Another sticking point with the morning shift was that Kheng would have to be present and awake for most of the time. Unlike when doing the night guarding, during the day the boss and the other bank workers were all there as well, so he couldn’t just laze around in a hammock any more.
When the new shift system had been introduced, Mr Hua Lin had explained to Kheng that at the end of each shift Kheng was expected to hand over responsibility of the bank’s compound’s security to the next guard. This would involve passing on the guarding equipment, which was essentially a torch and charger. They then had to do a circuit of the grounds to check nothing was missing or suspicious, and note this down in the new guards’ handing-over book, along with their names, the date and the time, before both guards signed it.
At 2pm Kheng watched with trepidation as the new guard cautiously wandered through the bank’s aging gates and made his way towards him. By Kheng’s estimation the man was probably in his late fifties. However, once men like him reached a certain age it was difficult to tell. One lined and world-weary face was very much like the next. It was more appropriate to switch to an epoch-based classification of age rather than continue with the regular monitoring of progress with measurable years.
“I’m the new guard. Meebor they call me.”
Kheng acknowledged his presence with a subtle nod.
“I’m Kheng. I’m supposed to hand over the shift-work to you using this notebook.”
Meebor nodded sagely back at him.
“They said something about that when I signed the contract. That young guy from the city kept going on about accountability or some such nonsense. I can write a bit. Mostly my name and numbers, stuff like that. I’m not so hot with longer sentences. Let’s hope there’s not too much to check.”
Kheng led Meebor on a two minute tour of the bank’s acreage, carefully noting the presence of the old plastic chair which he had now positioned so he could sit dutifully by the gate to reassure the customers of their safety. Other items of note were the padlock and key for the gate and the absence of any suspicious ropes, tunnelling equipment or getaway cars that might imply a major heist was under way. Kheng also pointed out to Meebor the security camera situation, and they quietly peered through the window of Mr Hua Lin’s office so Meebor could see what they did. As they returned to the front of the bank, Meebor concluded the handover with an astute observation.
“That camera on the gate’s a problem. It’s not going to be easy for me to go and have dinner, and I’ve not brought anything with me.”
“Your wife could bring you something.”
Kheng offered an alternative, noting that Meebor didn’t seem to be searching his mind too actively for his own solution.
“She’s not the sort of wife that would offer to walk down here and bring food to me. She’s more the sort of wife that would nag me for asking in the first place.”
Kheng nodded sympathetically. He too had never had the courage to suggest to his wife that it would be helpful to courier some nourishment over to him while he was at work. There would be a million good reasons why it was not possible. A major one would be that the benefits of Kheng’s not being at home and getting under her feet would be totally diluted by her having to leave the home during that period of calm because of him.
Kheng had decided that he was sympathetic to Meebor’s domestic problems. They shared a down trodden kindred spirit.
“Let’s go and look at the computer screen again through the window.”
Kheng decided that he would show Meebor how the camera for the gate didn’t capture the far corner of the wall where you could climb over and then use the newly installed part-built empty drainage system next to the road to get past the gate. It wasn’t a detail that he’d planned to be part of the guard handover notebook system. However, as it was apparent that Meebor wasn’t much of a writer, there was no real risk that any record of it was going to end up in the journal by accident.
14. Unlucky Numbers
Nelea and Mama Tae had invested significantly in the lucky numbers that they had extracted from Kheng’s dream. Particularly by Nelea’s standards, as she didn’t always do the lottery quite as religiously as Mama Tae. They’d each bought ten tickets using different combinations of the numbers for different games. When nothing came up they went back the next day and did the same. Despite their unwavering commitment to the interpretation of Kheng’s vision, none of the numbers had come up. Over the last week Mama Tae and Nelea had spent several afternoons enjoying a pipe and going back through the details of the dream, looking for any glimmer of a number that had been missed. After considerable scrutiny they could find no errors in the interpretation. The dream was so fantastic that it must mean something numerical. Mama Tae arrived at the conclusion that the problem lay with the raw information itself. It was time to haul Mr Kheng and his dream spirits back to the fireplace and revisit every aspect of this vision of his. Clearly there was something he wasn’t sharing, or a detail he’d overlooked.
Kheng reluctantly sat before the fire. It was his first post-shift afternoon and as predicted his new availability in the house was immediately impacting negatively on his simple but pleasant way of life. Once more he suffered the ash clouds that trailed behind Mama Tae’s flamboyant and exuberant arms as she drew herself into a trance before him. He already regretted sharing his vision once with the manic rattan furniture sales woman, and now he regretted it even more. All this theatre was also encouraging his normally sensible wife down an increasingly deviating path.
“Mr Kheng…”
Mama Tae fluttered her eyes upward so that they were mostly completely white, like in the movies when someone is pretending to be possessed. Kheng wondered how this addition to proceedings would sway the opinion of any fence-sitting dream spirits and help them consider the ritual as something that was worth engaging in after all.
“Mr Kheng, recant onto us once more you dream story.”
“I’ve told you all of it last time. Perhaps we should give it a rest.”
