#DICallaghan

It is my view Nokes that half the things we end up having to investigate wouldn’t come to pass if people had a bit more tolerance and some small part of kindness in their bloody hearts. - #DICallaghan

At least UFOs have made driving the edge of Barrowcross more interesting. Used to be you'd turn a corner and only find a spectral Saxon or corpse cart. Now you might be bothered by spaceship from the Planet Skareg full of silver-suited wankers. – #DICallaghan talking with #DSNokes

Hookland might be the only county Nokes where the journalists ask: “Was it curses?” and: “Were there any bite marks?” at a press conference about a murder enquiry. - #DICallaghan in conversation with #DSNokes

“He wouldn’t be the first radio ham in Hookland to become convinced creatures are living in the cold static between stations.”
“The first to try and blow up a BBC transmitter though.”
“Not even the first to do that. The path between static beasts and bombs is well trod.”
- #DICallaghan & #DSNokes

Spare me from star-child occultists. Spare me from ghost-bothering pricks. Spare me from those who only use witchcraft as an excuse to see some naked flesh. It isn’t the Age of Aquarius Nokes, it’s the Age of the Pisspuffin. - #DICallaghan in conversation to #DSNokes

Hookland Unexplained Team (HUT) have made a career of turning up to places where a bloke coming back from the pub has seen a movement in the hedge and assumed it’s a Star Wraith or a Harrow Hound. You journalists have enabled them in scaring the populace because bullshit sells papers. - #DICallaghan

For some folk Nokes, UFOs are a religion. They’ve got to testify. If it isn’t the Space Gospel at told to them by Commander Ril of the Planet Skareg, it’s that Meldon Hill is a holy place of galactic convergence. I wish all of the preachy bastards would get beamed up. – #DICallaghan

The clever folk at Weychester University will tell you a ghost is a natural change in an electromagnetic field being registered through the lens of your subconscious. They won’t charge you for telling you this, but they will be deeply snug about it while doing so. The spiritualist grifters of The Church of the Heavy Curtain will tell you a ghost is the spirit of a dead loved one. They will charge heavily for telling you this and they will also be smug about it. Myself, I say no word in the English language works harder than ghost and that you will know one by the collywobbles you feel when encountering it. – DI Callaghan in conversation with DS Nokes

#DICallaghan has the #ghost conversation with DS Nokes.

A winged, stone angel, adorned by moss and entangled with ivy. To an angelophilliac, it's expression might suggest something other than divine thoughts.

What you have to remember Nokes, is that when it comes to sex all logic and reason flee the premises. Did you know there's even a word for people sexually aroused by angels? Angelophillia. Ashcourt Necropolis has a real problem with divine messenger botherers. – #DICallaghan

Ghost ponces and phantom mongers would call it ‘psychic residue’. Me Nokes, I am a practical man. I call it collywobble echoes or if I am feeling little poetic, a place remembering. – #DICallaghan in conversation with #DSNokes

Can I echo Mr Brown’s opinion here. Callaghan & Noakes is the finest 70’s TV Police series never made. Surely someone has the writing skills to do it justice in novel form. #Hookland #DICallaghan #DSNoakes

Ghost cults, séance addicts, ectoplasm fetishists. Many of our populace are necromantic by nature. Their instinct to poke the dead ought to be illegal, but unfortunately we can't nick someone for disturbing the peace of a phantom. – #DICallaghan in conversation with #DSNokes

Ashcourt Docks nick is one of the most haunted places I know. It is more than the deaths in custody, the abject despair and grief it's seen. There's something about it that traps pain and anger in its bricks. I feel sorry for every copper and villain crossing its threshold. – #DICallaghan

There's always some prick who thinks Weychester was built from a plan within the Bible. That the Weychester Cathedral zodiac reveals twelve sacred gateways. It when they go from burbling about holy geometry and Joseph of Arimathea to sacrifices we have to worry. – #DICallaghan

"When you've been around long enough Nokes you come to realise some of the most powerful secret societies don't need to put on the flash. There's no grand shopfront, no big marble headquarters. Just an odd door down a neglected street. The Order of Lyterius is one of those. – #DICallaghan

"Some nicks are more haunted than others Nokes. It's not just deaths in custody, it's the shading of so much grief, so much bad business. It soaks into the walls. You clean vomit and blood out of a cell, but it's much harder to remove the taint of abject despair. – #DICallaghan

