Unsafe Deposit

by J. E. Kellenberger

  ‘I don’t care whether you’ve lost the crown jewels, you still can’t come in here,’ roared back the gruff voice, ‘this is private property and if you don’t leave I’ll call the police.’

  The gruff voice belonged to a large burly man wearing an orange hi-visibility jacket over dark green dungarees. He strode over to Doug and stood nose to nose in a confrontational stance.

  ‘Well what’s it to be Mister? Leave right now of your own accord or do you prefer the police?’

  ‘Look,’ replied Doug as calmly as he could, ‘something important to me was thrown away in one of those black plastic bags without my consent. I’d just like to sift through their contents to find it. It shouldn’t take long. Surely that’s possible.’

  ‘No, it’s not possible. How many times must I tell you that?’ answered back the gruff voice impatiently.

  Doug’s right hand reached smoothly inside his jacket and brought out his wallet. He removed the remaining three twenty pound notes and held them close to the gruff voice’s chest.

  ‘Are you sure it’s not possible?’ he enquired again.

  ‘I’ll take a look,’ said Gruff Voice after no more than a moment’s hesitation. As his hand wrapped around the notes he continued in a more conciliatory tone, ‘but you’ll have to wait outside the gates. This is a licensed waste transfer station and only permit holders and employees are allowed in. What was it you were looking for?’

  ‘A plastic sandwich carton,’ replied Doug, ‘like you buy in a supermarket. I put something in it and sealed it with sticky tape.’

  This information elicited a wrinkling of Gruff Voice’s eyebrows, a form of mocking gesture. He directed Doug out by a narrow side door adjacent to the double gates where he was left to kick his heels. Further protest Doug judged would be futile. Gruff Voice was a man of limited intelligence and an even lower threshold of sympathy and he just had to hope that he would fulfil his side of the bargain.

  The work-shy bloke on benefits pushed the man-sized broom with long stiff bristles forwards painfully slowly and pulled it back at an equally funereal pace. He didn’t want to be there but the lady at the government jobs centre had told him that there were stricter laws in place now and that his benefits would cease unless he cooperated and tried some form of paid work. He’d never worked before and he didn’t like it. He hated clocking on and clocking off. He detested the dungarees and jacket he’d been given to wear. He liked his Armani jeans and Nike polo shirt. He liked being free to wander where he wished. This was his fifth day of work and he would find some excuse not to come back the following week. He’d finish today and clock off as rules required but he wouldn’t be clocking on ever again. Gruff Voice waddled over to him. He hated Gruff Voice for the tirade of criticisms that constantly spewed from his mean mouth.

  ‘Haven’t you finished that yet you lazy bugger!’ blurted Gruff Voice. ‘Prefer to be in the West End in your designer jeans, would you? Well, whilst you’re wearing your dungarees sort through that mound of trash which arrived on the last skip and stash all the black bin bags in a neat pile to one side. I’ll give you three minutes max, it’s worth a fiver to you.’

  The cash incentive, small as it was, produced the desired rapid response and Gruff Voice was soon upending the bin bags one by one and sifting through their exposed contents. He found the sandwich carton in the sixth bag. It had something black inside it. As he turned to make his way back towards the entrance gates his mobile rang. He listened intently to his supervisor’s instructions and pressed the end-call button with a muttered expletive. He fished out a five pound note from his wallet, gave it to the benefits bloke and told him to hand the old sandwich carton to the man waiting for it outside the narrow door. He walked off swiftly in the direction of the office in complete contrast to the benefits bloke who ambled across the huge concrete forecourt towards the entrance as if bidden by his union to go slow. Turning the carton over in his hands he observed the contents through the dirty plastic, a small black pouch with woven drawstrings. It looked familiar somehow. He pulled back the sticky tape and removed the pouch. The pouch material was furry yet soft and silky. He’d handled something like this before but he couldn’t remember when or where. Through a crack between the double gates Doug had been able to observe the men rummaging through the bin bags, the discovery of the sandwich carton and its handing over to the younger man who was now taking an interminable time to reach him. He had to force himself not to shout out to the workman to hurry up but Doug’s patience ran out when he saw the man pulling back the sticky tape and removing the pouch.

