The Last Linslade Bobby Chapter Six, Part Three.

Chapter Six continued.....

PC 3 Steve Ingerson was a very small constable. Some one
at HQ had known this when they issued him with his collar number,
'3'. There had been a fight outside the Kebab shop on the canal
bridge and we had arrived to sort it out, in the van. Steve had
arrived shortly after as a patrol officer in a panda. One of the lads
fighting had then taken to his heals and run off up Soulbury Road.
Steve saw him and ran after him. I followed once I realised they were
both heading up the road, in the van. The lad swerved in the car park
at the rear of the Buckingham Arms pub and ran across it, jumping
over the wall into Old Road. Now, the lad knew the wall on the pub
side was just three feet, but a good six feet down onto Old Road.
Steve did not. The lad landed correctly and sped off towards the
station. Steve jumped over the wall but crashed to the ground the
other side, spraining both ankles (we thought at the time he had
broken them). He eventually married an Australian girl and emigrated
to Australia to join their police force. He was issued with a huge
Ford police car and a gun!

I become more mobile.

In mid-1992 I was sent on a course. I had done quite a
few courses for various things after joining Beds Police, one of
which was a Police Driving Course at Kempston Traffic Division. This
was virtually an Advanced Driving Course and has improved my driving
and observation no end. On that course I had suffered quite a bit of
leg pulling due simply to my age, I was the oldest constable they had
ever had on it. So I decided to upset the two (ex-police driver)
civilian instructors. I had by now rebuilt a big Vee 8, Rover P6B
saloon. It had an automatic gearbox and masses of power. The little
Morris Minor I gave to my son when he passed his first test. In this
Rover was a cassette player and we had been told the final exam was a
test of the Highway Code and then a driving test. I taped the whole
Highway Code on a cassette and played it the three weeks of the
course going to and from Kempston, which took from and hour to 90
minutes depending on the gridlock at the M1 at Brogborough. By the
time of the exam I could recite virtually all the code
parrot-fashion. I got 100% in the test! This astounded the two
instructors as well as the other five young constables on my course.
Just because there is snow on the top it does not mean the fire is
out.

The course I had been selected for was especially for
Local Beat Officers; I was to be given a police motorcycle. It was
not to be a big powerful BMW but a very quiet and maneuverable little
Honda 250N. Now I had passed my motorcycle driving test in Bletchley
in 1964 but had first started riding motorcycles in 1962 and was
still riding them. I had a 350cc, 1947 BSA B31 I was currently using
so I wondered what on earth the Police could teach me about a
motorcycle, I had been riding them for over thirty years! Oh, how the
great are fallen. I was, over the two-week course, taught to ride to
a system, a much safer and faster 'system' than I had ever used
before. It was the best course I had ever been on and there were only
two of us on it; the other chap was a Bedford LBO in his thirties. He
had passed his test in his teens but had then forsaken motorcycles
until now. We collected our new riding gear from a bike shop in
Bedford, then went to Kempston Traffic to be introduced to our
steeds, two brand-new Honda 250N motorcycles with full fairings, top
box and panniers and with a flashing blue light. The bikes had radio
equipment in the panniers but the top box could accommodate the huge
full-face helmets we were issued with, where the whole front lifted
up.

Our first port of call was Police Headquarters at
Kempston. My mate pulled up, tried to put his foot down but caught it
inside the fairing and fell over. He did it again later that day at a
transport cafe on the A1 to a full audience of lorry drivers. The
knack was to move your foot to the rear, then outwards. During the
two weeks we did everything imaginable on a motorcycle; fast rides,
town work, balance control,correct lines through bends, escort riding
(I was to do this in quite a few L/B town carnivals later), radio
procedure, bike servicing, puncture repairs, care of riding
equipment, and so on. On one ride out right up to Hunstanton in north
Norfolk I very nearly became an accident statistic. The instructor
was riding a 1000cc BMW where as we were on gutless 250cc machines
with a top speed of about 65mph fully loaded up, as we were. After
leaving Hunstanton we were travelling down the A149 the instructor
and the other pupil had got quite a long way ahead of me as
tail-end-charlie. We took turns to lead and it was his turn. As I
rounded a round-a-bout I saw they were a good mile ahead as I had had
to wait for traffic, so I opened up this little Honda on what was a
three lane highway, the type with the centre 'suicide' lane. The
traffic was stationary in a queue for as far as I could see coming
towards me as it often is in summer near the seaside. The nearside
lane had one car well ahead of me but the centre lane was clear. It
had a double white line stopping any traffic entering from the long
queue. I put my head down under the fairing windscreen and got the
bike almost up to 70mph on the long down-hill length approaching to
overtake the single car travelling my side. My motorcycle had full
police markings and I was in bright yellow hi-viz clothing, white
helmet with 'Police' on it, so should be easily visible. Just as I
got near to the car ahead, another car, and old Lada, pulled out of
the queue and crossed over the double white lines and drove towards
me. Its driver was very elderly and well down behind the steering
wheel. My life flashed before me, I shut my eyes, it was all over is
a split second. Somehow I had managed to get between the Lada and
the other car at 70mph, there must have been just a hairs thickness
each side. The Lada continued as if nothing had happened, the car I
had overtaken swerved but far too late, in seconds I was miles away
ahead. I breathed again and thought to myself, thank God the
instructor never saw anything, he was too far ahead.

