“Brass!” said Alf Larkin. “What d’you mean it’s bleedin’ brass?”
“That’s what it says here,” said Alf’s girlfriend, Sandra. She had just returned home, having completed a pleasant afternoon’s shopping in town and, to while away the time on the bus journey back, she had bought a copy of that evening’s edition of The Dursfield Evening News. The lead story on page three of that august publication bore the headline: “Of All The Brass!” followed by the subhead: “Brassed-Off Vicar Blasts Bonkers Burglar.” The article had been written by someone named Alistair T. Winkleigh who, according to the words in the brackets following his name, was the newspaper’s “Ecclesiastical Correspondent”.
There was a photograph accompanying the article. It showed a pleasant but unremarkable country church in front of which a short, fat man wearing a clerical collar was staring at the camera with a fiercely disapproving look upon his face. This man Alf correctly assumed to be the brassed-off vicar to which the subhead alluded.
“That church,” Alf said, as the full awful truth began, with glacial slowness, to burst upon his far from gargantuan intellect, “it’s not, by any chance…”
“St. John’s,” Sandra confirmed. “Yeah, that’s exactly what it is.”
“And this fat bloke?”
“He’s the vicar.”
“Of St. John’s Church?”
“Yeah.”
Alf read on slowly, in a silence that was only broken by his mumblings as he tried to make sense of some of the more difficult words.
“They reckon that cross...” Here Alf glanced at the beautiful golden, jewel-studded object that stood impressively in the centre of his mantelpiece. “They reckon it’s not gold.”
Sandra nodded. “Brass.”
“And the jewels. They reckon they aren’t diamonds and sapphires and rubies and stuff.”
Sandra nodded again. “Coloured glass.”
“Shit!”
Sandra, showing a remarkable ability to keep a cool head at times of crisis, asked Alf if he fancied a cup of tea; and Alf, who was not quite so good at keeping a cool head at times of crisis, gave vent to a lively and obscene recitation of profanities which need not concern us here.
It was some twenty minutes or so later, under the calming influence of a cup of tea and a packet of garibaldi biscuits, that Alf began to formulate a strategy. “I got an idea,” he said.
“That’s good,” Sandra said.
“We got to get it back.”
“Get what back?”
“That bleeding brass cross.”
“Why? Even if it’s not worth much, it’s kind of pretty. We can keep it as an ornament.”
Alf let loose with a few more profanities and then explained his reasoning for Sandra’s benefit. If the vicar had told a journalist about the theft of the cross, he had probably also told the police. If he’d told the police, who would they suspect first of all? Alf Larkin, that’s who, on account of the police’s unreasonable prejudices against Alf and also the fact that Alf had a long record of previous thefts and minor assaults.
“Yeah,” Sandra said, “but they’d suspect you if it was gold, like you thought it was, too. So that don’t change nothing, do it?”
“If it was gold,” Alf said, “not to mention diamonds and rubies and stuff, I’d get rid of it, wouldn’t I? To people I know what deals in that stuff. But since it’s brass and coloured glass, I’m stuck with it. Due to the fact that there isn’t what you’d call a brisk trade in black-market brass and coloured glass crosses. Nah, all things considered, the best thing to do would be to put the bloody thing back where it belongs. On the altar of St. John’s Church.”
“How you gonna do that, then?” said Sandra.
“I’m not.” Alf grinned at the thought. “But I know someone who will.”