The King's Deception

Oxford Circus was his favorite locale. The Bakerloo, Central, and Victoria Underground lines all converged there. Every morning and evening tens of thousands of people streamed in and out, most headed to the trendy shops and stores that lined Oxford and Bond streets a hundred feet above. Many, like the dowager he now spied, were weighed down with shopping bags — easy marks for someone with the skills he’d spent five of his fifteen years of life perfecting.

It helped that few considered him a threat. He was barely five feet tall with thick blond hair that he kept trimmed with a pair of scissors stolen last year from Harrods. He was actually a fairly proficient barber and considered hairstyling as a possible career — one day, after his street time was behind him. For now, the skill allowed him to maintain an image strangers found inviting. Thankfully, the city’s charity shops offered him a varied choice in dress at little or no cost. He liked corduroy pants and buttondown shirts, a carefree look reminiscent of one of his favorite stories, Oliver Twist. An ideal image for an enterprising pickpocket.

His Scottish mother named him Ian, the only thing she gave him besides life. She disappeared when he was three months old and an English aunt took her place and bestowed him with the last name of Dunne. He’d not seen that aunt in three years, ever since he escaped out a second-story window and dissolved into the streets of London where he’d survived through a combination of charity and criminality.

The police knew him. They’d arrested him several times in other stations and once at Trafalgar Square. But never had he stayed in custody. There’d been three foster homes, attempts to stabilize him, but he’d run away from them all. His age worked in his favor, as did his plight. Pity was an easy emotion to manipulate.

He approached the old woman using the crowd for cover. His methodology was the result of much practice, a simple matter to lightly bump into her.

“Sorry,” he said, adding a quick smile.

She instantly warmed to him and returned the friendly gesture. “That’s okay, young man.”