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Chapter 2 ..... No such thing as a free lunch?
The doorbell rang. Clambering up he opened the door to a man suited and booted. An apologetic fellow with an unfortunate complexion and trembling hands. He cuddled his briefcase like a parachute that refused to open at the last moment.
“Mr Edwards?” He spoke with a whisper. Thomas still had the polisher humming in his right hand and shouting above the noise.
“Sorry, who? Oh, of course, come in, our kid.” He switched off the machine and dusted himself down, adopting a North Yorkshire accent.
“I can’t stop, me duck, I have somebody coming around in a minute to look at the house. You’re not one of those Jehovah’s Witnesses are you? I’ve told you before, I don’t believe ‘out’ about it, cheerio.”
He was just to spin the little man around on his heels and eject him manually. The man looked awkward and broke the grasp, piping up.
“I am that very same man. Terence Abbot? We spoke on the phone? I won’t take up much your time. Just a quick tour before we ‘do the deed’ so to speak. My, it all looks quite adequate for my needs.”
Thomas, stood still, in mask and goggles and said.
“Oh, ok, sorry flower, I’ll carry on then. Just don’t mind me. Want to get the place up to scratch, for yer.”
He knelt down and continued furiously polished the floor in tight clockwise circles. A few minutes later the man descended with his protruding teeth helping a broad grin. He looked very pleased. He raised his small voice and tapped Thomas on his shoulder to get his attention and turn the damn thing off again.
“Well, Mr Edwards. Everything seems to be in order. To whom do I make the cheque out too?” He scrabbled in his inside pocket for a pen and while he flipped through the stubs.
“Hold on. No offence. But I’ve had a bad experience with cheques. Especially, those of the India rubber variety. We agreed cash on the phone.”
The man gave a knowing look and reached for his wallet instead, as if he had almost pulled off a wheeze.
“You can’t blame me for trying. Three months deposit for rental. £1800? It’s all there.”
He handed over the crisp £10 notes counting them one by one, efficiently planting them in the open palm of the Landlord.
The man squeaked.
“May I have a receipt and rent book for that?”
Thomas responded.
“It’s alright, I will trust you. You’ve got an honest face, anyway I must get on. See you tomorrow. I will leave the key at the pub on tut corner. Ok, Ta-ra, then.” He said switching the polisher on and then back on his knees.
 The little man reversed out of the door, not sure if he should have persisted or not. He left in a scurry to his car and climbed in looking across his shoulder at his future home with pride.
Thomas, looked out of a chink in the curtain rubbing the windows of his goggles and gave a little wave.
The car disappeared. Thomas looked at his watch. He walked to the kitchen plucking the cap, goggles and mask off, packing away his polisher. Scouring the kitchen for something he was looking for. His eyes lit up to see a pack of sugar languishing in a cupboard. Taking a large saucepan he then poured the contents in. Walking to his trusty rucksack he took from one of the pockets a plastic bag full of a strange white powder. It was not heroin, although it looked like it at first glance. He opened the seal and sniffed the material reassuringly. Thomas, poured in half the amount, switched on the stove heat to a low flame and stirred the two ingredients together as if making soup. He poured from the pan and allowed to cool on some ready tin foil. A little later, he tested the solidified mound. It looked like an off white lump of animal dung. He patted the ‘zoo pooh’ into a ball and then placed unlit wooden matches into it at intervals exposing the sulphur heads. He gently transferred his ‘cake’ into a Tupperware and into his rucksack.
Thomas looked at his watch. It was almost 8. 25 a.m. He panned the rooms with his belongings swung about his shoulder. The real estate lady would be arriving any minute. He stepped through the front door and fished out a wooden sign that was nose first inside a hedge at the side of the house and pulled on it, and replanted it with a twist into the lawn.
He walked to the bottle bank on the corner of the street. He had jammed the newly emptied bin hatch with a wedge of pallet wood, hammered in with a brick. The trapdoor was stuck fast, thus all his clients had just dumped their discarded attire in bags and boxes. One dinner suit with tie, shirt and shoes exactly in his size. Some dead guy who was obviously proud of his appearance as Thomas was. Depending on his remit, he would change his appearance to fit the mission, purely derived from perfectly good ‘hand me downs’.
