FILES ON NASTY BASTARDS.
GEORGE ARTHUR PERKINS SAT NERVOUSLY, TWISTING THE END OF HIS tie between his fingers. Marcus Harding and Harry Rawlings sat opposite him in the interview room, saying nothing. Neither of them had said a word to Perkins ever since they had brought him in for questioning.
Immediately after Yarrow’s briefing, they had descended into the depths of the station basement, the lair of Sergeant Maurice Capstone, whom it was rumoured had never left the archives since his appointment as Archives Officer seventeen years ago. Capstone, it was said, lived down there and had never been seen outside the nick, never been seen in the canteen or in the toilets or anywhere except in the archives for the past seventeen years.
Of course, this was not true. Capstone did not live down there, but when on duty, he very rarely left his desk, and when not on duty, he did not socialise with the other coppers at the ‘Dog and Bacon’ or at any of the other pubs frequented by the police. He preferred the company of his three Alsatian dogs, named Adolf, Heinrich, and Hermann respectively, and drank his Uncle Arnold’s home-made apple cider. It was not by choice that he lived alone; his wife had left him after the death of their only son.
He was a big man, with the heavy build of a man who lived an entirely sedentary lifestyle, with fish and chips, HP sauce, and bacon sandwiches as his principal diet. However, Maurice Capstone had an encyclopaedic knowledge of just about every single case file among the hundreds that had been deposited there over the years, case files that filled the endless yards of the dusty shelving that lined the walls and down the narrow aisles of the archives section.
Ask for a file for a crime committed fifteen years ago, and after a moment’s contemplation, Capstone would raise his ponderous bulk and, counting off the rows on pudgy fingers, make straight for the file in question. He was very rarely stumped; very rarely did he have to consult the large ledgers into which the details of every file were laboriously entered; either by Capstone himself, PC Gerald Loveday, or, just occasionally, by WPC Janet Lodge. If no one else was available, she could make entries under the watchful eye of Capstone, who held the same deep-rooted prejudice against WPCs as Bullock or Dave Armitage, barely considering them capable of even the simplest of filing tasks.
The metallic click-clack of the steel-capped heels of Harding and Rawlings’s shoes echoed against the shiny green tiles lining the walls of the corridor leading to Capstone’s lair, announcing their presence long before they reached his desk.
Surprisingly, considering the years Marcus Harding had been at Garside CID, this was the first time he had had occasion to go down into the depths of the Archives.
“Morning, Harry,” Capstone greeted Rawlings, seemingly ignoring Harding, who bristled but said nothing. “How’re you doing?”
“Not so bad, yourself?”
“Can’t complain, and it wouldn’t do any bloody good if I did,”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
Well, you haven’t come down here just to enquire after my health, have you? You on that little girl case? Nasty piece of work, that.”
“Aye, we’ve come to get the records of any sex offenders you’ve got.” answered Rawlings. “Rapists, indecent assaults, peeping toms, the lot.”
‘We got a few of them, foul fuckin’ shits, every one of ‘em. Nasty Bastard files, I call ‘em,’ said Capstone, leaning over in his seat to break wind through pendulous buttocks. ‘Aaah, that’s better,’ he said, grinning up at Harding. ‘As the Good Book says, better out than in.’
‘They’re the ones we need, the nasty bastards,’ said Rawlings, waving his hand to disperse the fart stink.
‘You reckon he’s got form for rape or summat?’ Capstone said, now scratching at his crotch.
‘Yes, else kiddie diddling, any sort of sex offence. The Boss reckons he must have some sort of form,’ Rawlings answered. ‘He reckons you don’t just become a child rapist and murderer overnight; there’s got to be a pattern. “Find the pattern,” he says.’
‘Crispy Bacon he might be, but he ain’t daft, I’ll give him that.’
‘Don’t call him that,’ Marcus said hotly, the first time he had spoken. ‘Don’t call the DI “Crispy Bacon.”‘
Capstone turned curious eyes up towards Marcus.
‘What we got ‘ere, Arry?’ he asked Rawlings, his eyes glinting yellowy in the harsh lighting.
‘Harding, Maurice, Sgt Marcus Harding, to be precise.’
‘Bit touchy, ain’t he?’
‘Aye, must be the German blood,’ said Rawlings, seemingly setting aside the recent rapport with Harding to score some cheap points.
‘German blood? I thought we’d done for all them fuckers. For me, the only…’
‘The only good German is a dead German,’ interjected Harding. ‘I’ve heard it all before, all my life. “Who’s your Nazi dad then, eh? Heinrich Himmler?” All that shit. My Dad was murdered by the Nazis; he died in a concentration camp. So, where does all this “the only good German is a dead German” come from, eh? Not all Germans were Nazis, you know. Some Germans fought against Nazism and died for it, like my father,’ continued Marcus hotly, bunching his fists.
‘Calm down, my son, calm down,’ placated Capstone, ‘we’re only having a bit of a dig, ‘cos you’re German-born. Don’t take it on so, and sorry ‘bout yer Dad. Only for me, it’s a touchy subject an’ all. My lad Steven, he died fighting you lot, fighting the Nazis anyhow. He was a tail gunner on a Halifax bomber, shot down over Essen, 17th October 1943, eighteen years old he was, broke his mother’s heart.’
‘Sorry to hear that. I didn’t know,’ Harding said, still angry.
‘As for the DI,’ Capstone continued, as if he had not heard Harding, ‘for me, he’s a crackerjack, none better, and I call him Crispy Bacon out of respect. He fought the Germans, them as killed my Steven, up there in the sky, fighting them Messerschmitts and got himself badly wounded, and since then burned by that nutter at the loony bin and that’s the way of it. Top bloke for me. He’s a good copper an’ all, and I respect the man, but that don’t mean to say we can’t have a nickname for him, now does it?’
‘S’pose not,’ answered Harding dully, a bubbling pot of anger still seething.
‘As for you, if you’re a sergeant, you’ve been in the job long enough to know everybody takes the piss out of everybody else. If you haven’t grown a thick skin by now, you shouldn’t be in the job. As the Good Book says, “if you can’t take a joke, then piss off out of it.”‘
Marcus glowered, not completely mollified.
‘OK, children, that concludes the lesson for today,’ said Capstone, clapping his hands together with a crack that echoed around the basement. ‘We will now sing hymn number 43, “Files on Nasty Bastards.”‘
‘Files on Nasty Bastards,’ echoed Rawlings, grinning at Harding.