Nicola Barker - Burley Cross Postbox Theft

21/12/2006, approx. 21.00 hrs. Burley Cross High Street. The Postbox. Mr Booth’s assistant, Miss Squire, pulls up in her car. She is late. She had planned to arrive earlier in the day to host an inspection of the local B&Bs (which she has already contacted by phone) in order to drum up interest in Mr Booth’s Ilkley show (also, perhaps, to ‘case’ these properties for any objects of exceptional value while accumulating a useful store of information, which she can then follow up on the internet, through detailed searches of local papers, obituaries, MySpace pages, websites etc.).

Unfortunately, Miss Squire has been delayed because of a problem with her tyre (a blowout on the A65). When she arrives in Burley Cross it is late — too late — but she pulls up in her car (or Ka) next to the postbox to check the collection times (which she suspects — and correctly — may have been temporarily altered in the week leading up to Christmas).

As Miss Squire inspects the postbox, it occurs to her that it is in an extremely poor state of repair. She kicks it, gently, with a peremptory toe. The door groans its protest. She kicks it again, still harder. The door caves in a little. Her face breaks into a broad smile. Incredible! Perhaps her luck is turning at last!

She goes over to her car and grabs the first sharp object she can find — a plastic knife and fork (which she’d earlier used to devour a takeaway M&S red onion and feta salad — this is pure speculation, she may’ve just used a stray screwdriver or a handy Swiss army knife, or the salad may actually have been tuna-based) — then returns to the ailing postbox and vigorously attacks the door again.

With hardly any wrangling, the door falls off its hinges, revealing a healthy bounty of Christmas post inside! She pulls out the contents and bundles them into her capacious handbag, then leaps back into her car and drives off.

Fifteen minutes later (21.22 hrs), Miss Squire arrives in Skipton where she is booked into a local B&B. This B&B is located directly across the road from Mhairi Callaghan’s Feathercuts. Miss Squire informs the proprietress of the B&B (Margaret Bridge) that she is late because of a blow-out on the motorway, then heads straight up to her room to retire for the night.

The following day, at around lunchtime (having occupied her morning I know not how) she walks into Mhairi Callaghan’s Feathercuts for a trim. Here she has a long and fascinating conversation with the proprietress about a broad range of issues — Mr Booth included.

In a subsequent interview (14/03/07) Mhairi describes Miss Squire as ‘an absolute gem. Friendly. Very chatty. Beautiful hair, barely needed touching, really. Very loyal to Mr Booth…’ who it turns out is ‘the bastard son of some filthy high-up in the Methodist Church and a famous wine gum heiress — Maynards, was it?’ (Yes. So Mhairi’s memory on this score isn’t quite all it might have been…).

Miss Squire then goes on to tell Mhairi how she and Mr Booth met ‘after he relayed a message to her during a live performance about where her late mother had hidden a valuable diamond ring. It was tucked snugly inside a hollowed-out copy of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes , would you believe!’

Uh, no. I wouldn’t.

‘Which she’d been just on the brink of throwing out! Of course Miss Squire was so impressed by him that she booked a further, private consultation to try and make contact with her late mother again. He sat her down and said, “You’re bored with your job,” (she was an air hostess) “you have a strong psychic gift, but it needs bringing out. You want to become my personal assistant, but you don’t have the first clue how to go about it.” Incredible! The man’s a genius!’ (And the rest, as they say, is history).

Oh yes… One small detail Mhairi didn’t forget: while she was finishing up Miss Squire’s haircut, Miss Squire received a phone call (at 13.15 hrs, approx., from Mr Booth) and apparently became ‘quite agitated’. Mhairi is uncertain as to the finer details of this exchange because she was rushed off her feet at the time, juggling Miss Squire’s cut with a difficult tinting job, but Miss Squires left the salon shortly afterwards (too flustered to remember to leave a tip!).

During a later conversation with Maggie Bridge (14/03/07), I was able to discover that Miss Squire cancelled her booking for the following night and left ‘in quite a hurry’. When I asked her if she could remember anything else remotely unusual about Miss Squire’s visit she said no, but as I was leaving she said, ‘In actual fact, yes. I remember it struck me as being quite strange, when I came to make up her room, that Miss Squire had taken pretty much everything that wasn’t glued down — the toilet roll, tissues, soap, napkins, even the bag from inside the wastepaper basket.’ I asked her what kind of a bag it was. ‘It was a standard black refuse bag,’ she said, ‘because I’d run out of the smaller, white ones that I normally use.’

Well, I don’t suppose it takes much of a genius to put two and two together here, Inspector. I’m guessing that Mr Booth — presumably spooked on coming home and finding that his flat had been ransacked by the police — phoned Miss Squires (at the hairdresser’s, where she was intent on sniffing out local gossip to use in his act) and told her that the police were on to them and that she should bail on her mission (who knows what other kinds of mischief Miss Squire was involved in: at this stage we can but conjecture…).

Miss Squire immediately remembered the incriminating bundle of letters in the boot of her car (where, presumably, she had stored them), and, in a state of high paranoia, ran back to the B&B, took the bin bag from the wastepaper basket, tipped the letters inside it, and dumped them, unopened, in a nearby back alley.

In her panic, Miss Squire neglected to seal the bag quite as tightly as she should have. There were high winds that day, and by the time Mhairi came outside to dump some rubbish of her own, a selection of letters were flying around in her small concrete yard. The rest of the cache she later discovered in the communal back alley… etc. etc.

So what do you think, Inspector?

Of course at this stage there is little I can do to bring about an official case against Mr Booth and his pretty cohort (my theories are just ‘informed speculation’, after all); certainly nothing that might have any hope of standing up in a court of law.

I find this deeply frustrating, not least because — further to my suspicions — I had a sudden fancy that it might be interesting to conduct a second search on Mr Booth (né Whittaker), but this time instead of Raymond I inserted Robert (Trebor?) into the mix. And you’ll never guess what… Seven counts of theft by deceit, four of minor fraud, nine of theft… a veritable Aladdin’s cave of lawbreaking and intrigue!

I am now hard on Mr Booth’s tail. Through his web-page I have acquired extensive amounts of information about future appearances in the UK, and have contacted all the local forces in the areas involved with the details of this case. His Ilkley performance has been re-booked for late September. I await his return to these parts — and that of Miss Squire — with abiding interest.

Re fishing on Saturday. I’m afraid I’ll have to give it a rain check, since I currently have a prior engagement to drive the Brooks sisters (Tilly and Rhona) to the L.S. Lowry museum in Salford.

I went to the trouble of hiring a Vauxhall Zafira for the occasion, and was persuaded to invite Reverend Paul and Tilly’s friend Edo along as well (further to the hanging of Edo’s crucifix in the church, it seems the reverend and he have forged a great spiritual and intellectual bond. Edo is now acting as temporary church warden — since Steve Briars was taken ill with suspected bird flu).