Writing for Fun
June 2016
Breaking In or Nice One Bruv - Reg Pound
Newly qualified Police Constable Dennis Lyon had been asked by his sergeant to keep an eye on a witness and to keep him company until he, the sergeant, had time to come back and question him.
So here they were in the interview room sitting either side of an aged cigarette and tea stained table. P.C. Lyon had been told only that the shifty looking character sat opposite him was a witness, but he was in no doubt that he was in fact a crime suspect. What else would anyone be with a false air of innocence and wearing a suit shirt and tie in this day and age of casual dress. Only T.V. News or sports presenters and villains dressed like that. This joker was not the former. Even reporters and top politicians had stopped wearing ties nowadays, No, he was wearing suit shirt and tie because that’s what solicitors told their crooked clients to do in order to impress magistrates.
‘You going to question me or what. If so, shouldn’t I have my brief here?’ Lance thought he’d wind this plod up a bit, he knew a rookie copper when he saw one.
‘Nothing like that, I don’t even know why you’re here,’ P.C. Lyon admitted. He’d nearly said, ‘sir.’ He’d been trained to be polite to all members of the public but he was blowed if he was going to say sir to this smart alec who after all could only be about the same age, as himself. ‘But if you’d like to have a chat to pass the time and tell me what happened, that’s fine. It’ll be off the record of course.’ Dennis knew the value of getting suspects to talk about themselves and if he managed that perhaps he would find out something to tell the sergeant.
Lance thought he might as well get his story straight and practising on this plonker could be useful. ‘Well it’s like this Constable, me and me brother, Galy got in by this old lady’s window.’
A confession already, P.C.Lyon could hardly believe his luck. ‘Oh, and where is your brother now?’
‘Dunno.’ Lance knew that his brother was at the local A&E getting sewn up. The silly idiot had got himself cut when they smashed a window to get in, but he wasn’t going to tell this plod that. Galy weren’t none too bright and if the law questioned him it would upset him and he may give something away. Not that Galy was daft but Galy took after their Dad whilst he took after their Mum and she was the brains behind the family.
‘What next?’ Dennis asked.
‘Nothing. I’d rather not talk about it.’
Dennis knew it was important to keep a rapport with a suspect, he’d read all the Inspector Morse and Inspector Frost novels. He began to see himself as a class interrogator so he thought a change to tack was called for. ‘Galy sounds a bit of a strange name for your brother, what’s it short for?’ An innocent question just to get the conversation going again.
‘Galahad as it happens. Our Dad was named Arthur and as our second name is King . . . King Arthur . . . get it, one of Dad’s smart arse mates said that if he had any sons he should call them after the knights of the round table. So I get to be called Lancelot and me poor brother was stuck with Galahad. It’s alright having a poncy name like that if you go to Eton, (the school for posh people) but if you go to Eton Manor Comp then it’s no joke. All the kids take the mickey and the teachers were just as bad. He was always fighting so he was thrown out and went to Cambridge.’
Dennis was impressed and puzzled. ‘How did he manage that?’
‘Easy, Cambridge Heath Comp was even worse than Eton Manor, they’d take anybody.’
Dennis wasn’t sure whether the mickey was being taken out of him but carried on. ‘Well your brother isn’t the only one who suffered at school.’
‘Why?’ Lance was curious.
‘My name is Dennis Lyon . . . Lion’s Den? . . . I also thought the teachers were worse for making fun, but I’m going to get my own back now that I’m a copper; any number of them will be over the drink drive limit when they have their end of term party in a few weeks, I’ll get them then.’
‘Good on yer mate, I mean constable,’ Lance said. Perhaps this guy isn’t so bad after all he thought, it may pay me to be friendly with a copper even a learner. ‘It seems your sergeant is taking his time what else would you like to talk about?’ Lance asked.
Dennis, thus encouraged, wanted to see what more he could find out. ‘What happened after you and Galy broke into the old lady’s house?’
‘You’ve got it wrong officer, we didn’t exactly break in, but never mind I suppose a copper would think that. Anyway we heard hollering and shouting from one of the upstairs rooms. It was the old lady.’
‘What was she hollering then?’
‘Oh, something like ‘Help, Help, I’m being robbed,’ but it wasn’t very clear as she was screaming too much.’
