Crime Stop

The key to relieving people of their valuables in Pick ‘n Pay is to blend.

Make very little eye contact. Wear clean clothes. Hover on the fringes of a large family huddled in front of the yogurt display.

The boy behind me has been a bumbling tsotsi for about 15 minutes.

Heâ s read the handbook but forgotten the subtlety so he makes telling work of staring me down nervously or latching onto random though opportune families out in their Easter Monday best every time I turn around and find him trailing.

Itâ s the Vaseline that gives him away.

The lack of it on his ashy knees and dusty elbows jutting out sharply and in half-starved contrast to the well-fed and marvelouslly moisturised relatives he adopts as a flimsy cover. The Vaseline and the stripes. Vertical on his green shirt, horizontal on his white shorts so you know no sensible female figure has been in the recent picture to get him to know better, fatten him up, tell him crime doesnâ t pay.

Like most men, I lose him in the tampon aisle before ducking into pest control where I find heâ s not alone.

Taller and on his own turf, I watch another young man shadowing an elderly one before a short, sharp cough sends him scurrying towards the tills like the cockroach on the Doom bottle heâ s pretending to be purchasing. Not three minutes later, heâ s back again. Returning the bottle.

He knows I know and I know he knows I know and he gives me one short, sharp defiant look before leaving the aisle and making like Elvis in the context of buildings.

Thatâ s when I bump into the boy again. Still hoping for a win.

Heâ s in one of the crowded queues invading a short-sighted womanâ s personal space when I go where I always go when the world gets a little wacky.

The chocolate aisle.

Employee packing, me playing at rambling, informing 80-year-old nosey parker, sweet packer marching to the store managerâ s desk, reporting, before a woman booms promptly into a microphone.

â Attention, ladies and gentlemen, please take care of your handbags and cellphones.⠝

The boy detaches himself from the short-sighted woman and heads towards the bakery.

But not before the sweet packer has asked me to point him out and Iâ ve done so from afar citing the cowardly reality of needing to walk home through a medley of deserted parking and broad daylight, both of which are suitable sites for snitch kicking by small boy.

The sweet packer follows him and turns to me for confirmation before a security guard in a bright yellow vest takes the trail over, presumably bent on blinding criminals with conspicuousness.

He could learn a few things about blending in from the small boy but I keep that to myself as he goes about his business.

My work is done.

Iâ ve sent one criminal scurrying, another has the heat on them and so I finish my shopping, duck past a chancer who has reached in past the public holiday booze barrier, dropped the bottle and is standing in a puddle of pungent broken dreams the sight of which make me feel a little sad.

Not for the desperado whose one too many days of alcohol purchasing deprivation have led him to the looks heâ s getting as he guards the liquor lake waiting for clean up but for the little boy who I know nothing about beyond the fact that heâ s trying to steal on Easter morning.

Not preparing lunch with a family that loves him. Not hunting for or painting Easter eggs. Not doing anything a little boy should be doing.

Rather evading mall cops while trailing an eagle-eyed though ironically nearsighted woman who will probably give the whole thing way too much thought.

I donâ t see him again until I do.

Iâ m feeling bad for being a responsible citizen, for sparing myself or someone else the heartache of posting about needing everyoneâ s numbers or texting someone only to receive a sincere though no less devastating ⠘new phone, who dis?â when I spot him.

Sitting alone at Milky Lane.

He knows I know. I know he knows I know.

So I smile.

He smiles. Cocks his head and points one finger at me in mock threat.