probably at that very moment, and the nation would be reassured that coincidences do happen and the outbreaks had been contained. Meanwhile, purely as a precaution, if anybody did happen to have a tin of pineapple or corned beef on their shelves they should place it in a bucket of water and surround it with sandbags. Alternatively, they could return it to their nearest branch of Grainger's.
'How did it go?' Dave asked, next morning, when I came down from Gilbert's prayer meeting.
'How did what go?'
'The talk, Dumbo.'
'Oh,' I said, dismissively, 'you know how it is. Boring speakers, nobody interested in what you say. Complete waste of time.'
'So you won't be going to any more?'
'We-ell, you know how I hate to disappoint people. According to Gilbert I missed all the fun.'
'Big-hearted Charlie. Yeah, you got out of it quite nicely. It's kids' stuff this morning compared to yesterday. It was like the fall of Saigon in the car park. There was even a TV crew from France. No doubt a few more of our delicacies will be taken off their shelves.'
'No doubt. Did you find anything else?'
'Not much. Two more tins of corned beef found at the Huddersfield store and a tin of peaches at Oldfield.'
'All with puncture holes?'
'That's right. They're at Weatherton now.'
'Well done. It's worth a try but dozens of people could have handled them.'
'Nuh uh. Not necessarily so. They're loaded on to the shelves twelve at a time in a cardboard tray, and up to then all the handling has been mechanical. The person whose delicate fingers punctured the tin could be the first one to touch it. We're in with a chance.'
'Hey, that's brilliant. Meanwhile, it wouldn't hurt to cherchez lafemme. I've a feeling that's what this is all a' bout. Let's start by bringing Mrs Sharon Brown down to size.' I found the number for Heckley Grainger's and dialled it. 'Could I speak to Mrs Brown, please?'
'Sorry, but Mrs Brown is off work for a few days.'
'Oh. When will she be back?'
'Tuesday. Can I put you through to her secretary?'
'No, it's a personal call. I'll ring her on Tuesday.' I replaced the receiver and turned to Dave, saying: 'She has a secretary.'
'Might be worth having a word with her.'
'True. I'll put Pete on to it, preferably away from the office. He can charm the ducks off the water.'
We weren't following leads or pursuing a clearly defined course of action. We were, frankly, floundering. The culprit might be a nutcase loner, living in a tower block, or a bitter housewife with a grudge, or it might be an insider conducting a personal vendetta. We'd re-situated CCTV cameras to cover the first two possibilities, and for the third one all we could do was gather information about the principle characters, listen to gossip and go where it led. That way, when the break came, we'd be prepared.
Dave said: 'Pete doesn't charm them off the water, he talks them off it.'
'But he gets them talking back, too. Much better than I can.'
'If they can get a quack in. He's done a chart for you.'
'Good. I like charts. Charts make it look as if we're doing something. Where is he?'
'Probably in the briefing room. He's taken a shine to the new probationer. I'll fetch the chart.'
It was a map, and he'd done a good job. All the findings were marked on it, colour coded to indicate peaches, pineapple or corned beef, with different shapes for punctured tins, the coloured dye and the warfarin.
'Well, this should impress the ACC,' I said. 'I'm not sure if it will progress the investigation, but the ACC will have an orgasm.' I spanned the spaces between incidents with my fingers, making mental adjustments for distance, numbers of cases and degree of seriousness, remembering the talk I'd heard the day before and adding a few touches of my own.
'He lives there,' I declared, stabbing a finger at the centre of gravity of the case. 'I've done a course on this and it never fails.'
'Let's have a look,' Dave said. He considered the location for a few seconds before adding: 'Well that should make it easy. According to your course he lives in Heckley nick.'
Have a day off and the paperwork accrues. Nobody does it for you and the problems don't go away. The troops had plenty to be on with so I listened to what they had to say, made a few suggestions and sent them on their way. We'd opened an incident room at the nick for the Grainger's job and I pinned Pete's chart on the wall next to the map with the twenty-mile radius that I'd drawn. His contribution looked more professional so I unpinned my map and stuffed it in a drawer. I'd ask Pete to add the radius to his map.
Back in my own office I answered a few letters, including one to a local councillor who persistently complained about harassment of young people for skateboarding in the mall car park. We'd captured the problem on video and the mall management were receiving equally vociferous complaints about damage to parked vehicles, but the councillor would not listen. Not even when we told him about the needles being left all over the place. He also complained about the older youths in souped-up cars who congregated in one of the town-centre car parks late at night, about the lack of amenities for our budding basketball players and about the speed bumps on Fellside Road. He lives on Fellside Road. He has a regular column in the Gazette and he uses it to beat the police. Our community affairs officer had talked to him, explained the problems, told him what limited powers we had, but he wouldn't listen and-now he was coming through to me. There's nothing wins votes like a fearless campaigner, and he had nothing to fear because we'd long ago stopped dangling our critics from the ceiling and administering the bastinado. I politely told him that, much as I sympathised with him about the children from the comprehensive dropping litter outside his sweet shop, it was not my intention to take any action, and in future I was only prepared to correspond with him through his solicitor.
I was basking in the warm glow of indignation gratified and gathering my strength for an assault on the staff development reports, thirteen months overdue, when the phone interrupted me. It was the front desk.
'Lady thinks she may have seen the knicker thief, Charlie. I'll put her through.'
I waited a few seconds then said: 'Detective Inspector Priest here. How can I help you?'
'Oh, hello. I think I may have seen this… person who's stealing underwear from washing lines.'
'That's music to my ears, Madam. First of all, can I ask you your name, please?'
She was called Mrs Mavis Lewis and had been reading the Heckley Gazette as her smalls went through the rinse cycle when she happened to see an article about the thefts from washing lines. To be accurate, they were her daughter's smalls. Miss Lewis was a nurse at the White Rose clinic, just outside town, and changed her underwear twice a day. Every Friday Mrs Lewis did a big wash and, weather permitting, hung her daughter's frillies on the line to dry. Last week a shower interrupted the process and as she unpegged them she became aware of a youth standing in the garden that backed on to her garden, in the shadow of the overgrown privet hedge. He appeared to be watching her, but when she looked again he'd disappeared.
'This was last Friday?' I asked, and she confirmed that it was.
'And you're doing a wash now?'
'Yes. They've just finished spinning.'
'Are you going to hang them outside?'
'I wasn't thinking of, it looks like rain again.'
I glanced out of the window and banks of clouds glowered back at me. 'I know. What time did you see the youth?'
'It would be sometime after one o'clock. The lunchtime concert had just started.'
'The lunchtime concert?'
'On Radio 3.'
I was impressed. Radio 3 listeners don't make up a significant percentage of our clients. They don't make up a significant percentage of the BBC's clients. If the thief knew her routine there was a chance that he'd come back today, and if he did, we could nab him.
'If I sent a couple of officers over would you be happy to hang the washing out, Mrs Lewis?' I asked.
'Yes. No problem.'
