by Tim Flanagan
Sometimes the most innocent-looking people can hide a secret. Take my current target, Arthur Longsocks—his day started very cautiously. He waited to leave his home on Wensleydale Drive at nine o’clock in the morning, knowing that the local schoolchildren were safely confined behind the playground bars. Arthur leaned on his stick, playing the part of the old man nicely. The people he did happen to meet on his journey would respectfully allow him space to walk along the pavement or politely wait in doorways to let him pass. This was a route he was so familiar with that he knew where every uneven paving slab stuck up dangerously or wobbled unpredictably beneath his stick. Arthur kept the hand that wasn’t holding onto his walking stick safely tucked inside his pocket, not to hold onto the lining of his trousers to prevent them from falling down but to hold onto the treasure he was escorting to the drop-off point. Arthur was not your normal elderly man. He needed to be extra cautious on his journey—he couldn’t risk falling and breaking his hip and having a helpful paramedic going through his pockets.
At the corner of Waxatosis Avenue and Joloop Street, he stopped and went into a small shop, collected his newspaper and, much to the shopkeeper’s frustration, handed over a twenty-pound note as payment. He carefully put his change into a small purse, placed it into a carrier bag along with the newspaper, then continued on his journey.
After a few moments, Arthur stopped again at a small supermarket. He wandered the aisles, collected a carton of milk, smiled sweetly at two old ladies arguing over the last bottle of sherry, and went to the self-service checkout. He carefully scanned the milk carton, took a twenty-pound note from his pocket, and fed it into the machine. His change was dispensed, which he put carefully into his purse.
Farther along the pavement, he stopped at Costbucks, a trendy coffee shop. He watched the barista noisily mix up his coffee with an unimpressed tut, paid with another twenty from his pocket, and again placed the change in his purse.
You may be wondering how I know all this. For the last few days, I’ve been trailing Arthur, hidden beneath an assortment of disguises and clothes that I found in the abandoned clothes boxes of my dead granddad, watching him perform his morning ritual (Arthur, not my granddad), which was almost identical every single day. But this is not the ritual of a lonely old man—this is the ritual of a criminal mastermind.
As I knew that Arthur followed the same route every morning, all I had to do was wait for him to appear in Costbucks, ready to pick up the trail and continue on the next stage of his journey, one I had so far failed to observe completely. In order to make a full report to Mr Burbridge, I wanted to make sure I had all the details correct.
I sipped at my coffee and wiped some of the frothy milk from my top lip with the back of my hand. Before Arthur arrived, I quickly learnt that trendy cups of coffee did not mix well with facial additions—one facial addition in particular, my fake moustache made from the trimmed fur from the cat. The steam and foam were beginning to melt the glue I’d found in the garage that was holding the moustache in place. Not wishing to look as though I were eating an exotic caterpillar, I decided to remove it, resulting in a rather confused look from a young girl sitting with her mother at the next table. It took her so much by surprise that she stopped cramming a muffin into her mouth for a whole second.
I had found a table by the door so that I could watch the room—or, more importantly, Arthur—without making it seem too obvious. I had brought a sheet of paper and pencil with me. Every few minutes, I looked up from the piece of paper and stuck the end of the pencil in my mouth, chewing it thoughtfully, pretending to use my immense brainpower to solve a problem. This gave me the perfect opportunity to glance around the room without drawing too much attention to myself, especially now that the moustache was safely tucked inside my pocket.
Now that he had his coffee, Arthur sat down and began flicking through his newspaper. I could tell he wasn’t particularly interested in the local news, but I knew he hadn’t bought the newspaper to keep himself up to date with the hair salon price war that was gripping the town—buying the newspaper was simply part of his plan.
And besides, Arthur didn’t have much hair anyway, so he wouldn’t be interested in which salon was offering the cheapest cuts.
Arthur sipped his small latte then awkwardly folded the newspaper back up and placed it into the carrier bag beside the carton of milk and purse that contained all of the change he had collected so far that morning.
