h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Truth is stranger than fiction, and usually fictional crime writing bears no resemblance at all to the real thing, so herewith a real life crime scene.

Weeks of investigation and observations had got nowhere and I had spent night after night laid out under the stars with my police dog Storm, no one came and the only thing worth putting in the book was the fact that Yuri Gagarin passed over head at high speed, even Storm could not have caught him.

It took weeks of fruitless observations and I now can write the full story in seven paragraphs, case solved.

There were some peculiar goings on at Fleetwood Docks and a bullion theft had recently taken place there. A CID investigation with searches of the area and detailed enquiries, had failed to solve the mystery of the missing cash.

It is amazing that this type of theft was so rare, in view of the pathetic security attached to the movement of coin around the country.

The thieves of Manchester, especially from the Ardwick and Collyhurst areas would have had a field day had they known about it. Because the drums of coin, delivered each week to the city banks in King St Manchester, had always spent most of the night completely unguarded in Ardwick West Goods Yard.

The entire railway staff most certainly knew about it, because the railway drivers had to deliver the bullion with the three wheeled mechanical horse and trailer, and the shunting staff had to put the containers into position for unloading.

Everyone had full knowledge of the contents of those containers, and that information had been well known for many years. I think that everyone could see the vulnerability of the bullion, except for our inspectors who should have arranged it’s protection, and the local thieves.

Perhaps some of these thieves preferred to do it the hard way, because there was another siding nearby at Ashton Road where Billy Redfern had a huge scrap yard, and he suffered some losses from his enormous store of copper and brass.

The thieves knew where the non-ferrous metals were kept, because they had usually brought it in and sold it to him. They just came back, stole it once more and then sold it again somewhere else.

To get to the copper and brass in store they had to climb over a high fence, negotiate a very steep hill and break into the building where the metals were kept.

What they did not know, was that the very steep hill in the centre of the yard was actually a mountain of copper wire, it had been stored there since the First World War, and had lain there undisturbed for more than thirty years.

Also in the very next sidings, there was occasionally a goods train carrying the drums of bullion for delivery to the city banks the following morning. Amazingly these drums of coin seemed to be reasonably safe, despite a total lack of security during the hours of darkness.

The missing drum of bullion at Fleetwood may also have been more secure with less security as it happened. Shortly after the disappearance of the drum of bullion from Fleetwood Docks, a certain police officer was on a rest day, and another officer had run out of tea and sugar for a brew?

By a very strange coincidence, his key just happened to fit the other Bobbies locker, and inside the locker there were stacks and stacks of brand new sixpences, all arranged in neat little rows across the top shelf of the locker.

When the policeman was arrested, and shown the contents of his locker he denied all knowledge of the missing bullion, and he said that he had been collecting sixpences for some considerable time.

When it was pointed out to him that all of the coins had the same date he changed his mind, and led the way to the rest of the loot. A steel barrel containing the missing bullion was found suspended by a rope beneath twenty feet of water, in the trawler dock at Fleetwood near to the police office.