Thomas was amazed how easy it is to become invisible when you are pretty non-descript looking. Sombre suit, and a nerdy haircut. Speaking only, when spoken too.
His favourite Biblical proverb was: “There is much wisdom in silence.” He had lost almost lost the ability to use the power of his own speech or accent since his Mother’s death and so had become a mimic. He was accomplished at all dialects. Peter Sellers inspired him as a child and he cultured many disguised voices to get him out of tight spots.
His real name was Thomas Galloway. He was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome when he was a teenager. He had lived alone with a tyrannical Father in the Northern Hebrides. He was bullied at school for being unable to understand the lessons delivered each painful term from a Calvinist Priest whose caustic treatment sanctioned further abuse from his peers.
On Sunday, after church, his Father would make him sing, standing on tables in the pub. Hymns in Summer. Carols in Winter. The unforgiving drunken brute would dress him in all kinds of ridiculous costumes and then when ‘Spuggy’ (his pet name for Thomas meaning a slang word for ‘sparrow’) had sung his last note, the inebriated Jack Galloway would pass his cap around to afford his next drink.
If Spuggy sung badly or hit too many wrong notes he would look forward to a ‘leathering’ as his father threats were never to be ignored or it was his belt buckle first.
Thomas got used to the ‘hidings’. He preferred them than when he sang well, and his father tucked him in to bed. He hated his Fathers’ prolonged attentions at bedtime. He prayed to God every night that his father would never wake up. Finally, he got his wish. He choked on his own vomit after one of his ‘benders’. Thomas found him dead and at the age of seven.
For 10 years he had lived off his ‘clients’. To him, survival was not just instinct it was a professional business. His clients were put there for him by God. He believed the Lord would provide.
Clients were the trusting of humanity. It was a business arrangement. If they were to trust him, then they would have to pay somehow. It was just a simple process of who has the power to manipulate the situation in whose favour. The possessor, and the possessed. His clients were shareholders of his empire. They were believers in him as he was in Christ.
Jesus knew he would be betrayed. Because humans are weak. Thomas was the Messiah’s messenger.
You don’t need presence or charisma. The dumber you look the more you are underestimated. People avoid contact with nerdy guys. It’s the unassuming that get away with murder. If you look like a bank clerk or train-spotter, you are viewed as harmless.
That is Joe Public’s first mistake.
Thomas was called many names back at school for his frugality. He was bullied each day there and at home relentlessly. They called him ‘The Crab’ because he walked with a peculiar gait. Slightly sideways, due to a weakening of his left side through some dubious midwifery at birth. He went on to live in a series of hostile so-called care environments throughout his teenage years. Belongings and food, were regularly stolen by the kids and staff. He became shrewd to people with sticky fingers. He set traps for thieves. Taking the power plug and lead off his TV. Stripping the wires at one end. Plugging it in and twisting it around the door key on string through the letter box. Switching it on at the powerpoint and waiting for intruders.
In between foster homes, on one single occasion, Social Services agreed his Mother take him in for one last ditch attempt to reconcile their relationship. Thomas was overjoyed. His Mother also tried hard to be a Mother again. It wasn’t long before cracks appeared. Her son became possessive and obsessed with home security.
Once, his own Mother continually had her food freezer robbed by gypsies. They would break into the garage undisturbed, using the light from the chest freezer to see what they needed to steal. Thomas simply got his Mother’s card nail file and carefully slipped in between the two rows of matches in a matchbook. He taped it tightly shut trapping the file inside the book. Taped it to the side of the freezer with some string tied to the end of the card file and the other to the freezer handle. The hose of the BarBQ gas bottle would be taped close to the incendiary and switched half on. When the food rustlers came back they were in for a very warm reception. The explosion awoke Thomas and he phoned the emergency services. He was taken away by the authorities once again.
By the age of 15 years old Thomas was back with his Mother in a new home provided by a housing association.
His Mother died tragically.
