Wayne had been our head porter for a little over two weeks now, and quite frankly, it was driving us all crazy. It’s not like the ‘power’ had gone to his head, because he didn’t have much. He was only in charge of three lads. In my mind Wayne had always had power, as if he was allocated it as a child and learned how to use it. Not in an attention seeking way, where many children would put on the shower curtain as a cape and charge about the house, telling mummy and daddy to play house and do things. It was as if someone had taught him how to get things done, with a calm voice and the way of a manager that everyone thought was ‘an all right bloke'. In our store, they come few and far between.
Of course, Wayne wasn’t a manager, but I thought he could be.
‘You could be, you know? A manager.’
‘I know.’
This was awkward. In fact, from the first second I started a conversation with him, (which was precisely eight minutes ago) it was awkward. Wayne didn’t really do conversation, like a lot of people don’t do going to the gym. It just wasn’t his thing. He could speak, but not in a chatty 'down-at-the-hairdressers' kind of way. And that’s all well and good in my book. If you’re not a talker, you’re not a talker. You’re reserved or a people watcher. But did he have to throw in the annoying smug confidence?
‘You know you could be a manager?’
‘Yes, if I wanted to be.’
Talking to Wayne was like playing Buckaroo. You never really knew if what you were saying was the right thing, or whether he would snap at something. Even if it was as simple as ‘Good morning.’
‘And do you want to be?’ I winced.
‘No, been there, done that.’
‘Oh right, you didn’t enjoy it, then?’
It looks like I’m asking a lot of questions, but believe me, if you were in my shoes, you’d be asking anything. You’d ask what kind of underwear his father wears, just to get a syllable out of him.
‘I did at the time.’
‘Oh, right.’
His sentences sounded like they’ve been heavily edited. Like there were words he’d left out. Sentences that had fallen off the face of the earth, leaving out vital information and hints of real conversation. The fact that he was the head porter put on more pressure, as he could tell me what to do at any point.
‘So you don’t want a manager’s job now?’
No, can you get back in your zone now, Dylan?’
I went back in my zone. Which was the trolley bay to the right of the store. Wayne and Alex covered the left side and Steve got issued with the bay next to mine, at the far end on the car park.Wayne could do his job. The fact that a man like Wayne, so uptight and self motivated was in charge of three trolley pushers was quite sad. But, if he could do it properly that there would be no problems. And he could. Wayne filled out the month’s rotas in a matter of minutes, unlike Steve’s plan of sitting down in the canteen with a cup of coffee, phoning a few friends from his World Of Warcraft fan club, and then getting on with the rotas.
Wayne was down and clearing up before I realised he was gone in the first place, picking up the litter with so much investigation, scratching up every bit of chewing gum he could find. I walked up from my zone to the front of the store, armed with three or four trolleys. The trouble with staying in one zone is, it’s one trolley bay. So you can empty it within fifteen minutes and that’s it for an hour. So I took my time with them, enjoying Wayne’s new rule. But as I walked up I passed a brown Volvo with one of the back doors open. The car was one of those large ones you don’t see anymore. With a boot that you could sit down and have a three course meal in. I stopped and scanned the car park for a possible owner, bouncing over to me and grinning, waving their keys in the air. But no one was around. It was a mild Thursday afternoon; the only people who come in store are the young people in suits who buy sandwiches. Young people in suits don’t drive big Volvos; they’d get sacked on the spot.
I slowly walked around the car, searching for life. On the backseat was a 1998 map book and a few CD’s scattered around it. The seats were dusty and worn. The passenger seat was full of rubbish; a full plastic bag occupied most of it, filled with boxes and miscellaneous packets and packages. It was only when I moved away I realised the contents of the bag were things from the supermarket. But they were in an old re-useable bag, and the boxes still have protective covers and tags attached, as if they’d fallen from the warehouse lorry.
I scanned the car and the car park one more time. Wayne was still litter-picking, obviously his reply to any sentence would be ‘Do Not Disturb’. He had the walkie-talkie that had contact with inside the store, and I couldn’t really leave the car. How could someone leave their car door open on a car park? You open a door and then shut it. It’s a simple rule we all learn in primary school. My Dad used to go mental at me for not shutting doors in the house. He was of that age when he could feel drafts in every room, even with the radiators on, on a summer’s day.
I slammed the door shut and turned away, only for the alarm to start whaling out from the car, making the three or four people on the whole of the car park peer over. The alarm startled me a little, which didn’t make me look as innocent as I wanted to, but I held up my arm at them and gave each of them a little nod. I was Mr Cool. It’s OK, I thought to myself, nothing to see here. You just get on with your day; I’ll sort this out. I was about to think about how I could sort this out when Danny came rushing over to me. Danny was the new guy on security. With a dark jacket that was a little too tight and too much gel in his hair. He was about 20 years old, and for someone working on the security side of things, didn’t look as if he could hold any order, let alone keep anything secure. He proved my point as soon as he got to me.
‘What’s going on?’ He said, with a scratchy and unbalanced voice.
‘I just shut the door. It was open.’
That sounded like it made sense,. but it also sounded stupid.
‘You just shut the door? It was open?’
‘Yeah. The door was open, so I shut it. Now the alarms going off.’ I shouted over the alarm.
‘Why was the door open?’
‘I don’t know. I just got here.’
‘Is this your car?’ He asked, with one finger in his ear.