We pulled in at a transport cafe on the A10 about a half
hour later. In the cafe the instructor looked at me and said, “Boy,
Neil, that was a bit close wasn't it?” He had seen it all in his
mirrors.

I used my BSA B31 to travel to and from the course and
as it had a rigid rear end riding the Honda was like travelling in a
Rolls Royce. Using the BSA meant I could circumnavigate all the long
traffic queues at the MI, cutting my journey time down to less than
an hour for the 24 miles. The bike I rode on the course was not the
one I was to use in Linslade. Leighton Buzzard Police Station already
had a little 250N. It also had a radio fitted, but cost restraints
dictated I was never to be issued with an 'electric helmet' so I had
to ride about with an ear piece plugged into the personal radio on my
belt. This was not ideal as the wind noise would often mask HQ
calling for me. I did however, do the final riding test on the 'new'
Honda. My test was a fast ride from Northampton to Newport Pagnell, a
road they thought I would not know, but knew like the back of my hand
as I was born and raised locally. I did not remind them either,
getting 72%, the highest obtainable on a 'noddy bike test'. If I had
got 100% I would have qualified for the big BMWs. The earlier Highway
Code test on my car driving course negated the need to do it again.
The hi-light of the course was riding a motorcycle and being paid to
do it; the lo-light was sitting in Bedford for three hours in the
rain with a rear wheel puncture whilst someone went back to Kempston
to 'steal' another rear wheel from an unused bike. Once back in
Linslade I could now get about all of it much quicker on the
motorcycle. The Honda was not mine exclusively as three LBO's shared
it. One hated bikes so the village's LBO, PC Graham Matthews and I
shared it. The first RTA I had to deal with was a car running into
the rear of another in Wing Road, opposite Cedars Way. A chap driving
an old Mk2 Ford Cortina had broken down under the railway bridge. He
and his passenger had then pushed the car as far as they could and
into the old entrance to what is now Steppingstone Place but back
then an old disused industrial area once part of the railway station
sidings. They opened the bonnet to try find the cause of the problem
when a local councilor drove under the railway bridge in his Citroen
2CV. The councilor had poor eyesight and did not see the stationary
Cortina jutting out, ramming it from the rear. This made the Cortina
shoot forward and broke both the ankles of its owner who had been
standing in front looking under its bonnet.

Chris Ireland ran the motorcycle shop in Old Road called
'Desperate Dans'. He and his workforce were hugely amused by my
gutless little Honda. There were three 'bike shops in Linslade then,
one on the canal bridge run by an ex-fireman, another in Wing Road
run by Allan Trivett and Desperate Dans in Old Road. For a short time
there was another opposite Chris Ireland's shop, but it did not
survive very long. From Chris Ireland I purchased a very nice 1966
Triumph Boneville 650cc. It had been given a set of BSA front forks,
wheel and brake, but as BSA and Triumph were virtually the same
company, by fitting a set of fork gaiters I suitably camouflaged
them. It was not an expensive purchase but it was the bike I had
dreamed of during my teenage years, but by 1992 traffic was very much
denser than it was in 1966. Whilst this 650cc Triumph would get to
60mph in six seconds and top out at 112mph, it just did not have
modern brakes and I once or twice found myself almost in the soup
when trying to stop with its tiny eight-inch, single leading shoe,
front drum brake. I sold it after a year(for a lot more than I had
paid) rather disappointed with it.

I often stuck my nose in to see what was being built at
Desperate Dans, there was often a little whiff of sweet cigarette
smoke, possibly cannabis or burnt engine oil; I never knew which. But
occasionally I would be warned off calling in by the Drug Squad which
I thought stupid. The reason for this was if I walked past without
calling in, they knew they were due for a raid from the drug squad!
Chris built three-wheeled trikes for disabled motorcyclists in
wheelchairs. The wheelchair could be loaded on a rear platform and
its occupant go for a ride, either driving or being taken by a friend
or partner. He had hit on quite a niche market and sold many, one to
a member of the Saudi royal family.

