He was strolling through the small pop-up market, killing time.
His bus wouldn’t be there for another twenty minutes. He liked perusing the various bits and pieces these temporary markets had to offer. He stopped at the second-hand stall, it had mainly electrical goods on display. The laptop caught his eye. He picked it up and turned it over. The vendor spotted him showing an interest. He moved closer.
“Nice one, eh? Good model, that,” he said, looking hopeful.
The man nodded.
“Top quality piece of kit,” he said, “comes with a full-sized keyboard, Windows 10 in S mode, dual-core Intel Celeron processor, 64 GB storage, high-definition display, SuperSpeed USB Type-A at 5Gbps.”
He cocked his head looking pleased with himself.
“It’s MU-MIMO supported,” he went on, “with dual front-facing speakers and drop box cloud storage, SD and Micro SD card reader, Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2.”
The man shook his head, saying, “I couldn’t possibly buy it.”
The seller looked perplexed. ”Why not?”
“Well, to put it simply, receiving stolen property is a crime.”
The man behind the stall looked edgy, he said, “What do you mean?”
“Mind you,” the man continued, “the far greater crime of selling it knowing that it’s stolen, carries a much greater penalty, along with a prison sentence, of course.” He turned it over, pointing to the smiley face with one curly strand of hair standing up. He smiled. “Scratches that on everything, my son does. Cute eh? It was stolen from his school bag only a couple of days ago.”
The seller looked around. “Take it!” he said.
The man grinned. “Can’t do that,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, here’s the thing. If I were to take that, knowing, as I do, that it is stolen goods, I would be putting myself on the wrong side of the law.”
The other stood speechless.
“Unless…” said the man, with raised eyebrows.
“Yes? Unless what.”
“Unless there were some sort of incentive, regarding the risk I’d be taking, that is.”
The seller nodded his head slowly. “What sort of incentive?” he asked.
“Oh! Fifty should do it.”
The seller scowled and dipped into his tin. He held out a fifty note.
Pocketing the money, he picked up the laptop.
“Have you got a bag?” he asked, with a perfectly straight face.