A Country Burglary

 

It was late in the evening and we were still sitting round the kitchen table in Yorkshire, finishing our red wine, knowing we should have gone to bed but relishing the time with our youngest son Archie and his wife Steph. We’d come up from Essex to this small West Riding town watch Archie’s pupils perform Mary Poppins. Steph had met us earlier with our granddaughter Ada, now sweetly asleep upstairs. It had been a lovely day away.

Then my phone rang. It was Bertie, our son who lives as our ‘next door neighbour’ at home. This means a small separate building in the same space - 'the shed'. He and his dogs had unexpectedly left home that day, to visit a friend in distress. An unplanned absence.. He’d just returned, seen upstairs lights left on, discovered the back door open and our bedroom in chaos. Understandably he was shocked and upset.

No, not normal mess

‘Call the police,’ we said. ‘You have to call the police.’ He did so and was told he mustn’t touch anything, mustn't go into the room but must stay downstairs and await their arrival, whenever that might be. I was worried about him. He’d had a long, emotionally tiring day and was now wondering whether it was his return that had disturbed the burglars, whether they’d left by the back door as he and the dogs came in at the front. 

Our house is isolated. That's its charm, normally, but now it was the middle of the night. I had no idea how long he’d have to stay up waiting for the police. He’d sent us a photo taken from the doorway of our bedroom. I didn’t like the feeling that whoever had caused all this mess could still be nearby, in the fields at the back, maybe.

I lay awake in my cosy Yorkshire bed feeling very far away and wishing morning would come. I sent a message to my daughter, Georgeanna, who lives nearby, telling her what had happened, but there was no reply. For once she and her baby must be getting some sleep.  I still worried about Bertie, waiting there alone in the violated house, not allowed to touch, not allowed go to bed in his own space and shut himself in. I hesitated. I cracked. I rang to wake my son-in-law, Mark, who immediately offered to go and drink cups of tea with Bertie and wait with him till the police arrived.

I thought, for the umpteenth time, how lucky I am to have all these dear ones nearby, coming easily in and out of our home. It had however been the indirect cause of the intrusion. Normally the space in front of the house is full of everyone’s cars and Georgeanna’s horse trailer. People arrive and leave frequently. But that day she’d moved the trailer; the horses were holidaying in a distant field; we’d gone to Yorkshire; Bertie and his clamorous dogs had gone elsewhere. The thieves had been quick to take advantage.

There wasn't much in these boxes

That was what spooked me. I didn’t feel especially traumatised by the thought that other people’s hands had been rifling through my knicker drawer, or that my few family pieces of jewellery were gone – though I did feel some sadness.  It was imagining unseen eyes, taking notice of our movements. People alerting each other to the vulnerability of our empty house.

What I love about living here is its privacy, its secrecy even. If I can’t be bothered to get dressed in the morning, I feed the horses in my dressing gown and wellies.  We’re quite hard to find – no signpost at the top of the lane, a postcode that misdirects. When we used to have primary school activities here, I was regularly accused of moving the house between visits.  There’s an off-grid feeling to living here. The burglary was a rude reality check.

‘We’re just sitting ducks,’ said Allison the parish clerk bitterly, when her secluded cottage was burgled similarly the following week, while she and her various children were all-too-obviously, out. We’d worked out by then what had happened to us. The burglary hadn’t taken place at night, as we first assumed. It was mid-afternoon. They’d parked at the end of the drive, presumably walked up to knock on the door – as if delivering something or asking directions, then gone round the back and pushed the back door open. They were focussed and working to a routine – take no notice of computers and TVs, furniture or pictures, too bulky, too easily traceable and little value – go straight up to the bedrooms and begin emptying drawers. Pull a pillowcase off the bed to fill up with swag. Only take jewellery and cash, easy to carry, easy to get rid of. On the way out, raid the cupboard under the kitchen sink for some cleaning product to remove fingerprints and DNA.

no time to fill the pillowcase

The police explained the procedure – Allison’s thieves had followed it to the letter. She has a very low lintel on one of her doors which they’d used her 'Mr Muscle' to clean off. Presumably because they’d bashed their heads on it. Hard she hoped. Ours hadn’t done so well. The pillowcase was chucked on the floor, empty. There was a ciggie butt left on the stairs, palm marks on the back door where they’d pushed their way in.  Best of all, a necklace and some earrings, which had belonged to my grandmother and which I especially value, had been thrown aside or dropped as they ran.

Because they did run. One of our neighbours was driving down the lane on her way to collect her child from school. Just a little earlier that afternoon her dog had been making a tremendous noise – as if someone was possibly outside the house. So, when she saw two men in black sprinting down our drive to jump in their car, and drive away at speed, she was sufficiently alert to pull out her phone and film them. That was how we knew when the burglary had occurred. Not late at night when Bertie had come home.

We don’t know what made them run. Bertie has a theory that gunshots in the back field where a pigeon shooter is occasionally active could have scared them. Perhaps they’d been watching too many urban shoot-out films.

It clearly wasn’t a sudden pang of conscience or realisation of the error of their ways. On the afternoon of the following week, the same day that Allison’s cottage was ransacked, two other houses in the neighbourhood suffered similar incursions. Except that in one of them, the householder was not only at home but had a working CCTV system which recorded the vehicle used and the face of the front man.  There were two others, but they were hooded. One person has been arrested and is now on bail. 

Currently we’re all in a state of limbo waiting for various results to come back from the police DNA lab in Coventry. What connections can be made? What charges can be brought, and will they stick? Meanwhile the purveyors of video doorbells, reinforced back doors and surveillance cameras are doing good business in our area. The police go from door to door, asking everyone ‘What did you see?’ My wellie-boot and dressing gown days are over.

 

I love this house