Chapter 4 : The Package Thief
Pemberton's Rental Building, Camberwell — April 26, 2010, 9:15 AM
The building was a converted Victorian terrace on a quiet side street off Camberwell Church Street — the kind of property that looked respectable from the outside and told a different story once you stepped through the front door. Cracked tiles in the hallway. A radiator that clanked like a prisoner rattling chains. The communal mail area was a sad wooden shelf next to the staircase, open to anyone who walked through the front door, which — as I discovered in about thirty seconds — didn't lock properly.
"The latch sticks," Pemberton said, jiggling the front door handle as if demonstrating this fact to someone who might dispute it. "I've had it repaired twice. Tenants prop it open with a brick when they're expecting deliveries."
And there's your problem, right there.
But I didn't say that. Not yet. Telling a client the answer before he'd finished explaining the question was bad business — it made them feel stupid, and stupid-feeling clients didn't become repeat clients. I'd learned that in my old life, sitting in on Bureau briefings where half the work was managing egos.
"Walk me through the timeline," I said instead, pulling out the small notepad I'd bought at a pound shop. "When did it start?"
Pemberton leaned against the banister, arms folded. He was wearing the same signet ring, the same quality shoes. The man had a uniform.
"Three weeks ago. Maybe four. Mrs. Patel in 2B was the first to complain — Amazon parcel, vanished between noon and three. Then Mr. Okoro in 3A lost a set of textbooks. Then it was electronics — a laptop, a tablet. That's when I lost tenants."
"How many units?"
"Eight. Two are empty now because of this."
Empty units meant lost rent. For a man like Pemberton — a man who tracked every penny the way a hawk tracked field mice — that was the real pain point. The thefts weren't just an inconvenience. They were an affront to his ledger.
[Case Acquired: Package Theft — Difficulty: Trivial — Reward: TBD]
I examined the mail shelf. Scratches on the wood surface, but those were old — years of parcels sliding on and off. No security camera, which was standard for a building this age and this price bracket. The hallway had one window, frosted glass, facing a narrow alley.
"I'm going to need to talk to some of your tenants," I said. "And I'll need the delivery schedule — which companies, what times."
"I'll introduce you to whoever's home. As for deliveries..." He pulled a folded paper from his jacket. Printed spreadsheet, neat columns. Times, dates, carriers, items reported stolen. The man was a landlord to his bones.
I spent the next two hours knocking on doors.
Mrs. Patel in 2B was a retired schoolteacher who spoke in the clipped, precise English of someone who'd been correcting grammar for forty years. Her stolen parcel had been a birthday gift for her granddaughter — a children's book, worth maybe eight pounds. She was more upset about the principle than the loss.
"It's the violation," she said, standing in her doorway with a cup of tea she hadn't offered me. "Someone came into our building and took something that wasn't theirs. What does that say about where we live?"
Mr. Okoro in 3A was a postgraduate student at King's College. His textbooks had cost over two hundred pounds. He'd reported it to the police, who'd given him a crime reference number and precisely nothing else.
"They said it was a low-priority property crime," he told me, frustration tight in his jaw. "Low priority. Two hundred quid is my food budget for a month."
The woman in 1A — young professional, barely home — hadn't lost anything but had seen a delivery van parked outside "longer than usual" on at least two occasions. She couldn't remember which company. She could remember the van was white, which in London narrowed things down to approximately every van on every road.
I thanked them all, made notes, and went back to the hallway. Stood there for a minute, looking at the shelf, the door, the window.
The pattern was clear: weekday afternoons, consistent timing, only packages left on the shelf. Nothing taken from inside flats. Which meant the thief had access to the building but not the individual units. Someone with a key, or someone who knew the door was propped open.
Time to watch.
---
Camberwell Side Street — April 27-28, 2010
I bought the cheapest digital camera I could find — a Canon point-and-shoot from a Cash Converters on Walworth Road, twenty-five quid, battered but functional. Then I borrowed a car.
"Borrowed" was generous. Derek at the hostel had a mate named Raj who ran a minicab service and had a Ford Focus that spent most weekdays parked behind his house in Peckham. For ten pounds and a promise to return it with petrol, Raj handed over the keys without asking why.
Day one: nothing.
I sat in the Focus across from Pemberton's building from noon to six, eating a Tesco meal deal and drinking cold coffee from a thermos. Three deliveries arrived — Royal Mail, DPD, Hermes. Each driver pulled up, carried packages inside, came back out within two minutes. Normal. By five o'clock, my back ached from the sagging driver's seat and my bladder was staging a formal protest.