  ‘Oi!’ yelled Doug, ‘that’s my property and I’ve paid to have it returned to me.’

  Unaware that he was being observed, the benefits bloke jumped in surprise, hastily shoving the pouch back into the grimy carton and running his fingers along the edges of the sticky tape, hoping that it would adhere.

  ‘OK, keep your hair on. I’m coming.’

  ‘About bloody time,’ mumbled Doug under his breath as he heard the side door’s latch being released and saw the door swing open.

  For a second both men stared at one another in recognition of a previous encounter but with a mutual inability to determine the context in which they had met.

  ‘Here,’ said the workman, holding out the carton in his extended hand, ‘take it!’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Doug, pulling back the carton’s flap and easing the pouch’s drawstrings to glimpse the contents within. ‘Thanks.’

  Doug turned abruptly on his heels and made his way to the street to look for a cash machine and a taxi back to the office. In the excitement of retrieving the gems he forgot the warning in his mind about the recycling operative. But the man he had just seen did not forget him. Back in the unloading bays he thought about him while he was sweeping the mess from the bin bags back into the general heap. When the buzzer sounded for the end of his shift he removed his jacket and dungarees, a bestselling line manufactured by WareWork, and stuffed them in his locker before clocking off. He would tell the benefits lady about the back pain the work had caused. That would shut her up. As he donned his red baseball cap outside the employees’ exit it suddenly came to him. The man had been wearing cycling shorts the last time he saw him. He, Kevin, had put the pouch into the cyclist’s pannier. He remembered Ron had said that the pouch contained something very valuable. Jewels, thought Kevin, they must be jewel stones. It’s my lucky day. I wonder how much Ron would pay for information leading to their recovery. Life suddenly seemed a whole lot brighter for Kevin.

  ‘Hallo Kevin,’ answered Ron, responding to the ringing of his Kevin-specific mobile.

  ‘Long time, no hear,’ said Kevin, believing this to be a snappy opener.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ replied Ron, giving nothing away.

  ‘Got some info,’ said Kevin, trying again to interest Ron.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes really, black pouch containing jewels. Remember that?’

  Ron immediately sat bolt upright in his swivel chair. He certainly did remember that!

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Ron, still playing it cool.

  ‘Interested?’ asked Kevin.

  ‘Possibly,’ replied Ron. ‘Depends what info you have.’

  ‘I know who’s got them,’ came back a smug voice.

  ‘Who’s that then?’ enquired Ron, a fraction too keenly.

  ‘It’ll cost you,’ replied a jubilant Kevin. He had never had the upper hand on Ron before and he was enjoying every second of feeling the supremo.

  Ron would have loved to have told him to get lost but his instincts told him to play along. He would get his own back on this smart arse later on.

  ‘What’s your price then?’

  ‘Five grand!’ said Kevin, curling his lips into a smirk.

  ‘Having a joke are you Kevin?’

  ‘No
joke, five grand,’ repeated Kevin.

  ‘And you know where they are?’

  There was hesitation at the other end of the line. The silence was audible. He doesn’t know where they are, thought Ron. His grand plan is in tatters and he’s just realising it.

  ‘OK,’ said Ron, knowing that Kevin couldn’t reply to that question without admitting his ignorance. ‘Listen up, tell me who’s got them and when you last saw them and I’ll give you a hundred quid. If I can recover them from the information you give me I’ll give you a further nine hundred. I can’t say fairer than that!’

