Bug-Man’s Blog

I thought for something different I’d write you a story. It’s a true story. It happened to us on Saturday night.

Beware, crims!
by Adam Smith

It was a lazy Saturday night. We couldn’t go out because we were on such a tight budget. It’s not like there was that much to do anyway. Passing the time, Lindsay decided to take some empty beer cans out the front to the recycling crate.

We live on a quiet, dead-end suburban London street. Residents walk up and down frequently yet the street is always full of cars. We’d only been here for a month or so and we weren’t used to all of our neighbours yet. There are the people next door who we’ve only ever seen a couple of times, the people upstairs who make noise but never seem to be home, and the little old lady across the street who likes to peer out through her curtains whenever something’s happening in the street. All in all, its a pretty normal place to live.

As Lindsay lowered the cans into the crate he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. Not paying too much attention he looked over and saw a dark man walking out of the house across the street. He was tall, black and wearing a dark, hooded winter jacket. Carrying a plastic bag in one hand he glanced over at Lindsay and began walking towards the train line; the contents of the bag jingling with every step.

Alarm bells went off inside Lindsay’s head as he realised that this was most unusual. The man who left the house certainly didn’t live there, and it was quite strange for the old lady’s curtains to be left open with all of her lights off. Perhaps there was a logical explanation for this. Perhaps he was a relative? A friend? A carer? Or perhaps it was something worse. Perhaps she’d been molested, attacked, robbed or killed? The strange feeling of worry started to set in.

Lindsay returned to the house and summoned me. “What is it?” I said, walking down the passageway.

“I don’t know — you know the old lady across the street? Well I just saw a man walk out of her house with a jingling bag.”

“Do you think something might have happened?”

“I don’t know. Look, her curtains are open. She never leaves her curtains open. Maybe she’s been attacked or robbed. Should I call the police? I’m not sure. Maybe she hasn’t and I don’t want to call the police around for no good reason!” Lindsay said.

Lindsay took me outside and showed me her curtains open. He showed me exactly where the guy was walking and what he saw. With all of the lights off we didn’t want to approach the house and wake everyone without being sure there was something wrong.

“If you feel strongly enough that something might have happened then call it through. It would be the right thing to do I think.”

“OK.”

Something didn’t seem quite right about all of this. I left Lindsay to make his call in private, and walked down the corridor.

Lindsay picked up his phone and dialed. “Hello, my name’s Lindsay. I’m just calling because I’ve seen something strange across the street and I’m not sure if this is the right thing to do or not but I just wanted to make sure she is alright. There is an old lady who lives across the street and her curtains are open and her lights are off, which is unusual for her. And about ten minutes ago I saw a man walk out of her house and go down the street and he was carrying a jingling bag.”

The woman at the other end of the phone asked for a more detailed description of the man. “How would you describe his appearance?” she said.

“He was an African-English male…” Lindsay began.

“Black.” said the woman.

“Yeah. I’m from Australia and I just didn’t know what exactly to say.” Lindsay said, trying to be politically correct. He gave the rest of the description and details and we went outside to wait for the police.

As we stood in the cool London air we could hear police cars off in the distance. They sounded like they were coming from the direction the man with the bag had gone. We wondered if the police had picked him up for questioning. The sirens stopped and we looked at each other. Another set of sirens went off in a different direction, then another. They moved around us but this is typical of any Saturday night in London really. There are police everywhere, so we had no way to know exactly what was going on. We decided to go back inside and wait.

At last the police arrived. They pulled up in the middle of the road in front of the house and we walked outside. Lindsay went over to explain the situation to the policeman through the car window.

“… and I’m just very concerned,” he finished. “It was all a bit unusual.”

“Right, we’ll take a look then,” the constable said, as he and his partner got out of the car. Putting their MET hats on they casually approached the front door, torches in arms. The constable went to knock on the door but it was unlocked and opened straight away. “Hello, is anybody home? This is the police.” they said, as they entered the house.

Lindsay’s heart skipped a beat as he started worrying about the old lady. As the more rational of the two in situations like this I tried to calm him down and stop him from worrying about what could or couldn’t have happened until we know for sure. I have always tried to think like that because there’s no point worrying about something until you know for sure.

Both the inner and outer doors were unlocked and the police wandered around the house with their torches, turning on interior lights. They came outside again and approached us, asking for a better description of the events.

“Did the door show signs of forced entry?” I asked.

“Yes, the door was forced and the place has been robbed. Nobody is home.” the handsome constable replied.

Lindsay let out a sigh of relief that the old lady was OK.

“Do you know where she is at the moment, or where she might have gone?”

“No, we’ve only just moved in a few weeks ago, so we don’t know the neighbours very well yet. But she’s usually home so maybe she’s gone away for the weekend.” we replied.

We hung around for a while to see what was going on as the police questioned a couple of the neighbours and shortly afterwards a van turned up to secure the premises. A woman emerged from the van carrying a tool box. Walking in the dark she stepped right in a puddle. “Fuck!” she let out loudly, as the other two coppers let out a laugh. She stepped into the foyer and worked to secure the doors.

The older police officer came over to shoo us back inside. “There’s nothing more we need from you guys, so you’re free to go back inside. We’ve just brought around some equipment to secure the premises until the occupier comes home.”

“Good luck. Hope you catch him!” I said. The police officer let out a dry “mrhh..” as he walked away, like he’d heard it all before.

We stayed inside and watched the activities for a while longer until we became bored with it. Eventually the police left too and we never heard anything back. We’ll probably never find out if he got caught or not unless they need a witness statement from us, but at the very least we had something interesting to fill our night.