legends · 4 min read ·
Interview Under Caution
A police interview with a council groundsman about a headstone that moves an inch each week toward the gate.
**Record of interview — Marlow Division, recorded.**
**Interviewing officers: DS A. Keane, DC R. Bloom.**
**Interviewee: Mr. Gareth Lloyd, who has declined a solicitor.**
**Offence under enquiry: unlawful removal of a headstone, St. Aldwin's burial ground.**
· · ·
KEANE: Mr. Lloyd, you understand you're not under arrest and may leave at any time.
LLOYD: I understand.
KEANE: Then let's go back to the beginning. You work for the council grounds team.
LLOYD: Eleven years. Churchyards, cemeteries, verges.
KEANE: On the night of the ninth, CCTV at the gate shows you entering at 21:50 in a council van. You were not rostered.
LLOYD: No.
KEANE: And a headstone from the north wall was found the next morning in the van, in the back, wrapped in a tarpaulin.
LLOYD: That's right.
BLOOM: Can I ask why you took it?
LLOYD: I didn't take it. I moved it.
BLOOM: From where to where?
LLOYD: From the north wall to the van. Because it wouldn't stay put.
KEANE: Say again?
LLOYD: It was moving. Every time I mowed round it, it was a bit further from the wall. Not much. An inch a week. I measured. I've got the numbers in my phone.
BLOOM: Headstones don't move, Mr. Lloyd.
LLOYD: That's what I said. I'm not an idiot. I'm telling you what a tape measure told me.
KEANE: Whose is it? The headstone.
LLOYD: It says Ellen Ward, nineteen-twelve to nineteen-eighty-one. There's no flowers, there's no one tends it. It's been nobody's for forty years.
KEANE: And it was moving where?
LLOYD: Toward the gate.
KEANE: Toward the gate.
LLOYD: Yes. As though she wanted out. I thought if I got it in the van I could take it somewhere it'd settle.
BLOOM: Where were you going to take it?
LLOYD: I hadn't thought. I just wanted it off the grass. I was frightened it would get to the lane.
KEANE: What would happen if it got to the lane?
LLOYD: I don't know. But I know what it looked like at the gate, in the van lights. The grass behind it was flat. A line of flat grass from the wall. Like something had been dragged, only the dragging was done by the stone, in the other direction, with no one pulling.
BLOOM: Did you see it move?
LLOYD: No. Never while I was looking. I watched it for an hour on Tuesday. Nothing. I went for a cup of tea and when I came back it was a foot further.
KEANE: I'm going to put it to you, Mr. Lloyd, that you've had a breakdown of some kind.
LLOYD: You can put it to me, yes.
KEANE: Do you accept that?
LLOYD: I'd rather it was that. I'd go and see someone. But the stone's in your evidence room, isn't it? You've got it. Why not go and have a look?
BLOOM: It's in Property Store 2.
LLOYD: How far from the door is it?
BLOOM: ...
LLOYD: Ask someone to measure.
*[Pause of eleven seconds.]*
KEANE: DC Bloom has left the room.
LLOYD: He's gone to look.
KEANE: He's gone to get a coffee.
LLOYD: You don't have to say it for the tape. I know what he's gone for.
KEANE: Mr. Lloyd, for the benefit of the recording, are you threatening—
LLOYD: No. God, no. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm tired. I haven't slept since it started. I only wanted to say that the stone isn't angry. I thought it was angry. It isn't. I've been through the records at the church. Ellen Ward's husband was buried on the other side of the lane, in the Methodist ground, in eighty-two. They wouldn't let her lie with him, because she was Church and he was chapel. She's been trying to get across for forty years. All she wants is the lane.
KEANE: ...
LLOYD: That's all it is. I only wanted to say it before the sergeant comes back. If you want to charge me, charge me. But if it was me, I'd take it across the road.
*[A door opens. Footsteps. A chair is moved.]*
BLOOM: Guv. I measured it. I've put a mark.
KEANE: Interview suspended at 14:12.