CHAPTER 5

Catch Me if You Can

Shoplifting is a major headache to both the police and the shops where it is committed. Today shoplifting is committed primarily by organized groups who steal to order for the rich pickings to be had, which, in the 1960s and 1970s we had no experience of.

What we did have, all of us, was plenty of experience of individual shoplifters. In our police division we had a small food supermarket called Fine Fare and by an odd coincidence the manageress of that store was my mother-in-law, Mabel Mills. This was situated on Attercliffe Road, as was Banners, the massive multi-store where you could buy almost anything. Banners housed the first escalator outside London and the shop was so vast that it was dubbed the ‘Harrods of the North’. We also had a new and well known supermarket on the Orgreave Industrial Estate in Handsworth. No one had seen anything like it before, it was huge and everything was laid out on open shelves. You could pick the goods up and examine them at your leisure – what a brilliant idea. People came from far and wide just for the novelty factor and that included Christine and me.

Being a new yet brilliant concept relating to shopping, it also attracted temptation. People have got used to supermarkets today and are more aware of the consequences of shoplifting, but many years ago it was all very new.

Oddly enough the biggest culprits were old people who were tempted to steal for greed as opposed to need and the stuff that they ‘accidentally’ dropped into their handbags or pockets was invariably things that they didn’t even use or need. With old ladies it was cosmetics whereas with old men it was usually DIY tools or something similar. They’d never heard of plain clothes store detectives or security cameras. At the check-out till they paid for the legal items and then went to leave the store thinking that they were in the clear. It was only when they left the premises and were detained by the security staff and searched, that the tears started to flow and panic, terror and excuses kicked in. If only they’d realized that even after paying for the legal items they could have returned and declared the stolen ones, but by not having done so and exiting the premises, it made the offence complete – THEFT – was it worth it? The silly thing is that most of the old people, when arrested and searched had more than enough money in their possession to pay for the things that they had stolen but didn’t need and unfortunately they had succumbed to opportunity and temptation; and had probably never stolen anything in their lives before.

It wasn’t just old people but all age groups that stole and younger people who were caught were found to have little money so theirs ‘as they saw it’ was mostly theft for need before greed. People stole for other reasons and they were all different.

I well remember going to the store one day to deal with a man of about 75 years of age who had stolen three tins of salmon, which in those days weren’t cheap. When I got there, I spoke with the store detective who told me that in view of the man’s age and the small amount stolen, company policy would allow a senior police officer to caution him instead of taking him to court. They would only allow this to happen provided that he had no previous convictions. He also told me that the man was absolutely terrified at the thought of going to court.

On entering the security office I could see what they meant, the man was shaking like a leaf. After introducing myself I said, ‘I am arresting you for the theft of three tins of salmon and I am going to take you to Attercliffe police station where your details will be verified. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so but anything that you do say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence. OK?’

‘I am sorry officer. Please, please don’t take me to court,’ the man pleaded, and I could see that he was sobbing.

Back at the police station I sat him down, not in a cell but in the CID office with me while I was making enquiries about his address, etc and every time I looked at him he was getting more and more stressed. I turned to him and said, ‘Have you any previous convictions?’

‘Yes, only one a long, long time ago for theft,’ he answered.

‘Look,’ I said to him, ‘Why are you in such a state? Because of your age I might still be able to get you a caution. Try to calm down a bit.’

The man looked at me, slowly stood up and, after undoing his shirt, took it off completely.

‘What the hell is he up to?’ I thought. Then he slowly turned round with his back towards me. I couldn’t believe what I saw; his back was a mass of raised weals and scars, what a mess.

‘How the hell has that happened?’ I asked.

‘My last offence was in the 1920s, about fifty years ago in the Isle of Man where I was given several strokes of the birch. Now you know why I’m terrified of going to court,’ he answered pitifully.

I said to him very, very slowly, ‘Don’t worry you already told me that you had seen action in the Second World War and you’ve kept out of trouble for fifty years, is that right?’ Very meekly, he answered, ‘Yes sir.’ My heart went out to his situation and, looking at his back again, I said, ‘Put your shirt back on and come with me.’

I drove straight back to the store and asked to see the manager. When I saw him I gave him back the tins of salmon (the evidence). I explained to him what was what and I asked the man to take his shirt off and the manager was stunned into silence at what he saw. In my mind rules are made to be obeyed but there is always the exception to the rule and luckily, the manager agreed with my sentiments. After thanking him for his consideration in letting the man off the hook I drove the man straight home and told him that part of the deal that I’d made with the manager was that we had a pot of tea and a fag together. He couldn’t thank me enough and was obviously more than relieved. I gave him a friendly caution and then ripped up all the official paper work as I left the house – no one would ever know. Until now that is!

