Yesterday I spent most of my evening at the local nick. The story goes as follows:I had been doing an evening round on my trike, nothing much, just 25 klicks around the lake. When I arrived back in home town it was time to decide whether to go home or to do another short loop in the opposite direction. I wasn't greatly motivated but since the weather forecast for the next days was far from brilliant I decided to put a few more miles on the clock. When I turned into a small side street I saw an older man walking on the pavement, carrying what looked like a battered old sports bag. From behind the man came up a jogger in a hoodie and closed in on the man in kind of a suspicious way, I guess that must have been the point when I thought something like uh-oh, here we go...The jogger snatched the bag from the man and set of at a high pace, leaving the victim helpless. Without giving it a thought I went after the thief on my trike! At the end of the street I was swerving dangerously around a car which was standing waiting at the crossroads, I couldn't look into the street when I turned that corner but when I had passed the car I saw the thief legging it up the street with the stolen bag under his arm...I pushed hard and followed in hot pursuit, one corner to the left, one to the right, somehow I even found the air to yell for the police at the top of my lungs but bystanders were so surprised, they could not do anything. Anyway, the thief was too stupid to go anywhere I couldn't have followed, so I closed in further and further. Again, I was yelling Police! and at that point I was close enough that the thief turned around for a second and dropped the stolen bag.I snatched it from the ground at full pace ( bless that trike! ) and shouted something like: When I get you bastard...!After that there was no sense in continuing the pursuit because he was a younger and fitter man and in the time it would have taken me to get off the trike he would have been gone anyway. ( also, there is no sense in endangering oneself unneccessarily, right? )So I turned around on the spot and headed for the police station on the shortest way, with the sports bag under my arm. When I turned into the yard a police car with flashing lights was just making it's way out, so I signalled them to stop and asked: Are you going for the bag snatch? And they said yes, wherupon I said that's fine, because I got the booty right here! One policeman said "great!", jumped from the car and took the bag while I was heading for the station to give a description of the thief. We did a protocol, as things must, when finally the victim turned up. He was understandably excited and said that this had been his last day in this town because tomorrow they would close the shop for good. So I asked him: If you don't mind me asking, good man, what exactly is your business? And he answered: Why, I'm a gold salesman, in that bag were 6000 Euros worth of gold and 3000 in cash! ( no kidding! )Imagine that, in an old battered sports bag, where I assumed nothing more than maybe a sweaty towel and a pair of sneakers...Well, it took quite a while until the Kriminalpolizei finally arrived and asked me to make a final statement. Meanwhile I was aked if I wanted food or drink or something and some admired the trike. It was all in a very nice atmosphere, we talked a lot of things, I asked some questions about policing and we had a few laughs as well. I think I'll count that as an evening amongst nice people. The police all agreed that the bag snatch must have been planned and that the thief would have been observing the victim for some days so that he knew the other man's habits and where to get at him best.The victim had asked me to visit him and his boss the other day, which I declined and said that I'd consider it as natural that every person in the same situation should act like I did. ( Besides, I think those gold salesmen are rather shady characters themselves... )Well, yes, that's the way it went. They didn't get the thief but I guess some day they will because the choice of Africans isn't that great around here but this is none of my business. I finally went home for a well deserved shower but couldn't find sleep for some time after all that excitement....
Kim, you are very bad!