She had tried to chastise him for coming home with a black eye, so she hit him with her shoe, tripped and fallen down the stairs of their home where she lay with a broken neck. A week later a neighbour complained of a foul smell and called the Police who arrived to break down the door and see the youngster clinging to a rotting corpse at the foot of the stairwell.
The day was bright and spring was in his step as the birds chattered and the soft dew sparkled as he crushed the lush grass under his step. Thomas bounded across Parker’s Piece and across the Bridge to Jesus Green. He liked Cambridge. “The Seat of Learning”. He walked admiring the colleges along the ‘backs’. King’s and Trinity. Where the likes of Samuel Pepys , John Milton and Sir Isaac Newton were groomed to change history. The spires twisted into the air and apple and cherry blossom carpeted the long riverbank to the huge edifices that stood so proudly. Willows a century old stooped across in between the footbridges as if almost to trying to embrace each other and a new day. Students appeared like termites returning to their mounds. Giggling and sharing a cigarette. A bespectacled American boy reading a paperback bumped into him, dropping his satchel and apologised. It fell open to the floor and Thomas knelt to help him gather the contents that had strewn across the pavement. Nimbly, Thomas recovered the mess and lifting the satchel to the boy’s shoulder, warmly blurted.
“No harm done.” With a nudge of his glasses upwards the boy thanked Thomas, and sped off, apparently late for a lecture. The lad from Austin, had missed the fact that among the his college work spewed across the damp sidewalk that his credit card tucked into a Nat West chequebook was missing from his personal effects.
Thomas had to become Todd Bradley Roland for a few hours. He trotted into the travel shop and asked the assistant for standby flights that day to Greece.
Flight T49 to Thessaloniki airport would depart from London Heathrow at 17.50 hours that day. He looked at his watch and his stomach gurgled loudly. It was almost eleven.
Thomas was hungry. The cheque book would not be used for a restaurant meal. He popped it into his rucksack. Thomas made his way up towards the Botanical Gardens. He entered the Royal Lodge Cambridge Hotel and walked in to the reception and smiled at the girl.
“Hello, Sir. Are you here for the “Groom Service” butler training seminar?”
Thomas looked at some flyers drifting on the front desk. An International valet service are recruiting in the city’s most prestigious venue.
“Err yes, but I have mislaid my acceptance letter.”
“That’s ok, Sir please sign here and wait to be seated.” The trim and efficient girl buzzed the counter when a gentleman in a tuxedo appeared escorted him into a type of large dining hall with others on a stage platform at the far end where a line of other men in the same attire were acting out various tasks in culinary role play.
All Thomas had to do was wait for the free buffet and rub shoulders with a bunch of sad servile creatures whose only mission in life was to be a well paid underdog. Waiting tables for others who have the manners and etiquette of the trough fed.
After two excruciating hours watching a video on personal hygiene and dress code, brunch was served, several standards higher than preceding events he had attended.
The starter was strained Mulligatawny soup made with chopped lean ham, curried with onion and lemon juice followed by Lobster baked in the shell, with pears in rice with roquet and radishes. Followed by plum charlotte.
Thomas had a second helping and making an excuse to have a cigarette and slipped from the building unnoticed. He belched appreciatively as he walked into a car showroom along the Hills Road.
British Leyland and Land Rover had come a long way. Some beautiful examples sparkled before in a motoring armada of some of the most desirable street cars on the planet.
Thomas caressed the bonnet of a Jaguar S-TYPE
3.0 V6 Sport 4dr Auto
Jaguar for £25000 in racing green.
A large red headed man in a grey suit and hideous tie emerged mopping his brow.
“Isn’t she the kippers knickers?”
Thomas looked unimpressed and replied.
“I’m just sick of BMW’s, right now. I’m looking for a runabout for my wife. She likes the racecourse, you see.”
The sweating man looked like he had just won the lottery and proceeded to warm up his prospective buyer.
“Well, forgive me Mr….?”
“Todd. Todd Roland.”
Thomas, put his rucksack down and with hands in his pockets peered through the driver’s side window.
“Like rambling, do you?” The sweaty man said, pointing at the rucksack.