All crimes are different and some are more unusual than others.

A call came into the office one day from the owner of a small engineering firm in a rough area of Sheffield. I was in the CID office typing up yet another crime report with now two fingers instead of one, and so I took the call.

‘Is that the CID office?’ The man quietly and nervously asked.

‘It is, how can I help you?’ I replied.

‘One of my workers has found something you might want to see,’ he said.

‘What’s that then?’ I asked.

‘I’ll leave that up to you to tell us when you see it,’ said the man; and continued, ‘Can you come now please?’

I was ready for a break from all the paper work so I grabbed the keys of the unmarked car at our disposal and I was off.

As I was driving up Attercliffe Road and near to Maltby Street School I saw a group of young children waiting to cross the road, obviously waiting to go back to school after their dinner. A few weeks previous to this occasion I used to take these same children across the road but now it was another policeman who was doing my old job. I pipped and waved to the kids but they didn’t recognize me out of uniform. I was mortified and it made me realize that I was missing the beat and the people I used to talk to every day. I also realized that there was less laughter in the CID as we were far too busy for that. I still wasn’t sure whether CID was for me.

A few blokes in overalls, along with a man in a suit, were standing outside the engineering firm when I arrived. Must be something important, I thought as I saw them mouthing, ‘Here he is, this is him.’

After announcing myself and showing them my warrant card I said, ‘Right lads, what’s all the fuss about?’ The man in the suit spoke up and at the same time pointed to a chunk of land about the size of a football pitch. It was open ground and covered in small bushes and builders’ rubbish.

‘The lads were having a kick about game of football at snap time, when Alec slipped on some loose stones and fell face down on the floor,’ he said as he pointed Alec out to me.

‘Go on then Alec, what happened next?’ I asked. ‘I was face down on the floor when I felt this thing touching my nose. I looked at it, jumped up and nearly crapped mi sen.’

‘What was it?’ I asked, intrigued. ‘I think I know, but I’m not sure.’ Alec replied pointing nervously to a box, ‘I covered it with that cardboard shoe box and the boss sent for you.’

Down to me then, I thought as I crossed the cobbled street and went to the box. In the few seconds it took me to get there my mind went into overdrive. It must be a rat or something but then why ring for the police – especially the CID.

I felt like Michael Miles from the TV programme Take Your Pick when contestants could ‘open a box’. I knelt down and very slowly and gingerly lifted up the box, not knowing what I would find. There it was, lying at an angle of about 45 degrees from the horizontal and resting on some gravel – a human finger. No wonder poor old Alec had nearly crapped himself when it touched his nose. I couldn’t believe my eyes and back in the engineering firm office I phoned for the police photographer and the pathologist to attend the scene.

The pathologist and the photographer arrived almost together and when the latter was satisfied that he had enough images, the pathologist started to do his work. After examination he concluded that it was a finger from possibly a left hand and more than likely from a male. The finger had been chopped off with, perhaps, a chisel or bolt croppers and had been ‘dead’ for a couple of weeks, making any fingerprint taken from it pointless. Forensic science was nowhere near as advanced as it is today – so that was that.

The lads had now gathered around and, as I picked up the blackened finger and put it into a small plastic envelope, one of the lads keeled over.

By this time I’d been joined by John and Rick and we carefully searched the area of land where the finger had been found but no further body parts were to be seen.

Who did it belong to, how and why had it got there? Where do you begin to find the answers to such questions?

The area around us was full of small businesses and lots of shops, so John, Rick and I split up and made local enquiries in the vain hope that someone had seen something suspicious.

As anyone working in the emergency services will tell you, when dealing with nasty sights and situations you have to have some sort of release or you would go mad. The release usually took the form of someone saying something funny, but not meant to be nasty or hurtful in any way. Some people would find this dark humour distasteful but I can assure you that that is not the intention. Although this incident was not a horrible sight to us or stressful, when John, Ricky and I met up later to discuss the situation John said, ‘That’s HANDY leaving that finger there, we’ll have to KNUCKLE down and NAIL the bastard who’s done it.’

