The Game of Shepherd and Dawse (6 page)

“I’ll stay with Charlie until you get back”, Joe reassured Angela as she made her way out his door and back towards her flat.

It didn’t take long for Angela to look rather amazing, as she always looked rather amazing anyway. The taxi took about 15 minutes to arrive and indeed took her straight to the local police station.

“I can wait for you if you like, luv”, the driver said as he pulled into an empty space. “I ain’t got nothing else booked for a half hour so I’ll turn the meter of for ya, if you’re not gonna be long”?

Angela was thankful to have this bit sorted out. “Yes”, she said, “thank you. Thank you very much. Shouldn’t be more than 20 minutes, I would have thought”, Angela smiled back and gave an involuntary wink. She was in flirt mode and for a very good reason.

On occasion, Angela had reported Dickie Duckley’s behaviour to the police but it was always the same lame response with the same lame shrug of the shoulders: “We’re ever so sorry, Mam, but unless he actually breaks the law, there’s very little we can do”. This time was different though. This time Angela had something solid and maybe, just maybe, there might be a fingerprint or two.

It was Darryl Dunstable the desk sergeant who was on duty that day, which was a godsend for Angela because Darryl had just been promoted and was very keen to show his superiors that his promotion hadn’t been in vain. Darryl was also very happy that finally he would now be known as Sergeant Dunstable instead of Constable Dunstable. Sergeant Dunstable sounded so much more credible to Darryl. After Angela had explained the situation and shown the letter in the clear plastic bag to Darryl, he wasn’t as hopeful about finger prints as Angela had hoped.

“Hmmmm…” the sergeant mused, as he studied the letter through the plastic. “Very difficult to get prints at the best of times, let alone off paper and let alone off a letter of this nature. Whoever sent this would probably have worn gloves when it was typed up and sent”.

This wasn’t what Angela wanted to hear.

The sergeant sensed her disappointment and fixed his eyes on the letter again. “Mind you though, going by the spelling and grammar, this guy doesn’t look like he’s got too much up top”, the sergeant smiled. Suddenly the sergeant’s smile got even bigger.

“Well now, isn’t that a rather lovely looking second-class stamp”? he said, as though he had just stumbled across something quite momentous.

Angela didn’t get what he saying at first, as it was just a standard second class stamp. The sergeant then rested his arms on the counter and leaned his head slightly closer to Angela’s.

“Deoxyribonucleic acid”, Darryl whispered loudly with a satisfying grin on his face, half expecting Angela to know what that meant, which she didn’t. Darryl apologised when he noted the confused look on Angela’s face.

“DNA, Miss Clark. I would bet you my truncheon that whoever did this, licked that stamp, which would mean that if this person really is dangerous then chances are he will be in our system somewhere”, the sergeant said. “And, if somehow he isn’t already, then he’s certainly going to be very soon”. The sergeant finished off in a confident tone, feeling and looking rather pleased with himself. This was more due to the fact that he had been able to pronounce deoxyribonucleic acid absolutely perfectly. He never could get his tongue around that one, even at the best of times, and being around an attractive woman usually made it worse.

Finally. This was exactly what Angela wanted to hear. Someone of authority was taking her claims seriously. After her initial drop in faith when she first entered the station, she was now feeling rather excited. The sergeant took down all the other usual details from Angela and then took a statement from her about the incident with Dickie Duckley involving Charlie. Once they finished, Angela realised she had actually been in the station for a full hour. She felt a little bad for the taxi driver, who had offered to wait, but figured by now he would have gone off and get another fare from someone else. As Angela made her way out of the station she was pleasantly surprised to see the smiling taxi driver still there.

“Are you still free”? Angela asked with a somewhat bashful yet hopeful look on her face.

“Yep. Free and ready to go”, he smiled back at her as he started the engine. “My last fare cancelled at the last minute, so I figured I might as well wait”.

It was well worth the wait to the taxi driver, just to see Angela’s pretty face again. The total fare was £14.30 roundtrip. Angela tipped him the rest of the change from the £20 Joe had given her, which made him even happier. Angela knew Joe wouldn’t mind and would in fact be pleased that she had, being that the taxi driver had been such a gentleman.

The DNA results came back quickly and the dawn raid on Dickie Duckley’s house was early enough in the morning to catch him unawares but just late enough for the whole street to see what was going on. The new style of battering ram that has just been issued to the police forces across the country was used (and more than enthusiastically). The whole damn door came off the hinges.

It turned out that Dickie Duckley was a predatory child abuser, whose real name was Ross Len. He had been wanted for quite some time and had changed his identity after skipping bail from a court case where he was just about to be found guilty of some very nasty crimes against young children. He had changed his name and the way that he looked. He had also laid low for a while after absconding from the authorities and then moving to a totally different area many miles from where he first lived.

It would be a police van with a secure cage that would take Dickie Duckley away, opposing to one of the standard issue patrol cars. When everyone at the station found out who they were dealing with, the driver of the police van was instructed to take the scenic route to Shepherd Road, causing Dickie Duckley to wait a full 21 minutes before the van arrived – meanwhile standing in full view of the whole road, handcuffed and in his dirty vest and pee stained underpants. As Dickie was led into the back of the van, it suddenly hit him where he was about to spend the rest of his miserable days. Instinctively, he froze for a moment, not wanting to get in. Thankfully, the size 11 police boot (that was attached to the end of the supervising sergeant) was very persuasive, and Dickie settled in rather nicely, even managing to lie down and spread his legs out a little. There would be no complaints made on this officer.

Almost the whole road saw the whole thing. All but three people, that is. Joe didn’t want to be getting high off the misery of another person no matter how vile they were. Charlie and Angela followed his lead and instead they enjoyed a nice cup of morning tea by the fireplace feeling a warm glow of safety, almost as warm as the glow of the fire itself. It was a classic example of the game of Shepherd and Dawse being played, and for this time, it was a point to team Shepherd.

