Stephen Booth - Dead And Buried

Murfin looked up when he saw Cooper arrive. His pen was poised dramatically in mid-air.

‘Ah, boss,’ he called. ‘Would you say I “create processes that make sure stakeholders’ and customers’ views and needs are clearly identified and responded to”?’

‘No,’ said Cooper.

‘Would you agree that “this officer’s performance in their current position is satisfactory”?’

‘No.’

‘Or that “the officer meets the person specification/promotion criteria”?’

‘No.’

‘Ben, I have to tell you — my line supervisor’s comments are a very important part of the application process.’

‘It’s still no.’

Murfin sighed. ‘Well, that’s buggered this one, then.’

Keyboards had fallen silent, and the rustle of paperwork had stopped. Even the phones seemed to have taken a break. Cooper could feel the rest of the team watching him carefully.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ he said. ‘Give me that, Gavin.’

‘It’s restricted,’ protested Murfin.

‘Only when complete.’

‘Well, all right.’

Cooper glanced over the form, feeling slightly uneasy about what Murfin might have been writing. When he was in this mood, anything could happen. And as Gavin had pointed out, Cooper was his line supervisor and therefore responsible for his activities.

He ran his finger down the first page, which asked for personal details. For the question ‘Which of the following best describes your religious affiliation?’, Murfin had crossed out all the options and written ‘Jedi knight’. The next question was: ‘How do you identify your sexual orientation?’

‘I’ll put “backwards” for that one,’ said Cooper.

‘But I’m not-’

‘Yes you are. And now I’m going to file your application in the usual manner.’

Cooper ripped the form slowly in half, and dropped the two pieces into the nearest waste-paper bin. As he did it, he could almost hear the tension in the room ease, like a quiet sigh of relief. Even Murfin smiled, as if it was just the result he’d been hoping for.

‘Gavin, why are you even bothering with all that?’ asked Villiers in the subsequent silence. ‘You’re due to retire next month anyway.’

‘Well, exactly,’ said Murfin. ‘I wouldn’t have dared do it before. Blimey, I would have got myself into so much trouble. But now I’m retiring, it doesn’t matter, see. I can put what I like on the forms, and no one will take any notice.’

‘Has this been some lifelong ambition, then?’

‘It’s been Jean’s ambition. You know how I hate to disappoint her.’

‘She’s been disappointed in you all her life, Gavin.’

Murfin shook his head. ‘No, that’s not true. It’s only since she married me. She was perfectly happy until then.’

Cooper bit his lip, trying not to laugh. Though Gavin seemed to be joking, it felt as though laughing would be the wrong thing to do right now.

Murfin was becoming such a contrast to Hurst and Irvine, who were still young in service. A couple of weeks ago, Cooper had overheard Irvine referring to his colleague as a ‘flub’, and had to caution him about his attitude. The ironic thing was that Irvine could only have picked up the expression from Gavin Murfin himself, since no one else used it these days.

In the last few months, Murfin had reverted to the language he’d learned on the job as a young PC thirty years ago, in less politically correct times.

‘I seem to have mislaid my acronym book,’ said Murfin. ‘What’s NIM?’

‘The National Intelligence Model. You ought to know that if you’re applying for a job as … what is it? A Surveillance Operative with the Counter Terrorism Unit.’

‘Right. I’m an ideal candidate as a SOCTU with a specialised knowledge of NIM and, er … give me another one.’

‘BONGO,’ said Irvine.

Murfin frowned, and ran his tongue round the inside of his teeth as if searching for a last crumb. Then he seemed to take the decision to ignore the jibe. The relaxed attitude of his shoulders seemed to say, ‘All water off a duck’s back, mate.’ BONGO was the old-timer’s slang for a lazy police officer. It stood for ‘Books On, Never Goes Out’.

‘Maybe we should get some work done,’ said Villiers.

Carol Villiers had been back in Derbyshire for only a few months. She’d been lucky with a successful application when her period of service in the RAF Police came to an end. There certainly hadn’t been many successful applications since then. Derbyshire Constabulary, like every other regional police force, had been finding ways of saving money for a couple of years now. That meant reducing staff numbers wherever possible. Specialist functions were being shared with neighbouring forces, and officers who left were rarely replaced. Retirement was more than encouraged; it was being made compulsory for those who had already served their thirty years.

‘Did anything come of that last tip-off, Gavin?’ asked Cooper.

‘No, it was a LOB.’

‘A load of …?’

‘Yeah. That. There’s been another theft, though. One more down for Postman Pat.’

‘Where?’ asked Cooper.

‘Luke has the details.’

Murfin aside, one of the reasons for the tension was that Cooper’s team had been working on an inquiry into the theft of postboxes. All over Britain, the famous red Victorian boxes were being stolen by criminals who sold them for thousands of pounds on internet auction sites. In rural areas, they were ripped from lamp posts and telegraph poles, or chiselled out of walls. In some cases, entire pillar boxes had been uprooted from the ground, with vehicles used to drag them from their foundations. Many antique boxes were being sold as souvenirs to collectors abroad, especially in the USA. It wasn’t an opportunist thing people did on the way home from the pub. You needed heavy cutting equipment to take some of those boxes away.

Postbox prices had risen since the Royal Mail stopped auctioning off old stock nearly ten years ago. It was said that boxes dating back to Queen Victoria’s reign and bearing the VR mark could fetch up to five thousand pounds in America. George V boxes were worth around a thousand quid, while even the more modern ones could go for hundreds.

Originally the theory had been that thieves wanted the scrap metal, but any legitimate scrapyard wasn’t going to want those postboxes — they were far too distinctive. One of the difficulties, though, was distinguishing them from genuinely sourced items and Chinese replicas.

So it was the boxes themselves that appeared to be the target, rather than the mail they contained. The number of thefts had been accelerating, with around thirteen boxes removed in the last two months alone. In one incident in a village near Edendale, thieves had posed as workmen to be inconspicuous, and waited until the mail had been collected.

It forced Cooper to picture a gang of thieves lurking behind a wall with a JCB until the postman had left. But more bizarre things than that happened in the Peak District every week.

Irvine waved across the room, while taking a phone call at the same time.

‘I’ll bring you up to date in a minute,’ he said.

‘Okay. Other than that, anything happening?’

‘There’s been a cow rampage,’ said Murfin. ‘But uniforms are dealing with that.’

‘Could you try to communicate a bit more clearly, Gavin?’ said Cooper.

Murfin eyed him cautiously.

‘Oh yeah. Walker with a dog, chased by cows when he tried to cross their field. Walker escaped with a scare, but dog got badly knocked about by cows. It happens every year.’

‘With relentless regularity.’

And so it did. People thought it was only bulls that were dangerous, but cows were more likely to attack you, especially if you had a dog, and particularly in the spring. It was the animal they were going for, of course. They associated dogs with the loss of their calves.