19th January
Chief Inspector Mandy Watkins turned left into Church Road, Waterford and glanced at the clock on the dashboard of her car. It was two in the morning.
Her week of late shifts was over, and she was looking forward to a couple of days of leave.
Mandy had lived in the village for many years, and despite the constraints that the Force placed on her time, she tried to stay involved with village life. For example, she had planned to give a talk about policing in Hampshire to the March meeting of the village Women’s Group – a group coordinated by Helen Hargreaves.
As she passed Helen’s house, she glanced at the metal security fencing which now surrounded the property opposite. In all her years of policing, she had never heard of a house being demolished by a meteorite.
Suddenly, her attention was drawn by a flash of light from inside the ruins of Sam Collin’s house.
She pulled over to the side of the road and stopped her car.
Her police experience had taught her never to ignore something that appeared odd. Indeed, she already had a theory to explain her brief sighting of a light in what remained of that building.
If she had had to place a bet at that moment, she would have put ten pounds on one of the lads from the council properties in Well Lane trying to see what he could steal before everything was properly cleared up. If she had had a further five pounds to wager, she might have predicted the intruder to be Dan Summers, an individual who accounted for about eighty percent of the, albeit minor, crime in Waterford.
Mandy pulled a torch from the glove box of her car and walked back to the site. She squeezed through a gap between the end of the fencing and the neighbouring wall – the route that she guessed had been used by the current occupant of the building.
She thought about whether to shout: ‘Police, come out of there,’ or to go for broke with her second bet and shout: ‘Police, come out of there, Dan.’
She went for the former.
She heard a noise. Then, from the rear of the property, a hooded figure emerged and ran away from her down the garden.
Mandy quickly followed.
Sam’s garden was surrounded by a substantial hawthorn hedge. There was no way through it, and twenty seconds later, Mandy was just feet away from the trapped fugitive.
‘Police, stop!’ she shouted.
The hooded figure stood still, aware that there was no escape. The intruder turned to face Mandy.
From the height and build, she now knew that it could not be Dan.
Mandy shone her torch into the intruder’s face.
Both looked at each other, and it would have been difficult to judge who was the more shocked.
‘Reverend Leadbetter,’ said Mandy, ‘what are you doing here?’