CAUGHT
RED-HANDED
Captain
George Beach
‘The point is, sergeant,
I want you to do it.’ Captain George Beach, The Welch
Regiment, leant back in his chair and flashed one of his
winning smiles. He bore the demeanor of a jovial
headmaster. If ever he needed to reprimand anyone, tears
sprouted in his eyes.
‘I’ve got plenty of other
jobs on,’ Les Hooper argued.
‘This one’s got prestige.
Think about it. The general will hear of it, the
brigadier will know, could even reach the ears of the
cleaner at the governor’s castle. You might get
mentioned in the war diary, in despatches, on the news.
Not only big cases make reputations.’ The smile
widened. ‘Grab your chance to be famous.’
Les sighed. Whichever way the
silken-tongued captain put it, the case remained
trivial.
It was 1951 and the British
Forces Broadcasting Station in Trieste had a problem.
Gramophone
records kept vanishing. Troops of the British Element
Trieste Force (BETFOR) were being deprived of their
nightly music dose. In desperation, the station chief
finally sought the help of 93 Special Investigation
Section.
Les became distracted by an
array of fishing flies displayed on the captain’s
desk. George explained the annual Fit-For-Role
inspection was due and, knowing the brigadier was a keen
angler, he arranged a ploy to divert his concentration.
He picked up one of the flies.
‘A hackle. Nice, eh?’
‘Didn’t know you were a
fisherman.’
The captain tapped his nose
conspiratorially. ‘You get yourself off to the radio
station. Think of the morale boost for squaddies when
you find those missing Johnnie
Ray records.’
Les wished George would stop
grinning.
Outside the office, Les bumped
into Tommy Carr, the company sergeant major. ‘What’s
the latest on the Rossetti Barracks job?’
‘Nothing,’ Les replied.
‘I’ve got a more important task. Someone’s been
pinching 78s from the radio station.’
Tommy’s lips twisted.
‘People round here get their priorities mixed up.’
Les snorted, ‘The captain
thought it funny, too.’
The Rossetti Barracks job was
small fry, too. The unit canteen of the Northamptonshire
regiment had been broken into a week before and cash and
cigarettes stolen. Les was also investigating a more
important case where a local gypsy girl reckoned a
British soldier raped her the previous Saturday night.
Les arrested the suspect, Private Howard, who denied
everything, and now awaited forensic evidence from the
police laboratory.
The Forces Broadcasting Station
at 8, Via Bellosguardo, was run by UK civilians, the man
in charge being Jonathan Dewksbury. He explained the
missing records were
those left on a hall table for the evening and
late-night presenters. Surprisingly, hundreds had been
stolen over a long period. Why not report it earlier?
‘Didn’t want to make a
fuss,’ explained Dewksbury lamely.
Les chatted with some of the
presenters and learnt they ordered records and the
librarian left them on the table to be collected when
the presenter arrived for his shift. This narrowed the
likely culprit down to all who worked in the place and
everyone with access. As the main door of the building
remained unlocked 24 hours a day, over three million
suspects, mostly Italian.
Les went through the
painstaking chore of listing dates when records were
stolen and tagging all the people believed to be in the
building on the relevant evenings. A lot of names!
Dewksbury insisted every one of
his staff was completely honest. But he would say that.
The
Trieste Venezia Guilia Police Force, British run,
organised station security. This proved to be the
keystone. Les spent a few hours at the radio station,
making notes, trying to look intelligent, waving the SIB
flag and banging his head against a brick wall. The
musically deprived squaddies would have to be patient
while Les dreamed up tactics to solve the mystery.
On the way back to the SIB
offices at Montebello he visited the police laboratory
on Via P. Revoltella. Morelli, a forensic scientist,
confirmed mud on the rape suspect’s shoes matched a
sample Les collected from the scene. Another nail in
Private Howard’s coffin.
At the laboratory a large pile
of human bones, blackened with age and exposure lay
heaped casually in one corner of the main office.
A lab assistant explained they
belonged to Chetniks, led by Draza Mihjalovic, who
opposed the wartime Yugoslav partisan leader Tito. When
Tito seized power at the end of the war he exacted
terrible revenge on Chetniks and supporters. Their legs
were broken and they were thrown down deep, natural
shafts that abounded in the Slovenia countryside. Les
noticed snapped leg bones in the pile. The bones were
recovered in border territory that fluctuated in
possession between Yugoslavia and Trieste and had been
in the hole for over six years.
Evidence that, although
outwardly a wonderful place to live and serve with the
SIB, evil undercurrents existed which caused continual
tension between Slav and Italian who disputed the
territory. Hence the reason for the UN military
government, headed by Major General John Winterton, with
British and American troops under his command.
