The Last Linslade Bobby Chapter Seven, Part Three.

The Shell petrol filling station in Leighton Road
opposite Dunham & Haines was often a tea spot for me, especially
on a late shift. I would bump into some of the town's taxi drivers
and swap tales. Sometimes I picked up useful bits of information. But
one day I was out on the Honda motorcycle when I was sent to the
filling station as they had had a 'drive off'. This is a common
crime, fill up your tank then drive off without paying. Legally it is
a mine field because the law states that to commit theft you need to
miss-appropriate property to treat as your own that does not belong
to you. When the cashier presses the button at a filling station they
give you permission to fill your tank, so the petrol becomes your
property. If you then drove off it was a civil debt! So a new law was
written specifically about Making Off Without Payment and is as
applicable to leaving a cafe without paying for a meal, or a petrol
station without paying for your petrol! To protect the customer a
clause was added that if there was a complaint over the product's
quality, then a correct name and address must be left and it was then
a civil matter. But many 'drive offs' for non-payment of fuel happen.
I arrived at the till to be shewn the CCTV tape. The offender was an
elderly lady, her car was in full view as was its registration plate.
I got the HQ Control Room to 'PNC' the car for me and got an address
in Eggington. So I set off on the Honda for the house and found the
suspect car parked in the driveway. I recognised the house as it was
one of the town's doctor's residence. I knocked on the front door and
the lady on the CCTV tape answered it. She looked at me with a blank
face, no doubt wondering what a policeman was doing at her front
door. I reminded her she had failed to pay for her petrol. She was
shocked, then remembered she had just done that so began rushing
about to find her car keys and her handbag, intending to return to
pay her bill. In her hurry and embarrassment she pulled the font door
shut but left the car and house keys on the table in the hall. Now
she was shut out of her house with no keys, so flustered was she. I
got her calmed down and opened the door with my bank card. The door
was fitted with a very old version of a Yale-type lock and the speed
I got in amazed her. I told her to get a modern double-locking night
lock fitted. Now armed with the car and house keys and her handbag,
she shot off to pay up. I 'resulted' the job off with a simple,
'Forgot to pay, now returning'.

My time in Linslade coincided with the arrival of lots
of companies fitting plastic double glazing. Some were good, others
were average and some were hopeless. The worst sold cheap plastic
systems that any burglar would have no trouble removing to get in. I
speak of the double glazed windows where the seal is on the outside
and to simply removed the glazed panel you pulled out the seal. Some
burglars even replaced the windows afterwards so as to make the point
of entry hard to find. Decent glazing systems were fitted from inside
the house so it was impossible to remove from the outside. Alas, many
elderly customers went for the cheaper systems, simply because it
cost less. There was a big spate of whole patio doors being lifted
out of their runners by burglars that I had to deal with. When a
patio door is fitted, it is lifted up into the top runner, then
dropped onto the bottom runner. If fitted correctly the fitter then
screws some small blocks above the top runner so the door cannot
easily be lifted and removed. The burglar would break into the garden
shed, remove a spade, then use the spade to lift the patio door out
of its slot. With a whole door missing, big items like TVs could
easily be carried out. I lost count of the numbers of remove window
panes and patio doors removed that I went to.

Breaking into garden sheds is a lucrative business for
travellers. They wait until about November, then steal the lawns
mowers, power tools and garden equipment. This they sell at car-boot
sales some distance away. The poor loser often does not know the
property has gone until the spring. The way people fit locks to their
sheds use to make me weep. A big expensive padlock would have a cheap
wire latch with all the screws easily removable with a screwdriver.
The burglar would simply refit the screws after his visit.

Chapter Eight to follow.....