Unsafe Deposit

by J. E. Kellenberger

  The guard had told him to use the last carriage of the train as this was the only one in which bicycles were permitted up to four o’clock and the start of the rush hour. The train was fairly crowded and having left his bike in the designated area Doug found a place where he could sit and put his panniers on the free seat next to him. On advice from one of the experienced grand tourers he had taped his house keys to the inside bottom of one of his saddle bags. Padded cycle shorts he had been told were apparently great for the crutch but rubbish for carrying keys safely. The bum bag Doug had favoured was full with banknotes and coins and on hot days he had found it cumbersome and restrictive and so it was usually dumped in one of the panniers for the duration of that day’s leg. Retrieving his keys from the left pannier, his hand came into contact with a small, soft, velvety object. Loosening the drawstrings and opening the mouth of the pouch, he was amazed to find it contained marbles. Pulling out one to study more closely, he twisted it around in his fingers looking at the grey glass with the milky swirls and the alphabetic letter ‘r’ embossed on it. The panniers were half sitting on the seat and half on his thigh and a bend in the track caused a jolt which resulted in the marble shooting out from his fingers, bouncing off a knee and falling to the floor. Bending down to recover the marble, Doug had to twist around to feel for it under the seat and in so doing his heel came down on it with a crunch. Finally, almost kneeling, he was able to see and pick up several pieces of broken glass which seemed to have shattered like a casing around an inner core. Holding the gleaming inner core in his palm, he could see it had facets and he knew intuitively that it was a diamond. Disbelieving, he sat unmoving for several minutes trying to take in the reality of this situation. Still stunned, he stuffed the core and glass pieces into his jacket pocket and pulled the pouch drawstrings tight. Slipping it back into the bottom of his pannier below his wet-weather over trousers, he came across another unexpected and unwelcomed shape. Looking deeply into the pannier, he found a short cylinder with a small green lid and some coloured lettering on the plastic tube. Confusion, followed by anxiety, set in. He seemed unable to think clearly. He remained quiet and motionless until he got out at his stop. Getting out too were Kevin and Susan.

  Even with a bike stand it was a fiddly process re-attaching the heavy panniers to the rear wheel luggage rack and with his mind not fully on the job it took several minutes. Looking up frequently from the task Doug was struck by a man lingering on the platform whose face he felt he had seen at St. Pancras and one that he had definitely seen on the Eurostar train. He was also beginning to recall a scene at the Café Rosah when a table had been upturned and a glass of something or other had crashed onto the tiled ground. He and his companions had taken cover from the midday sun and were lunching in the comparatively cool indoor section of the café but near the entrance and had heard the commotion when it happened. He had also heard this man shout out “Hallo, Tommy”. He had a London accent, of that Doug was sure. In those few moments the mental stupor of the previous minutes was replaced by a thousand thoughts whirring through Doug’s mind in the same nanosecond. What were these things? Why were they in his panniers? Who had put them there? Who is the bloke who seems to be watching me? Is he the police? If not then who does he represent? But to these questions no answers were forthcoming. By the time he had wheeled his bike slowly along the platform, down two flights of stone stairs and then along the underground passageway which crossed under the railway lines before rising steeply to emerge by platform one, his legal training had kicked in and he knew what to do; he would have to find a police station and hand them in. It would be the only way he could ensure that they were returned to the beneficial owner and the only way that he could protect himself from these strange and stressful happenings. He must resist the temptation to confront this man; he didn’t look like the police although you could never tell these days and anyhow what would he say if he did: “Sorry mate I trod on one of the marbles by mistake and here are the glass shards and the inner diamond core!” No, he must get away from him somehow, hide the objects if necessary but get them into safe custody with the police. From the station a long narrow pathway led between the railway embankment to the right and rough ground to the left climbing all the time until it emerged adjacent to the council allotments. The path was at least three quarters of a mile long with a sharp turn to the left near its end and if he peddled quickly enough he should be able to round the bend and escape into the winding streets of the small town without being seen by his tail.

