It was about as close to an emotional outburst as Vogel would ever get. To a police colleague, at any rate.
The young DC knew better than to probe for more.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
Al
I suppose nothing lasts for ever. I’d always got away with it, so never felt in any danger of being caught before. I’d been visiting schools — primary schools — on and off, for years. I’d not been to this one before, though. I liked to ring the changes. It was safer and more exciting too.
I looked at my watch. 12.20 p.m. It wouldn’t be long now. Very soon, the little dears would be leaving their classrooms for their dinner break. Some would go home. Almost all would be in the playground at some stage and that was right by the road, with just a wire netting fence for protection. You could see through wire netting well enough.
A few days earlier, I had driven by, as slowly as I dared in my own car, to suss out whether or not this was a good venue for my purposes. It was. I figured that, if I parked a little way off and on the other side of the road from the school gates, I would not be that conspicuous. It was where some of the teachers left their cars and where all the mothers parked, when they came to pick up their children at the end of the day. With the help of a pair of powerful binoculars, I had a pretty damned good view.
I wasn’t in my own car now, of course. It would only take one eagle-eyed observer to decide that I was acting suspiciously and jot down my car registration number, then I’d be for it.
Oh no. I was cleverer than that, far cleverer than anybody who knew me realised.
As a lad I’d run with a wild crowd. So I’d learned early on how to open a vehicle door without drawing attention to myself through the noise of breaking glass; I could use a wire and a hook. Then I’d hot-wire the engine. It only worked with old vehicles, of course, where the windows didn’t quite close or could be forced a fraction or two. Any sort of alarm system, let alone the sophisticated modern sort, certainly deterred the likes of me. It just made things too difficult.
These school-watching visits of mine were very important to me. I told myself that they stopped me seeking out more active encounters and, up to a point, that was true.
So I feared the day when I could no longer find vehicles old and shoddy enough for my burglary skills. Fortunately, there were still quite a few about if you knew where to look, more often than not there were vans. Your average man with a van is unlikely to want to spend a fortune on his transport, even if he was actually successful enough to do so.
I’d been encouraged to read a newspaper report indicating that modern, state-of-the-art, keyless vehicles were proving to be not as secure as had been assumed. Indeed, one British police force, Essex, so alarmed by the rise in theft of such vehicles, recently advised keyless owners to install a crook lock, just in case.
Anyway, on this particular day, I procured my transport, as usual, from a location as close as possible to my target school. There was always a risk in what I got up to, but I tried to keep it to the minimum. Therefore, I also did my stealing right before I intended to do my watching. This limited the time I needed to be on the road in my stolen vehicle and how long I would be in it after it was reported missing by its rightful owner, if at all. I didn’t push my luck. Or I tried not to, anyway.
So that’s how I came to be sitting outside Moorcroft Primary School in my stolen van of choice: an elderly, white, Ford Transit. It’s not only the commercial van driver’s favourite, but also the car thief’s favourite. The Transit is by far the most frequently stolen vehicle in the UK. There are so many of them about that they are curiously inconspicuous in spite of their size. Most people would assume that there was work being done somewhere close by or a delivery being made. That’s what I hoped for anyway.
As always, I parked carefully. The conveniently available front slot of the row lining the far pavement from the school meant that I could make a quick getaway, if necessary. I’d been lucky to find a space right by the white zigzags, which forbade parking any closer to the school gates.
I wound the window down and I could just hear the sound of the bell that signified the end of morning lessons. After a couple of minutes, a group of boys and girls came out and started to walk in the direction of the council estate, which bordered the school to the right.
It was an exceptionally warm April day. Most of the girls were wearing their summer uniform: striped dresses, in the school colours of blue and yellow, and little white socks. This was a traditional sort of school, requiring traditional school attire.
I liked that. I liked it a lot.
I let my left hand drop to my crotch and began to massage myself there through my trousers. I started to swell. I unzipped my fly. I was already hard. I felt the excitement rising in me.
The little girls and boys walked past without even glancing in my direction. I was wearing dark glasses, made to look quite normal by the warm weather and a hoody. It was a size or two too big and not so well-suited to the temperature, but common enough at any time of year. I’d pulled the hood down over my forehead, partially concealing my face. I had become fairly well versed in the whereabouts of CCTV throughout much of the city and my stolen vehicles would lead anyone trying to trace me to a dead end but, with my predilections, you couldn’t be too careful.
I hunkered down, pushing myself well back into the seat. My head slotted into the headrest with which the van was most conveniently fitted. Even if they glanced towards me, it was unlikely that any of the children would spot me.
They were gone far too quickly.
I removed my hand from my penis and let it become flaccid again. I did not zip up my fly. The best bit was still to come.
After about half an hour, the children who had stayed at school for their midday meal — the vast majority of them — came running out into the playground. I had a good enough view across the road, but I needed a close-up. I reached for the binoculars I always carried on these occasions and raised them to my eyes.
There was a trampoline in the corner at the nearer end of the playground. The children, supervised by a woman teacher, were taking it in turns to have a go. There was another teacher, a man, on duty at the far end of the playground. You always had to keep an eye on the teachers, but the woman supervising the trampoline was far too busy, making sure her charges didn’t kill themselves, to even glance in my direction. The man was watching some boys have a kick about and seemed more interested in giving them advice on their footballing skills, than anything else.
Even if either of the teachers looked towards me, the way in which I was sitting, with my head tightly pressed against the headrest, would make it unlikely that they would even realise anyone was inside the van. Mine would appear to be just another empty vehicle. That’s what I hoped, anyway.
There was a girl bouncing about on the trampoline. She would have been seven or eight, I thought. She was pretty, with fluffy, blonde hair. A picture-book child. She did a kind of somersault and ended up pretty much upside down. The skirt of her dress dropped over her inverted upper body, revealing sturdy, little legs and a flash of white knickers.
I lowered my free hand between my legs and began stroking and fondling myself again.
I was vaguely aware of children walking right by the van, but I couldn’t stop.
Suddenly, I realised there was a face at the window, on the passenger side of the van. It belonged to a little girl, also aged seven or eight, I thought. I guessed she must be standing on tiptoe to make herself tall enough to look through the window at me. I found that exciting too.