Surreal Switch
[Memoir]
Rob and I are sat inside a Spanish police station waiting for an interpreter.
The waiting room is poky, and we are listening to a man sat opposite tell the story about how a taxi driver refused him entry into his cab late last night, because he was too drunk, so he smashed the car’s window in. He asks us why we are here and we tell him we had something stolen from our hotel room. “You see what I mean? They’re all the fucking same aren’t they?” and we smile a weird grimace at him because these are two very different stories, but he sees himself as the victim, nonetheless. He tells us his flight leaves in two hours, but he is still waiting for his passport back – all his friends are at the airport waiting for him. Rob and I look at each other and the look is a silent agreement that this man is not getting on that flight.
Earlier that morning – our first full day at the hotel in Tossa De Mar – I made sure to lock all the valuables, including the Nintendo Switch that Rob had loaned from his brother, in the room safe. We go to breakfast, but before we sit down we ask at reception to borrow an iron. The lady on reception tells us it will be delivered to our room.
After breakfast we decide to try out the rooftop pool area. Rob goes straight up and I pop to the room to pick up some sun lotion and bits we need. I notice that the iron has been delivered while we were dining.
I go up to the pool, and we are there for a while when Rob says he needs something from the room that I didn’t bring with me, and he goes down. He returns ten minutes later, ashen faced. “Someone has taken the Switch,” he says. I reassure him that they haven’t – it’s in the safe. I go back down to the room with him, open the safe, and hand him the Switch. “Okay, well they’ve taken the case, with the games in it. I left it here, on the bed, before breakfast,” he says and starts mentally calculating the number of games in the case, and the value – we eventually estimate to be over £200.
I say it’s ok, we have good insurance, let’s just make sure it’s not anywhere in the room first. So we tear the room apart – pull all the covers off the bed and shake them out, pull the beds from the wall, look under all the furniture, empty out drawers, double check the empty suitcases. We sit forlornly on the stripped bed, when Rob asks me why someone would steal a case with just games in it? I say I guess they thought there was a device in there too? Or they reckon they can sell the games?
Certain it is not anywhere in the room, I call the insurance company. They reassure me that a claim can be taken forward, but they advise us to wait until we have returned home because these things have a habit of “turning up”. The adviser says all they would need is a police report with a crime reference number.
Before we get involved in all that, we go down to reception to make a complaint, to see if they can check the hallway CCTV, to see if this is simple to resolve without police. We don’t want any trouble, just the case returned to us, and we’d definitely rather not spend a day of our short holiday in a police station. The manager we speak to assures us he will check the CCTV within the window of the time we went for breakfast. We return to the rooftop pool, but Rob is restless – he wants this resolved. He paces between the loungers. After an hour or so, we go back to reception to ask about the CCTV and the same guy is like “Manana, manana!” and I’m like, no, not later, NOW! I had been reluctant to start shouting accusations, but he gives me no choice.
“Look,” I say. “The Switch case was in the room before breakfast. The iron was delivered, and then the Switch case was not in the room. We have turned the room over. It is very definitely not there. I’m not saying it was the person who delivered the iron, but could you please CHECK with them? You can watch the CCTV at double speed, and we have given you an hour window. It will take half an hour to view maximum. Or I will sit and do it for you if you prefer?”
He reassures us he will do it and we leave. We go back to the hotel room, past the maids in the corridor, who have started cleaning the rooms, and make plans for lunch. I suggest we have lunch at the hotel, and if the manager has still not made any progress, we can go to the police station in the afternoon.
After lunch it is a different member of staff on reception, and I tell this lady our predicament. She goes into a back room and comes out saying the manager will check CCTV later. I tell her we have had enough waiting and are going to the police station now.
Typically, the directions she gives us are to a police station, but the wrong one. We need the local police, but we are at the federal police station, which is empty because they are all out policing a big festival. A man in the street directs us to the local police station where we now find ourselves.
Eventually after a couple of hours the translator comes to take our statement. She gives us a copy with a reference number along the bottom, and we leave the building and breathe out – we can finally start to enjoy the holiday properly now.
By this point it is late afternoon, and Rob is debating whether to call his brother and let him know. I tell him he should – to relive his conscience, and reassure him that the insurance will pay out, and we will pay the £50 excess.
When we get back to the room, the maids have been and the chaos of our search is no longer visible. Rob goes out onto the balcony to make the call to his brother, and I have a shower. When I get out, Rob says his brother was not bothered at all, but said it was weird. I sit on my side of the bed to do my make-up with a little hand mirror. Rob sits on his side of the bed, puts his hand down, and his face goes ashen again.
