The incident occurred on the night the house-breaker gave a hitchhiker a lift.
Looking back, he wondered why he had done it. After all, he’d just robbed a house of all its valuables and was returning home in order to empty his boot and fill the shelves in the back room with even more stolen goods. It must have been bravado. Anyway, he was trying to get to the same town, so he got in. They soon got chatting. The driver asked what had brought the man out, thumbing a lift so late at night. It was at this point that the conversation took on a strangeness. He was told that it was a regular habit of his to visit people that had wandered off the straight and narrow path to salvation.
“A specialist do-gooder, if you like. I try to have such wrong-doers realise that in the end crime just doesn’t pay,” he said, grinning at the man who had just committed burglary. “I suppose you could say that I use unconventional ways of spreading the good word.”
The driver felt his hands begin to tremble on the steering wheel. He said, “I don’t know who you are. What do you want?”
The other waved the idea off. “Want? Nothing special, you don’t have to take me into town, just drop me off at your place and you’ll not see or hear from me again; I promise.”
“OK. I’ll do that, but I don’t see…”
“No, of course not,” the other interrupted, ‘you’re not meant to. By the way, have you lost your phone?
The driver, now very nervous and confused, patted his pocket.
“Don’t bother, I picked your pocket and left it on the floor in the living room back there. Oh! Yes, I also tripped the house alarm soon after you drove off.”
“How…?” the crook began, turning to the other as he swung into the entrance of his road. The seat was empty.
Up ahead, a police car was parked in his driveway with its blue light flashing.
A grinning constable was holding up his phone.