Swings & Things   

   I'm just the man who looks after the swings and things.

        I spotted him almost as soon as he started to hang around.  You get an instinct for a wrong-un.  Twenty years as a Redcap (Military Police) and another fifteen as a civvy copper doesn't leave much room for the 'benefit of the doubt'.

        Now I just keep on eye on the park and look after the swings and things.  Well, it gives me a uniform to wear for the last ten years or so of my working life, and nice regular hours.  A man gets into certain habits.

        Sometimes I get to bellow at teenage vandals and intimidate the thugs.  Believe me, it's not every 'Parkie' who has a real Sergeant's bellow like mine...  Or a subtle prod with a thumb or protruding knuckle which can really hurt without leaving any marks.  But the little kids all love me, and a lot of the young Mums who bring them have a soft spot for 'Old Ron'.

        Mind you, that's all it is, just a soft spot.  No hanky panky.  I've a Missus at home for that kind of nonsense and she takes care of all my needs very nicely, thank you very much.  And no-one cooks a Sunday roast as well as my Missus.

        Over the last few years I've earned a sort of 'Honorary Grandad' status, and although it's not part of the job I'll gladly keep an eye on the kids if their Mum has to go to the Ladies, or nip across the road to the shops for picnic stuff.  Sometimes they even share a sandwich or two with me.

        But, back to the wrong-un.  He didn't look like a kiddy fiddler...  Well, not the popular image of one, but I've seen his type before.  About thirty years old, neat and tidy, almost dapper one might say.  Some of the Mums thought he was after them, I heard them joking about it.  Which would have been fair enough, because some of them are right little crackers.  If I wasn't a happily married man...

        So I kept an eye on him when he came to the park, about three times a week at lunchtimes, to feed the ducks in the river and take pictures of them.  Well, that's what he said the camera was for when one of the more militant Mums challenged him about it.

        Kids being kids a lot of them wanted their picture taken but he nearly always said no, claiming the memory card was nearly full.  Sometimes they would be climbing all over the bench to see when he showed them pictures of the ducks, their little bodies pressed close as he clicked through the images in the playback screen.  It made my flesh crawl, but you can't hang a man just on suspicion, can you?

        The first exception to the 'ducks only' rule were some pictures he took of little Ebony and her Mum, Jackie.  'Jax' to her friends.  Ebony is a sweet little thing with big brown eyes who looks like a startled fawn, and Jackie has hair like a dandelion clock, which changes colour nearly every week.

        Jackie let him take some pictures in return for a copy, which he produced the next time he came, offering her a CD with the pics on it.  Seems like he made a good job, because I heard her telling some of the others.

        So it was no surprise when a few others asked him to do the same.  He and Jackie seemed to hit it off, and with her being a single Mum there was no obvious harm in that.  She seemed so happy that for a while I began to doubt my own assessment of him.

        But thirty-five years of Coppering kept me watching him as I went about my daily work.

        Eventually he made a mistake - they always do, you know - and left his camera with Jackie while he went for ice creams.

        "Any more good pics of little Ebony?"  I casually picked it up and thumbed through the digital pics before she had a chance to protest.  Not that she was likely to, after all, 'Old Ron' wasn't going to steal it, was he?

        "Probably not.  He deletes most of them, says they're not good enough."

        I turned the camera back off and put it down.  "He's better with ducks than kids."  I said casually, before moving away and savagely beheading a few weeds with my litter picking tool.

        Legs and knickers...  Far too many legs and knickers...  Photographing girls on swings you're bound to get some, but not that many...  Not with that degree of close-up.  I could picture his neat little fingers probing where the camera had been before...  For the first time in years I struggled to do justice to the dinner my Missus had waiting when I got home.

        The only question now was how to handle it.  It took a week or two to find out where he lived and his daily routine.

        ****

       I made sure it was me who found his body, early one morning before the kids arrived.  Before even the most energetic of joggers thudded past on the dewy grass.  I was there early to untangle the swing chains, something that usually happened after the local youths had been on the beer.  Just an everyday part of my job, nothing suspicious.

        As a responsible ex-Copper I called the local nick, and then they took over.  There he was, hanging on a bit of his own clothesline, from the central swing of the set of three.

        They checked his flat, which was when they found the rest of the cut clothesline.  But a burglar had been in and there was nothing photographic left to point any fingers in his direction. 

        It made the local news but once the blue and white incident tape was removed  it didn't stop the kids from coming to play.  Jackie stopped bringing Ebony for a while, but life goes on and she was soon back.  She'd lost some of her sparkle though, which was a pity.  Maybe she really had cared for him.  Women can be funny like that sometimes.

        But you can't have a man like that hanging around a park, pun not intended.  Once a park gets a name for perverts people stop using it, and the Council eventually remove the equipment.  It happens every time.  And if they did that where would I be?

        After all, I'm just the man who looks after the swings and things.

        ***