CONSTABLE GOES TO MARKET a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 26) by NICHOLAS RHEA

Author:NICHOLAS RHEA [RHEA, NICHOLAS]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Joffe Books crime thriller and cozy mystery suspense
Published: 2021-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

During market days in the small towns dotted around the North York Moors, one of our duties was to patrol among the stalls with our eyes wide open, just in case some shifty dealer was attempting to use this means of disposing of stolen property. It was a simple and very effective means of distributing stolen goods, not only to gullible purchasers, but also to the wider public, including unsuspecting experts.

This was not a large-scale or major problem, however; any high-quality antiques would rarely, if ever, be deliberately sold by market-traders, although it was possible that some small and rare object might find itself displayed and sold as a trinket. Oil paintings, rare books, and items of jewellery might sometimes be sold from market-stalls, as would items of glassware, ceramics, or what was loosely termed bric-a-brac, and genuine bargains were sometimes discovered among what appeared to be miscellaneous pieces of utter junk. I recall a book dealer picking up a shoebox full of old books, swiftly checking its contents, paying a very low price for the boxful, and then rushing off with a look of total glee on his face. I was later to learn that among those old books he had spotted a rare and very valuable Bible and had bought it for next to nothing.

Most market-traders and antique dealers can tell similar stories but deals of that kind were not of any professional concern to the police. What we sought was stolen property, but when faced with a large market-stall full of assorted oddments, probably having been transported over a long distance and collected during a lengthy period, it was virtually impossible to recognise anything which may have been stolen. To outward appearances, all the goods on view had been placed there for legitimate sale and it would be a mammoth task to check every item to see whether or not it had been reported stolen. Although most thieves disposed of their hauls very quickly, some did safely store them in the hope they would be forgotten, and after the passage of an appropriate time, would produce their treasures from a safe hiding place in the hope of a trouble-free sale or disposal.

When accepting a report of stolen property, the most difficult thing, from an operational police point of view, is obtaining an accurate description of stolen items. When I was in the Force, many people who lost valuables could not provide a detailed description of their belongings and, quite often, the description they produced was insufficient as any kind of legal proof of ownership. While a man might recognise a statue of Venus stolen from his garden, how could he prove it is definitely his, especially if the seller also claimed ownership and if thousands of identical statues had been manufactured? A stolen object needs some means of positive identification if it is to be restored to its rightful owner; this might be a serial number, a crack in a certain place, a piece missing through

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