  Grateful for his newfound fitness but fuelled mostly by fear, Doug got out of the saddle in the style of a rider in a Tour de France mountain stage and sprinted up the pathway. He rounded the sharp bend where he dismounted immediately. Edging cautiously towards the bend’s apex, he checked if he was still being followed. A chasing figure was running steadily up the rising pathway. Doug turned back to his bike with the intention of speeding off into town and losing himself amongst the traffic and pedestrians but when he pushed down hard on a pedal his foot met with no resistance. He didn’t need to hear the clinks to know what had happened. His chain had come off! Cursing the timing of such rotten luck, he knew better than to waste precious moments trying to feed it back onto the sprockets. He had tried on occasions before and always failed unless the bike was upside down and even with tips from his seventy-year-old mentor he had had zero success. Near where he was standing there was an opening in the chain-linked fence, probably made by kids, with a matching gap in the scruffy privet hedge. There was now no way by bike that he could escape the attentions of the man chasing after him. His only option was to hide the two objects somewhere and recover them later to pass on to the police. Bending down, Doug wriggled through the opening. No one was about. He moved quickly towards a compost bin placed close to the fence and removed its cover. Digging his gloved hands into the decaying material to make a hole, he buried the articles in the middle and hurriedly replaced the lid. Regaining the pathway, he wheeled his cycle towards town as fast as he could. Kevin, despite being a tidy distance behind him as his running pace slowed to little more than a jog with the constant exertion necessary on an uphill track, had from another point in the thin hedge seen Doug crouching over a compost bin. Gasping for air, Kevin rounded the bend at a slow walking pace and soon spotted the gap where Doug must have got into the allotments. When he poked his head through the gap he saw a lady digging nearby. He had no option other than to withdraw. He judged it pointless to continue following the slowly disappearing figure wheeling away his bike. The action now centred on the compost heap.

  Susan had had no trouble in picking out Kevin at the Eurostar terminal in the Gare du Nord as the photo emailed through to the office had shown a clear image of his face. She conjectured that it was very unlikely that Kevin would know her as she had spent most of her time in the force dealing with domestics and female issues and she had left the force three years previously when she had failed her sergeant’s exams. Trailing Kevin from Paris to Fenchurch Street and hopping on the same train as him had been child’s play for her. When she alighted from the carriage and saw Kevin lingering on the platform eyeing a man fitting panniers onto a bike her suspicions were aroused that he, in turn, was following the cyclist. She followed Kevin at a judicious distance until he suddenly started to run up the pathway by the railway embankment. Susan couldn’t do running. She was of medium height with a sturdy physique and the best part of two stones overweight. Trainers, even for surveillance jobs, were not her style and her rather out-of-date brogues were more suited to walking. Despite marching briskly Kevin was soon out of her sight. By the time she had reached the point along the pathway where the allotments started he was already three hundred yards ahead of her and had turned the sharp bend left which formed a right angle with the embankment. It wasn’t just by good providence that she happened to be looking through a sparse part of the privet hedge at the very moment Kevin’s countenance emerged to reconnoitre the land ahead and then, jus
t as suddenly, disappear. It was part of her nosy, prying nature that led her to habitually look over fences and walls to spy on what was happening in neighbours’ gardens and other peoples’ lives that brought her to this fortuitous situation. But when she cautiously rounded the bend no one was in sight and the trail was, apparently, dead.

