The old metal gates of the school swung out in a sudden gust of the approaching storm, moving as if to stop the thief. He turned left out of the gate and started to head up the hill towards the shopping mall. There were people everywhere. He was a part of the crowd.
We had gone less than a hundred metres, though, when the sound of sirens came from the top of the hill and two police cars came hurtling around the corner, lights flashing, sirens screaming, the whole deal. They stopped, parked on odd angles in the middle of the road, blockading the street.
Wow, that was fast.
The Hunchback Robber stopped in mid-stride, staring at the police cars. Two more appeared behind them and one of the roadblocks pulled back a little to let them through. They raced down the hill towards us.
Hunchie made his mind up and turned around, heading straight for me. I wasn’t worried, though. I, too, was just a part of the crowd.
I flicked a casual glance at his face as he passed by.
He had a thin goatee, but in all other respects was a very ordinary-looking guy.
He headed down the hill now. I knew exactly what to do and poured thought after thought at him.
It’s too risky now. Stash the backpack and come back for it later when the coast is clear.
He crossed the road, moving towards the bush reserve in the gully at the bottom of the hill.
I stayed on the other side of the road. In the crowd.
He disappeared into the bush and I waited. I knew he would emerge sooner or later, you couldn’t go anywhere that way, it just led to a wide deep creek. A second or two later he reappeared, minus the backpack, in time to see two more police cars screech to a halt around the corner at the bottom of the road and set up a roadblock there.
There was enormous confusion in the crowd. What was going on? I could almost hear them wondering.
Hunchie crossed back over and blended right in. Just another face in the crowd.
He headed back into the school grounds, and why shouldn’t he? Without any witnesses to identify him, without any incriminating loot, he was just one of the fair-goers.
I waited until he was safely out of sight and strolled across the road, as natural as anything. Without being obvious about it, I stepped slowly into the bush.
There was only one way in, a kind of a track beaten by kids from the college. The bush surrounded me and smothered the noise too, except for the wailing sirens. Then they too switched off, and the silence was enveloping.
Where would he hide it?
The rain began. I pulled up my collar and moved deeper into the bush. In the distance I heard thunder. The gloom intensified as the rain increased.
Where would he hide it?
I searched behind tree trunks and in the centre of dense bushes. Nothing.
I beat my way through the thicker bushes to the left, then to the right of the small path. Nothing. Yet it had to be here.
Lightning flashed in the distance, filtered though the leaves, and I looked up involuntarily. That was how I found it. A glimpse of yellow and red, high above the ground in the fork of an old kowhai.
It was out of my reach, but that was not going to stop me now. I threw myself at the tree, scrabbling madly at the trunk and, somehow, got the tips of my fingers to the edge of a strap. I tugged, and the bag came loose, tumbling on to my head with a thump that I barely noticed.
With trembling hands I unzipped it and pulled open the black plastic bag inside.
It was exactly the way I had imagined. Piles and piles of notes of every description. Edmund Hillary and Kate Sheppard and even a few Lord Rutherfords. Untold wealth.
And it was all mine.
I closed the bag and put it on my back. I couldn’t leave it here. It was a bit risky taking it out, with all the cops everywhere, but, I reasoned, they were looking for an adult hunchback, not a kid with a backpack.
Lightning flashed again and thunder roared, closer this time. I was starting to get drenched.
I emerged from the relative peace of the bush to the whirlwind confusion of the road. The rain was washing the steep street; people were scurrying up and down the hill. The red and blue lights of the police cars swept wetly around the scene from both ends of the road.
I started to walk and, abruptly, stopped. There she was. Directly opposite me. Erica. The most wonderful creature in all creation.
What would she think? my mind kept asking over and over. What would she think of me if she knew I really was a bad egg? A troublemaker. A criminal. A thief.
I froze, with one foot in the air, overwhelmed by it all. This was it. I could walk off with the loot and be rich. There was a line that I was about to cross, like the line in the canteen, but this one would decide what kind of person I would grow up to be.
My foot came down. All I had to do was to walk up the hill, away from the school. Away from the police. Away from Erica.
I looked at Erica and she turned around and looked me square in the eyes. To this day, I don’t know if I did that with my power, made her look at me, I mean. Maybe it was just coincidence.
But she looked at me and I looked at her, and that moment was worth all the loot in the world. That instant in time was the end of my criminal career.
I took a step in the other direction, towards the police. There was a crowd of them, milling around, looking harassed and urgent.
I walked up to the nearest policeman and thrust the bag towards him.
‘Not now, son,’ he said.
‘No, no,’ I began. ‘I followed him, and …’
‘Please move away and let us do out work.’ He turned away abruptly at a call from another officer.
I walked up to him and tapped him on the arm but, before I could get a word in, he thrust an angry finger at my face. ‘Go, move away, get out of here! Now!’
‘But I …’
‘Go!’
He turned away again.
‘But I followed the robber and found his bag!’ I screamed, tearing open the zipper on the bag to show him.
He half turned. They all did, watching in slow motion as the mask and coat fell out, followed by the shotgun, which hit the ground muzzle first and fired.
I don’t know much about guns, and especially not shotguns, I thought they had safety catches, but either this one didn’t or it was off.
The explosion was like a bomb bursting in the middle of them and, if the gun had been facing upwards, it might have been a disaster. The flash of the shot illuminated all the blue uniforms and the crash of the shot was like a shockwave through the crowd.
They gasped and cowered in an instant as the shotgun took off like a rocket, kicking into the air with the force of the blast. It shot up about ten metres, seemed to hover there for a few seconds, then slowly started to fall, right into the astonished arms of a police constable.
There was a shocked silence for a few seconds, our ears all ringing with the noise of the shot. Then the police reacted. I looked up at a sea of blue uniforms, and some of them had guns. And those guns were pointing at me.