Gut Instinct

He stood at the self-service checkout; scanning his frivolous bits of shopping and plopping them into the plastic bag after ever beep. His sharp suit and polished shoes suggested a professional businessman. His larger than average midriff and portly appearance nodded towards an exuberant lifestyle, not short of money. But there was something off about this guy. He walked from the barcode scanner to the bag with a stiff limp.  A certain strangeness overshadowed the way he was standing. There was definitely something dodgy about his gate.

“Can I help you?”

“Huh? What?”

I looked at the cashier behind the till. I was queuing at my local supermarket to buy a lottery ticket (just a lucky dip, in case you were wondering) and had been waiting so long for the old bird in front of me to finish counting her 5p’s on the counter that I’d lost interest in my infrequent gambling habit. Instead, I’d taken notice of a small, squat man in a suit standing at the self-services. There was just something suspicious about him. I couldn’t quite tell what.

“What do you want?” the cashier insisted. Her blonde hair tied into a tight bun, probably to pull back her weathered skin in an unsuccessful attempt to give an appearance of youth. Her painted on eyebrows creased into an irritated frown. The heavily lip-sticked (lip-stack?) mouth dissolved into a scowl.  Customer service wasn’t her forte.

I asked for my ticket without taking my eyes off the bloke. He seemed to be leaning to one side. It looked as if he was smuggling something heavy in his trousers. Scanning a large iceberg lettuce, he looked up and our eyes met across the busy shop. Worry flashed through his gaze and I immediately picked up on the cut of guilt slicing across his face. What was this big bag of bollocks up to?

“He’s hiding something” my gut suggested.

“I’d agree” agreed my suspicions.

“Me three” chimed in my intuition.

The blonde cashier insisted on me paying her, but my mind was elsewhere now. The fella in the suit was speeding up his self-serviced checking-out, throwing out beeps from the machine like the heart-rate monitor of an obese smoker after a jog. Beep! Beep! Beep!  And then it happened.

“Unexpected item in the bagging area!!!”

The electronic voice sang shrill across the whole supermarket. Everyone turned to look at the man, now fumbling with an oversized French baguette poking from the carrier in the bagging area. There were crumbs all over his left foot.  A toddler pointed and shook its tiny head.

It clicked. The bastard was smuggling loaves. Down his trouser leg was another 30 inch baguette, probably still warm from the oven (and now keeping at a constant temperature with the heat of his thigh). That’s why he had the funny posture. That was why he was limping back and forth. By Christ had he picked the wrong day to shoplift.

Instinct kicked in and I bound across the store. My enormous, muscular legs cut through the air like a hot knife through butter (or margarine for the health conscious... pfft!). It was now or never. He barely had time to slide twin packs of frozen salmon across the scanner before I pounced on him. I was a righteous tiger, fighting on the side of good and he was my thieving pray.

“D’you like bread, punk?” I asked, not entirely sure why I’d added the “punk” part at the end but deciding to run with it, regardless.

“W-w-w-what?” stammered the man, wheezing beneath my bulky weight.

“Do you like bread?” I snarled, finishing with “Punk” again.

“You’re crushing me!”

I laughed and threw my head back for effect before laughing some more.

“Are you going to take out the hot stick you’re packing down your trouser leg, or shall I, punk?”

I was becoming very aware of how often I was using the word “Punk” now, and made a conscious effort to stop.
“Excuse me?” The man looked terrified.

“You’ve made one Hell of a mistake today buddy boy. Normally I’d turn a blind eye to this kind of petty thieving. But you’re not poverty stricken. Look at this crisp suit. You obviously have money to buy fancy iceberg lettuce and TWO packets of salmon!”

“It’s buy-one-get-one-free!”

“I don’t care what special offers there are (though that does sound quite reasonable). If you can buy the rest of your shopping, then why can’t you pay for French baguettes like everyone else? No one pulls a Worrall Thompson in the same building as Kurt Silverwood!”

I’m certain someone cheered at this point.

I pulled at his waistband, trying to wriggle down his trousers, but the guy hung on tight, screeching like a pansy as I turned him round onto his front. He kicked and squealed as I tugged at his leg, feeling the unnatural bulk within his trousers where the baguette was hidden. Yet somehow it felt strange... A little too bulky. It was then that I should have stopped pulling at the man’s leg.

One enormous heave and I was flung backwards into the air, left sprawled in a heap on the floor. The man was yelping as a crowd gathered around us. I looked at the shoe I was holding onto. An expensive piece of footwear, littered with breadcrumbs around the laces. A few moments passed before I noticed that the man’s leg was still attached to it.

A young mother fainted. A few children started crying. An elderly gentleman swore (“Shitting Jesus!”). I recoiled in horror as I saw the gasping man, lying on the floor helpless, missing the bottom half of his leg from the knee. I held the rest of it upright in my hands. I’d torn the bugger’s leg off! I hadn’t realised my own strength!

“Give me that back!” cried the man.

I lay, stunned, the leg in my clutches.

“Give me back my prosthetic leg!”

Never have the words “prosthetic leg” ushered so much relief to so many people. As everyone jointly realised in one successive swoop across the audience, there was an almost audible sigh of relief. I hadn’t torn off the leg of a man. I’d simply yanked off the fake limb of an amputee which is a million times more socially acceptable.

I threw back the appendage before rising to my feet and dusting myself off. A small group of people gathered round the man who was now desperately trying to attach the plastic member back in place beneath his knee.

“Did you really think this poor man was shoplifting!?” exclaimed an official looking woman in distain.

“Don’t be silly,” I replied. “I was only pulling his leg.”

Lesson learnt? Trust your gut instincts as 99% of the time they’ll be right. But be aware that the other 1% may end with you detaching the prosthetic leg from a perfectly innocent gentleman and having to do a runner.

Kurt Silverwood P.I.