This week Tony’s ruminating rather than moaning. There’s a handful of police officers, a frisson or two, a knife crime & some chocolate spread. Flummoxed? Read on …….
This is a police crime story. A sort of Mr Moan meets Agatha Christie. But can you work out the surprise ending?
Pre-Arrest
My name is Detective Constable Horatio Hughes. Please stop sniggering. It’s a perfectly respectable Christian name. I bet you’re called Charles or William or Elizabeth or Elsie. There was Horatio (aka Horace), the Roman poet, the bloke in Hamlet (the Shakespearean play, not the cigar, dummy), Horatio Hornblower (fiction) and Horatio Nelson (lost it at the battle of Trafalgar, 1805). I was named after Horatio Caro because my father was stationed in Berlin and this chess master played there and my Dad loved his chess. This bloke created the Caro-Kann defence. Bored? Wait till I really get going.
My colleagues call me ‘Huggie’. Well, I think the dames like a bit of a cuddle. I invented the greatest chat-up line of all time. You sit by your target conquest and say, “I don’t want to talk to you’.” She, obviously, is hurt. Then you say, “I simply want to listen to you.” Works a treat. I’ve had to reform because of all this modern correctness stuff. No more feeling bottoms. Pity.
I’m a good copper. Never really wanted promotion. Ok. I knew you’d guess. I have failed the Promotion Boards four times and on each there was a woman. They’d eye me up and down and so I gave them the ‘Huggie’ look. I could tell that several of them were trapped in loveless marriages. My results record is up there with the best. I have done one thing that was smart. I recognised that policing was changing and I went with it. If the DCI wants a report in triplicate, he gets it. No moans from me.
The Crime
Night duty with PC Evie Mullins. We get on. Within twenty minutes of being in a patrol car together she told me that if I even thought a dirty thought, she would rearrange the anatomy in the lower part of my body. That was cool. She told me she loved her husband. That was hysterical.
Control came on. The news was bad. We were being called to a report of child abuse. Oh hell! Bank robbers with nuclear weapons, radicals with machine guns, drunks, drug dealers, no problem. Child abuse? In the old days I could take the bastard round the back of the house and whack him. Not now. I have to respect his human rights.
Arrival
Crap neighbourhood, wheels missing from parked cars, bicycle parts over front gardens, dustbins over-flowing with takeaway meals packaging, £2,000 television sets in every front room. I heard a scream. Decided to ignore it. We went to the house where the report had emanated. It was inevitable. He had been in the army and had been wounded (probably a broken finger-nail) and was living off benefits. She worked in the maternity department of the local hospital. I liked her. Life had delivered her a bad hand. Him!
Evie, boy, she really is gorgeous, wrote it all down. Their evidence was compelling as they repeated all that they had heard through the walls. We thanked them and I warned General Custer that he should forget any thoughts of dishing out retribution. “Leave the matter to us, Sir,” I said in my best policeman manner.
Entrance
Evie led the way probably because I pushed her ahead. Managed to feel some of her bulges: amazing. She banged on the door because there was no bell or knocker. “Open up, Police,” she yelled. I was impressed. Three shouts later the front door opened and a timid looking mother appeared. Evie charged in which was against the rules. We are supposed to be invited to enter. As I arrived in the hallway, Evie yelled, “Huggie, kitchen.” If she had offered me unlimited relationships I could not have reached it quicker. There was a girl of around three years old laughing and rubbing chocolate over her mouth and face.
I went into the lounge whereupon I came across man mountain. Huge, drinking and potentially dangerous. I went back into the kitchen where Evie was sitting with the woman. She stood up and shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “There’s no evidence to back up the neighbour’s claims.”
“Why don’t you two filth….” suggested Goliath. The rest was a bit rude.
The Knife
Which is what we did. We sat in the car for perhaps ten minutes: Evie morphed into a thoughtful iceberg. “Huggie, we’re fools,” she announced. She jumped out of the vehicle and I followed, a little meekly. I am not kidding – she went through the door, up the stairs into the bedroom and yelled out in anger. The child was on the bed and the mother was photographing her. “She’d covered her bruising with chocolate,” yelled Evie. It was at this moment that I realised man mountain was coming up the stairs and had reached the landing. I did my best police manual audit to assess the danger and decided the vicious, curved knife he was thrusting towards my middle was the main danger point.
Evie was at my side and so I thrust out my hand and slammed her behind me. She put her arms around me: heaven. I now did my best ‘Get Carter’ impersonation where Michael Caine says to the Geordie thug, “you are very large and you are very unfit”. In truth I knew he had one chance. He blew it. The knife entered my side and grazed it. My fist did some serious damage and he fell backwards. I decided to jump down the stairs and land on top of him. The Police Complaints lot can make of that what they want.
The Result?
The system worked. The proper people arrived and the child was taken to hospital and into care. Then the two adults were arrested although one was having serious problems with several broken teeth. Evie was offered counselling: I loved her rather succinct reply. My Detective Inspector said I had used excessive force. My response has been editing to spare the feelings of the reading public.
I offered to take Evie home and she accepted. When she suggested we went the back road through the woods, for once, my amorous antennae were dimmed. My side was hurting (I don’t do A & E visits) and Evie heard me moan, very slightly. We stopped in a parking area, turned off the engine and she lifted my shirt. I was surprised at the amount of blood. Evie went to work and then I realised her hands were heading in another direction.
“My husband’s a wimp,” she whispered as she wrapped herself around me.
Solve it? Work out the ending? Of course, you didn’t. Mr Moan’s the winner.
As a matter of interest, I am informed by a former female police inspector that the police force(s) have problems with relationships between officers often caused by shared stress (try a motorway multiple crash) which manifests itself as sexual desire.
(Detective Constable Horatio Hughes is fine with that.)
