Shared Experiences in A Small Town

In a small town, circa 4000 population, not much really happens, even on year to year basis.

There is a fairly stable population in terms of numbers apart from minor fluctuations to the positive or negative brought about by natural deaths, marriages and births or in the case of one notable year, a murder.

It was the talk of the town, the murder because no one in the living archive of the residents could remember having one before within the Parish Boundary.

Technically, the location of the untimely death was visible from my bedroom window, if I, as the teenager I was, leaned out of the casement, sat on the external sill, and hung on to the internal window board with the other free hand or by a grip of the knees. In actuality, I could only really see a clump of trees and the contrasting grey appearance of asbestos cement sheeting that formed the group of buildings where the murder had been committed.

Peeked at behind prayer-hands, with trepidation, from the main road when passing in our parents' car, the wider view was of a sorry looking establishment that was whispered to have been a Prisoner of War Camp in the 1940's. My own expectations for a prison camp were of course based on what I had seen on such films as The Great Escape, The Wooden Horse and the TV series Colditz. 

Even with the most fertile parts of my imagination, what had survived the decades after the drifting away in repatriation or settlement of the Italian former occupants was a great disappointment. Any guard towers, high barbed wire fences and surrounding minefields were long gone, if at all they had existed in the first place to watch over about 100 enemy soldiers whose own nation had capitulated to the Allies and who were likely to have no appetite whatsoever for conflict, fascism or partnering in any thousand year dictatorship.

A few shop fronts on Main Street had exotic Mediterranean sounding names for the proprietors of the ice cream parlour, bakery, general provisions and the beer-off. It would seem that their particular walk to liberation after the end of the war had just been across the railway lines, a matter of a few hundred yards into the town. The businesses were now in the hands of a second generation of self-imposed exiles who had assimilated into the home grown population easily and profitably.

Post- war the camp had been used to accommodate seasonal agricultural workers although many of the low, long and narrow huts had collapsed from lack of maintenance between storm damage or had suffered from vandalism and arson. The land on which the camp had been built did change hands a few times until finally owned and used by a local farmer as a place to store potatoes, sugar beet and hay bales.

Tramps and other vagrants were regularly seen kicking their way through the undergrowth and the brittle sectional concrete panels in order to gain some shelter from the wind. The shells of the huts would afford some respite from a prevailing northerly but the homeless would be in for a rude shock in wet weather as the corrugated asbestos sheets, angled to form the roof, were largely fractured, holed, missing or perforated.

The atmosphere of the place was, to us kids, foreboding. In any other group of under-used or abandoned structures around the town there would be frequent dares in our gang to commit damage, set something afire, snog a lass or just smash any remaining windows.

In the case of the old camp we kept well clear and nothing was spoken of it.

That was, until the murder.

We heard about it from one of our group who lived just down the road. He rode madly, on his Raleigh Chopper bike into the recreation ground where the rest of us were engaged in one of those epic football matches. I was about to even up the score at 42 goals for each team when his unstable, high speed approach threw me off my perfect shape for that shot.

He gesticulated, being a bit out of breath, that the Police had sealed off the road up at the camp and that something had kicked off and big style. Murder was mentioned. Not caring for our jackets and coats which were left as makeshift goalposts on the playing field, we made our way out of the kissing gate and over the railway crossing towards the edge of town.

No one wanted to take the lead so we made our way forward and with increasing hesitancy along the rough grass verge resembling a mob crowd looking for trouble but at the same time not really wanting any.

At first the camp entrance was obscured by a bend in the road but then we could clearly see a Police presence, now consisting of two of the local panda cars and an unmarked van. At the sight of our approach one of the Constables, known to us under an unflattering nickname, muttered to a colleague and made to cut us off before we got too close.

There was history between us and him.

He always seemed to know when an older bother or sister of our group had purchased and passed on a bottle of cider for our consumption under the railway bridge. If any graffiti appeared on Civic property he always sought us out at our somewhat predictable hang-outs to check our hands and pocket contents for evidence. He had an uncanny sense that our bikes, in the fading twilight of a summers evening, would be lacking operational lights. Many a time we were ambushed and reported to our parents.

Now, however, as he walked over the look on the face of the young Policeman was not the usual one we saw. This time it lacked any glee, mock incredulity and he was devoid of any sarcastic or stereotypical coppers comments. We were concentrating on this impending confrontation when the siren of an ambulance made us jump and panic on the verge as it came up behind us. The Constable waved it through but held up the palm of his right hand in that universally recognisable sign of 'Stop!'.

No one in our group spoke. I had half expected an excited cacophony of questions about the nature of the incident and whether there had been blood or other gore, what had been the weapons used and if any perpetrator had been apprehended. The silence was deafening. There would be plenty of opportunities to unravel the full story in the local newspaper or by eavesdropping the conversations of our parents and our elders in the town for some time to come.

I think that the young police officer was genuinely affected by the whole situation. His fresh complexion implied that he cannot have been in the Force for more than a few months. We respected his demeanour and quietly slunk away. That moment marked a distinct improvement in our subsequent relationship with the local constabulary and that individual in particular. We did share a common bond after all. Like our group, it must have been his first experience of murder as well.