Trafika Europe 2 - Polish Nocturne

The missing items were all small in size. They would have been easy to conceal in clothes or under a bag’s false bot- tom. But how had the alarms been deactivated and the locked cases opened? These were the questions that had turned the security chief’s suspicions toward the staff. I started with routine work, running the data on any new hires in the past several months and checking the security camera tapes. I had worked earlier as a store detective at a shopping center in Vantaa. The kleptomaniacs and candy snatchers didn’t interest me, but since I was a foot soldier in the security field, I had done everything they paid me for. One of the compulsive thieves I’d caught, an R&D director for a big corporation, had tried to bribe me not to report his crime, swearing it was a sickness. I’d refused; he didn’t offer me enough. After the foundation, it was time to pull on Santa’s boots. My grandfather had made them; he had been the village shoemaker. My late Uncle Jari had added roughness to the soles. The leather boots with their upturned tips gave a Finnish stamp to the corny Coca-Cola Santa’s red garb, and they made it easy for Bruun to distinguish me from the store’s other Santas, of which there were five, working in two shifts. I didn’t envy them: to listen to spoiled brats’ •

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