Unsafe Deposit

by J. E. Kellenberger

  Ruth’s job of the morning was to plant out her winter crop seedlings in the raised bed she had prepared the previous afternoon. With her spongy knee protectors strapped in place she was down on all fours for quite some time engaged in this labour-intensive activity. Coming up for a stretch of the muscles every so often Ruth became aware of a man lingering around her area as if almost spying on what was going on. Somewhat irritated by his presence, Ruth, not a woman to overly worry about hiding her disapproval, decided to approach him.

  ‘Hallo, are you looking for somebody?’ asked Ruth in a forthright manner. ‘I guess from your clothes that you are not a gardener.’

  ‘No, not really, I’m just enjoying looking at the variety of plants in the various plots,’ mumbled Doug hesitantly.

  ‘You don’t look like the sort of person who would be interested in plants! And how did you get in here?’ responded Ruth.

  ‘The gate was open and I sort of drifted in,’ replied Doug.

  ‘Well what is it you really want?’ demanded Ruth. ‘Whilst I’ve been planting my winter crop I’ve been glancing up and keeping tabs on you for several minutes and you just seem to be hanging around in this particular area.’

  Doug vacillated. How should he reply to this straightforward question?

  ‘Is it something to do with the compost heaps?’ Ruth persisted.

  ‘It could be,’ admitted Doug.

  An awkward moment passed while they both assessed the situation.

  ‘Did you leave something behind last evening?’ Ruth finally asked.

  Doug replied with a simple nod.

  ‘I think that we had better have a proper chat about this don’t you?’ said Ruth, taking the bull by the horns. ‘If you turn right out of the gates and go into the high street I’ll meet you at the coffee shop opposite the bank in twenty minutes after I have finished off here.’

  Doug replied in the affirmative and walked off purposefully.

  Seated at a table where they could not be overheard they slowly got talking.

  ‘I don’t know quite how to start because I’m in a curious situation,’ Doug opened. ‘I did leave something behind yesterday evening but it was something that was not mine and really should have nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Was it a couple of small items and did you put them in a compost heap?’ suggested Ruth.

  ‘I don’t know why I am telling you this but the answer is yes and I am really anxious about this whole affair,’ responded Doug.

  Looking directly at Ruth, he asked her if she had found the hidden packets. A long pause ensued whilst Ruth struggled with how she should answer this question. She prided herself on being able to tell a good character from a bad and in Doug she liked what she saw and heard. She decided to take a chance.

  ‘Yes I did but now that I have opened them I’m none the wiser as to what they are all about.’

  Doug brooded on her answer and decided to take a chance too.

  ‘I’ve just returned from cycling abroad. When I stowed my bike on the train home from Fenchurch Street I was too far away from my bike to keep an eye on it and so I removed my panniers and took them with me to my seat. I had stashed my house keys in a safe place at the bottom of one of the panniers and when I went to retrieve them I was astonished to find two small packets. I hastily opened one of the packets and found some marbles but I didn’t open the tube. These objects conveyed no meaning to me but, somehow, I had the feeling that I was being watched. A youngish man had walked several times up and down the central aisle of the carriage in which I was travelling from Paris to London. I remembered him because he was wearing a red baseball cap. I also noticed him on the platform at St. Pancras and I wasn’t mistaken that he followed me to Fenchurch Street and took the same train because he got out at my station. He seemed to be watching me strap on my panniers. I felt flustered and couldn’t make sense of what was going on but I knew I wasn’t imagining it. I mounted my bike and cycled up the railway pathway far too quickly for him to keep up with me. As I turned the corner my chain came off. I didn’t know how to get it back on without turning my bike upside down and I couldn’t do that quickly when it was loaded with two heavy saddle bags. I noticed the fencing was broken near where I was standing and there was a small gap in the hedge that I could get through. When I stuck my head through I saw no one about so I grabbed the packets and went through the hole and found the nearest place in which to hide them which, as it turned out, was your compost bin.’

  ‘And is that your only connections with these items?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘Yes, absolutely no other connection,’ replied Doug.

  ‘And were you going to leave them there?’ demanded Ruth.

  ‘I didn’t have any plan at the time other than to take them to the police,’ replied Doug. ‘I felt so confused. I needed time to try to make sense of it all. And that’s why I returned this morning, to retrieve them and hand them in to the authorities. But now trying to understand what’s going on seems more important.’

  Finishing their coffees, they agreed to meet again but this time with the contents to see if they could unravel any further information about the packets. Trailing Doug home was Paul while Lizzie’s instinct was to follow Ruth.