‘No.’
I was offended. Me? In a Volvo? I’m not 65-year-old grandma taking her grandchildren to the zoo.
‘Are you sure? You shut the door.’
‘Just because I shut the door doesn’t mean I own the car. I closed the door at Marks & Spencer’s last week, it doesn’t mean I own the place.’
‘I know that. You’re not Mark or Spencer, are you.’
You know when I said that talking to Wayne is like playing Buckaroo? Well talking to Danny is like playing Monopoly, with a monkey, with no money, dice or community chest cards. I just stared at him as he scanned the car.
‘What’s that?’ He pointed at the passenger seat.
‘Oh, it’s a bag.’
Why had I started to feel guilty? It wasn’t my shitty brown Volvo, it wasn't my bag of boxes.
‘A bag…’ He said, as if he was searching for the meaning in a dictionary. ‘It looks like…’
Danny leaned forward and peered through the window, smearing his hands, elbows and nose on the glass. He opened the door and started searching the bag.
‘Danny? What are you doing?’ I barked.
He didn’t answer. He was too busy scuffling through the boxes, picking one up every so often and shaking his head.
‘Dylan. These has been stolen. From here.’ He pointed at the store.
I felt like a pirate who'd just found his hidden treasure. Well, actually Danny found the treasure. I saw it first and thought nothing of it. I wouldn't be a good pirate, thinking about it. I’d find the treasure and say ‘Oh, well…never mind’, before walking away from it. Danny grabbed the bag from its already torn handles and rushed up the store.
‘Follow me.’ He squeaked.
We rushed past Wayne, who was now on all fours, scraping gum off the floor with his glasses an inch away from the floor. I followed him through the front doors, past the customer services desk and to a large door. He punched in, what seemed like, a 48 digit code, went through the door and through another. Then Danny got a set of keys out of his pocket, searched for the right one for ten minutes and then unlocked another door.
The security office was tiny. There was a fan on in the room but it failed the cancel out the stifling heat that comes with the eight or nine monitors they had on in there. Each one had multiple camera angles set up, viewing parts of the store even I hadn’t seen before. Danny pushed a few buttons, rewound tapes and finally stopped it on a woman. She was in the electrical aisle, staring in a freeze frame at a bunch of mobile phones in boxes. I put together that what she was looking at was what she had stolen. If I wasn’t going to be a pirate, an investigator was definitely on the card for me in the future.
‘That’s the one.’ He said, tapping his fingers on the table.
‘Wow, so where has she gone now?’
‘Probably to another shop. Marks & Spencers, probably.’
‘You think? I hope either Mark or Spencer gets them.’ I smiled.
Danny didn’t notice. I was stood over him as he peered at the screen. The woman was short with long brown hair that matched her ugly car. She had one of those horrible fleecy white jackets with a several Alaskan dogs on it, and let’s face it, a face only a mother could love.
‘What are you going to do next?’ I said.
‘Well…’ Danny spun round in his chair. ‘I’ll keep a camera on the car. You keep an eye out for her.’
‘Right…’
‘I’ll put this bag where it was.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘As bait.’
‘Ahh, right.’
Danny was new to this job, and I am pretty certain the managers wouldn’t want him to put hundreds of pounds worth of stolen good back into the car of the shoplifter. I think he’d watched far too many American cop shows on those awful cable channels.
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well what if she gets in the car and drives off?’
‘Didn’t you hear me? I’ll keep a camera on it. You keep an eye on it.’
It seemed to make sense, a camera and an eye. I don’t know why the FBI don't try that. Forget hacking phone calls and expensive military operations. Just set up a camera on the house and get a bloke to stand outside, looking at it every so often. I’m sure they’d get far. Danny put the overflowing bag of expensive electrical items back in the car and walked away, leaving me to keep an eye out. I’m glad Wayne put me in this zone; it was a hot bed of criminal activity.
‘Dylan!’ I heard a voice from the store. ‘You’ll have to work in my zone.’
It was Wayne. Still clearing up and de-gumming the front of the store. I couldn’t leave my zone. It was My Zone, after all. And now it was an area of crime. If I had some police ‘Do Not Cross’ tape it would be out by now, circling the entire car. I shook my head and waved my arms from side to side.
‘What?’ He barked over to me.
‘I can’t!’ I shouted, in the quietest voice possible.
I didn’t want the shoplifter to know something was up, of course. She would have smelt a rat if she did. But Wayne was getting louder and louder, whaling at me to got over to his zone.
Ten minutes later Danny came storming out.
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing. Why?’
‘She’s gone, the old woman has gone!’
I peered over to where the brown car was, now an empty parking space.
‘I thought you were keeping an eye out?’ He screeched.
‘I thought you were keeping a camera on it?’
‘I did. But…’
‘What?’
‘I went for a sandwich.’
‘Oh, right. Very professional.’
‘It was my break.’
Danny was panicking. He had no reason to, of course. None of the managers knew about the old woman and raggedy old shopping bag of goods. If they did know then he would be in serious trouble, for putting the stuff back in her car. I did him a favour.
‘Wayne told me to come over here. He’s in charge.’
‘That’s just great, then isn’t it! Where’s the old bag!’
He meant the bag of mobile phones, but I couldn’t resist.
‘She’s probably on the motorway by now.’ I smirked.
I wasn’t a pirate, or an investigator. But I could whip out the occasional humorous remark.
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