CHALLENGED

CHALLENGED

Colin Smart was always what you could call a challenged person. He was
vertically challenged at 5ft 4in. He was, to be blunt, a bit
intellectually challenged and then of course, he was extremely
challenged when it came to telling the truth. Veracity challenged, he
supposed you could call it.

His family had got used to his lies. 'It's his way of coping,'
explained his mother. They encouraged his fantasy life. After all it
was a way of trying to understand this small person in their family
every other member of which was taller than average. They encouraged
his interest in martial arts because they thought he might be bullied
all his life. Colin became an expert in Kung Fu, and they stopped
worrying about him. He became so fit and confident that he took a job
as a bouncer in a night club.

He was very good at dealing with inebriated ladies. If one was shouting
and being a nuisance, Colin would go up to her and provoke her,
usually, with a hand on a strategic place on her person. The woman
invariably took a swing at him (like swatting away an annoying fly). He
would grab her wrist and before she knew it, her arm was behind her
back and she was being marched out of the door.

Normally Colin had the sense to realise that the females who frequented
the night club were not at all interested in him. They could be
pleasant on the way in, and sometimes drunkenly flirtatious on the way
out, but they saw the job, not him. There was one exception. He had
noticed her only a few weeks ago. She was tall, dark and willowy. Shiny
scented hair cascaded down her back and enveloped Colin as she bent
down to sign in. He was overcome. He lost all the sense he had and was
helpless, putty in her hands.

He was impressed that she seemed interested in him. She talked to him
whenever she was there, and she seemed to come most nights now. She
spent a lot of time just wandering around the place. He thought that
she was just looking for the ladies when she opened the wrong doors and
found herself in the staff rooms or the kitchens. He rather enjoyed
fetching her out of such places. It gave them a little more time
together.

They started meeting outside the night club. It gave him the image he'd
always wanted to have, a beautiful lady walking beside him, OK,
towering above him, but it was the same thing. He felt that he was ten
feet tall. Of course, it helped that she thought he was a millionaire;
that he'd won the lottery but didn't want to give up the day job (well,
night job) just yet. With what she had in mind, it fitted in quite
well. She strung him along for nearly a week. They enjoyed talking
about his money and what he was going to do with it when he felt he was
ready. He told her the money was in a high interest account and he'd to
leave it there, couldn't get it out just now. She was impressed. He
hadn't struck her as an astute person but she had been wrong in her
judgement of people before.

He plan was straightforward. She would go into the office and take all
the money out of the safe. She had been taught the principles of
safe-breaking by her father, who had been 'away' for rather a long time
now. She would smuggle the money out with the help of Colin. Simple,
and should be successful. Colin was quite enthusiastic when she took
him into her confidence. They speculated together about future
destinations. He fancied the Maldives, she was keen on Bali, but they
could both picture themselves in a tropical paradise.

The grand theft went ahead. Colin created a diversion, not difficult in
his line of work. She robbed the safe and hid the loot where they had
previously decided it would be safe. She kept one bundle of money for
'immediate expenses', air tickets and the like.

As she was going out of the night club on her own as they had planned,
Colin did something not planned. He challenged her and called the
police. She was arrested. When she protested that Colin had been in on
it, he merely told the police he had suspected that she was a thief and
was acting as a spy to find out what she was doing.

Colin collected the money later and headed for the Maldives with his
'lottery winnings'. . .