The perfect crime
It was a banana-shaped maraca. It was a banana-shaped maraca and I wanted it.
It was in the back of a small shop named “All Things Percussion” and, to be fair, they’d lived up to their name.
The shopkeeper was large and slow and, I thought, perhaps a little drunk.
“‘s a funny thing,” he muttered, as he tried to ring my purchase up. “(Bloody thing’s curved, lookit the barcode, ‘s all bent.) ‘s a funny thing.”
“Is it?” I said, unsure.
“I used to have all of ‘em, see. A lot bunch of fruit… wotsits. Msracas. Ma. Racas.” He pinched his large, red nose thoughtfully, and gazed upward as if in search of inspiration.
“A whole fruit basket, see. Apples and pears and… thingies. Wotsits. Grapefruit, like. Maracas. All in a basket, right there,” he said, pointing vaguely in the direction I’d found the bright yellow instrument.
“Then one day, right, someone nicked ‘em. Someone stole ‘em all. All of ‘em. At once.”
I nodded, uncertain.
“They wandered in here, right. They came in here, bold as brass, right in the middle of the day. And - and this is genius, right - they brought fruit.”
He’d leaned forward now, whispering in conspiratorial, whiskey-soaked tones.
“They’d came in here and replaced them all, see. They replaced each apple wotsit, maraca, with an actual apple, so I wouldn’t notice. And bananas, and pears, and thingies. Wotsits. Grapefruits. One by bloody one. While I was watching. Right from here.”
He leaned back, pinched his nose again; stared at me, as if to make sure I grasped the fullness of the situation.
“Every damn piece. All of ‘em. They replaced the maracas with stuff from under their coat and then they just left. In broad daylight. Bold as brass.”
I just nodded.
“Amazing, really, in’t it,” he said. “I didn’t realise until I went to polish ‘em up that they were real fruit. And they just… walked outta here. With all my fruit maracas under their coat.”
He sniffed again, pinched his nose.
“‘Cept this one, I guess. Guess they didn’t have enough bananas. Still… it’s like the perfect crime, though, in’t it?”
