Daylight Robbery by Paul Barton

The bell jingled as the door swung shut. A masked man entered the shop. This was not what Michael needed after such a busy morning. He was looking forward to the afternoon lull, maybe a chance to read and fill the dead time that led to the end of the working day.

    The shop was situated in the centre of a large cluster of offices. Michael’s mornings were usually spent serving slick-haired salesmen who called themselves executives and wore suits far cheaper than the lives they professed to live. The pang of hate he felt as they interrupted whichever novel he was reading was the only feeling his job stirred within him. The afternoon was usually his paid leisure - even if it was at an insulting rate per hour. The till would be brimming with the crisp notes that had purchased the myriad of overpriced and shrivelled sandwiches from the cold counter. There was usually no sound for the rest of the day.

    But there was no relaxing read for Michael now. Before him stood a criminal who cut a comical figure. In his hands, out of a trembling bunch of rags, a metal tube pointed at him, a crude caricature of a rifle’s barrel. The pair of black women’s stockings, which the man had pulled over his face, did not disguise his features, but twisted them into a mask resembling Mr Punch. That was not the way to do it, Michael thought to himself.

    The impotent empty hole of the metal tubing tracked Michael as he walked around the counter. Opening a fresh packet of cigarettes, Michael paused for thought for a moment, and then offered one to the would-be bandit.

    ‘I take it this is your first raid?’ Michael asked.

    ‘Stand back or I’ll shoot,’ muttered the masked man as he took a frightened step backwards.

    ‘If you knew how much I got paid, then you’d realise there’s no way I’d get shot for this place,’ Michael smiled. ‘Besides, we both know that isn’t a gun in your hands.’

    The rags lifted, as the man adjusted the aim of his fake firearm at the shop assistant’s skull.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Michael said quickly. ‘I know that one swipe from that metal pipe would give me a pretty nasty headache, and I’ve never claimed to be a hero. How about I lock the door and we try to work this out rationally?’

    The man watched as Michael lowered the blinds on the windows of the shop, and clicked the Yale lock into place.

    ‘You know,’ said Michael, ‘if I was a bit braver I’d help you carry that till out of here. Christ, do you think I dreamed of a job like this when I was at university?’

    Michael offered the cigarettes again. ‘Come on, mate. We’re both on the same side here.  You know how many times I’ve dreamed of taking this place for everything it’s got?’

    The man removed his mask, and took a deep gulp of fresh air. He took a cigarette. Michael leaned forward and lit it for him.

    ‘Are you going to help me?’ the man asked. His mumble had been replaced by a hopeful, almost ecstatic tone.

    Michael shrugged. ‘I wish it was that easy. We do have one thing in our favour,’ he said, gesturing to the ceiling. ‘The cheap bastards who own this place don’t have any security cameras. That’s how much they value my safety, I suppose.’

    ‘Then what’s stopping you?’ said the man. ‘I could just grab the money and run, no harm done. We could even split it…’

    Michael shook his head. ‘The owners would think I’m in on it. I mean, the police would have me sweating in some cell somewhere. I’m no master criminal and, no offence, neither are you. How long do you think I’d last under a bright light, with my hands cuffed behind my back, before I told them everything? Sorry, but I’m only being honest.’

    The man took another draw on his cigarette and shifted nervously on his feet. His head was bowed, deep in thought.

    ‘Why are you doing this?’ asked Michael.

    The man began a story that could be heard in any cheap alehouse: His life was sliding downhill as fast as the bills were mounting. He lived in a tiny flat where the morning postman’s drop hit the doormat with what seemed the thud of a boulder. Each bill he ignored grew redder and redder. This was, he thought, his only way out.

  Michael placed a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder. He offered him another cigarette. The man dropped the butt from his mouth, crushed out the little embers with the toe of his right shoe, and took a fresh cigarette. He leaned towards the flame from the lighter that Michael, his co-conspirator, presented him.

