Quickly suppressing the sudden shock and dread he was feeling, Stu soon gathered his wits about him and scarpered swiftly off through the front gate and into the street just as fast as his legs could carry him.
The hapless Constable scrabbled around trying to get a grip on the icy surface, and by the time he had managed to get himself up to his knees, Stu was long gone.
Kneeling there winded and feeling rather undignified in the snow, and then just beginning to sense the freezing cold wetness penetrating his uniform trousers, P.C. Golightly was not feeling best pleased, not least because the little blighter hadn’t even stopped for a second and offered to help him up.
“Right!” he thought, “I’ll show him!” and reached to his lapel for his radio, which he grabbed with the sort of flourish a gunslinger might have done in one of those Westerns he had so enjoyed as a boy. P.C. Golightly was not by nature one for the ostentatious, but, for once, he really relished the moment, even though it quickly passed when he realised what an idiot he probably looked like.
Golightly breathed deeply and tried to calm himself down enough to make his report, knowing full well that his reputation around the station was hardly going to be enhanced by any descriptions he might make about falling over in the snow.
He was patched through to the Desk Sergeant who immediately made some smart remark about whether he was calling in because he’d slipped on some ice and started off with some typical banter about sending out cranes to help him to get to his feet. He still had a merry lilt in his voice as he began to take Golightly’s report. His mood very quickly become much more serious as Golightly described his encounter with his dark-clothed assailant leaving a trail size twelve bootprints across the lawn, and instantly and effortlessly switched into his more professional manner and ordered someone to head around to collect his fallen officer.
Once Golightly had signed off, the Sergeant put out a call for his patrolling officers to keep an eye out for the young tearaway. He couldn’t have people disrespecting his officers like that, even if it was just old Golightly.
Officer Golightly had, by this time, recovered enough of his wits to think about things a little. He decided to call in again and say he was fine, but thought that he’d better just check on the house he’d seen Stu running from. With a great deal of care, he walked up to the door of Eve’s house, unknowingly being her second gentleman caller in the small hours of that morning.
He rang the doorbell.
Inside the house, Eve was a mess of nerves. She’d already been wondering whether she should ever let Stu back into her house ever again, but with him having stormed off into the night like he just had, she was quite frightened of what he might do if he came back later on.
Having had no luck with the doorbell, Golightly knocked hard on the door knocker, and, after his collision with the intruder, was starting to become very concerned for the safety of the occupant of the house.
He shouted through the letterbox, “Is there anybody in there? Eve, are you all right, Miss…?”
Eve didn’t recognize the voice, but she was just very relieved that it wasn’t Stu returning. She carefully went towards the door, and flicked open the letterbox to find herself eyeball-to-eyeball with P.C. Golightly. Both of them jumped back in surprise, and Eve was more than a touch surprised to hear her empty milk bottles clattering around in disarray.
“H-h-hello…” she said, carefully, still wondering whether Stu had perhaps returned with one of his dodgier mates to give her a hard time.
“Police, Miss…” said P.C. Golightly trying to get back to his feet on the icy doorstep with all the professional dignity he felt he could muster under the circumstances, whilst also trying not to let his teeth chatter.
After a certain amount of negotiation, Eve warily opened the door and had to suppress a giggle at the disheveled figure in front of her, still trying to muster at least the appearance of officialdom despite everything.
A few minutes later, the Officer was gratefully drinking a cup of tea in the very same kitchen that his target had so recently vacated. He realized that Eve seemed very nervous, pacing around the kitchen and nibbling at her fingernails anxiously, and chose to ignore the fact that the kettle had boiled very quickly indeed and there was more than one mug visible. After all, maybe she was one of those strange types who insisted on using a clean mug every time she had a cup of tea, even in the middle of the night.
Maybe.
Probably had a dishwasher, he mused, remembering the evenings he’d spent washing mugs in his own house and resenting just how many different mugs his family seemed to use during the average day.
Eve was of course, quite frankly terrified. Terrified that Stu might return, terrified of what this Policeman wanted, and terrified of saying the wrong thing. What was it that Stu always told her? “Best that she didn’t know.” Well, she realized now that he was probably right about that…. Now, what was it that Golightly was saying to her…?
P.C. Golightly was asking her if she knew the gentleman who had dashed from her house a few moments ago. For his part, he was quite willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, he could just have been a prowler who had been disturbed to see an officer of the law approaching the house and had decided to make a run for it.
That, of course, made matters entirely different. If this was a genuine villain they were chasing, the young girl in front of him had just had a very lucky escape. If it was a pal of hers, and she was protecting him, well, that was another issue. He realized he had to play things very carefully. How she responded to his next question would make all the difference when he called in to the Station again. If she claimed that she didn’t know the fellow, he’d basically have to hit the panic button, and the whole thing would escalate from a small domestic incident to something approaching a major incident.
“So, the gentleman who was running from your house, Miss… Have you ever seen him before?’ he asked.
Eve tried to imagine what Stu would do. “Deny everything,” that was pretty much his standard position on these things.
“No,” she said, “I’ve never seem him before in my life!”
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