Constable by the Sea (17 page)

By two, I was due to book off duty, but every one of us volunteered to remain at work until Max was found, however long it took. By chance, I was parading an area at the top of Captain’s Pass where the hotels had underground cellars. I had to check every one of them, and as I made my methodic searches I was worrying about Max’s awful fate. I could see the harbour, and the little boats dragging their grappling irons. This made me think of the fishermen … suppose they netted his corpse or found him floating out to sea … The fishing boats, British and foreign, had gone out of the harbour this morning at high tide, some time before 5.30 a.m.

And those boats had very comfortable cabins … and those cabins were open at night …

As my mind followed those thoughts, I guessed where Max could be. It was the only answer. I walked along the clifftop to the coin-operated telescope which stands for the use of visitors but, before using it, looked out to sea with my naked eyes. I had no
idea how far those boats travelled before dropping their nets, but if they were within sight of the shore, they could be seen with the telescope. Together, they would look like an armada or a small floating town, but I couldn’t see them with my unaided vision.

As I was about to press a 3d bit into the telescope’s coin box, I noticed Sergeant White walking briskly up Captain’s Pass. He had not seen me, so I put my fingers to my mouth and produced a piercing whistle which he heard. I beckoned for him to join me.

‘Now, young Rhea, what’s up?’ he asked when he joined me, slightly breathless after his steep climb up the cliff-face steps.

I explained my theory, and he smiled with quick understanding.

‘The daft bugger!’ he said, smiling at the thought. ‘You’ll be right, lad. He’ll have gone below deck for a kip; he’ll be somewhere near Dogger Bank now …’

‘I wondered if we could check with this telescope?’ I said. ‘I was about to look when I saw you.’

‘Go on, then.”

I pressed my 3d bit into the slot, put my eye to the eyepiece and waited for the internal shield to move aside.

When the view cleared and I began my 3d worth of sightseeing, I could make out a clutch of fishing vessels some distance off shore. I had no idea how far out to sea they were, but the quality of this telescope was insufficient to identify anything clearly. I could not even decide whether the boats in view were those from Strensford or the visiting foreign fleet.

‘Hang on,’ said Chalky White when I told him. ‘I’ll go across to the Imperial and ring the coastguard.’

I continued to watch until my money expired, and when I removed my eye from the telescope, I was surprised to find that a party of people had assembled around me.

‘Is he out there?’ someone asked, coming forward with his money. ‘On those boats?’

‘We’re just checking,’ I said. ‘But feel free,’ and I indicated the vacant telescope. Now we had a new tourist attraction in town – spot the constable. I stood aside as a longer queue formed; based on the theory that British can’t resist queuing, everyone wanted to see what I’d been looking at. Such is human curiosity.

From regular visits to the Coastguard Station, I knew that the coastguards in their look-out high on the cliff at the opposite side of the harbour had a remarkably powerful set of binoculars; they were supported by a strong pillar and were more like a powerful telescope. Sergeant White would be asking the duty coastguard to examine those ships or even to make contact with them, to see if Max was on board.

It took a few minutes, by which time a growing crowd had gathered around my telescope as word passed among them. I wondered what they all expected to see, but when they saw Sergeant White returning with a smile, they all looked at him with expectancy.

‘He’s there,’ he said, with a mixture of anger and relief. ‘The silly … er …’ He hesitated as he realized the crowd was hanging onto every word. ‘Er … the silly fellow’s there. He’s on a Polish ship, the
Piaski,
and they’ve got him working. They don’t like policemen in Poland, you see, and thought he was a spy. And they make stowaways work! So he’s swilling the decks …’ and he burst out laughing. ‘They have refused to come all this way back with him. The coastguard’s been in touch. So he’ll have to stay there until the fleet comes home. The Poles knew nothing of the search of course. Serve him right … Well, folks,’ he addressed the crowd. ‘There he is, see if you can find him. It makes good viewing.’

And we left the growing crowd as we went into the Imperial Hotel to use their phone to ring the police station.

Mrs Cooper was very philosophical. ‘Mebbe that’ll put him off fishing,’ was her only comment, as she awaited the headlines in tomorrow’s papers.

