Norma recognised the musky mixture of dust and decay as she unlocked the front door.
The body had been removed but no-one had opened windows for air.
Her job as an environmental health officer was to clear the three-bedroom terrace; there was a waiting list of tenants a mile long.
She had seen this before; he was just an ordinary Joe, once a working man and then a pensioner and now all alone, found dead in his bed at eighty-one.
The furniture was mostly cheap and old and would go for recycling. Norma put on her gloves and a mask and busied herself stuffing newspapers, bottles, toiletries – the everyday detritus of a life – into binbags.
The three paper sacks hidden at the back of the airing cupboard interested her. They were heavy and when she opened them, she gasped. Banknotes; there were tens of thousands of pounds.
She had read of old folk who died in poverty and turned out to be misers leaving suitcases of cash under their beds.
Later, Norma marvelled at her nerve. Her bosses didn’t expect there to be bundles of banknotes, so they wouldn’t know she took them. She stashed the cash into a binbag and nonchalantly walked it to her car. Then she finished the job and went home for tea.
Across town, T. K. Mackenzie, the notorious crime boss, had yet to learn that the pathetic old man they had befriended and used as a cuckoo to store their drug takings was dead.
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 