Underneath

Rahman switched on his torch. "Police! Stay where you are."

The hand belonged to Ken. He climbed out of the hole, looked at the officers and sighed. Behind him, a second voice asked, "Ken? What's wrong?" It was Mr Lim, covered in dust from head to toe.

Ken tried to look nonchalant, calm and relaxed, as if being caught in a bank at midnight happened every day. "We were only checking the pipes," he said.

"Pipes," said Rahman. "In the middle of the night. From the shop next door." He shook his head. "You'll need a better alibi than that. Nobody will believe you were somewhere else."

At the police station, Rahman tried to interrogate the two men for hours. He asked question after question, but they said nothing.

Arif was still baffled. "I don't understand. How did you know?"

"Ken chose to be inconspicuous, a quiet worker on half pay. That was the first clue: nobody honest works for so little. Then the advert took you upstairs on Saturdays. Then the knees. Then the bank. One small fact at a time."

"You never stopped asking. You were relentless."

Their plan was ingenious, Rahman admitted, but the real culprit, the person who had planned everything, was Mr Lim. He had robbed two banks before. Ken was only the digger. Rahman thanked Maya and Arif for staying vigilant.

On Tuesday, the bank gave them both a reward. Arif was elated, so happy that he could not stop smiling.

"Fifty ringgit a week for copying a dictionary," Maya said. "I told you. Nobody pays for nothing."

Arif laughed. "At least I learned a lot of words starting with B."