As soon as he’d struggled back to his feet, he took the empty ceramic cup over to the counter so the barista didn’t have to tidy up after him. Based on appearances, Arthur seemed like a pleasant old man who was kind and thoughtful to everyone he came across. But what no one realised was that Arthur was conning them all and had been for some time now.
He leaned heavily on his stick as he made his way towards the automatic doors so he could continue his journey along the road. His ghostly eye glanced briefly in my direction. Had I been spotted? I waited a few seconds so it didn’t look too obvious that I was tailing him. I knew that Arthur wouldn’t be able to get very far very fast, so I could afford to wait slightly. I slurped the rest of my coffee, leaving a bubbly white moustache on my top lip, gathered the paper and pencil, and left. From my previous observations, I already knew the direction Arthur would be heading in.
Farther along the pavement, I could see the hunched figure moving between other pedestrians—his tired grey jacket that was darker around the collar from the grease he used to keep his hair combed back and creased in folds across the back from repeatedly sitting down was easy to spot. Arthur nodded politely to a postman then hobbled into a bakery. I stopped in front of the window and sniffed the warm, sweet air that drifted out of the open door. I licked my lips and contemplated treating myself to a chocolate yum-yum, but my eye was drawn back to Arthur. As with all of the other shops he had visited, he paid the saleswoman with a twenty-pound note from his pocket. I could see that she was not very pleased about this; however, being too polite to complain about old people’s eccentricities, she scraped together as much change as she could from two of the cash tills and handed it back to Arthur together with a small, fresh loaf of sliced bread. Arthur, following routine, placed the change into his now-bulging purse and returned it to the carrier bag.
The next stop would be important.
Up until now, I hadn’t managed to follow Arthur on his entire journey from a safe distance. The only way I could keep track of him was to stay close to him without being too obvious.
Arthur left the bakery and hobbled along the pavement until he came to a large, wide opening between two shops. Above the opening was a decorative iron arch that led to the indoor market. It had taken three days of legwork, talking to shop owners and spending hours watching Arthur, to get to the point in the investigation where I could understand what was going on. Arthur Longsocks was at the centre of the syndicate—in fact, this grey, withered man was the mastermind of the whole operation.
Arthur stepped under the iron arch and disappeared into the indoor market. I quickened my step, not wanting to lose him amongst the crowd of people. As soon as I reached the arch, I stuck my head in and looked for Arthur. Fortunately, he hadn’t gone far. He had stopped at a second-hand bookstall and was examining the back of a well-thumbed large-print thriller. He paid in his usual fashion, merged with the rest of the crowd, and made his way deeper inside the market.
I moved at a similar speed, matching his progress but always keeping a slight distance. At a local farmers’ stall, he bought a couple of sausages and tried the free samples on the fudge stand. He then examined a few items of antiques at another stall, but then I saw him do something that was quite out of character with the rest of his routine. Up until now, Arthur had bought small, low-priced items, paying for each with a twenty-pound note and putting the change into a separate purse. At the antiques stall, Arthur picked up a small blue-and-white vase. From a distance, it looked plain and not particularly special, bu
t Arthur had obviously taken a liking to it. He talked to the stallholder about the vase and haggled over the price. Once they agreed, Arthur pulled a roll of twenty-pound notes from his trouser pocket and peeled off several to pay for the vase. This time, there was no change.
The vase went into the carrier bag alongside the newspaper, carton of milk, loaf of bread, second-hand book, sausages, and purse that, by now, must have been fat to bursting from all of the change he’d acquired during the morning.