Kheng also wondered why calling on the presence of dream spirits required a deviation from the normal way of saying words. Mama Tae snapped out of her reverie and glared sternly at Kheng.
“The details, Kheng. Now.”
Mama Tae returned to her trance like state as if her sudden return to clarity had never taken place. She started to take deep and noisy breaths to add to the drama of her heightened state. Kheng decided it would be quicker in the long run just to play along.
“Like I said before, there was a large orange moon, filled with hot liquid gold. It rose from behind a big old tree and then the pig said all the weird stuff about triangles and buffaloes before Aunt Kayla appeared out of nowhere looking miserable, and then I woke up.”
Mama Tae dropped out from her trance and returned to being an angry neighbour again.
“Kheng! You need to take this seriously or we will keep going until you do. Now, from the beginning and with proper description and details this time.”
“Wait!”
It was Nelea’s turn to become animated.
“Wait, Mama Tae. Kheng just said the moon rose up from behind a large tree. He didn’t tell us that bit last time. There was no mention of a big tree before. That’s the missing piece of the puzzle.”
“You’re right, Nelea. The tree is the missing piece. Look at the time and money we’ve wasted because we couldn’t add in the tree number to the lottery. Kheng, I hope you’re learning from this. The trouble and expense you’ve put your poor wife to.”
Mama Tae was most definitely in a post-trance state by now and becoming quite excitable. Kheng decided to respond with his own frustration:
“You didn’t add a number for Aunt Kaylin either.”
Kheng was a bit fed up. He failed to see how any of this was his fault. He’d never been particularly up for the dream interpretation in the first place. If they were going to be selective about which bits they wanted to assign to the numbers to, then t
hat was hardly his concern. However, Mama Tae was never going to let Kheng get the last word:
“How can a dream summon up a number for your Aunt Kaylin. Don’t be so ridiculous. Honestly, I don’t know how poor Nelea copes I really don’t.”
Kheng accepted the scolding from Mama Tae and didn’t take the argument further. However, he could think of various ways to numerically describe an aunt. The number of aunts that you have; the age of the aunt in question; the number of functioning teeth belonging to the aunt. These were just three examples of many.
Nelea dragged them back to the vital question:
“So what does the tree mean? And what number does the tree give us then?”
Mama Tae took a deep breath and transformed herself back to the sage oracle of dream interpretation.
“Trees can mean anything really. The roots are the past, the trunk is the present and the branches the future. It depends a lot on the type of tree and what it was up to at the time. Was it a flowering tree? A dead tree? A very branchy tree? Were the leaves doing anything notable? Were there lots of gnarly bits of bark suggesting it was a very old tree? Was there anything in the tree like a big menacing bird or a dinosaur or an old pair of shoes, or a sack of rice?”
“It was just a big old tree. Just for a moment at the beginning. After that I was focused on the moon and the tree was gone.”
“Well, it’s probably irrelevant then to the overall interpretation. But you really must pay more attention next time. Who knows what important stuff we could all be missing out on. Anyway, the brevity of the tree or what it looked like doesn’t affect the numbers. Trees are usually a number four. That should be obviously clear to anyone who insists on dreaming about things.”
Nelea seemed less certain with the outcome of this.
“Well, we had number four anyway. Four was also the strength number.”
She gave this some thought before starting to cheer up a little.
“However,…with four being represented more strongly that we thought then it means we have to put it as the first number for the different lottery combinations.”
Mama Tae gave Nelea’s explanation due consideration.
“You may be right. That does make a lot of sense. We’d better head off to town and have another go at the lottery then.”
Kheng watched them leave. At least the dream had provided one thing: the house to himself for a few hours. He took his hammock out of his work-bag, tied it between two of the posts beneath his stilted home and settled in for a late afternoon nap.
15. Salt
Kheng had understood that he would have a week of doing the morning shift. He would then be rotated to the afternoon shift. The other two guards would rotate as well. The fourth guard would be available later on to cover for sick leave and the annual leave, a policy which had now been introduced. Mr Hua Lin had explained that this meant that the bank was now responsibly and proudly upholding the country’s labour law. Kheng took his word for it. Sadly the country’s generous labour laws were very much disturbing a routine that Kheng had been quite comfortable with in his ignorance.
When Kheng arrived at 6am the next morning to start his shift he was greeted by the new night guard who was finishing off his first shift on the job.
“Good morning Mr Kheng.”
“Good morning. Errr?”
“Salt. Everyone calls me Salt. Even my wife. Her idea in fact. I always put too much salt on my food. She says I ruin it. That or MSG. But you can’t call someone MSG now, can you?”
“I guess not.”
Kheng smiled in agreement. He decided he would be unable to dispute such a wise observation about food additives, even at a reasonable hour of the day.
“Thanks for the tip about the camera, Kheng. Old Mr Meebor passed it on. Very handy for nipping home. Popped back and got a flask of coffee. When you were on nights, where did you sleep? I tried sleeping in the chair. It’s playing havoc with my back this morning.”
