LITMIR.BIZ

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in for another 14 hours. Some of the skippers were completely unstoppable; bloody superheroes, the lot of them. The clock he was referring to is the force target of getting prisoners to custody within an hour of arrest.

      ‘But yeah, knock yourself out,’ he added. ‘Keep me posted.’

      ‘Thanks, sarge,’ I said.

      ‘Out,’ he replied, and vanished from the spare channel.

      I walked to the back of the police van.

      ‘What’s your name, mate?’ I said.

      ‘It’s Case Jacobs,’ he said.

      ‘Case?’ I replied. ‘Unusual name, where’s that from?’

      ‘It’s spelled K-E-E-S,’ he said. ‘I’m from Belgium.’

      ‘Nice to meet you, Kees,’ I said. ‘Normally, we’d have taken you straight to a police station, but I propose we go talk to the bicycle shop owner first. Is that okay by you?’

      ‘Of course,’ he said.

      ‘Good,’ I said, closing the back doors on the caged Transit van, before throwing the keys to the Astra to Kim and climbing into the van through the side door.

      Simon and Kim drove the vehicles to the bike shop, whilst I had a quick chat with Kees in the back of the Transit van.

      ‘So, what happened, then?’

      ‘I went into the bike shop to buy a new lock, as my last one was cut in half by the thieves, and I saw my bike there! I told the shop owner, but he said it wasn’t my bike and that I couldn’t have it back. So I took it.’

      ‘How can you know it’s your bike?’ I asked.

      ‘Look at it!’ he laughed. ‘Have you ever seen a bike like that? I fixed it up myself. There’s no way that’s not my bike. I changed the seat, and I can tell you every detail of every part of that bike.’

      Then began a monologue about the various bits and pieces he had used to make it ‘the perfect bike’.

      ‘It has Shimano XTR components all around, even the chain,’ he said, ‘but I blasted off the markings so thieves wouldn’t see them,’ he said.

      I took a closer look at the bike; true enough, every part was gleaming from having been sandblasted, and no markings were visible anywhere.

      ‘That puts us in a bit of a weird situation, though,’ I said. ‘You say you’ve done it so thieves won’t know that the bike is valuable, right?’

      Kees replied with a nod.

      ‘But that’s a pretty common thing for thieves to do as well, so owners won’t recognise their own bikes …’

      We arrived at the bike shop.

      ‘Hang on here for a second,’ I told Kees. ‘I’m just going to have a chat with the owner.’ I turned to Kim, who’d just finished calling in an update about our situation. ‘Wanna keep our friend company?’ I asked.

      ‘Yeah, sure,’ she said, and walked to the back of the van, opening one of the doors to give our prisoner some fresh air.

      I walked into the bike shop. The owner was there, looking none too pleased.

      ‘Took you fucking long enough,’ he said.

      ‘True,’ I said. ‘But we caught the guy.’

      The shopkeeper did a double take, then leaned forward and looked at the van. He couldn’t see into it.

      ‘Seriously?’

      ‘Yeah, we spotted him as he was cycling along, so we stopped him.’

      ‘Wow, that’s great!’

      ‘One little thing, though: he says the bike is his.’

      ‘Yeah, he told me the same,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘But no … no way. Some kid brought it in the other day to get a flat tyre fixed.’

      ‘In your opinion,’ I said, ‘is that a valuable bike?’

      ‘It’s a funny one, actually,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘It’s a pretty standard Cannondale. They’re popular bikes, but it’s a mid-range bike, not usually particularly expensive. This particular one has had just about every component upgraded, though – high-end everything.’

      ‘Did you do the upgrades for him?’ I asked.

      ‘Nope,’ he replied. ‘I’ve never seen the bike before.’

      ‘Is it hard to replace a flat tyre?’ I asked.

      ‘No! Not at all.’

      ‘It seems to me that this bike would have been owned by a bike lover, wouldn’t you say?’

      ‘Yeah, definitely. It came in super-clean. Seems as if the kid really loved his bike, definitely kept it in pristine condition.’

      ‘So, forgive me if I’m asking a silly question – if someone is a huge bike fan, wouldn’t they just replace their own inner tubes?’ I asked.

      ‘Yeah, I suppose so. But people are weird, y’know,’ he shrugged.

      ‘I don’t suppose you have CCTV, do you?’

      ‘Are you joking? We’re CCTV’d to the rafters. I’ve got several bikes in here that are worth thousands and thousands of pounds; no way would I not have CCTV,’ he said. ‘In fact, I already took a look at the footage of the guy who brought the bike in, and of the fellow who nicked it.’

      ‘Can I have a look?’ I asked.

      ‘Sure,’ he replied, and waved me to the back of the shop.

      It took me all of six seconds of the first video to recognise the lad who had brought the bike in for repair.

      ‘I’ve got some bad news for you,’ I said. ‘That’s Tommy, he’s a drug addict and a notorious bike thief around here.’

      ‘Seriously?’ the owner said. ‘I’ve seen him around the shop several times. He’s never stolen anything,’ he added, before pausing for several seconds. ‘I don’t think …’

      ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ I added. ‘I haven’t heard of him getting nicked for a good while, perhaps he’s taken the straight and narrow …’

      The shop owner shrugged and queued up the next video.

      ‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘The guy had a funny accent. German or something. He came in to buy a lock, but then he spotted the bike …’

      The video didn’t have sound, but it was unusually clear for CCTV. Surprisingly so, in fact. A lot of the CCTV footage we see is utterly useless, and some of it looks like it has been scrambled to hell and back, as if the entire file has been run through the blocking-out filter they apply to genitalia in Japanese pornography. Not that I would know what that looks like, of course.

      In the video, I could clearly see Kees getting more and more aggravated. At one point, he simply takes the bike out of the rack, rips off a label that was zip-tied to the seat and starts pushing the bike towards the doors. The shop owner quickly blocks his way, but Kees runs his bike into the owner, before taking a swing at him with the lock he is holding in his hand.

      ‘Stop there for a moment,’ I said, and took a closer look at the shopkeeper. ‘Did he hit you with the lock?’ I asked him, looking at his face carefully.

      ‘Yeah. He didn’t hit me properly, though. That would have hurt,’ he replied, as he lifted his hand to his face, rubbing his chin.

      ‘Your eye still looks a bit swollen,’ I said, thoughtfully.

      ‘Yeah, well, I’ve had worse,’ the shopkeeper said grimly. I looked at him, waiting for the rest of the story.

      ‘Rugby,’

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