  Ruth had moved the items from her breakfast bar onto the desk of her home office which was at the end of her long and narrow garden. She had had it installed a couple of years previously so that she could see personal clients at home without them having to actually enter the house. With the use of a couple of strategically placed arrows she was able to usher them around the side of her house to follow the brick pathway to the wooden structure which was purpose-built and had arrived on the back of an enormous lorry in kit form. As the gap between the side of the house and the fence had been so narrow the wall panels had been craned over the roof of her house and she and her adjoining neighbours had held their respective breaths whilst the operation was in progress. She had chosen to have it finished in larch cladding with shingle roofing around two skylights. It sat inconspicuously in its surroundings and was cosy in winter due to the high specification of insulation and was cool in summer when the skylights were opened. Although it had cost several thousand pounds she was very satisfied with the more professional look it gave to her client consultations.

  Sitting at her desk with Doug in the client’s chair, they poured over the bits and pieces.

  ‘How many marbles are there?’ she enquired.

  ‘Twenty-nine,’ he replied and continued, ‘but they are not all the same. They are of different sizes and some are spherical while others are somewhat elongated.’

  ‘Is there a character embossed on all of them?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve just made a list of the letters,’ he answered, ‘there are: four letter “t”s, three letter “e”s, two each of letters a,o,n,r,s,i and just one of h,q,u,l,f,i,d and c! That makes twenty-nine in all.’

  ‘And what are we to make of all of this?’ she questioned. ‘Should we assume that it’s an anagram?’

  ‘An anagram or a code,’ Doug replied, rubbing his chin. ‘I can’t think what else it could signify.’

  They wrote down the letters on some thick paper, cut it into squares with a character on each square and started shuffling the paper squares around in different formations.

  ‘If we assume English as the language of the anagram then we could make several words with the “q” followed obviously by the “u”. There’s Quince, Quiet, Quite, Quote or Quoted and Quality.’

  ‘It’s a good start but how to fit them into a meaningful sentence I don’t know, always assuming that the correct solution is a meaningful sentence,’ she responded. ‘I can make “quite a nice day for moth nests” or “tasty Mario nicely she quoted” both with a few characters left over but nothing better than that at the moment.’

  Turning their attention to
the tube and its contents they scrutinised the banknotes first.

  ‘I know a bit more about this than the marbles,’ Ruth opened. ‘The notes are obviously Swiss and are of the sixth series issued in 1976 and valid up until May 2000. I looked that up on the internet. One hundred francs is worth roughly sixty pounds sterling. The word “Watchword” is written in capitals just above each note’s ten-digit serial number.’

  ‘But why would you roll up two out-of-date banknotes of a European currency and stuff them into an empty cut-down tube used for holding fluorescing denture tablets?’ asked Doug with a mystified look.

  ‘And the x and y characters on the handkerchief must refer to the horizontal and vertical axes of a graph,’ Ruth continued, ‘but apart from that these things make no sense to me whatsoever’.

  Neither of them had spotted the neat golden stitches in one of the corners of the handkerchief nor remarked on the French knot.

  ‘I don’t think we are going to solve anything quickly,’ summed up Doug, ‘we had better ruminate on it and maybe in a few days it will make more sense. Could you put the handkerchief on your scanner and see if you can scan it into your computer? If that works you could print off a photocopy for me and in any idle moments I have at work I can consider it. Also, could you photocopy the two banknotes? Both sides please.’

  Doug watched her as Ruth attempted the scan. She was a woman in her mid-fifties with a clear complexion and glowing cheeks. Her short curly hair was brown on top with greying sides. She was dressed casually in trousers and a plain v-necked top and she was the antithesis of his ex-wife with her manicured nails and designer clothes. He liked Ruth’s thoughtful and questioning style and before he realised what he was saying he had invited her out to dinner later in the week to the Italian restaurant just off the high street and told her about their stone oven for pizzas and the exceptional Chianti that they served.

  Ruth spent a great deal of time in her home office at the bottom of the garden. When not seeing clients she was either writing or researching on the internet. As the office was about forty yards from the house she couldn’t hear when someone pressed the front door bell. She had seen advertised on a TV shopping channel wireless door bells with separate speaker that could be plugged into any electric socket and would ring as long as it was no farther than a certain distance from the bell push. Ruth had found this very useful when she was expecting a delivery or waiting for a tradesman or a service engineer to arrive.

  When Arthur and Ron had calmed down following Kevin’s admittance that he had lost the pouch of marbles they had decided that the only course of action was to steal them back. Lizzie, who had trailed Ruth and Doug to her house, had noticed them walking down the brick path to the home office at the bottom of the garden. She had heard their voices as they walked towards it and had opened the side gate and walked gingerly along the side wall of the house from where she could see the two of them sitting at a desk examining things and thus Arthur and Ron had concluded that they must have the pouch in their possession and that probably it would be put in one of the filing cabinets for safekeeping. They had then worked out a plan to get Ruth out of the office and busy at her front door while Joe sneaked down to steal the pouch. For a man built like a Rottweiler Joe McKay was as nimble as a trapeze artist on a high wire and with a level of perspicacity not usually associated with his thick set neck and broken nose. From time to time Ron called him in for special jobs with payment on results and minimal contact.