Dennis reflected he was right to think Lance and his brother were villains. ‘Well surely you wasn’t surprised, after all you had just smashed her window?’
Just then the sergeant popped his head round the door of the room. ‘Is Lance keeping you entertained Constable? Don’t believe a word he says. I’ll just go and fetch the thumbscrews and come back and have a word with him shortly.’
‘Very funny,’ Lance said. ‘My fingernails are only just growing again since last time you questioned me.’
‘Curious,’ Constable Lyon said after the sergeant had gone. ‘You two seem to know each other.’
‘Yer, well he’d come across me an’ Galy before.’
‘Why would that be then?’
‘Cos of a couple of jobs we’d done.’
‘What, other burglaries you mean?’
‘Nah, don’t be funny, I mean work. Galy not being too bright like couldn’t keep an ordinary job. He got sacked from the Pound Shop ‘cos he couldn’t understand the pricing system and only stayed helping out at a computer shop until the boss found out that Galy thought Broadband was an all-girl singing group.’
P.C. Lyon grinned. ‘You’re having me on.’
‘O.K. So I was’. Lance agreed. ‘But there wasn’t many jobs about when we left school so we started out on our own window cleaning round.’
‘And how did that go?’ P.C. Lyon reckoned they had used that as a cover for burglary and that was why his sergeant knew them.
‘Well another couple of geezers reckoned we were nicking their customers so they gave us a bit of a talking to.’
‘That’s the way to settle any disputes, talk it out. What happened?’
‘We had a fight and we were done for breach of the peace. It were your sergeant what arrested us.’
This chap likes the sound of his own voice, if I keep on encouraging him he’ll eventually admit to burgling the old lady’s house. ‘So?’
‘We got fined and couldn’t do window cleaning anymore. After that we had a go at garden and rubbish clearance.’
‘How did that go?’
‘Well we’d hire a little truck, collect the rubbish and stuff and dump it.’
P.C. Lyon could guess what happened there. ‘Illegal dumping I suppose?’
‘Oh no it weren’t. We knew that was against the law. What we did was to go round the streets, find somewhere where there was an empty skip and put the stuff there. Someone complained and the Council took us to Court so we copped another fine.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘We went round boot sales and started selling CD’s and DVD’s and clothes and things.’
‘That sounds OK but I guess you didn’t declare any profits to the taxman.’
‘Didn’t have a chance to otherwise we would’ve. The blokes from the Trading Standards said our stuff was counterfeit we got arrested. It was your sergeant who took us down to the nick and charged us. I wouldn’t mind but he’d bought some of the stuff off us. Anyway we had to stop trading and were down for another fine.’
P.C. Lyon observed, ‘You must had made a lot of money to be able to pay all these fines.’
‘Leave it out, you don’t think we pay them do you? It was in order to get some money that we started our last job.’
‘Another piece of bad luck I suppose?’ Constable Lyon was sure anything these brothers tried and failed was more to do with legality than luck.’
‘It was as a matter of fact but that was mainly due to Galy not being careful. Out probation officer got us a licence to sell fruit and veg down the market.’
He hadn’t mentioned a probation officer before, thought Constable Lyon, but he didn’t interrupt.
‘That was great, we put up a board saying all our stuff was in season and from local farms.’
‘So what went wrong this time?’ Constable Lyon was beginning to feel a little sympathy for these brothers much against his intuition.
‘Trading Standards again. Galy the fool had forgot to take the Tesco wrappers off some of the vegetables and some customers felt that the strawberries we were selling in December weren’t actually from English growers. I told them they were from English growers living in Spain. To cut a long story short they took away our licence.’
Sympathy now evaporated. Constable Lyon said, ‘Don’t you think that served you right?’
‘If you say so officer, but it seems to me society is dead against us,’ Lance replied.
‘So I suppose that was another fine?’
‘No as a matter of fact your sergeant sort of spoke up for us to the magistrate.’
‘Oh? and what did he say?’ Constable Lyon couldn’t think of any redeeming factors from what he had heard.
‘He told the magistrate that we weren’t bright enough to be real villains so instead of a fine we got community service.’
‘What did you do?’ Letting the two brothers loose on the community seemed like the worse thing to happen.