This was the part of investigative work that television never showed. The waiting. The slow, grinding, mind-numbing tedium of watching a door that nothing happened behind. In my old life, I'd done plenty of desk work, but desk work at least had coffee and a bathroom. Surveillance from a borrowed Ford Focus in Camberwell had neither.
Day two: there it was.
The delivery van — white, unmarked, not affiliated with any major carrier — arrived at 1:47 PM. The driver was new. Different from the three I'd cataloged yesterday. He carried two boxes inside, came back out, but instead of driving away immediately, he sat in the van. Made a phone call. Lasted four minutes. Then he pulled out, slow, circling the block before heading north.
I noted the plate number. Took three photos through the windshield.
Twenty-two minutes later, a young man — early twenties, tracksuit, hands in pockets — walked up to the front door and let himself in with a key. Not a resident. I'd memorized the faces of every tenant Pemberton had shown me, and this kid wasn't one of them.
He came out three minutes later carrying a box under his arm.
I got four clean shots of his face.
[Observation check: Detail captured — delivery van plate, suspect face, timing pattern]
[+3 SP]
I followed him. On foot this time — parked the car and kept a block's distance. He walked east, turned down a side street, and entered a ground-floor flat in a council block off Peckham Road. I noted the address, took one more photo of the door, and left.
---
Pemberton's Office, Camberwell — April 29, 2010, 11:00 AM
The confrontation wasn't dramatic. Real confrontations rarely were.
I'd spent the previous evening at the library, running the delivery van's plate through a public vehicle check — registered to a courier service in Lewisham. A few more searches gave me the driver's name, and from there, a Facebook profile that listed his cousin as living at the exact address I'd followed the young man to.
The cousin's name was Kyle Fenton. Twenty-two. Three prior cautions for shoplifting. Not exactly a criminal mastermind.
I went to Kyle's flat at nine in the morning, knocked, and waited. He answered in boxers and a vest, squinting against the daylight like a vampire caught at noon.
"Kyle Fenton?"
"Who's asking?"
I held up the camera. Showed him the photographs — him entering the building, him leaving with the box, the van, the timeline. His face went through denial, anger, and resignation in about eight seconds flat.
"Your cousin copies the building key for you," I said. "He calls when packages arrive. You go in, take what you want, sell the rest. You've been at it for three weeks, maybe four. Electronics are the big earners, but you took a set of textbooks too, which tells me you're not picky."
Kyle's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"I'm not police," I said. "But I can be, if that's how you want this to go. Or you can return everything you haven't sold, hand over the copied key, and find a different hobby."
He chose wisely. Took him two hours to gather what was left — about half the stolen items, the rest already fenced — and deliver them to Pemberton's office in a bin bag.
Pemberton spread the recovered items across his desk and stared at them like artifacts from an archaeological dig.
"His own cousin's delivery route," Pemberton said. "Unbelievable."
"That's the thing about theft from inside. It's almost always someone with access. Everyone assumes it's a stranger, but strangers don't have keys."
Pemberton made tea. It was terrible — stewed too long, milk added with the careless abandon of a man who considered tea a formality rather than a beverage. I drank it anyway, because you always drank the client's tea. Bureau rule number one of relationship management.
"What do I owe you?" he asked.
"Whatever you think it's worth."
He studied me over his mug. That calculating look again — the property investor's mental arithmetic, weighing value against cost.
"Seventy-five pounds for the case. And I want to discuss something else."
He slid an envelope across the desk. I opened it. Inside: three crisp fifty-pound notes and a typed letter on Pemberton's letterhead.
"Monthly retainer," he said. "Two hundred pounds. You handle any problems at my properties — thefts, tenant disputes, maintenance fraud. I've got six buildings across South London. Things come up."
Two hundred a month. Steady. Reliable. Not fortune, but foundation.
I took the envelope.
"When do I start?"
"You already have." He almost smiled. Almost. "More tea?"
"I'm good, thanks."
[Case Complete: Package Theft — Resolution: Successful]
[+15 SP. Total: 28/100]
[OBS +1: Sustained surveillance practice. New total: 12]
I left Pemberton's office with seventy-five pounds in my pocket, a retainer agreement in the envelope, and the quiet satisfaction of a job done right. Not a big job. Not an important job. A landlord's missing packages — the kind of thing Sherlock Holmes would dismiss as beneath contempt.
But Sherlock Holmes wasn't here. And I was.
On the way back to the hostel, I passed a newsagent with a handwritten sign in the window: Bedsits available — inquire within. I took down the number.
The immigration office had sent a letter to the hostel three days ago. My temporary status had been extended — provisional visa, six months, pending further review. Nathan Cole existed, at least on paper.
Time to give him an address.
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