2. Vicar on Remand

The nightmare continues for the Reverend Barney Pickle who seems to have got himself into a pickle...

The very next thing of any importance that happened to the Reverend Barney Pickle was on following morning when he was searched by PC Dedbeat (who quite enjoyed searching vicars manually), clamped into handcuffs (though why he had no idea, he was unlikely to try to escape even though he really wanted to but he knew that his lumbago would get in the way if heried anything vigorous..

For starters, it was clear that the police constable wasn’t a very friendly man from the way he sniggered at him, and no clergyman likes to be sniggered at, especially by an officer of the law.

“Remand,” he snapped at him, “remanded to jail. What fun, to see a holy man remanded to jail!”

“But I haven’t done anything!” wept the good Reverend Pickle, because in truth he hadn’t.

“Says you and whose army?” gloated the constable, “come on, your reverence!”

And that officer of decency, law and order pushed him in the back so that he stumbled in the right direction, that being the one to the station car park where a minibus was waiting to transport him the short distance from the police station to Brumpton Jail along with and two rather ugly looking individuals (who had been caught the previous night with needles in their arms and vomit on their breeches).

That minibus (adapted for use as prisoner transport by having the interior divided into cells with hardly any windows at all) took less than half an hour to crawl to the prison because the driver enjoyed taking his time and giving Joe Public plenty of time to peer through the minuscule windows at the reprobates within. Some of the good people of Brumpton then jeered and hooped loud and long and made all manner of rather rude noises, largely because it was considered jolly odd for a vicar to be escorted in handcuffs to prison.

The arrival of the minibus at the jail through a gate that was immediately locked behind it accompanied by an orchestra of threatening clanks and clunks, and slowly on to the highly secure and guarded main entrance filled the Reverence Pickle with a deep sense of dread. Then, after a brief pause during which for no obvious reason the driver’s papers were checked, the vehicle’s own door was opened and a burly prison officer, with a scar across his deformed nose and disseminating the gentle aroma of a perfume that seemed to be one third alcohol, one third tobacco and one third urine, pushed him none too gently through the opened entrace that led into the dread establishment.

The Reverend Barney Pickle scowled at that officer and then sniffed. Ah, the distinctive aroma, and he recognised the man because that officer, on a Sunday, usually managed to get a front row pew at his church and never failed to drop a few low denomination coppers into the offertory dish when it passed him by. And as if to confirm his recognition the officer, Sid Walnut hissed “Your turn to listen to my sermons from now on, your reverence ,” as he pushed him into a cubicle where he was stripped of his own clothes (excluding nothing) and made to dress in the dingy brown and rather soiled trousers of a remand prisoner.

Then his personal possessions were taken away, to be returned on his departure, he was told, and he was taken to a cell.

Prisons are overcrowded institutions at best, and he hated the idea of being incarcerated in the company of a stranger and share any space at all with someone he didn’t know.. What he wanted was a single cell where there would be no interruption when he created lengthy prayers beseeching his favoured deity to get him out of there. And the whole idea of having to go through half a dozen personal and private ceremonies including a special chant all of his own in the presence of a thirty stone thug truly alarmed him.

And that thirty stone thus was Amos Gadding.

“Here you are then your reverence,” sneered Officer Sid Walnut, “enjoy the company of Mr Gadding here. He’s a laugh, and no mistake!”

“Sod off, yer nonce” grated said Mr Gadding to the officer, and then he strained his facial features into some kind of attempt at smiling.

“So they caught you in the end, your Reverence,” he hissed, “what was it? Choirboys? The collection plate? A silver salver?”

“What?” asked the Reverend Pickle, “I don’t understand/”

“What you’ve done,” scowled his cellmate, “what they got you for. Fiddling with choirboys, was it? I’ve done that, but never got caught!”

“Nothing of the sort,” muttered the vicar, “I was in the bank and two men came in and told everyone to lie on the floor and demanded money at the top of their voices, and then a policeman came in and told them to go away before they got into trouble and arrested me for trying to rob the bank. And the cat looked at me quite furiously…”

“The cat?” growled Amos Gadding looking more ferocious by the moment. “What cat?” he demanded.

“The bank’s cat,” replied Pickle, “I heard them call him Horace. A handsome creature if you like cats. But the policeman marched me off and made out that I’d been the robber. And I wasn’t. The girl would know.”

“What girl?” almost shouted an already bored Amos Gadding.

“The one behind the counter who went off to see if I could overdraw by a few pounds,” almost wept Barney. “She would have known. I’m sure of it. I asked for ten pounds and she said I didn’t have enough in my account, though I thought I might have, and she’d have to ask the manager about a small overdraft for me…”

“Oh. So you’re a bank robber!” almost grinned the thug, and he held out one hand. “Pleased to know you, sir. “I’m Amos Gadding and I raped the Chief Constable’s missus! Or so they say, though like you, I’m as innocent as the day I was born. But a word to the wise. Don’t go around saying you never done it because nobody’ll believe you ‘cause we all say that!”

Barney could think of nothing else to say in a conversation that had taken virtually no time to get so far beyond him that he already felt lost, so he started reciting the Lord’s Prayer, which earned him a well aimed thump to his trousers.

“Don’t you try that god stiff in my cell!” shouted Amos Gadding, “or it’ll be more than your balls that start aching, I promise you that! Just you shut up for a bit and give me time and peace to play with myself!”

© Peter Rogerson 25.03.24