Crap Burglar
I was planning to have an early night tonight, but instead I find myself waiting for my next door neighbour’s living room window to be boarded up at 3am.
At about one o’clock this morning I heard some noise which I initially put down to my cat Patty playing. When I realised the noise was out in the street, I peered out from the living room window, but couldn’t see anything dodgy. A couple of minutes later there was a loud crash — clearly not feline-related — which made me race to find my keys and some trainers.
I opened the front door to find several police officers tending an injured man on the pavement right outside the gate, and my neighbour’s front window smashed in. (yes, you read that right, the Met actually responded quickly to a crime!)
It turned out that prior to trying to break in next door, the injured man had smashed a window in the street around the corner, hence the police’s quick response. Clearly rather drunk, the man had made a right pig’s ear of attempting to break into my neighbour’s, and ended up cutting his arm rather badly on the broken glass. Blood all over the place — over the window, the curtains, garden, front door and pavement.
Within a couple of minutes there were three police cars on the scene, plus two plain clothes officers, and a LAS Rapid Response Unit and ambulance to take care of Crap Burglar’s arterial bleeding.
I have to admit to being rather glad I wasn’t the first person on the scene; it would have felt a bit galling to have had to administer basic first aid to the man who’d just tried to smash his way into my neighbour’s place (and given Crap Burglar’s injuries, I’d have felt obliged to do so). Also, as burglar often = junkie, and junkie often = hepatitis, with all that blood I’d probably have spent five minutes rummaging around under the sink for a pair of Marigolds…
To make matters worse, my neighbour is on holiday at the moment, and I’ve been going in to feed her cat every day. Not exactly the sort of thing you want to find waiting for you when you get back from your hols, is it?
Anyway, once the ambulance had carted Crap Burglar off to the A&E at King’s, the cops said I’d have to wait for the Scene of Crime Officers (SOCO) to collect evidence before I could start washing the blood away (blood can be a bugger to get rid of, so I wanted to get the worst of it removed before it dried). Not entirely convinced it needed the specialist forensics team to figure it out: trail of blood leading from drunk bloke on pavement with a big gash in his arm to broken window… Hmmm.
Having watched a few episodes of CSI on TV I was a bit disappointed when the SOCO people didn’t turn up in a Hummer, all dressed in designer suits. They didn’t even have any hi-tech gadgets; in fact the three of them actually spent five minutes trying to figure out how to work their digital camera! Still, I like to think that when they return to their lab, with its sexy, low-key lighting, they’ll be piecing the whole incident together using a 3D computer animation at least.
Well, the blood’s been washed away, and the guy’s just finished boarding up the window, so it’s time for me to hit the hay.
