The meeting of African Union members, hosted now in Paris, approached the end of the formal greetings and opening speeches. All African delegates, plus members of the UN and the European Union, adjusted their translation screens, the various speakers’ words translated to text and the recipients’ computer screens adjusted by touch-screen language selection.
As the head of the European Union’s Overseas Development Department finished up, the background image on the computer screens changed from a pastel blue to an image of the Zimbabwean Ambassador easing out of a pink limousine.
6
The noise coming from the yard at 3am alerted the desk sergeant. He glanced at the monitors in time to see a small lorry dumping its load into the middle of the police car park.
‘Shit!’ he cursed as he jumped up, wishing he had spotted it earlier. He pressed the station’s tannoy button. ‘All available officers to the rear car park!’
The sergeant knew he could not leave the desk, not least because there were prisoners shouting for attention; lock-up had a recent delivery of drug addicts waiting to be processed, when they became a little more coherent. Officers rushed by, male and female, as he pressed the buzzer for the back door.
‘Go on. Quick!’
The shift duty officer appeared. ‘What’s up?’ he asked, expecting a van full of new arrivals ‘kicking-off’.
‘Some damn lorry driver is dumping his load in our yard!’
‘He’s what?’ the officer barked, now bolting out with others.
The first officer could not believe the sight that greeted him: pistols, rifles, sub-machineguns, shotguns, magazines with ammunition in, loose rounds rolling around, all in their yard. They checked the cab. Empty. Later they would find that the lorry had been stolen, no prints.
Close to two hundred weapons of all sorts were now lying in a pile as twelve officers stood around, looking confused. The area got hastily taped off – just in case, bomb disposal called and everyone warned to stand back. The chief constable put in an appearance at 7am, adding to the ‘much scratching of heads’, as the desk sergeant had reported it to his wife at the end of his shift. It’s not everyday that someone dumps several hundred illegal weapons on the police’s doorstep. Or in this case, their back yard.