Crime Wave in Hay

It's Children in Need day, and my neighbour always puts on a coffee morning with lots of nice cakes. This year, Mary Fellowes came across the road with her mayoral chain over her ordinary clothes - she said people are always asking her to wear the chain, so she thought she'd make the coffee morning an 'official' event for the town.
Another neighbour told us about the theft he'd suffered on Tuesday night. He'd parked his car down by the river, and in the night someone had come along and cut off the catalytic converter. He called the police when he found out, and they sent two PCs from Brecon, but there was nothing they could do about it. All they wanted, he said, was to know his date of birth and his religion, and they'd fill a form in and then close the case. He said that they had told him that another car had its catalytic converter stolen on the same night.
"Well, that's three then," said Mary. One of the Dial-A-Ride vans was parked down in the Co-op car park (which is well lit, unlike the riverside). It wasn't used on Wednesday, but on Thursday morning the driver found that it, too, had had the catalytic converter removed. She was going to tell the police as soon as she left the coffee morning.
The general opinion was that a gang had come into town from the Valleys, or Birmingham, or somewhere equally distant, taken what they wanted and disappeared whence they came. It's making people rather worried about the places they park their cars though.