I left it until after four o’clock; after the fair had officially closed, and the procession of kids with their buckets or cash tins of money had stopped flowing into the admin block. That was an important part of my ingenious plan. I wanted to be the last kid to arrive with a bucket of money and I wanted to arrive when they had already finished their counting.
My luck was in with the security guard at the entrance to the admin block. If it had been a teacher or Mr Curtis, then I would have been sunk because there was no way that a suspended kid was going to be bringing in a bucket of money.
But it wasn’t, it was old Mrs Mandible, the parent helper who ran the tuckshop. But I had worked my magic on her once before so I was confident I could do it again.
It was time for phase one. Getting inside.
I pulled out my money bucket, full of loose change, and tucked my backpack out of sight in the garden by the entrance to the hall. I casually entered the foyer. The entrance to the admin block was to the left, just past the school office.
Mandible sat on a wooden chair, reading. She looked up at me as I approached. ‘Where’s your pass?’
All the kids who would be carrying the fair proceeds needed a special pass to enter the admin block. Ben had shown me his.
‘I dropped it somewhere,’ I said with an apologetic shrug. ‘But I showed it to you the last two times.’
I was counting on the fact that there would have been kids coming and going all day long bringing in the profits from the fair. She couldn’t possibly remember them all. Plus she had seen my face before. And of course there was one more card to play.
That’s right. I transmitted to her. He was already in here a couple of times.
She nodded, and waved me through. It was the end of the day, and one dropped pass was not going to cause any great problem.
I pushed open the heavy swing doors into the administration corridor. The last time I had been in here, it was to get kicked out of school by old Curtis. The door to his office was closed and no doubt locked, but I stuck my tongue out at it anyway. It didn’t really make me feel any better though.
The next office was the Executive Officer’s, then the small records room where they had set up the counting table.
The corridor was empty, which was as it should be. I glanced at the door at the far end of the corridor. After the crime, I would leave the money outside that door, then return the way I had come so as not to make Mandible suspicious. Then I would skirt around the outside of the hall and retrieve the money from where I had left it. Easy.
Except something was wrong.
The door at the end of the corridor was swinging open. It should have been locked. That didn’t make any sense. Anybody could just walk in.
I wandered along the corridor and raised my hand to knock. I suppose I felt uneasy because it was only one day since I had left this corridor with my tail between my legs. Or, maybe, I was just uneasy about embarking on such an audacious crime. Whatever it was, it made me hesitate. And that saved my life.
As I paused, my glance fell back on the wide open door at the end of the corridor. And this time I noticed the really strange thing. The door was all splintered and broken around the lock. So was the door jamb.
The door hadn’t been left unlocked, it had been forced open!
That stayed my hand a moment or two longer and, in that short space of time, the door to the room opened and a hideous creature began to back out into the corridor.
I froze for just a second, then, silently, began to creep backwards until my back touched the opposite wall.
The creature was the size of a man, dressed in a black raincoat. Its back was bent over and hideously misshapen. A hunchback. It was carrying a large black rubbish bag and I knew at once what was in it. Money. The proceeds of the fair.
I knew also, without seeing, what the face would be. The horrible, distorted features of Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame.
I had come here to commit a robbery and I had walked in on one.
It was like a scene from a movie. There was an air of unreality about it. From outside, I could hear the shouts and laughter of excited children on their way home. From inside the hall behind me came the chatter of parent helpers cleaning up after the big auction.
The Hunchback Robber eased himself out of the room, his attention on the two parent helpers inside whose hands were bound with metallic tape. More tape covered their mouths. I’m not sure if they saw me or not. Their eyes were on the stubby shape of the sawn-off shotgun aimed directly at them.
It is hard to describe the emotions coursing through me at that moment. Fear? Of course. Terror even. Perhaps even a little excitement. The adrenalin was certainly flowing. Disbelief also. The Hunchback Robber had chosen the exact same day, and the exact same time, to rob exactly the same place I had planned to rob.
Of course, a part of my brain reasoned, while the rest screamed silently in terror, it was a tempting target, and if you were going to rob the takings of the fair, this was the logical time to do it: at the end of the day when the full proceeds were already in.
But the main emotion that flooded over me was one of indignation. This was my robbery. I had been planning this for weeks! What right did this thug have to walk in here with his shotgun and take over my crime?
But then I had another thought, and it was a doozy.
I could turn this around. Use it to my advantage. I would rob the robber!
It was the perfect crime. The Hunchback Robber would get all the blame, and I’d get all the money!
I thought quickly about how to pull it off. The main thing was not to get noticed.
Don’t look around. Don’t look around. I thought urgently at him.
The grotesque mask turned to the left, towards Curtis’s office, then to the right, towards the open door. I was lucky, I guess, the mask gave him a narrow field of vision and he could not see me, cowering against the wall right behind him.
It’s all clear. It’s all clear.
Satisfied, the hunchback pulled the door shut with a final menacing wave of his shotgun at the terrified occupants inside.
He immediately straightened and began walking towards the exit.
Just keep walking. Look straight ahead. I sent the message constantly. If he turned around, I was dead.
When he reached the door he checked carefully outside and, happy with what he saw, he dropped his rubbish bag to the floor.
With the ease of lots of practice, he stripped off the raincoat, revealing, not a hump in his back, but just a very ordinary looking backpack strapped on to one shoulder.
The raincoat, the shotgun, and the bag of loot went quickly into the backpack and the Quasimodo mask followed. He stripped off thin rubber gloves and tossed them in as well. He was just an ordinary looking guy. He was facing away from me, but I could estimate his age. Late twenties or early thirties. Short hair. Nothing unusual, he looked like any nondescript guy carrying a backpack.
Just look straight ahead. Act natural. Don’t seem guilty.
It was working. He picked up the bag without a backwards glance and stepped casually through the broken door. Strolling away from the building.
I followed a few paces behind. Look straight ahead. Don’t look back, that makes you look guilty.
So that was how he vanished into thin air. He became a normal guy, and was immediately camouflaged in the people around him.
A moment or two later, we were walking out of the school grounds.
Don’t look back.