I unwrapped the first aid. It was a BTE (behind the ear), but elegance itself. I offered it to the Brigadier. He slotted it into his ear. “Good Lord!” he said. “I can hear the clock ticking.”
Everyone in the room who wanted a replacement aid was given one, and we still had a few over. The morale of the troops couldn’t have been higher. Even Briony was happy with her stack of bubblewrap. We all slept well.
At breakfast, the results were amazing. People who hadn’t conversed for years were chatting animatedly.
Then the doorbell chimed. The chime of doom. A policeman with a megaphone stood in the doorway and announced, “Police. We’re coming in. Put your hands above your heads and stay where you are.”
Sadie said, “You don’t have to shout, young man. We can all hear you.”
We were taken in barred vans to the police station and kept in cells. Because there was a shortage of cells some of us had to double up and I found myself locked up with the Brigadier.
“This is overkill,” I said. “We’re harmless old people.”
“They don’t think so, George,” he said in a sombre tone. “Marcus Haliburton was shot dead in the course of the raid.”
“Shot? I didn’t hear any shots.”
“After you left, it got nasty. They’ll have me for murder and the rest of you for conspiracy to murder. We can’t expect all our troops to hold out under questioning. They’ll put up their hands, and we’re all done.”
He was right. Several old ladies confessed straight away. What can you expect? The trial that followed was swift and savage. The Brigadier asked to be tried by a court martial and refused to plead. He went down for life, with a recommendation that he serve at least ten years. They proved that the fatal shots had been fired from his gun.
I got three years for conspiracy to murder — in spite of claiming I didn’t know about the gun. Sadie was given six months. The Crown Prosecution Service didn’t press charges against some of the really frail ones. Oddly, nobody seemed interested in the hearing aid heist and we were allowed to keep our stolen property.
The Never-Say-Die Retirement Home had to carry on without us. But there was to be one last squirt from Operation Syringe.
One morning three weeks after the trial Briony decided to sort out her marmalade jars and store them better, using the bubblewrap the aids had been kept in. She was surrounding one of the jars with the stuff when there was a sudden popping sound. One of the little bubbles had burst under pressure. She pressed another and it made a satisfying sound. Highly amused, she started popping every one. She continued at this harmless pastime for over an hour. After tea break she went back and popped some more. It was all enormous fun until she damaged her fingernail and had to ask She-Who-Must-Be-Replaced to trim it.
“How did you do that?” Matron asked.
Briony showed her.
“Well, no wonder. There’s something hard inside the bubble. I do believe it’s glass. How wicked.”
But it didn’t turn out to be glass. It was an uncut diamond, and there were others secreted in the bubblewrap. A second police investigation was mounted into Operation Syringe. As a result, Buckfield, the manager of the Bay Tree Hotel, was arrested.
It seemed he had been working a racket with Marcus Haliburton, importing uncut diamonds stolen by workers in a South African diamond mine. The little rocks had been smuggled to Britain in the packing used for the hearing aids. Interpol took over the investigation on two continents.
It turned out that on the day of our heist Buckfield the manager suspected something was afoot, and decided Haliburton might be double-crossing him. When he checked Room 104 he found the Brigadier’s revolver on the bed and he was certain he was right. He took it straight to the suite. Haliburton denied everything and said he was only a go-between and offered to open the new box of aids in the manager’s presence. We know what it contained. Incensed, Buckfield pointed the gun and shot Haliburton dead.
After our release, we had a meeting to decide if we would sue the police for wrongful imprisonment. The Brigadier was all for it, but Sadie said we might be pushing our luck. We had a vote and decided she was right.
The good thing is that every one of us heard each word of the debate. I can recommend these new digital aids to anyone.
Popping Round to the Post
Nathan was the one I liked interviewing best. You wanted to believe him, his stories were so engaging. He had this persuasive, upbeat manner, sitting forward and fixing me with his soft blue eyes. Nothing about him suggested violence. “I don’t know why you keep asking me about a murder. I don’t know anything about a murder. I was just popping round to the post. It’s no distance. Ten minutes, maybe. Up Steven Street and then right into Melrose Avenue.”
“Popping round to the post?”
“Listen up, doc. I just told you.”
“Did you have any letters with you at the time?”
“Can’t remember.”
“The reason I ask,” I said, “is that when people go to the post they generally want to post something.”
He smiled. “Good one. Like it.” These memory lapses are a feature of the condition. Nathan didn’t appreciate that if a letter had been posted and delivered it would help corroborate his version of events.
Then he went into what I think of as his storyteller mode, one hand cupping his chin while the other unfolded between us as if he were a conjurer producing a coin. “Do you want to hear what happened?”
I nodded.
“There was I,” he said, “walking up the street.”
“Steven Street?”
“Yes.”
“On the right side or the left?”
“What difference does that make?”
According to Morgan, the detective inspector, number twenty-nine, the murder house, was on the left about a third of the way along. “I’m asking, that’s all.”
“Well, I wouldn’t need to cross, would I?” Nathan said. “So I was on the left, and when I got to Melrose—”
“Hold on,” I said. “We haven’t left Steven Street yet.”
“I have,” he said. “I’m telling you what happened in Melrose.”
“Did you notice anything in Steven Street?”
“No. Why should I?”
“Somebody told me about an incident there.”
“You’re on about that again, are you? I keep telling you I know nothing about a murder.”
“Go on, then.”
“You’ll never guess what I saw when I got to Melrose.”
That was guaranteed. His trips to the post were always impossible to predict. “Tell me, Nathan.”
“Three elephants.”
“In Melrose?” Melrose Avenue is a small suburban back street. “What were they doing?”
He grinned. “Swinging their trunks. Flapping their ears.”
“I mean, what were they doing in Melrose Avenue?”
He had me on a string now and he was enjoying himself. “What do you think?”
“I’m stumped. Why don’t you tell me?”
“They were walking in a line.”
“What, on their own?”
He gave me a look that suggested I was the one in need of psychotherapy. “They had a keeper with them, obviously.”
“Trained elephants?”
Now he sighed at my ignorance. “Melrose Avenue isn’t the African bush. Some little travelling circus was performing in the park and they were part of the procession.”
“But if it was a circus procession, Nathan, it would go up the High Street where all the shoppers could see it.”
“You’re right about that.”
“Then what were the elephants doing in Melrose?”
“Subsidence.”
I waited for more.
“You know where they laid the cable for the television in the High Street? They didn’t fill it in properly. A crack appeared right across the middle. They didn’t want the elephants making it worse so they diverted them around Melrose. The rest of the procession wasn’t so heavy — the marching band and the clowns and the bareback rider. They were allowed up the High Street.”