“Oh, yes, I see. Very droll. No, I’ve just been to lecturing at the Poly. Trying to explain to hung over, idle and indulged graduates 10 years of cutting edge technology in the interest of progress, eh?” Thomas, sniffed and carried on checking the car out.
“Please sit inside. I’ll give you some spec on this beast.” The man tucked in his shirt and weaved his bulk around the back of the car, clicking his fingers for a fellow colleague to fetch some keys.
He sat beside Thomas and taking a small canister of breath freshener squirted it in his mouth.
“What line of business are you in, Mr Roland?” The man buzzed the window and without looking held his palm out for the keys now being passed to him.
“Renewable energy.” Thomas clasped his hands on the steering wheel.”
“Ok, what you mean windmills and solar panels?” The man jeered, half interested.
Thomas gave a look of disdain. Turned to the guy with a measure of condescension.
“METHANE”. He snapped. The salesman looked clueless and pulled a face to prove it.
Thomas went on to paraphrase a romantic but plausible notion.
I’m the scientist who conspired with all the major oil companies to launch this nutty idea. Yep, Methane to power our cities in the future generated by rotting rubbish in landfill dumps will make far greater contribution to the world's energy supply. A new way of harvesting the gas should mean that many landfill dumps that untill now were thought to be too small to produce usable amounts of the gas will be able to provide a viable supply.”
The man looked astounded and breathed.
“So, you’ll get a Nobel Prize one day, huh?” He sucked the pencil plucked form behind his ear.
Thomas gave him an old fashioned look.
“Whaddyamean? Get one, I have one already. Saving energy means saving money that Tony Blair wants to put my way for what is the future. There is only eight years of North Sea oil reserves left. My team have to look for alternatives, big style. Do you get me?”
“Yea, you bet.” The man’s eyes were like saucers and realizing the commission he could earn started to reel off his readymade patter.
“This baby has automatic headlights, trip computer, ABS, PAS, RCL and DSC.”
Thomas looked quizzical.
“DSC?”
The guy fought for breath and responded.
“That’s Dynamic Stability Control. We’ve got airbags front and rear. Alarm and immobilizer. Fully loaded. Best of all….”
Thomas stopped him, so he would not be killed in the stampede.
“How much if I buy today?”
The man gaped. “Err, lets say with a full tank, insurance and tax for a year. £23,700.” He winced, hopefully.
“Ok, let’s see how she handles.” The guy jumped out, and opened the screen to the showroom then squeezing back in the passenger seat passing the keys to Thomas with a cocky smile.
Thomas eased out into the busy street and headed for the M11 motorway. As the car climbed to 140 mph he grinned together with the man like they were both up to now good. Well, only Thomas was, because suddenly the driver frowned and shook his head from side to side, as if he were disappointed and slew up to the hard shoulder with a neat judder.
“Whassup?” the sales man said with a worried expression too.
Thomas said.
“Listen to that.” He paused for a full 10 seconds.
“There is noise in the boot. What is in there? A loose jack, or the spare banging loose?
The bemused passenger concentrated and scratched his nose.
“I don’t hear a thing. I’ll check it out.” He stepped out and as he walked to the rear of the car Thomas squealed off waving goodbye to the guy in the rear view mirror.
“The cheeky …….” The stranded car salesman threw his clipboard at his feet and waved at oncoming traffic frantically for assistance.
Thomas swung off at Duxford and stopped at a derelict farm. He reached into the backseat and rooted into his rucksack pulling from it a leather case. He opened it once, and then again to reveal a belt of tools. Taking a screwdriver he jumped from the car. There was a ramshackle group of outbuildings drowning in every creeper and vine. A small work shed beckoned and he pushed the stubborn door struggling with a single hinge with his shoulder and it scraped open. Through the dank air he saw a bench and some scattered rubbish on the floor. He turned over a broken plastic chair and a bicycle frame. Graffiti had found the place and daubed itself on a wall with obscenities, and there were some spray cans left half empty as if the culprit had been disturbed or had got bored.
Thomas examined one can of clear lacquer and smirked with triumph. He panned the room again and found a small length of half inch dowel and walked outside squinting at the bright sunlight. Walking over to the car and taking the screwdriver with him he crouched and loosened both number plates. He broke the dowel across his knee to make equal lengths and put the rod under the bottom of the number plate lifting its angle from the car and re-tightened the screws pinching the wood in place. Picking up the spray lacquer he shook it for a full minute and sprayed both plates.