  ‘So, you rob this place, pay those bills, then what? You think they’ll be the last set of bills? Will your creditors send you a thank-you note in prison?’

  ‘But what else can I do?’ The man dropped the metal bar from his left hand. It hit the floor with a loud clang. With his free hand, he nervously massaged the back of his neck.

  ‘You got a wife? Michael asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So,’ Michael mused, ‘you’re going to throw your life away for an unpaid phone bill or two?’

  The man laughed. He looked at the rags, and metal piping, which had so utterly failed in its pretence of a gun. He visualised those ever sterner worded letters from various companies and wondered how they’d ever brought him to this place. It was strange, he thought, how red letters put you on a black list.

  He looked around the shop. The shelves were lined with gossip magazines. The occasional publications on film or music pocked the display, but they were crowded out by the journals on which Z-list celebrities had cellulite. Was he really risking jail to keep up with all this? 

  ‘I’m sorry…’ the man glanced at the name badge on the scruffy uniform, ‘…Michael.’

  Michael gave the cigarette packet and the lighter to the broken figure in front of him.

  ‘You’ve got more freedom than you think,’ he said. ‘There must be something you can do?’

  The exhalation of cigarette smoke from the wavering robber’s lungs now turned into a sigh.

  ‘I know what it’s like,’ said Michael. ‘I’m one wage slip from penury. I spent years writing essay after essay and all I get for a reward is this? I spend all day serving soulless, barely literate bastards for a pittance, and every time I press a button on that till I feel like spitting. You’re not the only one who’s spent his days dreaming of some way out of this.’

  The man dropped his cigarette to the floor and lit another.

  ‘No, my new, nameless friend, you have to take any opportunity you can get,’ said Michael. ‘If all the shit I take every day has taught me anything, it’s that the world owes me nothing…and I owe the world even less.’ His venomous final word hung in the air with a hiss.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ the man asked, between draws.

  ‘Why don’t you pick up your things, and forget any of this ever happened?’ Michael said with a smile.

  ‘Really, I mean…’ the former robber’s face flushed red.

  ‘Think nothing of it, perhaps this is a blessing in disguise.’

  Picking up his discarded robber’s kit, which was strewn across the floor, the man then strode to the door and unlocked it.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘you don’t know what you’ve done for me.’

  Michael smiled. ‘You’ve helped me too, in your own way.’ The warmth in his voice caused a smile to beam across the phoney gunman’s face as he stepped out into the world. His first breath of the air outside seemed to fill his mind with new possibilities. Even the sun seemed to shine brighter than before, despite the oncoming clouds.

  Inside, Michael walked across the shop floor to a shelf stacked with groceries. He admired the labels on each tin. His eyes fell across the garish and kitsch mash of colours that advertised the contents of each cheap sealed cylinder. 

  His gaze fell on to a tin of peas. He picked it up slowly then, with great ferocity, he smashed it into his brow once, twice, three times. Face stinging, he wiped the blood, which had splattered on to the tin, on his shirt. The tin was dented but it was clean. With care, he placed it towards the back of the shelf behind the other.

  Michael could feel his face beginning to swell, his vision starting to blur. He walked over to the till.

  It opened with a familiar ‘ching’. Michael took a fistful of notes – twenties, tens, fives. There was even a fifty. He closed the till and picked up the phone and dialled.

  ‘Police please,’ he whimpered. There was a pause as he was put through. ‘Hello, the shop I work in has just been robbed. This guy just burst in. He beat me. I think he has a gun.’ Michael described the robber, the beating he’d taken between the cigarettes of his assailant, and the direction of the robber’s escape.

  Michael had just found the perfect hiding place for the large wad of notes, when he heard a short burst of far off sirens. Moments later, the silence was punctuated with a burst of gunfire. Michael smiled, as he carefully placed his prize for collection at a later date. The police marksmen had just saved him a lot of explaining.

© Paul Barton 2007 All Rights Reserved