Reluctant Criminal
The postie barged open the gate with his broad posterior and marched up to the front door, clutching a small brown parcel. He noted the front door ajar which meant that the owner was about to depart and this would be one of his quicker deliveries. In ninety minutes, his shift would be over and he could retire into the snug of the Old Bell and imbibe a few jars of his favourite. Pressing the bell he could hear clearly the clarion, with the door being slightly ajar.
“Hello! Parcel for you love. You need to sign!” he shouted cheerfully. There was no need to be glum in this posh area of Islington. Christmas was only a couple of months away and tips were generous.
“Hello! Any one at home? Delivery for you!” Still no response so he rang the bell again, knocked on the door and gave it a slight push so that he could shout inside again.
“Hello!” he shouted, “the door’s open. Can you come and……” as he pushed the door further and spied a foot at an awkward angle. A further push and he exploded with an “Oh shit!” as he saw a young woman lying on the floor with her face covered in congealed blood. There was no need to go any further. He backed off and searched his coat pocket for his mobile.
The police were there in what appeared minutes and further cars could be heard by their wailing sirens announcing the rest of the posse were on their way. He stood his ground as a belligerent bobby tried to question him, to be rudely told by his arriving Sergeant to give up, “Can’t yer see, he’s a postie?” A Detective Inspector arrived and took Harold, the dismayed postman, who was going to miss his daily session at the Old Bell, aside, and quickly got the relevant information from him and determined what he had touched. He was told to wait in a police car so that the forensics could take his fingerprints. At least it was warm in the car and he could call the depot and tell them he was being detained by the police to help in a murder enquiry and that no one, on pain of death, was to clock him out. He could do with some extra overtime for his pains. He then remembered to text a message to his wife that he would be home later than usual.
“Bugger, we have a problem here,” uttered the Detective Inspector. “She’s been dead a long time so it’s unlikely that anybody had seen anything or heard anything. We’ll do the usual searches but I reckon that this is another Jill Dando case, with our chances of finding a culprit absolute Zero! OK lads, do your stuff and let’s see what we can come up with. Check out every angle and don’t leave any stone unturned.”
“Look Jeff, we need a result on this one. The Home Office is getting jittery and they want us to close this case off quickly, before the Christmas recession. It’s political and she was a famous enough to be important.”
“I understand Chief but we’ve drawn a blank on all fronts. No motive, no enemies, no stalkers, no reason for anybody to harm her. Somebody must have been waiting at the door for her to open it and he just plugged her in the forehead. The pistol was silenced according to forensic.”
“I understand but the Minister is going to make our life miserable if we don’t get a result.”
“OK Chief, what about if we get a confession from one of our unworthy brethren. We picked up a chappie from Birmingham about the same time at Euston, with a gun in his bags. We’ve been looking for him for some time, on a charge of homicide in Spark Hill up there. He was picked up on CCTV by one of our astute men on surveillance at the station. He was on his way back home when we picked him up.”
“What you’re getting at, is that we pin it on this guy from Birmingham?”
“Why not Chief, he’s going down anyway and he can plead guilty, that it was an accident. Burglary gone wrong, tripped over the mat and the gun went off as he fell. He then scarpered not touching or taking anything.”
“Will this fellow play ball?”
“If he has any sense he will, otherwise we send him back to Birmingham to go down for life there. He’ll get a much-reduced sentence by pleading guilty of manslaughter here and we get a result.”
“What about our people in Birmingham.”
“They will play ball. Apparently, the case isn’t quite as watertight as they would like. Not that we let on to our man.”
“What if we turn up the real killer in the meantime?”
“Let’s leave that till it comes up Chief.”
“OK, do it but we haven’t had this conversation.”
“Understood!”
The press had a field day in attacking the police for their apparent lack of progress and the Home Secretary was having his balls chewed off by the opposition by the inefficiency of his policies on crime. Finding the culprit at last sent the press in all directions to find an angle. The culprit’s mother showed her head above the parapet and became a focus of all media attention.
“He didn’t do it. He’s a good boy. He didn’t do it,” was all they managed to get out of the mother so they went off looking for motives and made them up as the scent went dry. Since Donald was a “bad’un” it was easy for the press to accept the inevitable. He’d been involved in all kinds of violent crime and had already spent much of his life in Her Majesties care in borstals and prisons so the media turned to support the long arm of the law for a change.
A few months later, Donald was convicted after a short trial and put away for fifteen years with a review after five years. He seemed to get off with it lightly but the Defence supported him, in that it was a pure accident. How could he have shot her dead, so accurately in the forehead, when he was falling, having tripped over the door mat, as he was forcing the lady inside, accidental shooting was the plea. The Judge accepted the accident tale and swiftly closed the case with accolades to the police for their success.
A year later, a National reporter was researching an article on the family members of murderers and managed to elicit an interview with Donald’s mother.
“He didn’t do it. He’s a good boy. He wouldn’t do anything like that!” After more and more of these platitudes, the valiant reporter rose, switched off his recorder and was about to depart. At a last-ditch attempt, to get some sense out of the lady, he asked.
“What makes you so sure that Donald didn’t do it Mrs. Kelp?”
“He didn’t do it cos on’t same day he were int’ custody in Hammersmith Police Station on a theft charge. That’s why he didn’t do it! I keep telling them!”