  Late Friday afternoons and evenings at the allotments in early autumn could be busy as some of the allotment holders left work earlier on a Friday than on the other weekdays. Most of the summer planting was over and raised beds needed to be dug and prepared for the next crop. Being her own boss Ruth had been there since midday and had just returned to her own patch after having had a cup of tea and a gossip with her chum Rosemary two plots along. She had already done the hard work of yanking up the spent potato plants, double digging and fertilising the beds so that she could plant her broad beans for a spring crop. All that really remained was to empty the spent plants she had chucked into the wheelbarrow onto the compost heap and then she was done for the day. Her patch was of standard size, being about two hundred and fifty square metres, about the size of a doubles tennis court, although as she had been told by the local authority from whom she rented it its size was more formally quantified in the old Anglo-Saxon measurement of poles. From where she stood, holding the handles of the wheelbarrow, she noticed that the top of the compost bin was crooked. She mildly chastised herself until she lifted off the large plastic lid, peered inside and noticed that the circular piece of old Wilton carpet that she always packed down on top of the decaying material within the container in order to keep as much heat in the bin as possible was facing pile side down; this was odd as she always put it in pile side up. Under the carpet it seemed to her that the heap looked somehow disturbed. She worked her hands into the material and soon felt two foreign objects. Withdrawing them, she found herself holding a small, soft pouch and a short plastic tube. Bemused, she stuffed them in her pockets and walked home contemplatively. Changing out of her gardening clothes at home, she remembered the strange objects, opened them and spread the contents on her breakfast bar.

  Kevin didn’t worry too much about losing Doug; what he was far more concerned about was the whereabouts of the two articles. He kept going over the happenings at the allotment and kept coming to the same conclusion that the cyclist must have dropped the items onto the compost heap. There could be no other explanation. He decided to stay in the vicinity of the allotments and crawl through the hole in the fence and search the contents of the bin as soon as it was dusk which would be in an hour or so. When he returned and ventured through the hole he could see nobody about. Stealthily he moved towards the compost bin and removed its cover. He had nothing better than his bare hands to sift through the decaying vegetation turning it one way and then another but found nothing even after repeating the process meticulously. He felt sure it was this compost bin over which he had seen the cyclist lean but he had noticed another one farther along the fence and he moved there deftly repeating the process but with the same result. In exasperation Kevin went back to the original one and checked for a third time but still found nothing. Clambering back onto the pathway he made his way back down to the station where he bought a ticket for London. With growing anxiety he wondered how he would break the news to Ron.

  If the truth be known it was a good thing that Susan had failed her promotion exams and left the force. Given a definite job to do she could be relied on to do it well but the moment events took an unexpected turn she needed guidance and working life in the Essex Constabulary was not geared up for constant counselling. Now from her vantage point looking into the allotments she rang the office for further instructions, explaining to Colin that although she had probably lost the target she sensed that whatever it was that Paul had seen being passed to Kevin in the Café Rosah might now have been deposited somewhere in the allotment she was currently observing.

  ‘What do you want me to do Colin? Stay here until dusk just to see if Kevin returns or shall I make my way back straightaway?’

  ‘I shall have to talk with the client again,’ replied Colin, ‘but I suggest that you stay put until dusk and if Kevin doesn’t reappear by then make your way home. And Susan, thanks,’ added Colin.

  Right on the time limit she had set, Kevin emerged through the fence and adjoining hedge. Susan observed him move quickly towards what looked like a compost bin and begin to rummage about in it. After a while he moved to another bin and seemed to do the same before going back to the original bin and repeating the process. He then vanished back through the fence gap and the next thing Susan saw was Kevin rounding the bend and walking down the pathway towards the station and towards where she was standing. When he was only a couple of hundred yards away from her she turned smartly on her heels and walked as inconspicuously down to the station as possible where she turned left into the underpass and made her way up onto the platform for trains going to the east coast. From across the railway lines she observed Kevin, ticket in hand, come onto the London-bound platform and catch the 18.52 to Fenchurch Street.

  Chapter Four

  Moving on

  2010

  Ruth worked as a freelance financial advisor and journalist. She liked the flexibility and freedom that it gave her. As well as a set of personal clients who she saw in her home office she also wrote articles on topical financial matters that were published in newspapers and financial journals. Occasionally she received invitations to speak on the radio. Divorced early in life, she had since remained single, enjoying an independent lifestyle despite her evident sociability. Her main passion was gardening and, in particular, she loved working on the allotment and enjoying the companionship of her fellow horticulturists. From time to time she travelled down to Devon to stay with her brother for a fortnight or so to give him respite from the constant demands of looking after his invalid wife. Her brother apart, her only other relatives were a niece in Scotland and a distant cousin in Florida with whom she exchanged Christmas cards and a short note therein of any outstanding news and the promise that they would definitely get together in the coming new year. Now in her mid-fifties Ruth’s life was never lonely.

