A Theft

‘STOP! STOP! or I’ll shoot!’ Constable Millerton shouted in a kind of strangulated heave, reminiscent of the sound air makes as it flees an over-stretched balloon. He sounded how he looked, which is to say like he was at death’s door. This is probably because he was; the exertion of a five hundred yard dash presented a distastefully daunting challenge for someone of his generous size and advancing age. He didn’t even have a gun, nor could he reasonably expect the remarkably fleet-footed thief to believe that a Duty Constable of the North Ayrshire Police would carry such a weapon.

Nevertheless, desperate times, he thought, did indeed call for desperate measures. But before Constable Millerton could discharge his imaginary firearm, the suspect’s mercurial figure darted around the far corner of the old barn alongside which the chase had been conducted. When the constable followed suit, any vision of death’s hallucinatory entry was erased by the sight of the very real door presently careering towards the pink, swollen crest of his nose.

In the very next moment, he could see a bright blue haze, dotted by several little black spots. Millerton found himself laid flat out on his back, with a few tears drifting calmly towards the base of his nose, which he now felt would be even more swollen and even more pink. As his senses returned, the sight of the charming summer sky above grew clearer. Most of the spots began to take the figure of the jackdaws who inhabited the roof of the barn and now wondered who was causing such a ruckus in their home. One spot had strayed from the rest and was growing larger, swaying side to side in the gentle breeze which came and went like a bashful tourist. His police hat meandered peacefully to the ground, landing the wrong way up.

‘Right,’ muttered the constable to himself as he scrambled to his feet. He now stood toe-to-toe with the great heavyweight that had bested him. The huge door was still swinging from the blow. Its bottle green paint had seen too many summers and was beginning to peel lazily from the wood. As if to say to his foe, ‘I’ll be back for you later,’ Constable Millerton narrowed his eyes vindictively – the door, of course, would be going nowhere – before stepping round and peering into the grand, old barn.

The barn itself was apparently no longer in use. There was the odd stack of hay littered around, loosely sheared and frayed. Tools adorned the corners, blunted with rust, and moss grew between the stones like plaque. Light crept in the doorway and projected a golden rectangle on the floor, across which specks of dust flashed furtively before retreating, like ships in the night caught by a coastal searchlight. To his surprise, Millerton found the object of his pursuit still in the barn. The young man was facing him, leaning back against a thick wooden ladder which rose to a dingy-looking mezzanine above. He was fresh-faced and handsome, with dark hair parted in the middle and pulled gracefully behind the ears.

The two men stared each other down from opposite ends of the barn. Constable Millerton now lamented his lack of a firearm; this was the closest to his childhood idol, Wyatt Earp, that twenty-five years of Ayrshire policing had brought him. Unfortunately, though, he still felt himself too out of breath to deliver the stylish reprimand he felt the moment called for. The young man began to look puzzled, as if waiting for the punchline to a joke he didn’t understand. Eventually, he broke the silence.

‘You’re alright, are you?’

The constable was taken aback, and the tough-talking remonstration he had been formulating dissolved in his mind like butter.

‘Eh…aye… I mean… No! Uh… you’re under arrest!’

Wyatt Earp smiled down upon him.

‘Oh right,’ replied the young man, grinning, ‘what’s that I’m under arrest for?’

The response altered the complexion of Constable Millerton. He had witnessed plainly the man thieving Mrs McKechnie’s purse, which was propped against a lamppost to which the old dear was tying her dog, Bertie, before heading into the post office. Bertie was an obnoxious little Papillon whose diminutive stature, coupled with a bark that rather remarkably imitated the shattering of glass panes, had earned him the scornful moniker Napoleon around the village, of which he was the scourge. It was unfortunate, therefore, that the thief had made off with the purse, and not the dog.

Millerton began to prowl in an arc around the young man like a bloated tabby on a rail track. The prospect of the thief playing dumb prompted a swift migration of policing style, from the Wild West to 1970s New York, where the law was upheld in a manner unapologetically malicious and vitriolic. Regrettably, there is yet no discernible style associated with North Ayrshire.

‘Don’t be cutting the fool with me, laddie. You were seen, clear as the Galloway Hills, making off with Mrs McKechnie’s purse. Now, where is it?’

To the constable’s consternation, the thief’s haughty, Capone-like grin peeled abruptly off his face like a wet poster, revealing an exclamation of sweaty guilt that poured from every one of his features. He dropped his head towards the floor and gingerly brandished the velvet clutch he had been holding behind his back.

‘I’m sorry, constable.’ The voice seemed to be louder than the thief had intended, as if squeezed out by the rising pressure of tears building behind his eyes. ‘I don’t know why I did it.’

The slick young highwayman that he had been chasing had disappeared, and Millerton now found himself confronting a boy no older than sixteen. The uncanny imitation of Serpico he had planned was clearly no longer required.

‘Well, I’ll be taking that off you.’ Millerton took the purse that the boy had brandished and placed his other hand on his sunken shoulder. ‘I’m afraid you’re nabbed, son.’