The rural fantasies of Londoners always screw then up. Cosy cottages, barn conversions. Their own orchard. They lack the ability to imagine the mud, how isolation devours your sanity. They can’t imagine the ghost soil, the curse dolls on the doorstep. - #DICallaghan

“See I don’t believe in space tourists from the Planet Skareg. Pretty as Hookland is…” “It’s not a patch on Yorkshire.” “I’ve heard tales of Barnsley and Sheffield and I don’t believe space tourists would travel dozens of light years for them either Nokes.” “You know Guv, there’s one thing I don’t get about all these spaceman sightings.” “Beyond why aliens from Planet Skareg would ever want to visit some of the most lonely farms on our patch?” “That obviously, but more why they all seem to look Mick Ronson.” “Who is ‘Mick Ronson’?” “You know David Bowie?” “Not personally, but by reputation and secondhand radio.” “Well his guitarist is Mick Ronson. He wears silver suits, has dyed blonde hair in a flamboyant shag …” “So it isn’t aliens causing all this fuss, it’s a rock star?” “No Guv, but what if it’s just someone dressing like one?” “Obviously, that’s a better answer than some bloke from Planet Skareg, but it doesn’t get us any closer to catching the bastard before he floats through the windows of another house or accosts any more astronomers at the Hine Radio Astronomy Observatory.”

#DICallaghan and DS Nokes discuss Yorkshire, Bowie, #MickRonson and space tourists.

Alder is one of those old style writers on ghosts. All ‘phantom armies of the night’ and ‘vengeful souls armed with the gaze of doom’. He isn’t one of those modern ghost folk who thinks the land is some sort wonky C90 psychic cassette. - #DICallaghan in conversation with #DSNokes

Nokes's wife is a Hooklander born and bred. She wanted to move back to look after her mother. This was somewhat fortunate as Nokes was unpopular being an honest policeman in Yorkshire in the 1970s. #DICallaghan selected him as his bagman for Nokes' reputation for being both clean and as an outsider.

“So what’s this bloke’s conspiracy theory Guv?”
“Mr. Bowers is of the opinion the English ‘Establishment’ has been using us humble and poor folk as proxies to fight a war against Elfland. Mind you, the Establishment do have form in that department.” – DS Nokes and #DICallaghan in conversation

Another UFO flap. Another bout of reports of robot men flying around on black metal boxes, aliens from the planet Skareg that always look like Mick Ronson and of course, blokes called Kev who tell the wife they were abducted, while they shacked up with a fancy woman in Surrey. - #DICallaghan, 1977

The highway authority blames delays on the Tettenbury bypass on local saboteurs. Locals blame the sabotage on the fact the new road disrupts an ancient Stay Below crossing point. I'm sceptical on the matter of cryptids, but even I find water weeds at the crime scene somewhat odd. – #DICallaghan

In 1594, Thomas Nashe wrote this truth of the ages: ‘This trick is worth noting, that those whom he dare not united encounter, disjoined and divided he will one by one assail in their sleep.’ He was talking about the Devil, but the point stands for an awful lot of politicians. - #DICallaghan

“He is a H.AR.D. man Noakes.”
“Hard man Guv?”
“Hookland Antiquities Reclamation Department. When so many significant archeological finds have gone missing from the county, some innovations in recovery are called for.” – #DICallaghan and DS Noakes in conversation

“Gricers”. Perfect use of the term. I haven’t heard it for years. I long for the publication of the #DICallaghan memoirs.

All of England has trainspotters Noakes. Every bit of it filled with them notebook-weilding, Thermos-packing trainspotters. Of course, Hookland is probably the only place where gangs of gricers are dedicated purely to chasing after the number of phantom engines and steam-wraiths. – #DICallaghan

There's more than a whiff of nominative determinism about the old Holdhurt Asylum. Abandoned buildings local kids won't play in, let alone break the windows off or scrawl on the walls 'DARREN LOVES FLORRIE', are generally bad news. Even I get the collywobbles there. - #DICallaghan

The problem with subways in Hookland – aside from the stench of urine and the lingering fear of bovver boy violence – is you can't always be sure you'll come out the other side in the same year went in. I wish we had the authority to close them all down. – #DICallaghan

Sod castles Nokes. Sod ruined abbeys. Anyone with any ghost-sense knows there's almost no more haunted place than a hospital corridor. – #DICallaghan