Detection

We were woken up practically in the middle of the night by the telephone ringing, after a mere five hours in bed.

To my irritation, it turned out to be the police.

The police know perfectly well that we do night shifts, because it is written all over our contact details on the file in their office, and as fellow night shift operatives they jolly well ought to know better.

They started off with an apology for getting us out of bed. Then they explained that they were calling to investigate the incident of the wicked customer that we had reported to them a week or two ago.

You might recall that this chap knocked off Mark’s cap some time back in the distant mists of last week, and then cleared off into the night without paying.

The police had been invited to attend at the time, which they did after a mere couple of hours, but the chap had disappeared, and despite their exhaustively knocking on the door of a nearby warehouse, he failed to turn up again.

They told us that they would be on the case and not to worry, and disappeared.

I am sorry to say that we did not have a great deal of confidence in the local constabulary’s enthusiasm for detection, and did some investigation of our own.

This led us to discover the chap’s name, email address, home address and place of business, perhaps we should apply to join the CID. What a pity they do not have a Volunteer Arm of enthusiastic amateurs, detecting things quietly for the puzzle-solving fun of it. It would be lots more interesting than being a Special Constable, who just have to listen to endless rants about dog poo on pavements and cars parking in front of people’s driveways.

Armed with this information, I wrote him a jolly stiff letter, demanding immediate payment.

To my satisfaction, he replied, although he did just tell me to get lost, and said, untruthfully, that he was not going to pay because Mark had tried to run him over.

I wrote back, saying that I thought it was unlikely that Mark had tried to do this before he got out of the taxi without paying, and that it did not make any difference to the bill, which was still sixty quid.

I was pleased to note that he had not denied making the journey, and from that point on, my path was encouragingly downhill.

I have been on the  receiving end plenty of threatening letters myself in the course of my lifetime, and know how it is done.

The threat of administration charges being added to his invoice, along with a Late Payment Charge, followed by court costs, did the trick, and in the end he coughed up last Wednesday, albeit reluctantly, and I graciously agreed that we would waive all further criminal charges and extended costs in relation to the matter. 

Obviously I knew perfectly well that this was going to happen anyway, because the police do not at all like charging people with offences, even when they have owned up to them. Lucy says that this is because of the vast quantity of paperwork that charging people generates. When people are victims of minor and boring crimes, it is always much easier to give them the phone number for Victim Support and hope that they will go away.

As a taxpayer I entirely approve of this careful husbandry of scarce resources. As an occasional victim of minor and boring crimes it is an absolute nuisance.

In any case by this time, a whole week later, as far as I was concerned I had achieved a satisfactory conclusion to the whole affair, and hence was surprised when the police telephoned this morning to tell me that they had received a complaint from us which they intended to investigate.

I had been asleep, and it took me a few moments to work it out and to explain that they need no longer bother.

Obviously they were very pleased with this outcome, which I understand from Lucy is their top favourite result. In any case they regretted to tell me that there would not have been enough evidence to pursue a complaint of common assault, since Mark had not thought to whip his camera out and film the chap doing it.

I explained that we did not mind this, since Mark has now recovered his equilibrium and has stopped being cross about it, which he did the moment the cash hit our bank account. It never ceases to amaze me how restorative solvency can be.

They apologised again for waking us up, and hung up, by which point sleep had fled for the morning, and we are going to have to have an early night tonight.

It is not too distant now.

I am looking forward to it.