Colin Dexter - Morse’s Greatest Mystery and other stories

But he made no further advance as he saw the grey head of the driver jerk round and the dusky-headed young maiden beside him hasten to fasten up the buttons on her blouse.

“Any joy?” asked Hodges.

Watson shook his head as he got back into the car. “Well, ’cept for the fellow up front there in the Jag, perhaps.”

Half a mile or so further along, Hodges nodded again to his left, and this time the Vauxhall Senator pulled in behind a furniture van.

“Coffee for me, Barry. Not too much milk, and two sugars, please.”

But Watson was no more than a few seconds into his mission before he stopped and stared. When (only an hour since) he’d glanced through the briefing-files and the traffic telexes back in Kidlington Police HQ, the last three letters of one particular stolen vehicle had caught his notice. How otherwise? For those last three letters were the initials of his own name, Barry Robert Watson; and here, on the van in front of him, was the registration number C 674 BRW.

There was always an awful lot of luck needed in apprehending villains, Watson had already learnt that — unless you were looking for a ginger-bearded giant, with a wooden leg, and a dinosaur tattooed on his balding head. And this was a bit of luck. Surely so.

Back in the police car, Hodges rang through to the Control Room at HQ, where within only a few seconds an operator read from his Police National Computer screen that the said vehicle, reg. C 674 BRW, had been stolen earlier that evening in Southampton. The number had appeared in the Thames Valley briefing-files only because there seemed to be some suggestion that the vehicle might be heading north. Along the A34. Up into Oxfordshire.

His head cushioned on his arms, the driver appeared to be deeply asleep, since only after a series of staccato raps on the cab window did he raise his head above the steering-wheel.

“This your vehicle?” bawled Watson.

“Wha’?”

“Police!”

The driver slowly wound down his window. “Wha’s the trouble, mate?”

“This your vehicle?”

“Wha’, this? I wouldn’t have it if you gev it me!”

“Let’s see your licence, please.”

“What licence?”

“Not your bloody dog licence, is it!”

“You got so many days on producin’ yer licence, you know that.”

“Haven’t got one — is that what you’re saying?”

“Not on me, no.”

“What’s your name?” (It was Hodges who took over now.)

“John Smith.”

“Sorry, yeah. Shoulda known.”

“Anything else I can help you with?”

“You’d better get down and come along with us.”

“Have I got any option, mate?”

“Not much.”

“Hold on a tick, then. I’d better just fill in the old tacho thing here. Got to keep yer records up to date, you know — ’specially if you get delayed a bit.”

“Yeah, well, let’s say you look like getting delayed a bit.”

Beckoning Watson to the other side of the van, and with one foot now on the lower foot-hold, Hodges raised himself to look into the cab, where he saw the driver filling in a white tachometer disc — writing slowly and innocently enough with a cheap blue Biro.

The driver of the lorry in front walked back to the van.

“Everything OK, Officer?”

Hodges nodded and stepped down. “No problems.”

“Everything OK, Danny?” continued the other, as the cab-door now opened.

“Fine, yeah! Just forgot me licence, din I?”

“ ‘Danny,’ eh?” remarked Sergeant Hodges as he steered the man into the near-side rear seat of the Vauxhall, conscious that the slimly built, quietly spoken man beside him hardly fitted the stock profile of any tearaway joyrider.

“Yeah! What do we call you?” added PC Watson over his shoulder.

“ ‘Mr. Smith’?” suggested Danny quietly.

If the Custody Suite at Bicester Police Station is not a match for the British Airways Club Class lounge at Heathrow, it is at least a well-lit, well-ventilated room — separated from the cell-area, and affording its present occupant a comfortable enough introit into his temporary detention.

In the presence of the arrested person himself (in the presence, too, of PC Watson) Sergeant Russell, the Custody Officer, standing in shirt-sleeves at a tall desk, has recited the statutory “Notice to Accused Persons,” and is now completing the Custody Record, as the law requires of him. Russell is an older man, a stickler for procedure, and he fills in the lengthy sections with scrupulous care. He has already made the decision to authorize the continued custody of the prisoner.

“Let me just put it to you once more, lad. What’s your real name?”

“Told you, din I? How many more times I got to tell you?”

Russell sighs wearily. There is little he can do if the man persists in such manifest falsehoods.

Yet Danny does so persist; has been so persisting for the past half-hour — ever since he’d slid a letter addressed to him beneath the driver’s seat in the front of the cab; ever since he’d jumped down into the strong arms of the law. Literally so.

“Still no news of your address?”

“No fixed abode, innit? Told you, din I? I’m a new-age traveller.”

“Occupation, then — Traveller.’ OK?”

“Yeah.”

“And you travelled down here in a vehicle stolen from a depot in Southampton at approximately 9:35 P.M. yesterday evening, right?”

“Who told you that?”

“Relax! I’ve got to put summat down here, that’s all — in the ‘Grounds for Detention’ bit. Don’t you understand that?”

Russell collects together his sheets of white A4, and prepares to call it a day. Or a night. “I just hope the Southampton boys’ve got as much patience as I have, that’s all.”

“Do we fingerprint him?” asks Watson.

“We do not! We follow the rule-book; and the rule-book says he’s got the right to a nice hot cuppa, if he wants one.”

Danny very much wants one, for his mouth is dry. But he is suddenly frightened and in danger of losing his self-control.

“You can’t bloody keep me ’ere!” The voice has grown harsh, the muscles are tightened in the neck. There is, for the first time since the arrest, a strong hint of a tightly coiled spring within the prisoner’s sinewy frame. His head moves forward over the desk which separates him from his interlocutor.

“Constable!” Russell is fully prepared; he experiences no fear as he steps towards the door at the back of the room which leads to his office. “Put the cuffs on him, will you? I shan’t be more’n a minute or two—”

“No!”

As suddenly as it has appeared, the tension has now gone. The voice is quiet once more; the muscles once more relaxed. The man breathes out a long, deep sigh, then holds up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender.

And Russell steps back to the desk, lays down the Custody Record, and takes out his pen again.

“OK. Let’s be having things, lad.”

Ten minutes later, from his own office, Sergeant Russell has introduced himself, and is speaking on the telephone to a Senior Prison Officer at Winchester.

“You’ve got somebody there who’s just scarpered, I think? Rather you haven’t got somebody there, if you see what I mean. Name o’ Smithson.”

“Oh God, no!”

“Pardon?”

“Just keep him, will you?”

“We are keeping him. He’s here — at Bicester — locked in his cell.”

“Excellent! As I say, just keep him there.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means we don’t want him back here, that’s what.”

“I’m not with you.”

“Either keep him, or lose him, that’s what I’m saying. Yes... Not a bad idea that, Sergeant. Why don’t you just lose him, and do us all a bloody favour?”