Back in my own office I answered a few letters, including one to a local councillor who persistently complained about harassment of young people for skateboarding in the mall car park. We'd captured the problem on video and the mall management were receiving equally vociferous complaints about damage to parked vehicles, but the councillor would not listen. Not even when we told him about the needles being left all over the place. He also complained about the older youths in souped-up cars who congregated in one of the town-centre car parks late at night, about the lack of amenities for our budding basketball players and about the speed bumps on Fellside Road. He lives on Fellside Road. He has a regular column in the Gazette and he uses it to beat the police. Our community affairs officer had talked to him, explained the problems, told him what limited powers we had, but he wouldn't listen and-now he was coming through to me. There's nothing wins votes like a fearless campaigner, and he had nothing to fear because we'd long ago stopped dangling our critics from the ceiling and administering the bastinado. I politely told him that, much as I sympathised with him about the children from the comprehensive dropping litter outside his sweet shop, it was not my intention to take any action, and in future I was only prepared to correspond with him through his solicitor.
I was basking in the warm glow of indignation gratified and gathering my strength for an assault on the staff development reports, thirteen months overdue, when the phone interrupted me. It was the front desk.
"Lady thinks she may have seen the knicker thief, Charlie. I'll put her through."
I waited a few seconds then said: "Detective Inspector Priest here. How can I help you?"
"Oh, hello. I think I may have seen this… person who's stealing underwear from washing lines."
"That's music to my ears, Madam. First of all, can I ask you your name, please?"
She was called Mrs Mavis Lewis and had been reading the Heckley Gazette as her smalls went through the rinse cycle when she happened to see an article about the thefts from washing lines. To be accurate, they were her daughter's smalls. Miss Lewis was a nurse at the White Rose clinic, just outside town, and changed her underwear twice a day. Every Friday Mrs Lewis did a big wash and, weather permitting, hung her daughter's frillies on the line to dry. Last week a shower interrupted the process and as she unpegged them she became aware of a youth standing in the garden that backed on to her garden, in the shadow of the overgrown privet hedge. He appeared to be watching her, but when she looked again he'd disappeared.
"This was last Friday?" I asked, and she confirmed that it was.
"And you're doing a wash now?"
"Yes. They've just finished spinning."
"Are you going to hang them outside?"
"I wasn't thinking of, it looks like rain again."
I glanced out of the window and banks of clouds glowered back at me. "I know. What time did you see the youth?"
"It would be sometime after one o'clock. The lunchtime concert had just started."
"The lunchtime concert?"
"On Radio 3."
I was impressed. Radio 3 listeners don't make up a significant percentage of our clients. They don't make up a significant percentage of the BBC's clients. If the thief knew her routine there was a chance that he'd come back today, and if he did, we could nab him.
"If I sent a couple of officers over would you be happy to hang the washing out, Mrs Lewis?" I asked.
"Yes. No problem."
"OK. Don't do anything just yet and I'll be with you in about twenty minutes to see how the land lies."
I contacted Dave and two other DCs and told them to come back to the station, then drove to Mrs Lewis's home. It was a semi, built back in the Thirties when houses had decent gardens but tiny kitchens. I drove round the block a couple of times, learning the street names, and parked a few doors away.
She was a pleasant woman, overweight and jolly, and not at all troubled by the attentions of the knicker thief. Her husband was there, sitting in an easy chair with a pair of headphones on. He had a bushy beard and wore brown brogues and a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Men who wear their shoes and jacket in the house make me lose sleep at night. I can't help thinking that they're prepared for a quick getaway. He removed the 'phones and stood up to shake hands.
"Don't let me interrupt the concert," I said.
"Tchaikovsky," he replied with a sniff. "Music for lifts."
Ah well, that was one of my favourite composers demolished. Mrs Lewis took me through into the kitchen, from where I could survey the garden. The rain had blown over but the next lot wasn't far away. There was a shed halfway down the garden, which would make a good observation post, and the neighbour had a greenhouse filled with tomato plants.
"Do you think your neighbours would let us use their greenhouse?" I asked, and I was assured that she wouldn't mind, so I rang the station and told Dave and the other two to come over, and arranged for a panda to stand by a couple of streets away. Then I asked Mrs Lewis to hang out the washing.
I sat on a step-ladder in the kitchen, Dave took the shed and the others lay doggo in the greenhouse. We stayed like that for three hours, as Miss Lewis's underwear came under more scrutiny than the Turin shroud. It hung from two lines like a set of teeth from some fabulous beast until the occasional gust of wind disturbed the image.
Dave rang me on my mobile at frequent intervals. "They're big, aren't they?" he observed.
"Affirmative. Have you seen anything?"
"No, only some porn magazines."
"I meant down the garden," I said, squashing my ear with the phone and praying that Mrs Lewis, standing next to me, didn't have hypersensitive hearing. She was wearing an anorak and trainers, and carrying a stout walking stick, determined to join in the chase should the need arise.
At four o'clock the phone rang again, but this time it was Heckley nick. "Have you had your mobile off, Charlie?" a smug sounding controller asked.
"No. Why."
"We've been trying to contact you all afternoon."
"Well it's switched on, and Dave's rung me several times without any problems. What did you want?"
"Ah well, there's no harm done. Just to report that uniformed branch have arrested a twelve-year-old youth on suspicion of theft of undergarments from washing lines. They took him home and his mother let them into his bedroom, which he kept locked. They found a regular lingerie department in there, apparently, and they're bringing him in."
"You what?" I hissed.
"You heard. The lads in the panda you had standing by nabbed him. He walked round the corner but when he saw them he turned turtle and started running. Unfortunately for him we had Yorkshire's four hundred metres champion on the case, so it was no contest. You can bring your boys in, now, Charlie. It's all under control."
Dave's comment was unrepeatable, Mrs Lewis was delighted and the two in the greenhouse were incensed. They'd had a break from watching CCTV videos and eaten a few tomatoes, but the neighbour didn't believe in using insecticides and they were covered in mosquito bites.
As the four of us trudged into the nick a grinning desk sergeant held up two bulging plastic bags, saying: "Want to see some saucy items, chaps? We've got something for all tastes here."
On the stairs we crossed Gareth Adey, no doubt coming back from regaling Mr Wood with news of his boys' success. "Hello Charlie," he gushed. "Had a busy afternoon?"
We were in the office, drinking tea, when my power of speech returned. "Well they can do all the sodding paperwork," I declared.