  Ron and Lizzie acted rapidly on the news that the cyclist, in his business suit, had left the waste transfer station only ten minutes previously. They knew where he lived and where he worked and what he looked like. The gems were very obviously not in safekeeping contrary to the note in the jiffy bag as he had had to go to the dump to retrieve them and ergo, as Ron had said, they must be on his person and because he was dressed for business he was probably heading back to his office where he had presumably been storing them. Lizzie had already calculated that if he took the tube it would take him at least twenty minutes to get back to the City because he would have to change lines and a taxi wouldn’t be any quicker at this time of the working day. She reckoned that if she left Ludgate Hill straightaway she could be outside his office within ten minutes and they could put a well-worked plan into action to relieve him of his booty.

  Doug had been unable to find a cash dispenser but had just scraped together sufficient loose change for the underground fare when he remembered his prepaid travel card in his shirt pocket. He had been patting his inner jacket pocket regularly to reassure himself that the pouch and contents were safe. He walked briskly up Gresham Street and swung round into Ironmonger Lane almost at the trot; he couldn’t wait to get back to the office to restore some sort of normality to his day which so far had been a hiatus of anxiety. Not far from the building’s entrance his attention was diverted by a woman calling for assistance. She appeared to have one foot caught somehow and when he went to help he could see that the high heel of one of her shoes was wedged firmly between two slats of an iron drain cover.

  ‘Thanks so much for stopping to help,’ said Lizzie in her most beguiling manner. ‘I stepped off the pavement to cross over the road and didn’t notice the drain cover.’

  ‘I think you’ll have to take your foot out of the shoe as it looks fixed in the gap between the slats,’ said Doug, extending his arm for her to hold onto to maintain balance.

  Doug crouched down and wiggled the shoe back and forth until it came free.

  ‘Could I just hold onto you whilst I put the shoe back on?’ requested Lizzie, who without waiting for his answer put one hand on the back of the semi-crouching Doug and the other on his jacket lapel. She wriggled her foot into the shoe and stood up to her full height of five-foot-three-inches with three-inch heels. Doug stood up too and straightened his tie.

  ‘I always do something daft like that when I’m wearing new shoes!’ she exclaimed, charming her rescuer. ‘Thank you so much for your help.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ replied Doug, already moving off at a sharp pace.

  He mounted the front steps two at a time when he arrived at his office block and patted his inner breast pocket but the smile of comfort that was just about to break out onto his lips died instantly. The pocket was no longer bulging, it was as flat as a pancake and when he pulled his jacket open he could see that there was nothing in the pocket, no wallet and no pouch. ‘No,’ he cried out loud with anguish several times attracting the amused attention of the concierge, this can’t be happening! He turned towards the street in dismay and caught a glimpse of the woman he had just helped about to round the corner into Cheapside as quickly as her stilettos permitted. A cruel image of her hand diving into his breast pocket left him in no doubt that he had just been the victim of a cleverly worked pickpocket’s trick. Taking to his heels, he raced down the lane, turning left into Cheapside. Here the pavement was busy with office workers making their way to Bank underground to go home but he could see his mugger ahead, her auburn hair standing out in a sea of more muted colours and it was only so fast that you could move in a pair of stilettos like that.

  Lizzie’s flat shoes were in her fake designer handbag together with a thin, light blue top and a supermarket carrier bag. She needed to get to the ladies’ toilets at Bank underground station as soon as possible. There she would don the top over the smarter one she was wearing, put on the flat shoes, remove the wig and pop her conspicuous handbag into the white carrier bag. Ron would meet her outside the toilets and they would travel home together as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. Ron had originally wanted his sister to pass the spoils over to him in the recess of a shop front but Lizzie had insisted that that was too dangerous because of all the closed-circuit cameras operating in the vicinity and he had given way to her point of view. They would change lines on their journey home and, at some point, the wallet and pouch would find their way into Ron’s briefcase.

