‘Gail, can you believe this?’ said Dearden. ‘Someone from the police finally comes to see us, and he turns out to be from the wrong force.’
‘I’m Derbyshire, not South Yorkshire,’ Cooper explained again. But the woman said nothing.
‘Ah, but,’ said Dearden, wagging a finger at him, ‘Withens is in Derbyshire, isn’t it? Withens is on your patch.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So you can talk to us about the Oxleys.’
‘If you’d like to, Mr Dearden, I’d be happy to listen.’
‘This was the old gamekeeper’s lodge, which the estate sold off,’ explained Dearden as he led Cooper through the house. ‘It was certainly built to last.’
110
‘Built to stand the climate, you see.’
There were thick internal stone walls and solid floors that absorbed the sound of their footsteps. There was a stuffed fox’s head mounted on an oak shield in the hallway, but it seemed to have been left purely as a reminder of what the house had once been. The rooms had been filled with furniture covered in bright covers and white tablecloths, cabinets of blue-and-white pottery, and stands of smaller items - a collection of snuff boxes here, a display of gleaming brass there.
‘Now, the Oxleys are a problem to everyone,’ said Dearden. ‘What I can’t understand is why the authorities don’t introduce one of those local child-curfew schemes. The power to do it is there. They can ban children from being in a public place after nine o’clock in the evening, and the police can take them off the streets. But they won’t do it. It would be too politically incorrect, f suppose.’
‘And perhaps impossible to put into practice.’
‘Ah. Because there are no police officers around to enforce it. That’s right,’ said Dearden with exaggerated glee.
‘Besides, those curfew orders only apply to children under ten, sir.’
‘The ones beyond the criminal law. Well, there are some of those around here, too, believe me.’
‘What sort of problems have you had?’
‘Thefts, damage. For about eighteen months that’s been going on. Then they set fire to our old garage. Burned it out completely.’
‘Can I see?’
Dearden took him through a side door, past some outbuildings and into a yard, where he showed him a garage made of timber and corrugated iron. Though the structure still stood, its interior was blackened and charred, and the door had been destroyed by the fire.
‘The trouble is, we can’t see from the house when they come into the yard here. They’ve broken into the garage before, and into the other buildings. Nothing seems to stop them. We’ve got fed up of phoning the police. We’ve phoned so often that it’s on our “Friends and Family” list ‘
‘Yes, you said.’
‘Then we started using the internet.’
‘You did?’
‘Online Police.’
Iff
Cooper had never before come across anyone who used the Online Police website. It had been set up to allow people to report non-urgent minor crime, with the aim of freeing up telephone systems, particularly the 999 service. The site did make the point that it shouldn’t be used for crimes that were happening right then, or where the offender was still nearby, or where there was a witness, or evidence left at the scene.
He wondered if that warning was necessary. Did anybody think people would actually do that? Would a member of the public see a crime being committed, sit down at the computer, log on to www.online.police.uk and spend ten minutes filling in forms with details of their name and address, date, time and place of the crime? Maybe they would, these days.
They did all these breakins, and then they burned my garage down.’
‘Who did?’
‘The bloody Oxleys, of course. You did say you were listening?’
‘Yes, sir. But how ‘
‘The bloody Oxleys from bloody Waterloo Terrace. Those kids burned my garage down. They came from Withens, on your patch, and they crossed into Yorkshire, my patch, and they burned my garage down. It’s only a mile from here to Withens, but you’d think we had to call the FBI to do something about it, all because there’s a boundary stone in between.’
‘When your garage was set on fire, did nobody come from your local police?’
‘Some woman came and looked for fingerprints and stuff,’ said Dearden grudgingly. ‘But she wasn’t a proper policewoman. She said she was a civilian.’
‘A scenes of crime officer.’
‘Yes. Well, she didn’t seem to hold out much hope, anyway.’
‘You’re a bit vulnerable out here, aren’t you?’ said Cooper.
‘Ah. You’ve noticed. Vulnerable is the word - and there’s nobody interested in protecting us.’
Mrs Dearden had brought some tea. She hadn’t spoken to Cooper yet. He smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. Her lips were tightly pressed together.
‘Do you have any evidence to blame these incidents on the Oxley children?’
