“We’re here about a robbery. Are you the owners?”

Carl stepped forward nervously “I am, yes. That’s just, he’s… my assistant.” He gestured at Norris, who was enthusiastically polishing the jewels they’d been stashing in bags only minutes ago. _Too_ enthusiastically, he realised.

The officers seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Right, can you walk us through what happened here?” said the tall one. He seemed to be the one in charge.

“Well… as you can see, they wrecked my shop.” He gave what he hoped was a sad assessing sweep of the dishevelled surroundings.

“The call mentioned two assailants. Can you provide a description?” As his superior barked this order, the younger officer enthusiastically withdrew a notepad and pen from his breast pocket, poised to immortalise every word Carl said.

“A description?” Carl hadn’t thought this far ahead. “Yes, of course. Well, there was two of them.” Norris coughed nervously from behind the shattered counter. Carl pointedly ignored him.

“One of them was tall,” he continued, “great big oaf of a bloke, red hair, freckles, big nose.”

The officers looked at each other in confusion; “Hang on. You said on the phone they were wearing masks,” the younger one chimed in.

_Shit_. “They were. Yes, they were wearing masks, both of them. But the big one had his arms out, you know, and I could tell he was definitely a redhead with freckles.” He chuckled nervously, “I mean no one dyes their arm hair ginger do they!”

“I suppose not” drawled the one in charge, disinterested. “Right, and the other one?”

“The other one”, continued Carl, “was shorter, about your height” he gestured at the younger officer, “small build, you know? Looked like he skipped leg day.”

The young officer looked down at his lower half and blushed.

His superior didn’t seem to notice or care, “right, we’ll have officers out on the street looking for them.”

There was a muffled groan from the bathroom. The gag must have loosened. “That’s…” Carl gave a not at all reassuring smile “my other assistant. He’s had terrible tummy upsets since it all happened.” He leaned in to whisper conspiratorially “he’s the nervous type, you know?”

The tall officer raised his eyebrow and seemed to give a pointed glare in his colleague’s direction, as if to say yes, he did indeed know.

“We’ll be on our way then. A team will be round later to take inventory and statements. We’ll let you know if we catch them in the meantime.”

_If_. If was good.

“Cheerio!” Carl saluted them as they turned to leave, realising at the last second that he was supposed to be recently robbed. He gave a more somber follow-up wave, and threw in a few small head shakes for good measure.

At the sound of the front door closing behind their departed guests, Norris let out a great exhale of air, as if he’d been holding his breath the entire time.

“That was probably the worst idea you’ve ever had…. and yet it worked.”