“WHAT THE FUCK!” He shouts, and pulls back the tightly made bedsheets. Made into – folded into the bed – exactly in the middle of both pillows, is the Switch case, with all the games inside. We are open mouthed. “So it was a maid. She has returned it – presumably when she realised the device wasn’t inside, or when she realised she was in trouble?” I hypothesise.
Rob is back pacing up and down. “But why not just give it to us? Apologise? Why make it into the bed?” He says. Then immediately he calls his brother to tell him and they talk about how weird the whole situation is. But it gets weirder. The phone in the room rings, and I think, oh finally maybe this is news of the CCTV, an apology.
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“Hello, this is reception. There are two police officers here to speak with you,” the lady says.
“Ok we will be down in a moment,” I reply.
“No need – I have sent them up to your room,” she says.
I quickly relay this to Rob while I throw on some clothes, and we realise telling the police we have found the Switch made into the bedsheets is completely incredulous. I snatch it off him and put it in my suitcase above the wardrobe. “Why do you think they have come to see us?” Rob asks, and I say I don’t know – maybe they have news on the CCTV?
They knock and I let the two men into the room. They look like you might expect tourist police to look – cosplaying as actual tourists, but a bit uncanny valley: giving off a following-shoplifters vibe.
“We’ve had some malicious reports from tourists, claiming things have been stolen, just to make a false insurance claim,” one of the men tells us in fluent English.
“Ok,” I say and realise my instinct to hide the Switch case was not a bad one. We are clearly being set up – perhaps as punishment from hotel management because we didn’t wait for an in-house resolution.
The two men stalk the room, patting down the bed, picking things up and examining them, asking us questions about the theft. Rob and I stay on message, stick to the statement we gave earlier. After around ten minutes the men leave. Rob and I hold our breath until we are sure they are out of ear shot and then breathe out.
I say, in a fake, loud and sing-song voice, in case we are still being overheard: “Okay so shall we go for dinner?”
We find a pizza restaurant and order cocktails. “What the fuck just happened?” Rob says.
I glance around me to check that the two police officers who came into our room are not lurking, before responding: “Well I think we were set up. We pissed of that hotel manager, so he decided to get us back. He definitely thought we’d be caught red-handed with the Switch case.”
The whole day feels surreal, insane.
***
I am on the subway platform in Paris, and the train we need to catch is approaching. Obliviously, my Mum and I board the train – she is holding my hand tightly because I’m eight years-old. We are headed to a restaurant for the evening.
There is a moment of panic because my Dad is not with us on the train, as we turn and see the doors of the carriage close. We stare out of the window and watch as my Dad holds a man up by the scruff of his neck against the station wall with one hand, and lands a punch with his other fist. This will be the only time in my life I see my – usually non-violent – Father hit a man.
I look around, and everyone on the carriage is watching this scene open-mouthed as the train pulls away. It feels cinematic, unreal. My Mum is stunned to silence. I don’t know what we’ll do without my Dad?
Mobile phones are not a thing in 1990, so when we pull into the next station my Mum pulls me off the train to wait for my Dad to catch us up. Instinctively she looks in her bag for her purse with the subway carnet tickets inside, but it’s not there. Almost immediately the next subway train arrives, carrying my Dad who is looking out of the window for us.
We all sit down together on the platform bench, while my Dad recounts the story of watching the man steal my Mum’s purse just as we boarded, grabbing him and then watching him throw the purse across the station to an accomplice.
Shaken, my parents decide to go to the police tomorrow. We still have my Dad’s cash, so we find a payphone to call the bank to cancel my Mum’s cards, and continue with the evening we had planned, albeit subdued.
The next morning we spend the best part of the day inside a French police station, waiting for a translator, recounting this story. The police are dismissive – pickpocketing is rife, nothing they can do, low value crime, and so on.
For the rest of our time in Paris my Dad decides to spot pick-pocketers. He sees how they operate in little groups of two or three men, spotting, pointing, taking and then transferring the goods. He sees it happen to a Chinese woman, and before the thief can take her purse, my Dad knocks his baseball cap to the floor to distract him. My Dad says, “I know what you’re doing,” and the thief makes a run for it. The Chinese woman thanks my Dad profusely, and he takes the baseball cap as a token. He wears it for the rest of the holiday.