Occasionally I would be asked by another LBO for help. I
was in the station canteen one day when Mike Leech, a civilian
enquiry officer, came in and told us that a doctor needed help at a
house in Richmond Road. The villages LBO was with me, PC Graham
Matthews, who had a un-marked CID car he was using. So being the only
two 'available' officers we set off in the car to help. On arrival
the doctor introduced himself and told us he had become worried over
his patient who lived at the address we were at. The patient suffered
serious depression and was supposedly suicidal. We knocked on the
door and the windows, as he had already done, all to no avail. So we
went round to the back door. Still no one stirred so we decided that
it was possible he was in there and had cut his wrists or something
similar. We two coppers ran at the rear door with our shoulders and
the plywood door just splintered into bits. We went in and called out
for the lad, there was no reply. Then, with all three of us standing
on the smashed and splintered back door, we heard a key in the front
door lock... The lad had been out doing his shopping. I had to fill
in lots of forms to get him a new back door.

(Photo of me on my Honda police motorcycle removed.)

In the photo you see I am wearing a bright yellow
jacket. I used it one day on my Triumph which went a lot faster than
the little Honda did. There was no 'Police' sign on the back and it
was waterproof. Upon arriving home my back felt cold. When I took the
jacket off, the wind-whip at the speeds I had been doing had ripped
open the stitched seam down the middle of the back. I sent it back to
the stores at HQ, they sent me a new one. It seems a few others had
had similar problems with the jacket.

I was going off shift one afternoon when I arrived at
the police station to find it empty. This was a common occurrence
since it had become just an 'office'. I thought I was on my own but
then heard some noises. I checked the cells, they were all empty, but
then found it was coming from the ladies toilet. I called out to get
WPC Karen Dryden returning my call. She had come in a hour earlier
bursting for the loo. She had slammed the door shut and the handle
had fallen to bits, leaving her with just the shaft's hole! She could
not open the door. Eventually she had plucked up the courage to radio
HQ and ask for help. They then knew she was stuck in the loo, but
this was just as I radioed up to book off. Knowing I would be going
into the station they left it to me to find her. I told our local LBO
reporter, Mick King, and I drew him a cartoon of a boot bursting
through a door panel marked 'LADIES'. He put it in the local paper
with my ditty underneath, “Oh dear what can the matter be, WPC
Dryden is caught in the lavatory, she has been there from Monday to
Saturday, Oh dear what can the matter be as nobody knew she was
there,” Karen wanted to kill me.....

Off Southcott Avenue there is a road that leads to the
railway station. Off this road is Rockleigh Court, a 1930s built
block of flats for the commuter. One of the residents was a retired
solicitor who was a bit of a recluse and an oddball. He once pushed a
hand cart about Linslade collecting old newspapers for the Boy
Scouts, storing them in two lock-up garages in Chelsea Green. I saw
him often with this hand cart and one day he stopped me to report his
flat had been burgled. I went home with him and checked out the doors
and windows. There was no sign of any forced entry. He insisted they
had had a key. His suspect was his brother who lived in Australia who
had visited the month previously. When it came to the stolen property
he claimed it was the paperwork and Will of his mother, who had a
small fortune to leave them both. It was his brother's idea to get
all this fortune. I was a bit taken aback because this retired old
gent was himself well into his seventies and here he was telling me
about his mother who I assumed had died years ago. No, she was in a
care home in Albany Road and when I called she was indeed there, but
she was almost a hundred years old and totally deaf, blind, and had
no memory at all. Not an ideal person to take any statement from. So
I went back to the old chap, having had SOCO (Scenes of Crime
Officer) round to check out my idea of no forced entry. Pete Sowery
the SOCO agreed with me no one had forced their way in. The old chap
said that there might be fingerprints on paperwork the thief must
have touched to search for the will, etc. My eyes wandered about the
flat, there were piles of paper everywhere on tables, chairs, the
floor, the stairs. These were all old papers from his legal office
and only he knew what was what. So I agreed that if he could find
anything that might lead to a suspect, we would look into it. He
arrived at the Police Station the next day with his hand cart full to
the brim with 'suspect paper'. I had to let him down gently; there
was a moratorium on, no money, it would cost the police £12 per
sheet to get each checked for prints. As his suspect was his brother
had he got access to this paper I asked? The reply was yes, they had
been partners in their legal firm. I think I upset him when I said
that they had found finger prints inside the Egyptian Pyramids that
were over 2000 years old. No way would any fingerprint on any of this
paper prove the entry of his brother as he had handled it all years
ago as well. I asked him did anyone else have access, he replied his
cleaner lady did and she was working in league with his brother to
steal the Will. He gave me a name and said she lived in the flat
above his.

Continued......