Captain Beach’s round face
fell when Les declared he solved nothing. ‘Keep at
it,’ he instructed. ‘I’m relying on you.’
The fishing flies had vanished
from the desk. ‘How did the inspection go?’ Les
asked.
George perked up. ‘We passed
with flying colours,’ he boasted.
Les chuckled. ‘You hooked the
brigadier then.’
The captain tapped the side of
his nose. ‘Got to plan these things properly.’
Les returned to the radio
station the following afternoon and baited a trap in
collusion
with Dewksbury. Now all he could do was wait.
Feeling he had neglected the canteen theft long enough
he drove to the barracks on Via Rossetti and interviewed
the two men who ran the canteen, Corporal Weller and
Private Mills.
‘Right, you two,’ he began,
‘I’ve been a week investigating this nonsense and
pussyfooted around long enough. I’ll put my cards on
the table. I haven’t been wasting my time so don’t
give me a load of bull or I’ll get angry.’
He paused to let his words sink
in. The two men glanced at each other but refused to
look Les in the eye. He smiled to himself.
‘I examined the broken glass
from the door and know it was smashed from the inside.
That’s at least one mistake you made. Another was
lying to me. You’ve got one choice left – admit you
pinched the stuff and save yourself a lot of grief.’
The corporal hung his head and
studied his own feet for a long moment. He looked up,
heaved his shoulders and said, ‘Alright, we did it. I
needed money.’ Mills admitted conspiracy and Les wrote
down their signed confessions.
Back at the office, Tommy Carr
buttonholed him. ‘You’re not getting very far, are
you?’
‘The Rossetti job’s wrapped
up. I got two bods who admitted it.’
Tommy glared. ‘You said you
were getting nowhere.’
Les took a leaf from the
captain’s book and touched the side of his nose.
‘Never count your chickens. . . .’ He left Tommy
muttering to himself and went to the mess to enjoy a
glass of cold Dreher beer.
John Massie, who looked like a
benevolent bank manager, stood at the bar wearing a smug
expression. He had just returned from a post mortem at
the military hospital. The body belonged to a young
military policeman who decided to use a hammer and
chisel to dismantle a 20mm cannon shell he found on
Duino beach, near Trieste. The lack of complications
pleased John. A straightforward case of suicidal
stupidity.
The following morning Les was
in the darkroom looking at case photos of the dead
military policeman when he heard his name being called.
The captain wanted him.
George Beach wore his serious
face. ‘God knows what you’ve been up to. Get along
to the police station at Guistino, they want to see you
– now. Must be important. Don’t ask why, I don’t
know.’
Les refused to be panicked over
the unknown. He climbed into his Austin PU and drove
leisurely to the police station. A receptionist quickly
ushered him into an office where an inspector held out
hands as red as his face.
‘Look at these,’ he cried.
‘Red dye and I can’t get it off.’
Les nodded agreement, thinking
to himself, Surely
this inspector didn’t steal the
radio station’s records! Aloud he said, ‘Looks like
gentian violet.’
A nearby sergeant and two
unhappy plain-clothes detectives also showed their
hands, all deep red. Was every man in the station
stealing records?
‘This came from gramophone
records,’ the inspector unnecessarily and angrily
explained.
‘Thought so,’ said Les,
struggling to suppress a smile. ‘I dusted some at the
British radio station with dye to catch a thief.’
‘You might have told us what
you were doing. These stains won't wash off.’
‘Afraid not,’ Les agreed,
‘but you must have handled the records. Why?’
The story emerged. Dewksbury,
without telling Les, also called in the Venezia Guilia
police. They listed suspects and concluded the likely
thief was a policeman. They searched homes and
discovered over 400 records in one of them, including
the batch Les dusted with gentian violet dye.
All’s well that ends well, as
Shakespeare anticipated. The light-fingered policeman
languished behind bars and most of the records
recovered. Interestingly, not a
Johnnie Ray amongst them. Dewksbury thanked the SIB
and gave them a half-hour music programme to themselves.
Several members of the local law remained red-handed for
days, causing considerable mirth amongst colleagues.
As for the rape case, when
court-martial day arrived the gypsy girl failed to turn
up and could not be traced. Private Howard was released.
END
British Element Trieste Force (Formerly XIIIth Corps
emblem)
NOTE:
Younger surfers may wonder why a captain in the Welch
Regiment commanded a SIB unit. In those days the Royal
Military Police did not have commissioned ranks; all
officers were seconded from other regiments and corps,
most being former policemen.
