Matt Delito - Confessions of a Police Constable

‘You can never be sure,’ I said. ‘But he does seem to have all the receipts to back up his claims. He bought most of the parts off eBay and put the whole bike together himself. He showed me a blog of the work in progress; it looks like it all checks out.’

‘Can I talk to him?’ he asked.

I hesitated.

‘Not really, to be honest. If we’re going to charge him, we need to interview him at the police station.’

‘Can I go stand by your van and just think out loud for a bit, then?’ he asked, with a conspiratory smile on his face.

‘Do you have a bathroom?’ I asked.

‘I do,’ he said, pointing with his thumb towards a door in the corner of his workshop.

‘I’m going to go use the loo, then, if you don’t mind. What you do whilst I’m gone is up to you, really,’ I said, and walked to the bathroom.

When I came back out, the shopkeeper was standing next to the van, laughing with Kim.

Kim came up to me.

‘The shopkeeper is refusing to make a statement about the assault, and says that he may have “accidentally” deleted the footage of it,’ she said. ‘What should we do?’

‘Well, if there’s no evidence of an assault, no allegations of any sort …’ I said, adding: ‘Obviously, Kees can’t have stolen his own bike.’

Kim let our suspect out of the caged van but kept him in handcuffs.

‘So, just to confirm, I’ve written here: “I, Dan Smith, proprietor of the Bike Shack on seventy-three Main Street, confirm that I do not allege any crimes in connection with my 999 call. CAD eight-seven-four-nine refers”. If that sounds accurate, all you need to do is to sign here, and we’ll be out of your hair,’ I said.

‘Yeah, no worries. Turns out Kees and I have friends in common, and to be honest, I’d punch anyone who got in the way of stealing my pride and joy as well,’ he said, laughing.

‘Just for future reference,’ I said, ‘I probably wouldn’t say that to a police officer if I were you. What he should have done is to dial 999 himself; that would have solved the whole incident without anyone getting any black eyes.’

‘Yeah, of course. Of course,’ the shopkeeper said, as he signed and dated my pocketbook. ‘Keep up the good work, officer!’ he added, and walked off.

‘Get some ice on that eye,’ I called after him. He raised a hand and waved a thank you, as he strolled back to his shop. I doubted he would actually bother with the ice.

‘Kees,’ I said, turning to the young man, who was leant against the police van, flirting with Kim.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘We’ve got a bit of a problem,’ I said. ‘The shopkeeper showed me some CCTV footage of what happened in the shop. You took a swing at him with a bike lock and hit him across the face.’

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