Bamber's eventual reason for not dialling 999 -
He did not think it would make any difference in how quickly the police arrived.
----------
Looking up the number for the sixth furthest away police station sure isn't going to make things quicker.
We’ve mentioned this 6th furthest away police station before - you state it frequently as if he got out a map and looked at all the police stations before selecting the 6th furthest one then calling that.
However - Robert Boutflour in his diary entry for August 30th says that “local people know that Witham is closed from 2am to 6am” this is in response to it being suggested that Jeremy called Witham and didn’t get a response. If it’s correct that Jeremy did call Witham and didn’t get a response then he didn’t call the 6th furthest away Police station first.
If he didn’t call Witham because as a local he knew they would be closed then he only called the 6th furthest away police station if you also count the closed ones or ones he believed would be closed (making it pointless calling them!)
If Witham was closed at this time it’s a fairly safe assumption Tiptree would be too being a small village, easy to prove at the time, very difficult now! But given that D’Arcy falls under Witham’s area at the time (West’s court testimony said he looked this up and Witham policed the area) it suggests the larger area one.
In the pre-internet days it’s also highly likely that he looked the number up in the phone book or Yellow pages. This would have all the police stations grouped together under the heading of Police and then the numbers for each in alphabetical order, if all the local stations the first two would be Braintree and Chelmsford. Technically Braintree is closer, however the drive is likely to at best take the same amount of time as Chelmsford it’s also likely to be closed at that time. So he in fact called the first police station likely to be open, close to him in alphabetical order in the phone book…