Max was fined seven day’s pay for that escapade, but he also became something of a folk hero. The town still talks about the night sleepy Max Cooper dreamt he was fishing – and woke up on the North Sea to find that he was.

Because our brief spell of duty at Strensford was specifically to cope with the seasonal influx of holiday-makers, it was probable that we saw more of those than we did of the local people. There was very little time to form personal relationships or to know the residents.

This might have given a false image of the town and its population, but we did find that the visitors, whether they were there only for the day or for longer periods, were a friendly bunch of folks. The only regular trouble came from youths who grew rather boisterous after drinking too much, and from a few confidence tricksters who left their hotels and boarding houses without paying. And thoughtless motorists were a constant irritation.

Generally, those who took the trouble to journey to this corner of north-east England were a colourful, happy and
fun-loving
people, and as I walked that summer beat among them, I did experience several twinges of regret. That regret was my own wife and four tiny children could not be here too, that they could not enjoy the sands, the sea and the sunshine. I’d bring them later, I promised myself; it was such a charming place. Olde-worlde in many aspects, it had a powerful character of its very own, a character moulded by generations who had earned a tough living from the sea. That Strensford is picturesquely
situated is never in doubt, for it is supported by some of England’s finest and most dramatic countryside.

But if circumstances forced me to concentrate upon the visitors, they did not prevent me from noticing Edwin Dowson, a local man. Edwin was a man of routine, a life-long Strensford resident who was now well into his seventies, a gnomelike figure with a mop of iron-grey hair over his sharp little face.

Edwin’s daily routine comprised a walk into the town centre and a visit to the Lobster Inn. He’d been a groomsman in his younger days and had worked for one of the Strensford major shipping families. Now that he was retired, Edwin followed his routine every weekday, beginning at 10.30 a.m. He concluded his first session at 2.30 p.m. This allowed him time to get his breakfast, tidy his cottage and walk into town. In town, he went to the bar of the Lobster and sat on his own chair in his own corner where he remained until closing time. He drank very little but he did enjoy the companionship of locals and visitors alike who drank in the same bar. Every weekday Edwin lunched at that pub. And then at night he performed a similar exercise. He left home at 7 p.m., walked down to the Lobster and left at 10.30 p.m., when it was closing-time. On the way home, he bought fish and chips.

He did his own shopping during the afternoons when the pub was shut, and on Sunday his routine varied slightly to
accommodate
the change in the licensing hours. But he never missed a day at the Lobster, and his routine never altered, day in, day out, year in, year out.

That is, until one day that summer.

It was a Saturday morning, and I was making my point at a telephone kiosk on the New Quay, just around the corner from the Lobster Inn. I knew that Edwin would be walking past at that time, for he left home prompt at 10.30 a.m. and arrived at the pub at 10.40 a.m. That was his weekday routine and it never varied.

When he failed to walk past, I grew a little worried. After all, he was well into his seventies and he did live alone, and so I wondered if he might have suffered some illness during the night. I walked to the door of the bar, which always stood open
during the summer months, and peeped in. Edwin was not in his usual corner, and so I decided I should visit his little cottage, just to check on his welfare.

I climbed through the town via the steep steps which riddled the knots of red-roofed cottages as they clung so precariously to the cliffs which overlooked the harbour. High among the cluster of houses, I found his pretty little home. It was a one-up and one-down cottage and it was sandwiched between others of similar style. I knocked, but there was no reply and so I peered inside. It’s very neat and tidy appearance suggested it was unoccupied. I hammered again, in case he was in bed, and then a door opened at the adjoining house.

‘Yes?’ said a lady in a flowered apron. ‘Is it him you’re after?’

‘Yes. I’m just checking. I haven’t seen Edwin this morning,’ I explained. ‘I wondered if he was all right.’

‘Aye, he’s fine,’ she said, wiping her hands on the apron. ‘He’s gone on his holidays. Took a taxi at half eight this morning, loaded down with two suitcases, he was. He’s gone for a fortnight.’

‘Well, that’s a relief. Where’s he gone?’

‘Dunno,’ she said. ‘He just went off with all his stuff.’

