Read Constable Across the Moors for Free Online

back, and as I started to climb the slope, tugging at heather roots for support, they vanished over the horizon.
    I had lost my Russian.
     
    Six weeks later, we were in a classroom for a one-day course. The subject was “Liaison with the C.I.D.” A detective inspector from Headquarters was laying down the rules about communication between departments, and liaison between officers and men.
    “Exercise Moorjock was a perfect example of confusion,” he said.
    Was that an exercise? I thought it was the real thing! I’d given my all on that occasion, I’d risked my life and my limbs!
    “There was no communication, no liaison. We shot a film of the exercise to highlight some of the problems,” he said. “It speaks for itself.”
    And when the lights went out and the film hit the screen, I saw myself riding towards the camera; I saw the pseudo-Russian waiting for me, and I saw myself tumbling down a moorland hillside in a cloud of winter snow.
    I could not forget those Candlemas Day events, but did remember the old Yorkshire saying, “Look for nowt in February – and you’ll get it.”

2
    “This only is the witchcraft I have us’d”
    William Shakespeare 1564–1616 Othello
    “Rhea? Are you there?” It was Sergeant Blaketon and I was retrieving a heap of files from the floor of my office. I had lifted the telephone to answer and had dislodged a heap of paperwork with the cable.
    “Sorry, Sergeant,” I responded. “Yes, I’m here.”
    “Get yourself out to Ellersfield,” he instructed me. “Go and see a Miss Katherine Hardwick of Oak Crag Cottage. She’s got a complaint to make.”
    “What sort of complaint, sergeant?” I was still struggling to hold the telephone with one hand and pick up the files with the other. It would have been easier to leave them on the floor, but they annoyed me.
    “Mischief makers,” he said. “She’s being plagued by somebody from the village, one of the lads by the sound of it.”
    “Kids!” I snorted. “What’s he doing to her?”
    “Daft things really, knocking on her door when she’s in bed and running away before she opens it, tapping on the window when she’s sitting alone, pinching tomatoes from her greenhouse and cutting the tops off all her cabbages. That sort of thing. Nuisances, Rhea, nothing but bloody nuisances.”
    “Is she a regular complainer?” I asked him.
    “No, she’s not. She’s a decent hard-working woman who lives alone and she earns her keep by growing flowers and vegetables, or doing odd jobs for the folk of the area.”
    “I’m on my way,” I said.
    “Good. It’ll keep you quiet for the rest of the morning. Anything else to report?”
    “Nothing, sergeant, it’s all quiet.” It was extremely quiet. My beat had lacked any real trouble or serious incident for the past six weeks, but this lull may have been due to the weather. The winter snows and gales tended to keep people away from the moors and its range of villages, but now the spring had arrived, my workload would surely increase. Life was beginning anew, and I wondered if this lad’s activities with Miss Hardwick were a sign of rising sap.
    I departed from my hill-top house on my trusty Francis Barnett, clad up to the eyeballs in my winter suit, goggles, helmet and gloves. The crisp air contained a definite chill, but the brightness of the morning and the clarity of the views across the valleys and hills were truly magnificent. I was faced with a journey of some eighteen miles each way, and braced myself for the long, cold ride. There would be none of the gymnastics I’d enjoyed during Exercise Moorjock.
    I dropped into Ashfordly, rode through the sleepy market town and out towards Eltering before turning high into the moorlands which overlooked Ryedale. Here, the roads were reduced to tracks and I marvelled at the new growths blossoming from the depths of dead vegetation. The grass was showing a brighter green, new leaves were bursting from apparently lifeless stems and