Stuart Pawson - Some By Fire

The dog leapt about with joy when he unlocked the door, and after a great deal of fussing it settled down with what looked like a dustbin lid full of cows' feet. I measured the length of its chain and added a yard for safety.

"Oh my Gawd!" exclaimed Jeff when he saw the Transit. He pointed at the aerial, the tax disc and the mark on the windscreen.

"Oh my Gawd!" he repeated, then: "It's it. This is it. You jam my so-and-sos."

"Good policing," I told him. "Jammy's nothing to do with it."

"I'll ring for a SOCO," he said, producing a mobile phone.

The plants were in orderly rows, close together and about chest height.

We spread out and walked between them, trailing our fingers through the fronds and all wondering what they were worth and if there was any harm in it. At the far end Dave hammered some new nails through the loose plank so the local youths couldn't steal the evidence. Jeff rejoined us. "He's on his way," he said.

I pulled two leaves from a plant, gave one to Jeff and popped the other in my mouth. "Make you feel better," I told him. Strolling back through the rows I plucked another. At the far end Jeff emerged from the adjacent row and poked his tongue out at me. On it was a chewed-up ball of what might have been spinach. I did the same to him and we both giggled like schoolgirls in an art gallery.

Dave and I took Mr. Nelson back to the station. Some use the Nice Cop and Nasty Cop routine; others rely on the bastinado, beating them on the soles of their feet until they co-operate. We seduce them with a bacon sandwich and a mug of hot sweet tea. After that, he'd have told us anything.

He didn't know when his sons were coming back, but agreed to tell us as soon as they did. If he had the opportunity. The burglaries had coincided with their visits and he had wondered if they had committed them. We assured him they had, and he shed a few tears.

When Jeff and Nigel returned we sat Mr. Nelson in an interview room with another sarni, making a statement to a nice police lady, while we had an operations conference in my office. I wasn't happy about asking him to grass on his sons. Blood, as they say, is thicker than prison soup.

"The alternative," Jeff said, 'is to put out an APW on them and hope someone tells us when they come into the country, or mount an observation operation."

"One's unreliable and the other's expensive," Nigel said.

"We could just watch out for the van moving," Jeff suggested.

"Still expensive," Nigel countered. "We could be waiting weeks. I think we should rely on Mr. Nelson."

"We're asking him to shop his sons," I said. "It doesn't seem fair.

Plus, he might not get the opportunity. Or he might change his mind; he's obviously scared of them."

"Let's ask the technical support boffins to fit the van with a bug,"

Dave suggested.

"Sadly, it belongs to Len," I said. "If it's not Mr. Nelson's van he can't give us permission."

"We could say we didn't know."

"It would be inadmissible," Nigel told him.

"So what? We'll still nab them."

"And it'll get kicked out!"

"We can't fit a bug," I said, 'but there is a way Mr. Nelson could."

They all looked at me.

"He could just happen to drive the van into Electronic Solutions on Monday morning and ask them to fit it with a Tracker," I explained.

"Who would pay?" Nigel asked.

"We would," I replied.

"They cost about two hundred pounds."

Dave turned on him. "If you don't mind me saying so, Nigel," he began, 'you're growing into a right management cop."

"Nigel's right," I said before an argument could develop. "Money's tight, but I'll make a case out for it. Jeff, how much would a surveillance operation cost?"

"God knows!" he gasped.

"Think of a number."

"Er, ten thousand pounds."

"That'll do. Two hundred for a Tracker is a bargain. Have a word with Electronic Solutions in the morning, see if they'll do it cost price.

Or, better still, free. Tell them we'll take our fleet business away from them if they won't. Then ask Mr. Nelson to take the van in."

Electronic Solutions are auto electricians in Halifax. They tune our pursuit cars and fit various gizmos to them. The Tracker is a patented device that is more usually fitted to top-of-the-range vehicles like Porsches and Jags. It is secreted away somewhere and is completely passive until activated by a signal from a tracking station. If the car is reported stolen the signal is transmitted to it, and from then on its movements can be followed to within five yards. According to the literature some owners have had their vehicles found within minutes. Sadly, we're not allowed to plant bugs in vehicles without the consent of the owner. It's regarded as unsporting. Going to court with evidence gathered in such a manner would be misguided and overoptimistic, like ringing the Scottish Assembly and asking to reverse the charges. These days we're not allowed to gain evidence by trickery, subterfuge or deviousness. Confessions are acceptable, most of the time, but not always, and video evidence is good. Courts love video evidence, because TV doesn't lie. Get a decent tape of a crime in progress, show it on Look North, and the villains queue up to shout:

"It's me!" They're the same inadequate souls who appear on afternoon TV shows like Ricki Lake and Jerry Springer, confessing to owning a Barbour coat or having sexual relations with an armadillo. After that, putting your hand up for blagging Barclays Bank is positively high class. No, we couldn't fit the Transit with a bug, but Mr. Nelson could.

"It's not continuous monitoring," Nigel warned. "They need alerting that the vehicle is on the move before they activate the bug. And they'll want a crime reference number."

"Give them the last burglary number," Jeff suggested. "And once it's activated it should run forever. It's connected to the battery, I think."

"OK," I said. "Let's go for belt and braces. First of all, find out exactly how the Tracker works, Jeff. Then, if you think it necessary, put out an APW on the brothers. That might give us some notice that they are in the country. Lastly, if you're still not convinced, ask Mr. Nelson to give us a nod when they are around. OK?"

"Yep."

I sent Mr. Nelson home with the WPC. His home, that is, not hers. As I walked to the door with them I said: "I believe you told us that your sons held shares in a bar in Tenerife, Mr. Nelson."

"Aye, so they'm tell me."

Any idea what it's called?"

"Aye, it's called t'Pigeon Pie."

"Really?" I said. You could have knocked me down with a Sally Lunn.

It was back to being a small-town DI for a week. We had an average quota of muggings, fights and burglaries, and Gilbert asked me to go to his Chamber of Commerce meeting to talk about security cameras. In other words, to tell them that if they wanted them they'd have to pay for them. Highlight of the week was when the owner of a Toyota pickup caught a wheel clamper in the act and made a commendable attempt to force the clamp where most of us can only fantasise about. The Toyota owner appeared before the beak and the clamper appeared before a surgeon for some stitches. The good news was that they did his piles at the same time.

We were hanging fire with the Fox job. A lot was resting on my meeting with him. I talked to Tregellis a couple of times and we discussed possibilities. Fox employed Kingston but might deny knowing him personally. If they were buddies we'd concentrate on Kingston, suggesting that he might be involved with several crimes, including the fire, and encourage him to tell us what he knew about the man. If he said he didn't know him personally we'd switch tack. I'd bring Crosby into the conversation and tell Fox that we were looking into his ancestry, which was true. Tregellis had asked the War Crimes Bureau, which had extensive German-Jewish connections, to try to find any surviving relatives of a certain Johannes Josef Fuchs who fled Germany in 1940, aged about twelve. I'd asked Crosby to call in at his convenience and donate six hairs from his head, so we could do a DNA comparison with any relatives they located back in the Fatherland.