That definitely won the ‘pun’ of the day and all three of us raised our heads and eyebrows at the same time knowing that it wasn’t a laughing matter and that we would have a difficult time in catching the perpetrator of the crime – unless, of course, it was as a result of an accident. For that reason we later checked the hospital records around Sheffield to ascertain whether anyone in the last few weeks had gone to hospital minus a finger, which drew a blank. We also checked whether there were any missing persons, just in case it was a murder and again that drew a blank too. Having checked out all the local engineering firms, where accidents with machinery were frequent, we got no joy either and having no further lines of enquiry to go on, the case remained open but undetected.

The finger could have come from anywhere but, for my money, because of its position quite near to the road, it had either been thrown there by a pedestrian or by someone from a passing car. With nothing to go on the chances of solving the crime (if it was a crime) looked impossible. Or was it?

By the time we had done, it was past home time and, by a stroke of well-timed good fortune the front door of the Mason’s Arms at Thorpe Hesley was just opening at 7pm (no all-day opening in those days). I only lived about 50 yards away and I knew that the old men would be in and I’d get a game of either partner crib or dominoes – that is if I was invited to play.

After grabbing a pint at the bar I went into the tap room, which I preferred to the ‘best side’. The coal fire was blazing away and sitting at the long Formica-topped table were three, hard as nails but great fun, ex-coal-miners in their seventies, wearing their flat caps.

Old Harry looked smart with his gold Albert and chain hanging from his waistcoat pocket. Les, as usual, was smoking his large ‘cadging or scrounging’ pipe and moaning about anything that came into his head – especially his false teeth, which he said were killing him! The quietest of the three was Wilf, a lovely man and a gentleman.

‘Does tha want to mek a four up at crib Martyn?’ asked Wilf, ‘Ernie hasn’t turned up yet, so tha can be mi partner until he turns up.’ I jumped at the chance and sat down. If I played crib at work I would, maybe, win about six or seven games out of ten, but with these old codgers I was lucky if I could win one out of ten. Ernie worked at Bowman’s farm in the village and had been called back to work to deal with a cow that was calving but it was a breech birth so it was difficult and was taking longer than normal. This could take half an hour or, with a bit of luck for me, a couple of hours.

After half an hour I’d changed my mind and wished that Ernie would hurry up. Wilf was cursing me; Harry was laughing his head off at my expense and, in between laughing, Les was cursing his sore mouth and false teeth. There was no quarter given and none asked for and at the end of every game Wilf conducted a post mortem on why he and I had lost yet another game, culminating in him saying, ‘I wish Ernie would hurry up – tha bloody useless at crib Martyn – stick to cricket.’

You could smell Ernie before he got into the tap room. He was covered in cow shit and bits of afterbirth – even his bull’s-eye glasses were spattered in it.

‘I’ll bet tha losing, Wilf, playing wi’ ’im as thi partner,’ said Ernie.

‘Tha not kiddin’ I’m a ‘bob’ (shilling/5p) down already. Am I glad to see thee!’ replied Wilf.

After losing the current game Ernie took over from me and moved Les’s false teeth (which he had taken out earlier) to one side of the table and started to play the next game.

I watched every card on the table and sat behind Ernie just to see how he played the cards. I’d have played the cards differently to him but they won the game.

The word ‘fluke’ came to mind, but before I could say anything the door opened and in walked Elsie, who was a lovely lady and also Les’s wife. She looked at Les and with pursed lips said, ‘Have you got my teeth in, you daft thing?’

‘No wonder they bloody hurt, sorry love.’ And with that Les picked up his teeth off the table and passed them over to Elsie. As quick as a flash she took a handkerchief from her pocket, opened it and passed Les his own teeth and after wiping the ones he had come into the pub with, Elsie popped them into her mouth and off she went saying, ‘I can go and eat my tea now, silly bugger.’

We were all in hysterics apart from poor Les. Harry laughed so much that he fell off his stool luckily landing in the coal bucket and not the fire. The language was rich to say the least and the words that were used I cannot repeat here.

Elsie and Les were like chalk and cheese, but what a fabulous couple they were, no wonder everyone in the village loved them. I made my way home, skint but happy and told Christine about the finger incident which made her grimace but when I told her about Les and his teeth she said, ‘Only Les could do a daft thing like that.’ And then she was in stitches thinking about it.

I went to bed still thinking about the finger and why it was there and I must admit that, for the time being, we were all STUMPED – oops!

NB: It may be interesting for readers to know that some of my beats as a policeman and as a detective in CID were where a lot of the scenes were shot for the film (and now stage play) The Full Monty. The supermarket mentioned above was where that famous scene in the film was shot when Gaz persuaded Dave to ‘borrow’ two jackets and then ran for their lives out of the building.