The boy said nothing, nodding his head solemnly in acceptance.

‘But what in the heavens did you do that for? Doing a runner with a wee woman’s purse?’ The constable’s voice had softened, becoming almost paternal. He was entirely disarmed by the boy’s sombre resignation.

‘I’m an idiot, sir. Christ knows I’m the biggest fool in the town.’

Sensing a more comprehensive admission was ready to hatch, Millerton led the shaken figure over to a rectangular bale, on which they both sat down.

‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you why I did it.’

‘Son, in over twenty years in the polis, you can believe me when I say I’ve heard the lot. I once caught a boy with his pockets full of oranges nicked out the grocer’s. He said it was a seagull that had waltzed in the door and stolen them, but he’d battered it and was taking the oranges back to the shop. A regular Samaritan, right enough!’ The constable smiled, fondly recalling what had been a red-letter day for Ayrshire community policing; in the same twenty-four hours, he’d rescued a rogue sheep stranded in great peril on the railway line.

The tale appeared to have fallen on deaf ears though, with the boy’s head still driven towards his feet.

‘Worse than seagulls, sir. It’s a girl.’

Constable Millerton stretched his back out in shock. A crime of passion was not something he encountered often.

‘Oh, right.’ It occurred to him that Wyatt Earp likely never had to deal with such matters. ‘Who is this girl?’

‘Evie Cowie.’

Suddenly, it all made sense to the constable – if Evie Cowie had been a resident of fair Verona, that young tyke Romeo wouldn’t have bothered his backside about some girl on a balcony. Imagine, then, the trance in which she could place the youths of Southwest Scotland.

‘Ah,’ sighed Millerton, ‘and what about Evie Cowie?’

The boy sprang to life.

‘I love her! And, what’s more, she loves me!’ He jumped from the bale, embracing the air with his limbs, apparently to emphasise to his captor the enormity of the situation.

‘But... you see, I can’t afford a ring for her.’ He paused in a sulk, as if caught all over again, before breaking out in a fit of enmity. ‘But that great eejit McLachlan can, and he’s already bought her one.’

Somewhat flustered by the storm of emotion howling in front of him, Millerton forgot all about the earlier crime and now spoke as if an accomplice in the thief’s pursuit.

‘Thomas McLachlan?’

‘Aye. He’s coming down from Glasgow this weekend to propose. He’s that minted, Mr and Mrs Cowie will never let Evie turn him down.’

‘Even though she loves you?’

‘Exactly! You see this awful muck I’m in?’

‘Aye, laddie, I see it now.’ The constable’s eyes hovered like flies. ‘But how does the purse come into it?’

A look of slight confusion appeared on the boy’s face. Constable Millerton was not the most deductive of police officers.

‘Well, I needed money. For my own ring, you see. But I’m that dirt skint I’d be working five years before I could buy her a ring she deserved.’

‘So the proceeds of the theft were to secure Ms Cowie’s hand?’

Guilt returned to the boy like a shadow. ‘Aye,’ he muttered, defeated. ‘Like I said, I’m an idiot.’

In his mind, Millerton composed a complete picture of the crime. It seemed to him that this was a case in which the proper operation of the law could not provide a just outcome; proper policing, he reflected, demanded in such instances the pursuit of what was right, not what was lawful. He rose to his feet and paced the cool concrete. Eventually, he returned to the bale, picked up the purse and raked inside. His hand returned proudly, holding a wad of notes.

‘Listen, lad. I was young once. You were daft to think you’d get away with it, mind, but Lord knows there are some things worth sticking your neck out for.’

He held the money out to the boy. ‘Take this. Get her whatever ring you can, and if she loves you, she’ll take it gladly. And you’ll be happy, at least for a while anyway. Until she starts biting your ear for being at the pub too long.

The boy was incredulous, his bottom lip creaking towards the floor.

‘And once you’ve done it, get the hell out of town for a wee while. Down to the borders or something, have a wee honeymoon. I’ll see that Mrs McKechnie gets her purse back.’

The constable paused, recognising the plan did not yet produce an entirely satisfactory ending. The answer soon came to him, though, and his head broke into a nod as he sounded it out.

‘I’ll work out a kitty. The folks in the town won’t let her be out of pocket.’ The constable smiled and rested again on the hay. A look of perfect satisfaction captured his face, and he folded his arms proudly.

The boy was ecstatic. The agreement now concluded, the two shook hands.

‘Thank you, sir. I promise I’ll never forget this.’ Once again, it looked as though the boy might start crying, only with a different kind of tears.

‘Aye, you will, lad, because if you forget it, then you can’t blab it.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘Just get me a pint sometime. That’ll do.’

Clutching the money, the boy strode out of the barn as if walking on sunshine. Constable Millerton watched him leave, smiled, and reflected on the day’s events. He’d done a good thing, he decided; these were the kind of acts that made a man a man and, more importantly, a policeman a policeman. He would stay a while longer to enjoy the peace and goodness that still pervaded the barn, the kind that bursts out from a good deed and flushes the atmosphere. He was, he thought, a fine constable.