Also there were several official-looking cars parked outside the police station and Uncle John swears that a cabinet minister, well known at the time, sat in one of them.
Uncle John had just cause to wonder exactly what was going on. And so he asked and was told in no uncertain tones to mind his own business and do exactly what he was told. And then he was issued with a pistol.
There is a degree of vagueness concerning exactly what happened next. There was a lot of driving about in police cars and he was stationed at the end of an alleyway and told to shoot anyone who was not a policeman who came running down it. Uncle John was somewhat alarmed by this and, although he had shot a German officer in a tool shed somewhere on the Rhine in 1944, he was not at all keen to let fly at what might well prove to be an innocent bystander. Even if the bystander was, in fact, running at the time.
The next thing Uncle John recalled in any great detail was a suspect. The suspect being brought into the police station. And the fact that the suspect did not resemble any of the suspects involved in the various unrelated crimes. Especially he looked nothing like the Father Christmas character who’d held up the post office.
The suspect was marched into the police station. Uncle John says that he was more like carried and that he bobbed about in a peculiar fashion and seemed in a very agitated state.
Then Uncle John and several of his colleagues were told that they must go to a certain address and search the premises. And this they did.
Uncle John said that it was one of the weirdest experiences he’d ever had, although not as weird as the one he would have shortly afterwards. An ordinary terraced house it was, two up, three down. But it was packed. Packed with clothes. All kinds of clothes of every size. Children’s clothes, adults’ clothes, male and female. But big clothes and little clothes. And all shapes and sizes. And all the clothes the reported felons had worn were there. The child’s grey uniform, the blond woman’s pink coat, the gaunt man’s clothes, the Father Christmas man’s outfit, the lot.
This was evidently the now legendary thieves’ kitchen. There was a gang of them. The apprehended suspect was probably the leader. And the stolen goods were all there, the pop-up toaster, piles of money. And more. There were strange things. Artificial legs. A glass eye. Obviously this robber band owned to a few disabled members. It was all quite dramatic.
But it was bugger all compared to what Uncle John witnessed back at the police station. The suspect had not been taken to the cells, he was being interviewed in the chief constable’s office. And Uncle John knew that if you climbed up on a box in the back corridor you could see in through a little hatch and look down into this office.
I don’t know how he knew this, but he did know it, so he lost no time in shinning up and taking a peep.
What he saw was to remain with him for the rest of his life.
The Captain and several of the squaddies had the suspect held down across the chief constable’s desk. They grasped him by the hands and feet and the suspect was screaming. One of the squaddies pushed a handkerchief into his mouth and The Captain pulled at the man’s clothing. He was undressing him. As my uncle looked on, The Captain pulled down the man’s trousers to reveal a pair of artificial limbs.
My uncle was amazed, this man was an invalid, he didn’t have any legs.
Then the jacket was pulled from him and his shirt. The man’s arms weren’t real. They were false arms with false hands. The man was a total amputee.
My uncle says that The Captain was shouting. He shouted, “You see, he’s all of them. All of them.” And it was only later that my uncle realized what it meant. This man was all the criminals. He was the child and the woman and the tall man and the fat man, and who knows who else. He obviously owned a collection of different-sized arms and legs. He could make himself as tall or short as he wanted, depending upon which he wore. My uncle worried about the arms and hands though. He’d seen false legs in action, Douglas Bader flew Spitfires wearing false legs. But how could false arms and hands work? But somehow they did, this man was obviously one master of disguise and one most extraordinary master criminal.
As Uncle John looked on, he saw The Captain unstrapping the man’s false arms and legs. The man was really struggling, like a lunatic. He spat out the handkerchief, but a squaddie rammed it back in again. When the arms and legs had been removed the man didn’t struggle quite so much, but he writhed about. It was quite horrible to watch apparently, but Uncle John said that it was all too fascinating to turn away from. Although he wishes he had now.
What happened next was really freaky. One of the squaddies was holding onto the man’s hair and it came away in his hands. It was a wig, but when it came away it brought the man’s ears along with it. They were false ears. And when the squaddie tried to put the wig back on, he knocked off the man’s nose.
The Captain was worrying at the man’s vest and he ripped that open to expose a number of buckles and straps and these he began to undo. The man’s shoulders came off next, they were just rounded pads. His chest was a sort of stuffed bra affair and when The Captain tore off the man’s underpants, his genitals were made of rubber.
Things got somewhat out of control then. My uncle recalls seeing a squaddie pulling the handkerchief out of the man’s mouth, bringing with it the teeth and lips. The skin of the face appeared to be latex and it came off like a mask, revealing a hard dark material that might have been wood.
A rib cage, that was obviously wood, got yanked away. Inside was a lot of stuffing, like a Guy Fawkes dummy, and within minutes the entire frame was disassembled, leaving absolutely nothing.
There was no man inside there, not one little piece of a man.
And that is basically the end of the story as my uncle told it. He swore it was true and that he saw it happen with his own eyes. He was a retired policeman and I for one find it hard to believe that he made it up. I’ve never heard anything like it before and I don’t pretend to know what it means. But that’s it.
Further questioning on my part turned up a very little. The bits and pieces, of what amounted to nothing more than a dummy, but which had undoubtedly been a struggling man moments before, were gathered up, put into sacks and taken away. Uncle John had enough wisdom to mention nothing of what he’d seen to his fellow officers. He never saw The Captain or the mysterious squaddies ever again. Nor did he wish to.
That’s it.
Of course The Captain and the mysterious squaddies of the unlisted regiment didn’t know that Uncle John had witnessed all this. He had shinned down from his box and slipped back to the front desk. So when they came out of the chief constable’s office, all looking somewhat green of face and carrying several large sacks, he was the first policeman they saw. So they said, “Oi, you, Constable, give us a hand to get this evidence loaded.” And they stuck two of the sacks into his hands and marched him out to a waiting van.
He loaded the sacks in and returned for another two which he also put into the back. There was a lot of talking going on and no-one was looking at him. So Uncle John thought, Well, nobody is ever going to believe a word of this when I tell them, so why don’t I just dig into one of these sacks, take out the nose or a hand or something as proof and stick it in my pocket.
So that is just what he did. Or what he tried to do. He opened up the neck of one of the sacks and took a peep inside. It was stuffed with all this padding and straps and wooden bits and so forth, but right on the top was the mouth. The lips and the teeth. Uncle John was about to reach in, when the lips parted and the teeth moved and this little voice said, “Help me, help me.” Well, I warned you.