Kheng decided he vaguely knew this Salt. Something about the way he talked. Maybe he’d been in the army as well. However, it was very early in the morning and he was in no mood for a reunion with someone he wasn’t sure he knew.
“Have you got the handing-over book with you, Mr Salt?”
Salt waved the already dog-eared student notebook aloft to demonstrate that he had.
“Got it right here, Mr Kheng. Shall we do the handover now, or do you want coffee? There’s still some in the flask. Don’t know where we’ll both sit though. Only one chair. Only one cup as well, actually. I’ll have to remember an extra one tomorrow. Or you could bring one.”
Salt poured Kheng some coffee in the solitary cup, and Kheng took a sip whilst carefully studying the handing-over note book. It was already becoming quite repetitive and there had only been two handovers so far. Both records of the shift handover recognised that the chair had remained an asset and that it was not lost to the institution despite the various staff responsible for it. The same could be said for the torch and charger. Meanwhile nothing untoward had gone on beyond the concerns of the limited furniture.
“Thanks for the coffee, Mr Salt. It was good.”
“Not too salty then, eh? Sorry. Family joke. My wife always says that, if I say something was nice. Can’t win really. Damned either way.”
Kheng made a sympathetic noise and decided he didn’t begrudge Mr Salt the current loss of his night shift to him one bit. Salt’s wife sounded like a nightmare. His wife nagged, but at least she hadn’t renamed him after a type of condiment and then laid into him about it all the time. He decided to help out his new colleague with the sleeping dilemma.
“I used to bring a hammock to work with me in my bag. I packed it beneath a food container so it looked like I’d just brought dinner. There’s a tree at the back and a hook I put in the old wall. They are the right distance apart to hang the hammock comfortably between the two. Fortunately there are no new security cameras around the back, so it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll show you before I leave.”
Kheng handed back the empty cup, and folded the handover book so it could fit in his pocket. He led Salt around to the rear of the building to show him how to set up the hammock. Kheng was surprising himself at how quickly he was surrendering all the tricks of his trade. Firstly the storm pipe system at the front of the bank to dodge the camera, and now the hammock. However, Kheng had to face that things were very different now. Before Hua Lin arrived he’d thought of himself as one of the bank employees. Now there were white collar day workers and blue collar shift workers. He was one of the latter. New alliances were a necessity. The cameras were the real security for the bank, and he had a social responsibility to make sure these new recruits understood the ropes so they didn’t compromise their jobs. It sounded like the trouble they would both be in with their wives would be horrendous if they did.
After the hammock hook inspection, Mr Salt made his way out of the compound leaving Kheng to take charge. Kheng positioned himself at the front of the office, so that he could feign the pretence of an eager and well-disciplined guard for when the new boss arrived. It also fitted with Kheng’s ongoing obsession of monitoring the road work progress. The construction workers would begin in about an hour’s time and so he positioned the chair near the gate so he would be ready for the start of proceedings. Earlier in the week, on the opposite side of the street, they’d started putting together the form-work for the drainage inspection hatches. Not quite as interesting as when the big rollers and back hoes were trundling back and forth, but an interesting side-activity for him as he followed the overall process.
At about twenty to eight Mr Tann walked up to the gate and produced his keys from his satchel. Ms Win-Kham was striding up to the gate right behind him. Kheng had noticed that there had been a subtle change in the routine for both of these employees over recent days. Normally, Mr Tann would pop up at about eight o’clock or a bit after and open up the bank. The other staff would drift in over the following half an hou
r or so. Kheng usually passed a number of them on the street as he walked home. Since the change of management had taken place, Ms Win-Kham has started dead-heating with Mr Tann at the front of the bank exactly on eight o’clock, with Mr Hua Lin arriving shortly afterwards. This had clearly unnerved the old man who had understood that one of his few duties was to make sure that he was the first to arrive and have things open and ready for the boss. In response, he had started arriving five minutes earlier, and, strangely, so did Ms Win-Kham. It was all highly irregular. Particularly as Ms Win-Kham seemed to be more smartly dressed these days in more expensive tailored suits and wearing heels. It was a wonder she could get down the street at all, especially with all the drainage works going on, let alone make it in early.
Having played the game of who could arrive first for some time now, and taking gradual bites into the pre-eight o’clock time slot, Mr Tann and Ms Win-Kham were now running about twenty minutes ahead of the normal schedule. In the old days this would have worked out well for Kheng, as once Mr Tann had taken charge of the premises he could go home. However, with the new shift work in place Mr Tann’s arrival time was becoming wholly irrelevant. Let alone that of Ms Win-Kham.
16. Ms. Win-Kham
Ms Win-Kham had done reasonably well for herself. She was quite young when she achieved the status of head cashier at the provincial bank. Well, young by Maklai standards anyway. She had a steady job, a steady salary, and a small home, for which she was always able to pay the rent on time. Meanwhile, she was entering her early thirties and her looks were still holding, should she ever need to call on them. Due to the slow pace of Maklai life and lack of interesting opportunities, Ms Win-Kham had concluded for some time that there was very little reason to call on either her looks or her intellect to support any attempts at self-improvement.
The Feiquon Heist Page 7