The Gropes by Tom Sharpe

garage only to find the electronic doors firmly down and with no chance of raising them. Not only that, his Aston Martin wasn’t there. The car was known to be his pride and joy which he treasured more than anything else. That suggested to Albert that anorganised crime syndicate was responsible and that he could be looking at either kidnapping or, worse still, murder.
    With his head throbbing he tried to think. If Belinda and Esmond had been kidnapped or murdered, the intrusion of the law was the last thing he needed. Peering through the keyhole in the door, he was only slightly relieved to see his damned sister being forced into an ambulance by five hefty policemen.
    Ten minutes later, the chief inspector had joined his five colleagues outside the Ponson bungalow. He was taking his turn in trying to persuade Albert to come out only to be repeatedly told that he was a complete arse. Didn’t he understand that Albert couldn’t because the electronic lock wouldn’t work. And that even if the arsing lock would work, the arsing keys were missing.
    The chief inspector tried being reasonable. ‘No one’s accusing you of anything. We just want to know what the trouble is.’
    ‘The fucking trouble is that I’m locked in my bloody house and I can’t get out, you stupid dick. How many times do I have to tell you?’ Albert shouted back. ‘And some swine’s stolen my Aston Martin into the bargain.’
    The chief inspector tried another tack.
    ‘Have there been any shots in the house?’
    ‘Have there been any what?’ screamed Albert, still hung-over and now thoroughly muddled. Befuddled was the better word.
    ‘Has anyone been shooting in the house?’
    Albert struggled to think.
    ‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘I shot the lock off the sitting-room door.’
    ‘I see,’ said the chief inspector, who didn’t. He continued after a long pause. ‘And why do that?’
    ‘Because some bugger didn’t want me to get out.’
    ‘Who wouldn’t?’
    ‘Whoever locked the bloody thing.’
    ‘What bloody thing was behind the door?’ he asked, perked up by the supposition that it was a person.
    ‘I don’t know. It was pitch dark like I told you.’
    ‘So you fired through the lock and hit someone on the other side.’
    ‘No I didn’t. When I looked in the kitchen I didn’t see anyone. How could I? It was pitch dark. I told you that.’
    ‘So how come you said someone was bloody?
    Distracted by a large lorry hooting at a tractor in its path, the sergeant lost track of the statement he was taking down and concentrated on that ‘bloody’. The ‘whoever’ didn’t help.
    ‘So you admit you shot the person who had locked you out of the kitchen?’ he said.
    Albert struggled vainly to think of an innocent answer. ‘I didn’t know there was anyone on the other side. I couldn’t even see the lock. Had to feel for it. I mean, I put my finger out until I found the lock and then put the muzzle up against it and pulled the trigger. I didn’t mean to shoot anyone.’
    The chief inspector took over from the sergeant.
    ‘How do you know your Aston Martin has been stolen?’
    ‘Because it’s not in the garage.’
    ‘Is the door between the kitchen and the garage locked too?’
    ‘Not now it isn’t.’
    ‘And you say it has been stolen? How do you know?
    ‘Because the car isn’t there. I felt all over the place and it’s missing.’
    ‘Well, if there’s access from the garage to the kitchen, the only thing is to bring up a bulldozer and drag that garage door down.’
    Albert Ponson stood horrified in the darkness.
    ‘You can’t do that,’ he squawked. ‘You’ll bring the whole front of the house down.’
    ‘We’re only going to push it open. May damage the door of course but –’
    ‘You don’t understand. You push it or drag it and the whole front is going to come down, all of it.’
    ‘All of the front wall of the house? Of course it won’t. You just don’t want us to come in. You’ve got something to