‘We were given the job of clearing up the local churchyard. Anyway our supervisor was pretty busy so he said that as it would be easy to see what we had done he would leave us to get on with it. It was then I had one of my brilliant ideas.’
‘What was that?’
‘I’d show the sergeant we weren’t stupid, I got a plastic bucket, stuck a church leaflet on a large piece of paper and wrote on it ‘Sponsored Churchyard Cleanup. Please Give Generously’ and put it at the entrance.’
‘And how much did you make out of that’?’ He was looking forward to his sergeant coming back and charging this layabout; he was sure they’d robbed the old lady.
‘Nothing, we were doing alright as lots of people used the churchyard as a shortcut, but then the priest came along and saw us, said thank you and took the lot. I told Galy I thought priests only worked on Sunday and it was then only Wednesday. Anyway he didn’t report us, otherwise he would have had to give up the money as evidence.
‘So it was because you needed money that you decided to rob this old lady.’ Dennis thought he should get the conversation back on track.
‘I keep telling you constable we didn’t burgle the old dear’s home, where was I in my explaining what happened?’
‘You were telling me that the old lady was screaming and shouting after she heard you and your brother break in.’
‘Well I told Galy to look around downstairs and I rushed up to see if I could help her.’
‘Help her what?’
‘Calm down of course.’
‘And how did you expect to do that?’
By telling here there weren’t no burglars in the house. I told her me brother was looking round downstairs and I would have a good look round upstairs.’
Constable Lyon could hardly believe his ears. ‘You didn’t think that she may think you the burglars?’ he asked.
‘No, why should I?’ Lance tried to sound surprised at the question.
‘Well you had just broken her window and were roaming round the house.’
‘OK. I suppose there is that, but how was we to know the silly old girl was there? I mean would think we were robbing the place?’
‘So what next?’
‘Well I saw she had grabbed a mobile ‘phone and was jabbing away at the numbers. She seemed to be making a real mess of it so I grabbed it out of her hands.’
Constable Lyon was well pleased with himself, he should have a full confession before his sergeant came back. ‘Then what?’ he asked.
‘The silly old biddy went and collapsed didn’t she? So I shouted to Galy to come upstairs and help me carry her down and take her outside.’ . ‘Why did you do that?’
‘Because of the fire, you dope.’
‘Fire, what fire?’ Constable Lyon was taken aback. He knew nothing of the circumstances, he’d only been asked to keep this guy company. It had been his own idea to ask questions.
‘The fire me and Galy saw as we were coming back from the pub. That’s why we broke in to see if anyone was in trouble.’
‘Oh. And?’
‘After we got her outside I could hear the operator saying, ‘What service, please?’ so the old dear must have got through to 999. I told the operator ambulance and fire and waited for them to come. After that me and Galy split, didn’t we.’
‘So why are you here?’
‘Cos I couldn’t run as fast as your sergeant’. Dennis’s jaw dropped but before he could say anything Lance continued, ‘Don’t look at me like that – I’m only kidding. Actually the neighbours described us to your lot and your sergeant seemed to know who we were.’
Considering the things Lance had told him P.C. Lyon was not surprised. Just then the sergeant came into the room. ‘Right, Lance, has Constable Lyon been looking after you? It seems you and your brother are some sort of heroes. Mrs. Johnson has regained consciousness and says her neighbours told her you rescued her from the fire and says thank you and sorry she thought you were burglars.’
‘Thanks Sarge, do you know where Galy is?’
‘He’s outside, he’s just come out of hospital.’
‘Can we go now?’
‘Of course.’
‘Cheers then, Sarge. Nice talking to you Constable, hope they let you look after some real crooks next time.’
‘Watch it, Lance.’
‘Sorry Sarge.’
Lance went outside where he found Galy waiting for him. ‘Hi, bruv, you OK?’ ‘Yer, now I’ve got my arm done I’m fine. I thought the cops were going to stitch you up like my arm was.’ Galy could hardly stop laughing at his own joke.
‘Right. Very funny bruv, but if I hadn’t thought to start that fire we would have been in real trouble.’
‘Yer, that was brill. What about the couple of hundred quid I found in the old girl’s tea caddy?’
‘We keep that of course you dipstick. They’ll think it got burned in the fire or that the firemen took it.’ ‘Nice one, bruv.’