Free Grief Encounters by Stuart Pawson Page B

burglar with a single conviction eight years previously and one who had defrauded the DSS of several thousand pounds until an investigator caught him on video laying a block paving drive for a neighbour. None of them appeared to be related, all had wives who gave them alibis, none knew of anybody with that name who had been away from Heckley for several years. It wasn’t conclusive, but the slippers by the hearth, the half-finished ship in the bottle and the racing pigeons down on the allotment all conspired to tell me I could be better employed. Mid-afternoon I called it a day and went back to the nick. The temperature had dropped and thunder clouds were building up in the west.
    Jeff was all alone there, at his desk, waiting for the phone call. He hadn’t learnt that it never rings when you’re waiting for it. You should immerse yourself in something fascinating, or put a pan of milk on. Then it rings.
    ‘Any action?’ I asked, after I’d made us both a coffee and collected two KitKats from my private stash. Before I sat down I walked over to the door and switched on the office lights. All over town people were doing the same thing, lighted windows spreading like a rash ahead of the storm.
    He shook his head. ‘And you?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘Perhaps we’ll be lucky and have a quiet weekend.’
    We both took big bites of the biscuits, and that’s when the phone rang. Jeff swallowed first. ‘DS Caton,’ he spluttered into it as the first flurry of rain rattled against the glass.
    They’d knocked over a security man delivering cash for the ATMs in the wall of the supermarket just off the town centre, and escaped with two cash boxes of money. He’d been bashed on the helmet with an iron bar, and one of the robbers may have been armed. He had something ‘like a shotgun’ wrapped in a plastic bag and they both wore stocking masks. They’d driven off in a dark blue saloon, possibly a Ford Escort. The standard procedure is to flee from the scene in one vehicle, which will probably be seen by witnesses, and switch to a waiting vehicle that has been left somewhere quiet, like in the middle of a housing estate. We went downstairs to the control room and the duty sergeant handed Jeff a headset.
    They were amateurs, or thick. Professionals would have done the deed in the highly recognisable Subaru and had the innocuous Ford waiting nearby for their ultimate getaway. But because of its superior performance and reputation as a rally car the ringleader no doubt had romantic notions about outrunning any pursuers, but not many cars can outpace a 170mph Eurocopter or jump roadblocks.
    Jeff told the cars ringing the Subaru to stand by.
    ‘It’s howling down with rain,’ came the reply. ‘I’m having to use my wipers, which gives the game away, somewhat. Otherwise I can’t see out of the windows.’
    ‘Blimey, we have a cloudburst,’ someone added.
    ‘It’ll be the same for them,’ Jeff said.
    ‘Headlights approaching from behind. Coming past. It’s a Ford Escort. Dark blue, must be them.’
    ‘You’re in control,’ Jeff told the sergeant on the scene. ‘Repeat: you’re in control.’
    ‘Understood.’
    There was a silence as we imagined the Ford pulling in behind the parked Subaru, then: ‘Roadblocks go for it. Moving in. Go! Go! Go!’
    ‘Jesus! It’s a monsoon.’
    ‘They’re legging it.’
    ‘Which way?’
    ‘Through the gardens.’
    ‘Towards you.’
    ‘We’ve lost them.’
    ‘No we haven’t.’
    Garbled messages came through, interspersed with bursts of static as the thunderstorm passed over, followed by a long silence. We waited.
    Nearly ten minutes later a voice said: ‘Two suspects arrested; bringing them in,’ and we breathed again.
     
    Saturday morning we caught up with the Popes who had been unavailable through the week. I went to see one in Marsden who kept koi carp, or living jewels, as he called them. Fish should be silver and slick, I thought, not bedecked like the flag of an