In the East Riding police force, a posting to Whimsey is seen as a step down the career ladder. A punishment for past misdeeds, perhaps, or a tranquil semi-retirement for traumatised coppers who can no longer hack it in the city.
No serving police officer had ever volunteered for the Whimsey beat until Sam Braithwaite threw his hat into the ring. Five years ago Sam was just another copper pounding the city streets, filling his little black notebook with incomprehensible squiggles. But when Sam tried to learn the off-duty jargon known as canteen culture, he found plenty of canteen but precious little culture. He could’t join in the banter; his face didn’t fit. Sam decided to jump before he was pushed. When the Whimsey posting came up, he applied and, in the absence of any other candidates, got the job.
Like Sam, the Police House in Whimsey is modest and unassuming. Parked out front is a compact hatchback with a Greenpeace sticker on the back window. Sam doesn’t do a lot of mileage; five years on, the car still looks brand new. It’s got a siren and a little flashing light, but Sam doesn’t like to draw attention to himself. In the front garden is a notice board warning locals about the hazards of Colorado Beetles, abd the need to check the credentials of unannounced callers.
Having chosen out-of-the-way Whimsey, Sam ensures that his shortcomings as a police officer go more or less unnoticed. He can still hardly believe he’s getting paid to wander round the village, keeping an eye on things. It’s not like work at all. Old biddies ask him the time; some of them ask him what year it is. He sees things that other, busier people miss, such as the kingfisher that flies - with a flash of electric blue - across the river. And when things are particularly quiet in Whimsey - that’s most days, really - Sam takes the opportunity to slip away into the woods. Inside his jacket is a well-thumbed field-guide to mosses and liverworts. In the leather pouch where his walkie-talkie ought to be Sam keeps a pair of compact binoculars.
He was glad to get rid of the walkie-talkie. It made him feel self-conscious, and the antenna used to jab him in the eye. No-one ever called him up anyway. Unless Whimsey is suddenly overrun by mobsters, or cash-strapped farmers decide to diversify into cannabis cultivation, there is a tacit agreement at divisional headquarters that Sam should be left to his own devices. Indeed, the only contact with his Chief Inspector is a monthly phone call - merely to check that Sam is alive and well and keeping Whimsey’s crime figures down. This is fine with Sam, and keeps paperwork to a bare minimum.
Whimsey is not one of the East Riding’s crime hot-spots, though PC Braithwaite can’t take much credit for that. Local kids don’t go out looting. Well, not on school nights anyway. Misdemeanors seldom get more serious than serving red wine with the fish course, or wearing a loud tie in a built-up area. On those blessedly rare occasions when we do have a robbery, it’s likely to end with a red-faced burglar returning a bin-bag of valuables with an embarrassed shrug of the shoulders and the offer of a conciliatory pint. We have our fair share of roughnecks, of course, but they mostly drink out of harm's way, at the far end of the bar in the Farrier’s Arms, where the people most at risk from their lager-fuelled outbursts are each other.
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