  With the objects spread on the breakfast bar Ruth considered what she had got. In the small soft pouch there were twenty-nine glass marbles each embossed with a white, lower case letter. The marbles were of differing sizes and some appeared more spherical than others as they rolled freely on the smooth surface. Ruth forced off the tight green lid from the tube and withdrew its contents. It contained two rolled up banknotes and a dainty handkerchief with lace corners furled inside. There were some figures and shapes written on the handkerchief, probably with a ballpoint pen and a French knot in red silk had been embroidered in one of the lace corners. Above each banknote’s serial number there was a single word written in pencil. She knew their country of origin without having to read the elegant print along one end stating Swiss National Bank. They were both of a one hundred franc denomination. They looked somehow oversized and Ruth suspected that they were not of the current issue. She fired up her computer and “googled” the search words “old issue Swiss banknotes” and within seconds she learned that the notes belonged to the sixth issue that was current up to the new millennium. Looking patiently at these objects Ruth realised that she was not going to solve this conundrum quickly.

  ***

  Kevin’s conversation with Ron was never going to go well. On the train back to Fenchurch Street he practised what he was going to say several times. He tried starting at different points in the sorry saga, saying how unlucky he had been, what stress he had been under and even how well he had done in keeping tabs on someone from almost Austria in the middle of Europe to Essex but whichever way he put it he knew that Ron would be furious. Finding a relatively quiet spot under an arch outside the station, Kevin steeled himself and pressed the keypad with Ron’s mobile number.

  ‘Hallo, Kevin,’ Ron answered, immediately knowing that it
must be Kevin because he kept this number for him alone.

  ‘Ron,’ followed by a long pause before Kevin continued, ‘I collected the pouch as instructed but lots of things happened and I haven’t got it anymore.’

  ‘You are joking aren’t you, Kevin,’ Ron replied in a frosty voice.

  ‘No, Ron, straight up, I don’t have it but I know where it is and I can explain.’

  ‘This had better be good Kevin else you are in deep shit as the consignment was very valuable,’ Ron shouted back down the phone.

  By the time Kevin had finished his miserable explanation Ron knew that he would have to make an anonymous telephone call.

  ***

  Saturday was another beautiful day and Ruth had completely forgotten about the riddle sitting on her breakfast bar. She always took her breakfast in her newly refitted kitchen diner with the Financial Times spread out fully on the counter top so that she could keep abreast of the latest financial news. The broadsheet pages covered the puzzling items beneath and she had completely forgotten about them as she set out again for her allotment without any distracting thoughts on her mind.

  Unusually the entry gate to the allotments was open but last evening’s events didn’t register with Ruth until she approached her own plot and saw the odd sight of several plot holders huddling around chatting. This triggered her memory and a degree of anxiety kicked in immediately. She was greeted by Rosemary with the news that a disturbance had occurred overnight in their corner of the allotments or as Rosemary had put it more dramatically “someone had run amok”. Apparently there had been an anonymous telephone call to the press and a reporter from the local Gazette was present asking questions. There was no real overt evidence of ransacking except for some trampled down beds as if somebody had run across them but the plot owner between Rosemary and Ruth’s plots had had his compost heap upturned and it looked a sorry mess. Listening to the conversation, the plot holders seemed to think it was just kids engaging in a bit of vandalism but the reporter countered that vandalism by kids wasn’t usually linked with an anonymous phone call. Asked to check her patch Ruth could see foot marks across a couple of beds and some broken plant stems. Going through the motions of checking her compost bin she became wary of what to say and simply reported back to the group including the reporter that apart from the obvious nothing else seemed to be affected. With nothing more exciting to learn, the group dispersed and got back to work and the reporter left.