbering Max.

The office duty constable rang us all to keep us informed of the nil result, and I rang the office in my turn to report a nil response. This lack of a result began to generate some concern. Even though we had searched all Max’s regular nodding-off places, no one had found him – and he wasn’t easily overlooked.

By 8.30 that same morning, there was increasing concern which amounted almost to panic. Because no one had found Max, it was genuinely feared that he had come to some harm – perhaps he’d fallen into the harbour, or been attacked by villains, or become ill and collapsed somewhere. So at 8.45 we were all summoned back to the station for a briefing. There we were told that a full-scale search would be mounted, with police dogs and more men being drafted in.

A last-minute check was made at his home, just in case he had wandered back, but he was not there. His wife, a big lady called Polly, was not in the least worried – she said he often went on fishing trips and didn’t come home on time, because he had fallen asleep on a river bank somewhere. She was virtually unflappable – she knew him so well!

But the Force, in its official capacity, was worried, hence the preparations for a major search. The Inspector and the
Superintendent
had been called from their beds at the god-forsaken hour of 7.30 a.m., and we all assembled for this vital briefing.

The clock was striking nine as the Superintendent walked in to allocate to each one of us an area for intense search and thorough enquiry.

‘You all know PC Cooper,’ he said. ‘Even those who are with us for temporary coastal duties are familiar with his appearance, so I need not bother with a physical description. Now, last night, he was patrolling No. 3 Beat …’

At that stage the constable on office duty gingerly opened the door of the Muster Room and poked his head around the corner.

‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but it is important. It’s Max … er …
PC Cooper, sir. He’s all right, he’s on his way home sir … I just got a call …’

There was a long silence followed by murmurings of relief as the Superintendent, valiantly suppressing his anger, vanished upon his mission of discovery of the truth, while those who had remained on duty since six were dismissed and sent home for their overdue rest. I and the other early-turn men all returned to our normal duties, not daring at that stage, or in that tense official atmosphere, to attempt to discover what Max had done. We’d find out in due course.

Later that day I did find out where he had been.

We learned about 3 a.m. he had gone into the deserted railway station, as indeed we all did, and had entered a carriage for a sit-down. He had fallen asleep in a corner without setting his faithful alarm clock, and at 5.30 the empty coaches had been taken up the line to Middlesbrough. The sleeping Max had gone with them.

Strensford Station in those days closed after the last train at night, which was 5.35 p.m., and opened next morning around 6.45 a.m. The 7 a.m. train steamed up the valley to
Middlesbrough
and returned with a load of passengers, but on this occasion the empty coaches which had been left overnight in Strensford were required for an additional summer train from Middlesbrough. When they had arrived, they had been shunted into a siding, and so had Max. He had woken at 8.30 and, thinking the sun was higher than normal for the time of day, had emerged to find he was not in Strensford but in Middlesbrough, some thirty miles away. We were assured that this surprised him somewhat.

He was fined three days’ pay for that lapse, because several disciplinary offences were heaped upon his shining head.

But it was an ensuing, albeit similar performance, which caught the public’s eye, because on that occasion the Press found out.

The preliminaries were very similar to Max’s unintentional train journey because he had been working another night shift, complete with clock, cushion and coffee, and at six o’clock had failed, yet again, to appear when it was time to book off duty.
Once again, the customary search was launched, and this time we included all the coaches at the railway station but without result. Every one of Max’s known sleeping spaces was checked plus a few unknown ones, but he had vanished completely.

The panic and concern this time were at a level considerably lower than upon his railway trip, but there
was
concern and there
was
worry. This time he had vanished without a trace.

As worry increased, tension mounted and a larger search was authorized. The police dogs were called out, and radio-equipped vehicles brought in from other divisions. There was a total complement of about twenty men, so that a complete search of the town could be effected. It is fair to say that by 11.30 that morning everyone was worried, and even the stolid Polly was beginning to show some concern. He was now 5½ hours overdue. Her concern, however, arose because today was his day off, and he had arranged for her to knock him up at ten o’clock, after only some three hours sleep, so he could go fishing on the River Swale. That, she said, would have made him come off duty on time, and for that reason she was worried. She showed her anxiety by coming into town to join the search.

The sudden influx of police officers, vehicles and dogs, and their urgent enquiries around the town, soon came to the notice of the local reporter, who flashed the news to his friends on the national papers. The rapid arrival of several reporters from the nationals with their photographers, happened to coincide with Polly’s decision to join the search. She was pictured with a worried frown as she made a token inspection of a boilerhouse – a lovely human-interest photograph.

By noon, the regional and national programmes were pumping out the story of Strensford’s missing constable, and there is little doubt that the whole town, resident and visitor alike, knew of our very genuine concern. This time we were very worried, and the public joined the hunt. The locals knew where to look for Max, but failed to find him, while the visitors searched the most unlikely places, such as caves on the beach and deserted
woodland
glades.

Eventually the time had arrived for the harbour to be dragged. There had a grown a nagging fear that the large constable,
weighted down by his heavy uniform, might have slipped into the tidal waters and been drowned as the powerful undercurrents dragged him below. A few tentative searches of the waterline had been made, but there was nothing that resembled the soggy mess of a waterlogged Max.

To the delight of the newsmen, the Superintendent made the decision to drag the harbour. This would provide a marvellous seaside angle to the hunt and would produce some suitably dramatic pictures. As we had no marine section of the Force, he sought the help of the local fishermen. But they were not available either, because they were out of the harbour, fishing steadfastly somewhere on the grey North Sea. This meant we had to seek the assistance of some men who manned the pleasure boats. These were small cobles with a motor engine; they could carry a dozen folks out to sea, around the buoy and back again for a few shillings each.

Several of them offered to cruise up and down the harbour dragging the fearsome-looking grappling irons; we kept those at the station for such occasions. And so the search gathered momentum. As it did, so our concern, both official and private, steadily increased.