I squeezed through the crowd of people as Arthur walked over to yet another stall. An elderly lady was sitting knitting on a camping chair with a thermos of tea open beside her. As she saw Arthur approaching, she stopped her knitting and smiled, clearly recognising him, then nervously glanced from side to side. Apart from myself, no one else was paying them any attention. The stall displayed multi-coloured woollen knitted items including tea cosies, mittens, hats and scarves, yellow ducks, and oversized handbags. I felt an uncontrollable shudder travel down my spine, recalling the years of itchy pullovers that Aunty Agnes had made me wear every Christmas—quite awful. And it seemed that a lot of other people were of the same opinion—wandering shoppers immediately bypassed her stall, turning away as if offended by the gaudy colours and impractical items and giving the stall a wide berth in case any of the knitwear was contagious. The last thing anyone wanted after an innocent trip to the indoor market was to arrive home with an unexpected case of woolly fever.
Repressing the natural urge to vomit, I forced myself to continue to watch what was happening at the stall between Arthur and the knitter. He looked at a few items before picking up a pair of thick woollen rainbow-coloured socks. He pulled the hand that held onto his roll of banknotes from his pocket and pushed something into the neck of one of the socks that, from that distance, looked like the remains of the roll of money. He then handed the socks back to the woman, who quickly put them under the table. In return, she brought out a cardboard tube of sweets and passed them to him, which he automatically slipped into his carrier bag.
I realised immediately what I had just witnessed—the exchange. Obviously, the old knitting lady was part of the syndicate that was helping Arthur to distribute the twenty-pound notes.
From what I’d found out so far, I suspected that Arthur Longsocks was making fake twenty-pound notes and using them to buy small items, receiving genuine money in return. That was why he kept his change separate to the roll of twenties he carried. But this went wider. Some of the other pensioners were also in on the act. What I had just witnessed was an exchange of money. The old lady received the fake twenties from Arthur, and presumably, inside the sweet tube was some genuine money. Once a note was in the system, it would get passed around from hand to hand, from sale to sale, or even end up in a different part of the country before getting filtered at the Bank of England in London, where it had probably been brought to Mr Burbridge’s attention.
Without a second thought for the safety and purity of my eyes, I chanced another glance towards the knitting stall and noticed that Arthur had already moved on. I scanned the heads of the shoppers in front of me, looking for Arthur, but couldn’t see him. Then, as two people parted, I noticed his hunched figure heading towards the rear exit onto Yakly Street. I manoeuvred my way through the crowds, past the old lady, who was now knitting something that looked vaguely like a multi-coloured chequered aviation windsock. Arthur disappeared through the exit and turned left.
After grabbing a couple of jam and chutney samples from a stall I passed, I finally reached the exit. Arthur had vanished. For an elderly man, he certainly managed to move fast when he wanted. But he couldn’t have gone far in such a short space of time. I began walking in the direction he had turned, looking through every shop window to see if he was there. The first one was empty, but then I caught a glimpse of him, tucked at the back of an antiques shop, talking to the owner. I stopped walking and looked through the window, studying the items in the window as if I were interested in them but all the time keeping Arthur in the corner of my eye. He pulled the vase out of his bag and handed it to the owner.
At that point, I turned towards the road, distracted by the wailing siren of an ambulance that charged past me. It was only a second or two at most, but the next thing I heard was the gentle tinkle of a metal bell as Arthur opened the door, stepped onto the pavement, and walked right past me and headed back in the direction he had come from. His morning’s business concluded, he was heading home. I already knew where he lived so didn’t worry about following him back. Instead, I went inside the antiques shop.
‘That’s nice,’ I said to the shopkeeper, who was arranging a blue-and-white vase inside a display cabinet.
‘This? I’ve only just bought it myself.’ He pulled the vase back out and handed it over for me to look at. ‘There’s this old guy, sells some of his items to me when he’s a bit short. Taken quite a few bits from him over the last month. Nice old guy, really. Sad that he needs to sell things just to buy some food, so I always give him a good price, usually a bit more than it’s worth, but I feel like I’m helping him out.’
I turned the vase round in my hand, looked at the base because I’d seen so many experts on television do that, nodded as if I knew what I was looking at, and handed it back to the shopkeeper.
I took another few minutes walking around the shop, looking at some of the other antiques, thinking about the last piece in my jigsaw. I realised that this whole operation was purely a system for converting the fake money into real currency. Arthur was also buying large items to resell at profit if possible. I thanked the shopkeeper and left.
