Lost Property - Part 3

15:00

It starts to rain again as the cab finally pulls up to the front of Tom’s flat in Ladbroke Grove, W11. The tidy tree-lined street is miles away from the hustle and the bustle, and the sometimes murky streets of Manchester. He can’t wait to get in and have a cold beer, a shower and bed. But first, he has something to do. The bag. What’s in the bag?

It’s cool in the flat, after two weeks away it would be. He makes his way down the hallway and straight into the kitchen. Life is good for Tom. He has a beautiful flat. Wooden flooring throughout, high ceilings and large, bright rooms. The kitchen is where he spends most of his time, with its large oak table, 8 burner hob and lots of heavy natural wooden worktops.

He drops the heavy bag on the floor and opens the fridge. The light from inside the fridge highlights the sweat and light rain on his face as he grabs a tin of beer, cracks it open and hungrily gulps it down. He gasps and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and looks at the bag on the floor.

He places his half-empty tin of beer on the table, picks up the bag and puts it on the table. He stares at the bag for a moment. He takes a firm grip on the large zipper tag and draws the long zip open towards him. There are two neatly folded polo shirts, two jumpers, four pairs of new socks and 3 pieces of new underwear, all still in their boxes, only one has a broken seal. Slowly he takes the items out in bundles and places them carefully on the table. There is a sharp screeching of tyres from a car that has stopped urgently outside surprising Tom. It stops him from carrying on emptying the bag as he looks down the hallway to the front door.

Silence.

He has removed all of the items from the bag, but there is something else. A large polythene bag. Through the folds of the plastic, he can make out what looks like money, a lot of money. Lots of twenty-pound notes. Tom knows a lot of money when he sees it. He should do in his line of work.
Now his heart is racing. He looks once again down the hallway, and out of the kitchen window as if he is expecting someone to suddenly appear. Nothing, just the gentle drip from the kitchen tap. He reaches into the bag and pulls the tightly wrapped polythene bag out from the bottom of the bag. It’s heavy. Very heavy.

He places the tightly wrapped plastic bundle on the table with the clothes and his unfinished beer and begins to gently pull apart the polythene that’s holding the money together. Carefully he removes the money from the bag, constantly looking out of the kitchen window and looking down the hallway. After a while, there are eight neat piles of unused twenty-pound notes, bound together in batches of one thousand pounds. Tom’s mouth is dry. With his eyes fixed on the neat piles of money on his kitchen table, he grabs the can of beer, and without taking his eyes off the money he empties the remaining contents down his dry throat with loud gulps.

He begins to count the money, creating new piles and after 15 minutes he has counted thirty thousand pounds in unused twenty pound notes. He steps back from the table to take in the view. He takes his phone from his inside jacket pocket which is on the back of one of the chair, and begins to take photographs of the money from different angles. After checking the photographs on his phone, he starts to put the money back in the polythene bag and into the black holdall. He places the clothes, socks and boxes of underwear back on top of the money exactly as he found them. He then closes the bag, takes a deep breath and exhales loudly, rubbing his stubbly chin with his right hand. He shakes his head, laughs out loud and claps his sweating hands together, the noise echoing through the flat. He can’t believe that someone would be so stupid enough to leave a bag with so much money and on a train.


17:00

He takes the bag through to his bedroom and places it inside a large wardrobe. He turns on the ensuite shower, closes the curtains in the bedroom, and while the water is getting hot he undresses. Finally, after a long day, he enjoys the hot steaming water on his body, washing away the grime of the day, and the foul weather. He gets into his large bed and starts to wonder what to do with this thirty thousand pound bag of money. Many scenarios run through his head, none of which make any sense. Except for one. Keep the money and say nothing!

After a while, Tom falls into a long deep sleep. Tomorrow is another day.


09:00

Bolt upright and gasping for breath, Tom looks around his bedroom. There is knocking at the door. Loud, persistent knocking. He rubs his eyes and face and looks at the clock at the side of the bed. 09:00. Again the knock. It’s getting sharper, louder and quicker. Whoever is at the door, they are getting impatient.

“What the…”, moans Tom as he gets out of bed. He knows full well that it won’t be the postman, far too early for that, and he certainly isn’t expecting any deliveries or anything else for that matter, so whoever it is banging on the door will be getting a frosty, and by now, angry reception.
In just the clothes he went to bed in the night before, boxer shorts and a T-shirt. He staggers down the hallway, still bleary-eyed from his long deep sleep.

Through the frosted glass panel of his front door, he can make out two dark, blurred shapes. People. Men. He opens the door and has to rub his eyes again, this time in total confusion.
Before he could do or say anything else, he felt a quick sharp pain in his mouth followed by the taste of blood. His own blood, as one of the men strikes Tom with a powerful fast punch to the mouth. The blow takes him by surprise, so much so that it sends him staggering backwards down the hallway.
Quickly the two men enter the house and close the door firmly behind them.
The larger of the two men is carrying a black, nylon bag, similar to the one Tom now has hidden in his bedroom wardrobe. Lying on the floor of his hallway, Tom is nursing a very split and bloody lip, as he recognises the two men through his watering eyes. He is confused, unable to understand how and why these two men are in his house. More importantly, how did they find him? The man with the bag quickly approaches Tom, spins the bag over his head and slams it hard into Tom’s chest.

“Come on Tom. Up you get”, says the man with the bag. “We need to have a little talk”.

Even though it looks like there is nothing in the bag, it instantly winds Tom. Something sharp and heavy is in the bag. Together the two men pick Tom up from the floor, each man grabbing an arm, and unceremoniously dragging him into the kitchen. He is thrown into one of the four chairs surrounding the large oak table. The man with the bag smiles as he drops the bag on the table, while his associate pins Tom firmly down into the chair.

The bag is quickly unzipped by the larger of the two men who then pulls from the inside a roll of grey duck tape, which he throws to his accomplice, who immediately starts to tear a long strip from the roll and begins to wrap it around Tom’s legs and the legs of the chair thus binding them both together. Tom wrestles to try and break free, the searing pain from his legs as the tape tears at the hair on his legs is too much and he gives up the struggle, allowing his arms to be pulled behind him which, like his legs, are now bound to the back of the chair.


10:00

“My name is Kamile and this is my very very good friend Jonas. Hello again. How was your trip, Tom? Tom we would like to tell you a story. You, you Tom are the main character in our story. It’s a very interesting story. Would you like us to tell you our story, Tom?”

Tom is starting to panic and sob.

“Tom. Listen”, he shouts. “Would you like us to tell you a story?”

Tom’s eyes are watering, his brow is showing beads of sweat and his breathing is heavy. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand anything.

“Yes of course you do. Let us all get comfortable. Oh, but first Tom, there are a few things that we will need. Props if you like”.

STATIC

Lost Property - Part 4  (18+) Part 4 - A chance meeting on a train that leads to a double cross and death #2324959 by Bill Whyte