  When the bell rang Ruth got up from her swivel chair and hurried up the path. Although she wasn’t expecting anybody she liked to answer the door promptly.

  ‘Good morning,’ declared the lady standing on the porch. ‘I am a local artist and I am hoping that you have got a few minutes of your precious time to allow me to show you what I make.’

  Not really wanting to do so but feeling mean if she didn’t Ruth nodded in agreement.

  The auburn-haired lady bent down to unzip the small wheelie suitcase by her side and withdrew from it a dark crimson box. She removed the lid to display a sculptured flower made of soap.

  ‘I’m a sculptor and I work in different materials. This happens to be in handmade soap which I purchased at a craft fair. It doesn’t represent any particular flower head, more an artist’s impression of how beautiful flowers can be,’ she said.

  ‘It is exquisite,’ said Ruth, holding it up to her nose and inhaling deeply, ‘and what a lovely fragrance. Do you have others?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ exclaimed the caller. ‘Would you like to see some of them, they are in assorted colours with different scents?’

  ‘Come into the hall and you can get a few out for me to look at. If the price is reasonable I might be interested in buying several as they would make unusual gifts. I’m always looking for something different to give my friends,’ said Ruth.

  Before Ruth had even opened the front door Joe had edged round the side of the house and opened the gate. When he heard Lizzie engage Ruth in conversation he moved hurriedly down the brick path and opened the unlocked door into the home office. The computer monitor was glowing steadily and papers were spread out on the desk. He looked around quickly for any sign of the pouch but saw none. To the right of the desk were two three-drawer grey metal filing cabinets. Pulling on the middle drawer of the cabinet closest to him, he was relieved to find it unlocked. He rifled through each drawer as quickly as he dared without making a mess of the papers in the various files but could find nothing. Looking hastily at his watch he realised he was fast running out of time as Lizzie had told him before that he had a maximum of six minutes before getting himself back to the side of the house unseen. Aside from the desk with its computer system and the two filing cabinets there was little else in the room except a spare chair and a small rectangular coffee table on which was perched a glass vase with a few carnations.

  ‘There’s nothing else here,’ he murmured softly to himself. He took a last glance at the bits and pieces on the desk: a type of blotter, an electric clock, a desktop calendar displaying a picture of a waterfront scene and a yellow plastic tubular pencil tidy from which poked pencils from the tallest tube and a variety of pens from a smaller one. Sitting at an angle in the mouth of the shortest tube was a white cylinder with a green cap. Something made him think it was important and he pocketed it instinctively. He had closed the home office door, retraced his steps up the brick pathway and closed the gate behind him by the time he overheard Lizzie saying goodbye. Ruth was very satisfied with her purchases. She had bought four sculpted soaps, one with the scent of the herb rosemary which she earmarked for her allotment friend with the same name. She returned to her office and continued her research on the internet.

  Lizzie waited for Joe in the prearranged place two streets away.

  ‘Have you got it?’ she demanded immediately.

  ‘I looked everywhere for that pouch thing you described but there was nothing like that there,’ he answered.

  ‘Did you go through the filing cabinets?’

  ‘Yes, every drawer. They held nothing other than files full of papers!’

  ‘What about the desk?’ Lizzie persisted.

  ‘It didn’t have drawers, it was just a shaped worktop with a leg at each corner,’ he retorted. ‘If it had been there I would have found it.’

  She sighed and fell silent considering what to do next.

  ‘What I did find is this,’ Joe said, pulling the cylinder from his trouser pocket. ‘I don’t know what it is but I have the uncanny feeling that it is important.’

  Lizzie turned the white cylinder over in her hands and removed the lid. Pulling out the contents slightly, she felt a kind of crispness that she associated with banknotes.

  ‘OK Joe, here is your fee,’ she said, taking out an envelope from the wheelie case and handing it to him. Your train back into London leaves at 11.42 and you’ve got twenty minute
s to catch it so get going.’

  Lizzie walked away in the opposite direction from Joe, turned a corner, found a convenient hedge to hide behind and removed her wig. She donned a baseball cap and put on a large T-shirt over her smarter top and went and stood at the bus stop where she had arranged for Ron to pick her up. The least Joe knew about her the better and her name wasn’t what he called her, Evelyn.

  Sitting facing one another in a quiet corner of the restaurant they had enjoyed a meal of lasagne and salad. Not just any lasagne, Doug had pointed out, but one following a true Italian recipe. Washed down with a Chianti from Tuscany, chatting had come easily to them and there had been no awkward moments or strained silences.

  ‘I’m glad you like Italian as much as I do,’ Doug said. ‘My ex-wife would never have come to a restaurant like this,’ he continued, gesturing with his outstretched arm at the general decor and small wooden tables without tablecloths standing on an uneven stone paved floor. She was a snob and only enjoyed eating out at posh places where she could be seen by her so-called chums. It would cost a bomb to eat out with her and really I didn’t enjoy it half as much as dining here with you this evening.’