Status Anxiety | 28 February 2009

I have taken to sleeping with my grandfather’s cavalry sword under the bed

I caught a burglar last week. I was standing in my kitchen at 11 o’clock on Saturday morning when a young man suddenly appeared at the bottom of the garden. At first, I didn’t realise he was a burglar. I strolled outside in a spirit of genuine curiosity. What was he doing?

‘I was playing football and I kicked the ball over the fence,’ he said. ‘I thought it had gone in your garden, but it must have gone in the next-door one.’ At first, I believed him. He was young enough to be playing football — mid-to-late twenties — and he apologised for having climbed over my back fence. I showed him out through the front gate and it was only when he didn’t knock on the door of my neighbours that I realised he must be lying. Instead, he simply walked off down the street.

I rushed back inside to get my camera, hoping to take a photograph of him, but by the time I got outside again he’d vanished. I didn’t bother reporting it to the police until two days later, by which time a house four doors down had been burgled. I managed to track down the investigating officer and gave him a detailed description of the man I’d seen in my garden. He confirmed that the ‘lost football’ routine was a well-known ruse and that the man had probably been casing the joint. He said he might send round some officers with some images of burglars for me to look at, but he never did.

My wife Caroline was remarkably blasé about all this until we met a couple of our neighbours at a dinner party, who’d been subjected to a four-hour ordeal by three crack addicts. It was the middle of the night and the first the husband knew about his home being broken into was when one of the intruders sat on his chest and placed a pillow over his head. He warned him that if he tried to remove it, he’d cut his throat. His wife, too, was made to hold a pillow over her head while the three men searched for valuables. When they couldn’t find anything, they threatened to cut off one of the husband’s fingers. He persuaded them to take his wallet instead and gave them the pin number of his cashpoint card. One of the men stayed with them while the other two went to the nearest bank.

‘The most frightening moment was when they called from the cashpoint machine and told the man they’d left behind that I’d given them the wrong number,’ he said. ‘He threatened to cut off one of my wife’s nipples unless I gave them the right one — but I’d given them the right one. It turned out they were trying to get money out with my B&Q loyalty card. They were unbelievably stupid, but that made them all the more dangerous.’

In the end, the men managed to extract £400 from the husband’s bank account and then left. The wife said her greatest fear was that her one-year-old baby would wake up. ‘If he had started crying, God knows what might have happened,’ she said. ‘But for the first time in his life he slept through the night. Afterwards I thought, “There is a God.”’

Caroline has become quite paranoid since hearing about this, particularly as the chances of all four of our children sleeping through the night are vanishing to zero. I suggested applying for a shotgun licence and then keeping the weapon in a locked cabinet in our bedroom, but Caroline pointed out this wouldn’t have helped our neighbours. More likely, the crack addicts would have got hold of the gun and shot someone. In any event, shooting a burglar can easily result in a manslaughter conviction — and if you don’t kill him, he can sue you. Prudence dictates that keeping a gun in a house in town is never a good idea.

Our best bet is to strengthen our security — a trellis on the back fence, anti-burglar paint on the sidewalls, double-glazing on all the windows — and hope for the best. I have taken to sleeping with my grandfather’s cavalry sword under the bed. It’s a fearsome-looking thing and he once saw off a gang of burglars merely by brandishing it at them. I hope I’d have the courage to do the same, but I’m far from confident. We live in testing times.