I thanked her for her help and returned to my beat. I must admit I was very relieved, and I thought no more about Edwin for some five or six days.

It was a hot Friday night, the town was very busy, and I was performing a half-night shift, that is from 5 p.m. until 1 a.m. I was working a harbourside beat, and the place was thronged with people enjoying the balmy air. Some time after nine o’clock, a group of youngsters in one of the pubs started a fight in which several glasses were broken, and I managed to quell that; then two other fights started at another pub, and it was evident it was going to be one of those nights. It threatened to be a duty interspersed with many minor scuffles. This sort of thing wasn’t regarded as serious trouble, it was just a nuisance, and I coped. A lot of credit must go to the good humour of all concerned, including the local people. We, and the landlords, knew that the heavy hand of the law, or swift, hard retaliation from the locals, could stir up real bother. We humoured our
visitors, we jollied them along, and nothing serious broke out.

Then Sergeant Blaketon met me at half-past ten. I was patrolling the quayside when I noticed his impressive figure in the light of a street lamp.

‘Now, Rhea, anything doing?’ he asked.

I told him about the scuffles in the various pubs and said that things were now under control.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll do a few pub visits.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s closing time now, so we’ll clear them quickly and show our uniforms at the same time, just to prevent any bother later on.’

Together we patrolled all the quayside inns, checked a few youngsters’ ages and cleared the bars of late drinkers. In most cases the landlords were pleased to see us, and we did get all the drinkers out. One or two continued to sing in the streets, and most of them wended their way home in an alcoholic haze. For them, life was wonderful – until morning!

The last inn on our tour was the Lobster. By that time it was almost eleven o’clock, and obviously word of our presence had got around because, when we entered, the bar was empty – except for one man. He was sitting there with a large pint in his fist.

I looked, and looked again. It was Edwin.

But Sergeant Blaketon spoke first.

‘You!’ he almost shouted at the little fellow. ‘It’s closing time, and you are drinking after hours! Give me that drink. Landlord!’

The surprised landlord emerged from the back of the bar, wiping a glass as he came towards us.

‘Landlord, it is half-an-hour past closing time, and this man is still drinking. That is an offence,’ Sergeant Blaketon began to lay down the law. ‘It is an offence to serve after time, an offence to drink after time, and an offence …’

‘No, it isn’t, sergeant.’ The landlord spoke softly, not flinching an inch before the might of Oscar Blaketon. ‘Not in this case. Edwin is a resident. The licensing hours do not apply to residents.’

‘What’s your name?’ barked Sergeant Blaketon to Edwin.

Edwin told him.

‘Address?’

And Edwin gave his address, a matter of ten minutes from the pub.

‘No, he’s not, landlord,’ said Blaketon in triumph upon learning Edwin’s home address. ‘That is the oldest trick in the world – you can’t trick old stagers like me, you know. Oh no! Getting late drinkers to sign in as residents and get their names in the register. You ought to know better.’

‘I am staying here,’ piped up Edwin. ‘I’ve booked in for two weeks.’

And he had. Blaketon insisted on seeing his room, but Edwin was right. This was his holiday. Because all his friends were here and because he liked the food, Edwin had simply come down to his favourite inn for two weeks holiday, when his food and bed would be provided, his washing-up and cleaning done for him, and his bed made every day. For Edwin, this was bliss.

‘There’s no point in going somewhere that’s strange, is there, constable?’ he looked up at me. ‘I mean, what’s the good of going on holiday where you don’t know anybody? Besides,’ he added, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I can drink late, can’t I?’

It would be only two weeks later when a party from a Working Men’s Club at Sunderland descended on the town. They came in two coach-loads, which meant there was around eighty of them, and they had consumed several crates of beer on the way to Strensford. Their mission in Strensford that Saturday evening appeared to be to consume as much local ale as they could, and this was to be achieved by visiting as many pubs as possible. Afterwards, they would catch their buses home. Those who could not walk to the buses would be carried by their pals. They would not see much of Strensford’s quaint beauty and historic features, but that did not appear to bother them. They poured out of their buses at seven o’clock and marched purposefully towards the nearest pub. And so their mammoth binge began.

