for a living. I thought you said you were a graphic designer.'
'Ah! No. I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd heard that. It's just a defence mechanism. If I say what I really do people start asking me all sorts of questions, telling me their problems, laying down the law as they see it. It's a lot easier to tell a fib. I always say I'm a graphic designer and that usually silences them.'
'So what do you do?'
'I'm a policeman. A detective. I'm sorry if I misled you, it wasn't intentional. You're getting soaked.'
I'm not sure if it was the lie or the fact that I was a cop that dismayed Rosie, but something did. Her eyes narrowed and the smile left them. 'Oh,' was all she said.
'It's an honourable profession.' I'd lined myself up to lean forward and give her a peck on the cheek as we said our good-nights, but I didn't get the chance. Rosie slipped into the driver's seat and I said: 'I'll ring you.'
'Yes,' she replied as she pulled the door shut. I gave her a wave and walked over to where my own car was parked. She was embarrassed about being misled, I decided. When I'd plied her with one of Mr Ho's special banquets and her fingers were wrapped around another gin and tonic she'd want to know all about my best cases, of that I was sure. Women always do.
Chapter Two
'Crime pattern analysis, Charlie,' Superintendent Gilbert Wood said. 'I need figures, not excuses.'
'Remind me,' I replied. 'I've lost the list.'
'Percentage increase or decrease in burglary. Percentage increase or decrease in street crime. Percentage increase or decrease in car crime. By this afternoon. I need them for tomorrow.'
'Right. It shall be done. Do you want to show that we are a thin blue line manfully struggling against overwhelming odds, or that we are really on top of the job?'
Gilbert looked exasperated. 'The truth would be nice, for once. Do you think we could have an accurate picture of what's happening? The idea is to give the public, the newspapers and politicians some inkling of the way trends are heading. It helps formulate government policy, believe it or not. And, as a matter of fact, I'd be quite interested myself.'
'The truth is the hardest option,'
'I know, but just bloody do it.'
'And it will be meaningless. An informed guess by someone with my experience would give a much clearer picture of the situation.'
'Oh no it wouldn't. And when you've done that, get your hair cut. You look like an unemployed violinist.'
'Do you know how many mobile phones were stolen in 1982, Gilbert? I'll tell you: none. Not a single one. Or how many cars were stolen in Yorkshire in 1950? You could count them on your fingers. That's at least a ten thousand percent increase. If you don't weight the figures to compensate for other factors, like nobody had a mobile phone a few years ago, the numbers are meaningless. And do you know how much a haircut costs these days? I don't have someone to cut mine, in the kitchen with a tea towel round my neck.'
'I'll mention your concerns to the Chief Constable. This afternoon, please?'
'Your wish is my command, mein Fulirer. I'm sticking round the office if I can, in case the result comes through.'
'It will. They gave it what — four hours? — yesterday. They'll give it another couple this morning to make it look respectable and qualify for lunch, and then they'll announce their verdict. It's cut and dried, Charlie, believe me.'
'God, I hope so. The longer it takes the less promising it looks. How's young Freddie?'
'On the mend, thanks. They took his appendix out and he sounded cheerful when his mum rang him.'
Gilbert's daughter's son had been stricken with appendicitis while on a school trip. 'Where is he?'
'In the General. Apparently they'd just set off when he started complaining of stomach pains. One of the teachers recognised the symptoms, thought it might be appendicitis, and they took him straight to Casualty.'
'Lucky for young Freddie. OK, I'll get those figures.'
I skipped down the stairs, singing a happy tune — 'I don't want to set the world on fi-yah,' and burst into the CID office. Big Dave 'Sparky' Sparkington was sitting on the corner of a desk with his jacket hooked over his shoulder, like he was ready to be off somewhere, and Pete Goodfellow was tapping away at a keyboard. Everybody else was out making the streets of Heckley safe for children and little old ladies.
'I just want to start… aflame in your heart.'
'Blimey, you sound cheerful.'
'But I'm always cheerful. Peter, are those figures available?'
'Won't take a second to run them off.'
'Good. Deliver them personally to Mr Wood at about ten to five, please. Loosen your tie, roll up your sleeves and splash water on your brow. Make it look as if you've spent all day wrestling with them. You might even crawl in on your hands and knees… No, on second thoughts, forget the crawling.'
'Will do.'
I turned to Dave. 'Where are you going, Sunshine?'
'Sylvan Fields. A burglary last night and it looks as if the phantom knickers thief has struck again.'
'Happy going on your own?'
'Yeah, no problem. In spite of its reputation, most of the people who live there are quite decent.'
'Blimey, I never thought I'd hear you say that.'
'I know. I must be mellowing with age. All the rest are toe-rags, though. Will you ring me if the verdict comes through?'
'You bet.'
Off he went and I settled down in my little enclave to attack the pile of paperwork that had accrued. I'd spent an awful lot of the last six weeks in court, at a murder trial, and now the jury was out. Most of the time I'd been hanging around in the corridor, in case I was needed, with a couple of days in the witness box. Timothy Fletcher had murdered seven people, seven that we knew about, but had died whilst resisting arrest. He fell off Scammonden Bridge on to the M62, at rush hour, under a six-teen-wheeler loaded with Yorkie bars, but nobody was mourning him. The trial had been to decide how involved his girlfriend was in the murders. Was she an innocent dupe, as she claimed, or was she a fully paid-up partner? We went into court convinced that she had been instrumental in luring at least three victims into Fletcher's car, but our chief witness was still trau-matised by the attack and we had decided not to expose her to cross-examination. Meanwhile, the prisoner and her legal advisers had had six months to prepare a case and they'd done a good job. Now we weren't so cocky.
I read a policy document about Positive Crime Recording rules but most of it went straight over my head. As I understand it, when somebody comes into the station and says: 'I don't want to make a complaint, but…' we've got to record it as a complaint. Normally the desk sergeant would nod gravely, make sympathetic noises, promise to have a word in the appropriate ear, and completely forget the whole thing as soon as the non-complainant walked out through the door. Or, if he deemed it serious enough, he might 'have that word in somebody's ear. Either way everybody was happy. Now he has to initiate a trail of paperwork longer than Haley's comet. When the villains learn about it they'll have a field day. If every one of them came into the nick and said they didn't want to make a complaint, the whole legal system would grind to a halt. It nearly has already.
I wasn't in the mood for paperwork so I went for a wander. The typists were too busy to chat and the briefing room was deserted. 'Where is everybody?' I asked as I drifted into Control.
'Hello Charlie, waiting for the verdict?' the controller replied, turning to face me.
'Mmm. This is the worst bit.'
'She'll go down, sure as Christmas. They're all at the hospital. Been a bit of trouble there. Not sure what it's all about, yet.'
I looked at him. 'At the hospital?'
'That's right. They're not admitted, although one or two of them are contenders for the malingerers ward. We answered a call and they asked for backup. Bit of a riot outside, by the sound of it.'
'Is Gareth aware of what's happening?' Gareth Adey is my uniformed counterpart.