  By the time Lizzie descended the steps into the bowels of the tube station from the Cheapside entrance Doug was within a few strides of her. Had it not been for the bustling crowds he would have been able to have put a hand firmly on her shoulder, thwarting her further flight; as it was there was always somebody in the way preventing him from doing so. Lizzie’s passage around the subterranean, semi-circular concourse of one of London’s busiest underground stations was unerring as she fought her way past passengers diving across her towards the tickets machines and escalators. The ladies’ conveniences were located at a far end of the concourse beyond various kiosks. Here the throng of passengers had thinned and Doug could clearly see the sign above the turnstile entrance. He stayed back behind a support pillar, watching her fumble in her handbag for the necessary coins to release the heavy metal mechanism of the turnstile, something for which she had not bargained. A tall, slim man standing nearby, appearing to be reading an evening newspaper saw her difficulty and pulled a handful of change from his pocket. She turned towards him as if she knew precisely where he would be and picked two coins from his open hand. Standing calmly behind the pillar where the accomplice, as Doug presumed him to be, could not see him, Doug waited patiently for Lizzie’s reappearance and it was not long before a woman, diminutive in height and greatly changed in look, pushed through the exit gate of the turnstile and linked up with the tall, slim man. They turned around and headed back, arm in arm, towards the escalators and Doug followed at a safe distance with just a momentary panic as he approached the ticket machines before he remembered that his Oyster card for ticketless travel on the underground, which he used on rainy days instead of a Boris bike, was in his shirt pocket and not in his stolen wallet.

  All passengers going down the steep escalators were headed for the busy Central Line travelling either to the western suburbs or east towards Essex. Ron and Lizzie chose east and Doug followed. The train was packed but two young boys were persuaded by their parents to offer their seats to the still vivacious-looking Lizzie and her companion. From a packed standing position by the sliding doors Doug observed the furtive transfer of two packets from Lizzie’s carrier bag to Ron’s briefcase which he promptly put behind his legs for security, otherwise they appeared to Doug to be carefree without any worry of being followed or confronted. At Mile End station they got off and changed to the District Line for their onward journey to Barking and it wasn’t until several stations farther down the line that Ron realised that when they had changed trains he had picked up Lizzie’s carrier bag instead of the briefcase. At Barking they walked slowly along the platform to the way out, numbed by their mistake. Ron had half-heartedly suggested they could ask at Lost Property if the briefcase had been handed in. Lizzie had reminded him that the wallet of a Mr Douglas Watson was in it and if they did that they might be writing their own jail sentence.

  Doug had seen
the Lindseys get out at Mile End and was just about to do so too when he spotted that neither Ron nor Lizzie was carrying the briefcase. As the doors started closing he ducked back inside the train and within seconds it was again speeding through the tunnelling system. Still crowded, he pushed his way from the automatic doors to the area where the Lindseys had been seated and saw the briefcase being picked up by one of the young boys who had vacated his seat for Lizzie. The parents examined the briefcase and Doug overheard them discussing if they would find a Lost Property office when they got off at the next stop, Stratford. At the manned section of the ticket barrier the father recounted to the guard how and where he had found the briefcase and on the completion in biro of a short official form he handed it over. Doug watched thoughtfully as the scenario played out. Backing away from the exit gates he took the down escalator down and at the bottom turned one hundred and eighty degrees right and walked energetically up the ascending escalator back to the exit gates hoping that his cheeks would have reddened sufficiently to convince the guard on the manned gate of his anxiety.

  ‘I’ve left my briefcase on the train in error,’ said a breathless Doug to the elderly ticket collector who was standing by a sentry-box-style booth which housed odds and ends below a narrow waist-high shelf on which various pieces of paperwork sat. ‘Has it been handed in?’

  The briefcase stood on the floor amongst the odds and ends and when Doug saw it he pointed excitedly at it.

  ‘That’s it, that’s the one, thank God for that.’

  ‘Hold on a moment, Sir, I can’t just give it to you. How do I know it’s yours? Paperwork is already underway for it.’

  ‘It’s definitely mine,’ responded Doug, ‘and you can prove that because my wallet is in it and my driving licence with photo ID and name is in the wallet. Just open the briefcase and check please.’

  ‘That’s against procedure, Sir. I’m not allowed to tamper with lost property, it gets sent off to our headquarters in Baker Street, the staff there are the only people allowed to meddle with lost articles.’