Jack in the box

Me and my mates were a pretty ineffectual gang if you really stop and think about it. I’m sure we were a pain in the necks of the local police but we were never caught during our shoplifting and graffiti excursions.

Every now and again we’d get into a gang fight, but in our area it was little more than kids play fighting, and if it became more serious we’d all run away.

We got very good at running away!

Then as we began to get older we tried to think of ways of making a lot of money for ourselves with as little risk as possible.

We had some small success at pinching money from old people as they used the machines outside the banks, but somehow it never struck us as being a proper way of getting the stuff. Slowly the gang broke up as the older members became interested in other things. At last it was only me and Jack who were left.

Jack was a small boy and was always the first to run away if there was a fight, but he did come up with some good ideas.

Then one day as Jack and I were talking things over he thought of a really brilliant idea. “We look too young, so people don’t take us seriously. You know the sort of thing, if we walked into a bank the security people would come up and say something like ‘what do you kids want in here?’ What we need is some way to get inside buildings when there’s nobody about to chase us!”

I nodded wisely; after all I was supposed to be the leader of what was left of our group and nowadays that meant Jack.

Jack went on telling me his solution to our problem. “I’ve thought of a way of getting into a bank without anyone knowing at all!”

“Get on with it,” I replied, “don’t keep me hanging in suspense.”

“Put me in a box and post me,” he said proudly.
He waited until I’d finished laughing. “I mean it! If you were a bank manager and a large box labelled ‘Office equipment’ was brought in what would you do?”

“Unless I was expecting it I’d either return it to the sender or ring up head office and ask what I was supposed to do with it!”

“Exactly, and if we timed it right it could be delivered on a Friday night just as the bank closes and nobody is going to deal with the problem until Monday.”

“One thing,” I said, “how do you know you’ll be delivered at just the right time?”

That’s the clever part,” said Jack with a big grin, “our old mate Bill has got a job as a van driver delivering all around the area. He can move me in a strong cardboard box using a sack barrow and just happen to be outside on Monday waiting for the bank to open to take back the parcel delivered by mistake last Friday.”

Well naturally Bill had to be let into the idea and when he’d finished laughing at Jack he was easily able to find a suitable cardboard box for us. In fact he got us two or three and Jack was able to get to practice getting in and out of them.

The first thing we found was how easily damaged the cardboard boxes were. Fortunately I was a bit of a handyman so I spent a lot of time on the design and manufacture of a wooden crate. Jack decided that he preferred the version with the hinge at the bottom, once inside he could slip the catches and crouch, looking out with the box still covering his head and shoulders.

In the meantime Bill was able to use the computer at work to print off a set of authentic looking labels. ‘Office equipment’, ‘Handle with care,’ ‘This way up’, and so on.

Jack and I had a bit of a practice and then made up our minds to go for the big one straight away. About five minutes before bank closing time Bill delivered the crate to our local bank and sure enough they took it in. I hung about watching as Bill argued that he didn’t know how important the contents were, he was only the delivery boy.

Bill was there again on Monday morning apologising for the wrong delivery and then took the crate to a spot where Jack could get out again without anyone noticing.

Jack was all smiles as he got out but had no money. “I’ve done much better than that,” he said when we asked where the loot was. “The manager of the bank had a letter in his tray that said some shares were a dead cert to invest large sums of money, probably up to ten to one in a month. So I thought we could have a whip round and invest.”

So that’s what we did. We found a stock broker and gave him all the money we had in the world, £50. He told us we were throwing our money away but we insisted that we had a good tip. Then we kept an eye on the trading columns of the Financial Times and sure enough by the end of the month we had £500. Well we’d never had so much cash in our lives and we didn’t know quite what to do with it. We tried the crate again with another bank in the next town and Jack found a similar letter on a desk still promising ten to one in another company’s shares. We used some of our money making Jack’s box a little more comfortable, lots of padding and several cushions.

Then we decided to take the risk again, after all we’d had no money to start with and it was all legal. Once again it worked, we took our money to another broker and in a months time we now we had £5000. Then Jack came back to us and told us that he’d seen a programme on the telly the previous night about a scam going round the banks. It sounded like the one we’d got involved in relying on the letter he’d found.

It all sounded disgusting to us; after all if you can’t trust the banks, who can you trust? So we asked Bill to try and find another place to leave Jack in his box. It wasn’t so easy this time. Most companies seemed to work at the weekends these days, but at last he came up with a large important looking building that appeared to be closed at the weekend.

It was out in the countryside and had a large sign outside declaring that this was the home of ‘PATRA’. Of course at the time we didn’t know that PATRA was the Packaging and Allied Trades Research Association and that’s when it all went wrong.

Poor old Jack was taken to PATRA in his crate, but to his amazement he was moved upstairs to a room which he later found out was the testing laboratory used for the packaging industry. Oh blast, people in this building were still working here even at the weekend. He could hear voices discussing what tests to use on his box.

“This type of crate isn’t on our lists let’s try dropping it on a corner first” suggested one voice. Jack felt he was being raised up in the air and a few seconds later there was a big bang and he bumped his head slightly in spite of the box’s internal padding. “Right then, take it up in five foot increments and check the damage after every drop.”

Well the next drop finished it for poor old Jack, he let out a yell as he landed, but of course the crate was well padded and that deadened the sound. He just managed to hear “it’s very strong, let’s try fifteen feet this time,” when he lost his nerve and slipped the catches to open the lid. Someone outside let out a yell and the crate was lowered to the floor.

You know the rest of course. If you have any more questions you’re quite welcome to come and see me, but you’ll have to get another visiting order from the Prison Governor.