As I pulled into the car park at work this morning, there were inklings that something had happened, four silver trolleys and a standard Photinia standing just inside the gate, where we would never leave them. Walking across the gravel to the staff room, I noticed that the ropes under the oak tree, intended to prevent foot traffic across its root zone, had been dropped to the ground. One of my colleagues had arrived before me, and was lacing up his boots. He said the front gate was already open when he got there.
The house seemed fine, door locked and alarm set. The owners were not there, having taken the children camping overnight, and the boss's mother had called round. If I had a suspicious nature, which of course I have not, I would wonder whether she had only come round to let the chickens out, which after all we could have done, or whether she was checking that in our employers' absence we still turned up on time. I didn't know they were away, though it wouldn't have made any difference to me if I had. The boss's mother confirmed that the gate had been shut when she called round last night at eight to lock up the chickens. Curiouser and curiouser.
At first sight everything looked normal inside the plant centre. The Haddonstone reconstituted stone pots, which are not cheap, were still all there. Three absolutely new teak tables, each with four teak chairs and an umbrella, and in one case a butlers tray, for the cafe customers, had appeared since the last time I was at work. One of my colleagues nipped down to check the gardeners' shed, but the door was still attached to its hinges and locked. Then he realised what was missing.
All of the Eleagnus standards, that had been tied to the uprights in the shade tunnel, had gone. So had a couple of standard hollies, two standard bays, a Photinia lollipop, and a large Cordyline. All expensive plants, retailing at around the hundred pound mark. We huffed and puffed for a few minutes, trying to work out exactly what had gone, although my contribution was nil because I hadn't been there since last Monday, and couldn't remember what had been there five days ago, let alone yesterday. As I child I loathed the game where you have to memorise playing cards you have turned over, and was very bad at it, and it is even more difficult with plants because my colleagues keep moving them and I don't know most of what we've sold.
We rang the boss to break the bad news, and then by common accord I was deputed to ring the police. I must have a good ringing the police sort of voice, or else a residual air of authority from the long-ago days when I actually had some. I told them that it was the second time in ten days that the business had been targeted, then had to spell Eleagnus for the policeman who took down details of the crime. I think he may have taken up my suggestion of just calling the Cordyline a cabbage palm. He said someone would be round that morning, and someone was, a scrupulously polite constable who looked at the entrances, and the unlocked gate, and noted the lack of security cameras and absence of a guard dog. He said he would ring later to give us a crime number, but I got the strong impression that he thought the Suffolk Constabulary's chances of solving the crime were pretty much zero, and that they weren't going to devote any appreciable resources to it.
The boss rang several times through the course of the morning, sounding very irritable. He was sure it was the same burglars as last time, coming back for a second bite at the cherry, and I thought he was probably right, having read in the papers that that is what burglars do. He said that if he caught them at it a third time, he was going to shoot them. The liberal intellectual part of my brain thought that was rather harsh, since the UK abandoned the death penalty for theft some time back in the nineteenth century, but another part of me had sneaking sympathy for the idea. I conscientiously haul myself out of bed at six o'clock on a Sunday morning to water those plants, so why should other people simply waltz in and take them? It takes me approximately two months worth of (part time) work to earn the amount we've had sold them for, if they hadn't been stolen.
Later on a police forensic van arrived, and an officer dusted the trolleys for fingerprints. My colleague dealt with him, but it didn't sound as though the forensic specialist held out any more hope than the constable. The boss and the police did seem to have drastically different views of the crime. The boss considers the police to be useless at anything except policing motoring offences, and thinks they ought to be seaching car boot sales for stolen goods and catching criminals. The police think there are so many possible outlets for stolen plants that it is useless to look for them, and that in any case how could they prove the identity of a plant if they found it. Although the constable didn't say so explicity to us, the staff, I got the strong impression he thought that citizens who left an entire walled garden of eminently saleable goods unlocked, unalarmed, and unattended by man or dog were pretty much asking to be robbed.
Apart from that, the white peacock hatched two eggs, but one of the chicks died in the nest. It wasn't a successful day all round.
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