‘That’s not mine,’ said the gentleman. ‘That hasn’t come from here.’
Stunned, Nigel and Alan could not believe their ears. Surely they had misheard, somehow misunderstood.
‘But it must be yours. All our enquiries show it is, we even had a detailed description of the inside of this wonderful house. It is definitely yours!’ Nigel pleaded.
‘I’m very sorry, gentlemen, you have been misled. It’s not mine.’
‘But how can that be? This sapphire is the one shown in the Victorian painting by the staircase. That lady is wearing this stone. Please look again. We know it’s yours,’ Alan begged.
‘All I can say is it’s not mine. I can say no more. I am sorry you have come all this way.’
‘You must think again. I couldn’t begin to explain how much misery the person behind this theft has caused. You could end all that, for Christ’s sake. What’s more, this beautiful stone, which that picture tells me is a family heirloom, will go straight back to him. You cannot want that to happen, surely?’ implored Nigel.
‘I’m sorry, gentlemen, I can’t help you any further,’ was the terse reply as they were shown the door, the wind off the hills now more chilling than it had been a few minutes earlier. Hundreds of hours of work, dozens of enquiries and a six-hundred-mile round trip, together with a cast-iron belief that they would get their man, all wiped out in an instant.
Their world had come crashing down. Just as the net was about to close on the big fish they thought they had landed, he slipped away once more. Crestfallen and confused, Nigel and Alan’s journey back south was silent, with each lost in his own thoughts. They knew, for certain, that they had spoken to the owner of the Plum. But if he would not identify the gem, they could not prove that any theft had taken place; suspicion — even 100 per cent certainty — was not enough in the eyes of the law. The absence of a statement confirming ownership meant the Plum had to be returned to the person in whose deposit box it was found. It made them sick that one of their most prolific criminals was going to get a massive payday he was simply not entitled to.
Try as they might, they never did get to the bottom of why their victory was so cruelly snatched from them. The detectives were puzzled by the householder’s flat denial that the gem belonged to him. Was his ownership of it dubious? Did it hold some age-old family secret that would be best kept buried?
Could the acceptance of his ownership of the Plum and its theft really be that devastating? Did he actually give a moment’s thought to the ordinary people who would go on to be further victims? It was anyone’s guess.
The anger and despondency felt by Alan and Nigel was only matched by the sickeningly smug glee shown by their Mr Big as he flourished his signature on the paperwork that would return the Plum to him.
You can rarely predict the reception you get from the public. Experience taught me that not every victim regards the police as knights in shining armour. A thorough investigation, for example, can scupper a nicely inflated insurance claim. Some people are just too wealthy to bother worrying about their missing valuables and all the inconvenience police intrusion brings. Some just hate us and won’t give us house room, whatever the consequences or losses that entails.
It’s bad enough to be thwarted by smart lawyers or a sceptical jury, but it is most galling of all when the victim or a potential prosecution witness clams up. It happens time and again, often for no understandable reason — it could be threats made, fear or embarrassment or some other well-concealed reason. People are fickle and there is never enough time to fully understand the motivations of everyone we come across. Sometimes you just have to accept that it takes all sorts and move on. Policing Brighton is much too frantic to allow much time to do otherwise.
4: Laughing Policemen
It’s not all death and misery. Sometimes policing can be fun. As a species, emergency service workers find their light relief in the most bizarre places.
Special (or volunteer) police officers were not always as respected as they should have been. I found this frankly insulting as they put themselves on the line as much as we who were paid did.
I had a very personal reason to admire them. My father, John, always wanted to be a police officer but back in the 1960s the pay was poor and he wanted a family so he let his head rule his heart and instead qualified as a chartered surveyor. However, he and my mum Hilary instilled in me, and my older siblings Martin and Carol, a deep respect for the law and policing. This sparked a single-minded desire to tread the path that he was denied. My parents could not have been more proud of the choice I made, nor I of them.
My Dad decided, later in life, that he could live out his dream by joining the Hove Special Constabulary. Unpaid, the job mostly entailed attending fetes and public events. However, never one to miss an opportunity, Dad volunteered for fortnightly football duty at Brighton and Hove Albion home games. He loved football and loved policing; who needs paying if you can combine your two big passions? When my Uncle Gordon, Dad’s brother, took me to the games Dad was working at, I would stand on the terraces on a crate to give me extra height, and enviously watch him as he patrolled the perimeter of the pitch. I so wanted to be him.
As a natural leader (he became a Director of Brighton Borough Council) he never accepted the status quo. His insistence that ‘Specials’ could do more than just be rolled out for the soft events, such as being a token police presence at church fairs, provided him with the profile of a modernizer and he soon won promotion to head up Brighton’s Special Constabulary.
He could be quite ruthless, never suffering fools gladly, but he was fair. He saw that a number of colleagues were interested only in the status of being a Special, not actually the reality of doing the job. They did not last long but those who genuinely wanted to be part of the wider policing of the city were nurtured and encouraged. Dad would vehemently negotiate their rights and promote the profile of Specials. Many of my Divisional Commander predecessors still speak highly of him for this. He brought the Specials out of the dark ages and set them on the path to what they are today.
One Saturday afternoon, my partner, DC Dave Swainston, and I were in the Brighton CID office reading through witness statements regarding a prisoner we were about to interview for robbery. Suddenly the tannoy crackled into life: ‘All units, ten twenty Queens Park Road. Traffic warden being attacked. All free units to attend.’
And that is exactly what Dave and I did. Grabbing a set of car keys we joined the mass exodus all heading for the car park to race the short distance up the hill to assist the warden. Despite Dave being a former traffic officer, it was I who had the keys and therefore I who took the wheel of the CID car.
As I revved the protesting 1100cc engine, I gave way to the better-equipped and more powerful marked response cars then fell in behind them, using their wake of sirens and blue lights to force my way out on to the roadway.
As I raced up towards Queens Park Road, I noticed a very familiar uniformed figure running in the same direction. Dad was never an athlete but neither was he unfit. However, he was thirty-two years older than me so would have been knocking on the door of sixty at this time.
A wave of protectiveness engulfed me and temporarily I forgot about the poor traffic warden. My dad, fully kitted up with radio, truncheon and chunky jacket, would be thankful for the respite I could provide.