Arthur’s disguise as a harmless old man certainly worked well on everyone else, but I was now more certain than ever that he was the leader of a counterfeiting crime ring. To date, including the old knitting lady, I knew of three other people who’d bought fake banknotes from Arthur to use themselves. All elderly. All above suspicion. As a morally upstanding, currently poorly dressed (I was in disguise, mainly so none of my friends would recognise me and stop me in the street) but determined boy, it was my duty to uncover the evidence and place it before Mr Burbridge. I had an obligation, not only as a Special Patrol Youth but also as a young person who automatically got the blame for every negative thing that happened, to help justice prevail.
I collected my pedal bike from where I’d left it chained to a park railing and rode back home in a thoughtful mood. I needed proof that Arthur was copying twenty-pound notes, and the only way to do that was to expose his production line.
CHAPTER FOUR
Breaking In
The following morning, I woke early, went downstairs whilst Mum and Dad argued about the length of time each had spent in the bathroom, and went into the garage. No one in our family was particularly interested in mechanics, so the garage was used mainly as a storeroom for all the boxes of junk that, for some reason, never seemed to get disposed of. I had converted a corner of the garage into an area where I could put on my disguise without anyone noticing. I’d found an old box of dressing-up clothes from when I was a child, as well as a few boxes of Aunty Agnes’s deceased husband, Ronald’s, clothes. Most smelled like moth balls and damp, but a few of the items of clothing seemed safe to wear after a heavy spray of deodorant.
Today, I wore a pair of spectacles with the glass lenses pushed out so I could see where I was going, a shirt, and a long black coat. I was going for a young-businessman look today, complete with rolled-up newspaper that I’d taken from the cat’s litter tray. I removed any of the paper that looked a little yellow and damp and made my way back to Wensleydale Drive and stood on one corner where I could see Arthur’s house and waited for him to leave on his usual round. As the hands of my pink plastic watch hit nine o’clock, Arthur’s door opened, and the old man stepped onto the path, walking stick in hand and his other hand buried deep in his trouser pocket, no doubt clutching his rolled-up fake notes. I unfolded the assortment of random pages from the newspaper and pretended
to read them while I waited for Arthur to turn the corner and walk out of sight.
This was the opportunity I’d been waiting for. If he followed his usual routine, visited the same shops, and had a coffee before entering the market, I would have at least a two-hour gap before he returned. I couldn’t allow for the extra time he had taken yesterday when he purchased the vase then resold it to the antique shop. I had to assume that at the very least he would buy his small items, deliver some fake notes, then return to his house. To be certain of not being noticed, I wanted to be out of the house by eleven o’clock and before Arthur returned for his lunch.
Fortunately, Wensleydale Drive was quiet. Most of the other residents were families whose children had successfully been delivered to school and the houses abandoned for the rest of the day. Before Arthur had left his house, I’d watched one of his elderly neighbours being collected by a minibus, no doubt on her way to play as much bingo as she could handle without increasing her adrenaline levels to something that would rival a child experiencing a particularly heavy sugar rush. No curtains twitched, and the only noise was the sound of a lawn mower coming from the back of someone’s house.
I walked casually along the pavement until I reached Arthur’s front garden. It was a square patch of neatly mown grass with a round concrete plinth in the centre. Standing on the plinth was an ornamental gnome, its colours faded from prolonged exposure to sunlight, but it stood there like a guard who’d taken fashion tips from a circus clown.
I pressed the doorbell and heard a tacky electronic music box chime out “Rule Britannia” from somewhere inside the house. I knew the house was empty, but I didn’t want to arouse any suspicion from anyone who might be looking in my direction, so I had to look like a casual caller. I resisted mouthing the words along with the door chime all the way to the end. It didn’t feel respectful to the royal family to leave halfway through. Predictably, no one answered the door, so I moved around the front of the house, past the bay window, and round the side to the back garden.