“They won’t catch this pigeon.” He muttered. Getting back in the car and stuffing the almost empty aerosol in his rucksack he trawled off down the muddy track and onto the motorway in search of speed traps to confound.
A half hour later he was at Luton airport and had parked the car for good. Leaving the keys thoughtfully on top of the nearside tyre until it’s inevitable rescue one day by the rightful owner. He would never see that car or the UK again. He boarded the shuttle bus and stood with his rucksack in the elbow of the vehicle. He foraged for his American friend’s cheque book, discreetly slipping it into his trouser pocket.
Luton airport had been re-furbished since the last time he was there and even had an executive lounge. Thomas muse about this. He was, after all, an ambassador for Jesus and every individual on the planet a prospective disciple. Matthew chapter fourteen had commissioned him to preach the ‘good news’ far and wide in all the inhabited earth. He was bound in duty to show that while the book of Proverbs said ‘the wicked may seem to prosper’ God had spoken to him through his word, “Let not the rich man brag about having riches but brag in having the wisdom and knowledge of me.”
“Like scarecrows in a cucumber field they cannot speak and fail to make any steps while the reaper gathers up.” Thomas whispered watching the hordes bustling at the duty free shop.
The airport mall buzzed with electric baggage trucks and as sheep without a shepherd, he studied every person in his vision with scrupulous care. Craning their necks at the monitors with expressions of becalmed pirates looking for land. Thomas was amazed at the ‘power dressing’ at airports. One could not help feeling sorry for those travelers preening themselves in front of each other as some sort of courting ritual. Why didn’t they wear a sign or carry a placard, “I have money.” Or, “I want everybody to think I have money.”
Such people deserve to be quietly looted. They have probably made their money illegally so needed to be plundered. Thomas was a latter day Artful dodger, exploiting the carelessness of others. In fact he was highlighting the need for property owners to be more vigilant. He was inspired by his attendance at the many business seminars he frequented to keep malnutrition at bay. One in particular, that extolled the virtues of house security. He watched a video of two professional burglars on a screen timer try to break down a door that the window company were selling as a prime product. It took just one minute and twelve seconds to gain entry. A lifetime in the diary of a common thief. It would have been far more sensible to have the door opened for you and not have caused such unsightly damage and hideous noise. Surely, it’s far more polite to be invited in.
Yesterday, he was Trevor Langley. Meter reader.
By watching the comings and goings of a client it is easy to establish a pattern of a routine. Meter readers do call at the most awkward time, usually just as you need to go work. It’s better to call at the rear door as the meter box is right by it. At the point the last person in the house is about to rush out, Thomas would tap on the back door. The woman would in the process of snatching her bag and coat.
“Hello. Just, here to read your meter, Madam. Is this it?” He would point at the plastic box.
“Err, yes, will it take long, only I have to go?”
“10 seconds. Thanks. I’ll be gone in that time.” Thomas was reassuring. After all you don’t want to ‘hold people up’. Timing was essential, he would slip his hand into his pocket and use his own ‘doorbell’. A tiny door buzzer that he bought for his own front door, if he had one, that is. It will activate any doorbell as a ‘ghost’ caller from an electric frequency up to 20 yards. By pressing the buzzer to set off his client’s bell will require her to stop talking to him, and run for the front door.
“Oh, who on earth is that…? Excuse me.”
 The back door left open, gave Thomas his chance to slip inside and hide. The woman opens the door. Steps out into the road. Looks up and down it with a puzzled frown. Comes back inside looking flustered. Walks back into the kitchen where the meter reader man had gone too. Maybe it was kids playing ‘knock down Ginger’. She locked the back door and scooted off to work.
Thomas stayed for a good hour enjoying the Discovery channel and a pizza. He made two rules. That he borrow from a client one item only. His trophy would be small. He would leave the premises exactly how he found it. Thomas liked gadgets. The handheld cordless mug blender would be useful, he thought.
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