As the school years had ticked by, there had been a lot of change in society as a whole and eventually this change trickled down to Shepherd Road. Things had become less safe and all manner of nasty people were being released back in to the community from prison to wreak their havoc. It had been a policy change by the government. Some political fool in his infinite wisdom had decided the human rights of these monsters were greater than the rights of ordinary decent folk, who were just trying to bring up their families. Joe wasn’t fooled by all of the nonsense these types of politicians came out with to defend their actions. Not Joe. He was wise enough to know that some very evil people had made their way to the top of the political ladder, and this was their way of spreading their disease. All very cleverly done, of course, and covered over with a cloak that read, ‘All For the Greater Good’.

The police force had long been infected too. Long gone were the days when a copper would promptly and thoroughly investigate a crime. These days they seemed more interested in arresting and prosecuting innocent people who tried to protect their loved ones and their own property, as these were an easier target than the real criminals. And, it made the arrest figures look good. The police had also been advised to wait several hours before turning up when someone called about a crime at their house. For the police this worked really well. Citizens were so often fed up that they stopped reporting crime altogether. Then the police could brag about how the crime figures were coming down and what a wonderful job they were doing.

It was true, dark energies had managed to infect every corner of society, but through it all Joe Sadsoul had remained in mostly good health and he would always do his bit to try and keep some sort of balance. From two o’clock to eight o’clock each weekday, Angela would do her shift at the crisp factory and from three thirty to half eight, Charlie would always be at Joe’s. On weekends, Charlie would spend the day with his mum and as he got older he would spend the evenings with his friends. Joe made sure it was like this, as he knew the importance of having a good balance in life. Fun time for Charlie and Joe was never a weekend thing, and in addition, this arrangement gave Joe some time to spend with his neighbor and good friend, Mrs Bottal.

During the summer months Joe and Mrs Bottal would work on their vegetable patches and chat over the wall while drinking tea. As the weather got a bit colder, they would both add a drop of whisky to their tea to ‘warm their cockles’, as Mrs Bottal would put it. It would always be Mrs Bottal who made the tea and sometimes a few sandwiches, as that gave Mrs Bottal a small sense of purpose. Mrs Bottal was a natural mother-hen type and she didn’t feel useful if she wasn’t fussing over someone. After her beloved Frank had died, she had felt a bit lost so she enjoyed those occasions where she could fuss a bit over Joe.

The fact that Charlie spent so much time with Joe meant that Charlie never craved for a father figure, and Joe was more than just a father figure to Charlie, as he was a friend, uncle and granddad all rolled into one.

Neither Charlie nor Joe were boring people, which meant that they never got bored with each other or bored when they were together. Most of the time spent at Joe’s would be taken up by conversation. Charlie had an inquisitive mind and Joe had lived an interesting life, and that made for unending good conversation between them. Occasionally they would watch television, but only if it was something that would be of use to Charlie, like a nature programme or a history programme, or anything else that could feed young Charlie’s mind.

Only one type of programme was off limits for Charlie and that was anything to do with war. This wasn’t because Joe found these programmes hard to watch. He didn't – at least not in the traditional sense, as Joe had his own memories of going through the war. Rather, it was because Joe hated the way the media painted war in such a silly romantic, ‘must do and must have’ kind of way. It never showed the true horror of what war was really about, nor told of the ones who truly benefitted from such horrors. If and when Charlie did want to know about war, Joe was only too happy to teach Charlie the real story of what war was like. One particular day presented an opportunity for Joe to give Charlie a little snippet of what was war really about.

The day was Wednesday and the time was early evening. Charlie was at Joe's as usual and it was raining outside, very hard. Joe’s living room had taken on a cosy feel to it, as living rooms do when it’s dark and wet outside. Charlie was sitting in front of the fireplace, looking through some of Joe’s World War II books and the history there of. He’d really gotten into the reading of this particular book and had been drawn in by the author's fervent patriot writing of his take on the war.

In his childlike excitement, Charlie looked up to Joe and with a wide smile asked, “Was it fun killing all those Germans in the war, Joe”?

He was expecting Joe to reply with something like, ‘Oh absolutely, it was amazing. In fact, it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done’.

But Joe didn’t reply as Charlie had expected. Instead, he just gave Charlie a look. It was more of a stern look than a glare, but Joe made sure he held his gaze into Charlie’s eyes long enough to let Charlie know what a silly question it was that he had asked. Charlie felt the energy immediately and instantly came down from his media fueled high. Charlie slowly looked away, acknowledging Joe’s look and letting out a small, “Ooops!” with the tiniest of little grins on his face.

Charlie’s quick analysis of the situation melted away any of Joe’s disapproval with his young student. Joe tapped Charlie lightly on the arm and explained, “Sorry Charlie, it was a little harsh of me to look at you like that. But books like the one you're reading only describe the glorious side of war, if there is such a thing. They never show the true horrors of war because if they did there would never be any more wars and they don’t want that because wars are big business”.

Joe settled himself in the straight-back chair that was near Charlie and next to the fire before he continued. "So in answer to your question, my little friend, there are three types of people who go into battle. The first type are those who really enjoy killing. They get a real taste for it and these are the people who allow wars to happen. The second type are the ones like myself. We do what we have to do because we have no choice. We are good men in a very bad job. We don’t like it and we don’t dislike it. We just shut off all emotion to it and hope to dear God it will be all over with as soon as humanly possible. Then, there is the third type,” Joe said with a slight sigh. “My good friend, Adam Flowers, fit into this third category. He hated war and he hated killing people. The only thing he hated more was that he was so damn good at it”.