We were alerted and all the duty constables kept a discreet eye on their activities, knowing that after closing time we would
have to act rather like sheepdogs as we shepherded them all safely to their waiting coaches.

And so we did. By the end of their marathon boozing session, they had split into little groups, and so by closing time all the pubs were evicting specimens of the working men of
Sunderland
. They were in various stages of intoxication, ranging from the merry to the legless, but they were no trouble. They were a happy, cheerful lot who couldn’t remember where their buses had been parked, and so we, as expected, guided them to the coach-park.

I was one of the constables who had been allocated this task, and it was a laugh a minute getting them all into their seats.

When almost all were on board, I saw two men, both exceedingly merry, wending their way towards us.

‘Howway, Jack, Eddie, man. We’re waiting – get a move on!’ called someone from one of the buses.

The one called Eddie was legless, speechless and clueless and was being stoutly supported by his pal.

‘Eddie was on the other bus!’ said his pal Jack with difficulty as he approached the open door.

‘Never mind which bus he came on, man, get him on this yan, and you. It’s time we were moving – an’ we’ve ten crates of ale to finish afore we get yam.’

I stepped forward to help the near-unconscious Eddie on board. He was a huge man with a loud-checked jacket which was obviously new. We had difficulty getting him up the stairs and along the narrow aisle, but we succeeded, and he flopped onto a seat, where he promptly fell asleep.

It was with considerable relief that we watched those coaches depart from our area.

When I went into the police station to book off duty at a few minutes before one o’clock, Sergeant Blaketon was at the counter dealing with a distraught woman. I did not hear what she was saying, but as I walked in, he hailed me.

‘Ah, PC Rhea,’ he addressed me by my rank in the presence of a member of the public. ‘You’ve been on the quayside and thereabouts all evening, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, sergeant,’ I said.

‘Well, this is Mrs Turnbull, and her husband has gone missing. She tells me they arrived at Strensford only this afternoon for a week’s holiday, and this evening her husband went out for a drink. She didn’t go with him because she was tired, and so she stayed behind at her lodgings …’

‘He likes his drink, ye see, officer, but he canna swim a stroke,’ she said in her strong Geordie accent. ‘Man, he’s so daft, ye knaw. Ah’ve never got him away on holiday before. Not the once. Ah had neea end of bother getting him doon here, he disna like leaving his mates, you knaw. And I bought him a lovely new jacket for the trip …’

‘Where are you from, Mrs Turnbull?’ I asked.

‘Whey, Sunderland, man.’

‘And your husband’s name and description?’

‘It’s Eddie, and he’s a big man, bigger than any of youse polis.’

‘Is he a member of the Working Men’s Club in Sunderland?’ I asked.

‘Whey, aye, man. They’re all his pals. How is it you knaw all this then?’

‘He’s gone back to Sunderland,’ I said. I tried to explain that the men wouldn’t realize Eddie was here with his wife; when they encountered him in one of the pubs, they’d naturally think he was on their outing and, being mates, they’d made sure he got home safely.

‘Ah canna win wi’ that feller, can Ah?’ she was in tears. ‘When Ah think of all the bother Ah had to get him here, and now he’s forgotten he was here with me! By, lad, Ah’ll knock the living daylights out of him when Ah get back …’

‘He is safe,’ I said gingerly. ‘At least he’s not come to any harm.’

‘Not for this week!’ she growled as she stalked out of the station. ‘He can stew at home. I’ll stay here and enjoy myself without that silly bugger. Ah’ll deal with him when Ah get back!’

‘You know, Rhea,’ said Sergeant Blaketon when she’d gone, ‘Maybe that Eddie wasn’t so drunk after all.’

Thinking about it later, I tended to agree. He would probably
have a very happy holiday in Sunderland.

My most enduring memory of those weeks involved the most traditional of seaside sights – a small child playing with a bucket and spade on the sands.

It began when I was working a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. shift in the town centre, a rare treat for any policeman because it meant he did not have to rise at the crack of dawn, neither did he have to work until late at night. It was a pleasure to be on duty. I walked slowly from the police station, savouring the warmth of the sunny day and the pleasing sight of casually dressed
holiday-makers
, especially the lovely girls.