By the time the sun came up the mall manager had arrived and was expressing scepticism at the version of events presented by the security team. This scepticism was well placed as the team had been unable to agree on what they were going to say, leaving Amy to produce a vague retelling on the spot, delicately skipping over anything that would reveal their overall incompetence.

The mall manager was polite but clearly not convinced. ‘You have to understand that there is no evidence at all that any type of theft was attempted, you have nine cameras here but not a single frame to back up your claims.’

She didn’t seem vindictive. Her manner was reasonable. She was well groomed, middle aged, and came across as very sharp. She was clearly over whatever all this was. She seemed to Amy like someone who was very competent at everything they did but somehow now had to manage a small mall. For Amy, this quiet competence was very confronting. She didn’t like how she felt in comparison to this woman. She thought of herself as an exceptionally competent person too, and was disturbed by all the recent evidence to the contrary. She thought this woman must see her how she often saw her own team, grifting agents of chaos at worst, loveable losers at best. She wasn’t a lovable loser. She wanted to grab the manager's shirt and yell ‘I’m competent too! We’re the same!’

The manager continued, ‘I’ll grant you the alarms triggered, but you understand I have to at least entertain the idea that you are making this up to claim the risk bonus,’ she continued. ‘Furthermore I do not understand your explanation of how this person got past your cameras, or how you then stopped him. Apart from assuring me it was ‘kick ass and very cool’ you have been very scant with the details.’

Amy bristled. Her stress, embarrassment, and insecurity mixed together and combined to produce an unexpected soup of belligerence. ‘I cannot tell you how we stopped him, just be thankful that we did! You’re welcome by the way. I’m “you’re welcoming” you in anticipation of the “thank you” you haven’t delivered yet. And just for your information we aren’t making up a story to get a risk bonus because our contract doesn’t have a risk bonus!’

‘What?’ Baron blurted.

‘We can talk about it later’ Amy hissed through her teeth.

‘Why doesn’t our contract have a risk bonus? Every security contract has a risk bonus!’ Baron irritatingly added.

Amy leaned in and shout-whispered ‘Because I’m not good at business Baron, that was supposed to be your job. You were supposed to check our contracts, and if you say “my job is social media” I will punch you in the teeth.’

“This is very professional,’ the Mall manager noted. ‘Also why have you packed down your cameras? We haven’t fired you yet.’

This confused Amy for a moment before she realised the manager had assumed that the cameras had been plugged in and operating and therefore the only explanation for the mess of equipment on the ground could be that they then dismantled them. The manager believed the cameras had been set up because this is what Amy had told her, packing lie on top of lie. Anything to navigate around the fact that no functioning camera had ever been pointed at the painting. The mall door opened and two police officers entered, closely followed by a woman not in uniform.

‘Shit,’ said Amy.

‘Shit?’ repeated the manager, with a look suggesting it was unlikely a security consultant who had successfully prevented a crime would swear when a police officer entered.

‘Why did you call the cops?’ Amy asked.

The manager looked genuinely confused. ‘Because according to you there was an attempted crime. Which you, I’m told, by you, heroically prevented.’

‘Huddle!’ Amy shouted at her crew, and they scurried out of earshot of the manager who looked infuriatingly calm, like someone who knew there was a problem but was fairly confident it wasn't theirs.

‘Whatever happens, it cannot get out that we never set up the cameras,’ Amy whispered quite loudly.

‘Agreed,’ replied Baron and Thomas.

‘But what do we tell them?’ Thomas asked.

‘That we were really cool and kick ass,’ Amy said.

‘That didn’t seem to be enough information for the manager,’ Baron observed.

‘I know!’ shout-whispered Amy.

This was really getting out of hand. Amy decided it was a bad look that she was panicking and decided to say something reassuring and leadership like.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got this. You can trust me. I know just what to say.’

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‘Oh I’m so pleased!’ said one of the police officers who had wandered over to the huddle unnoticed. He was a large man in his early 50s, and did in fact look like he was gleefully looking forward to hearing what Amy had to say.

‘Good morning team! I’m Sergeant Keith Holloway and this is my associate Contable Emerson.’

‘Hello!’ Said Emmerson cheerfully. Emmerson was a younger woman with what seemed to be a genuine smile on her face.

Holloway continued, ‘We cannot wait to hear this fantastic story about your heroic crime stopping efforts. I’m reliably told that it was very ‘kick ass’ and ‘cool’. Marvellous! In your own words, what exactly happened here?’

If the manager had an aura of someone trying to be reasonable in slightly unreasonable circumstances, Sergeant Holloway had the air of someone cheerfully looking for an opportunity to be unreasonable. Constable Emerson had the air of someone who had no layers of reasonableness or unreasonableness. She came across as sincerely pleased to be there, and her excited anticipation of the story seemed quite sincere.

‘Let's start with the alleged attempted theft. How did our suspected criminal get past your cameras and into the atrium area?’

Amy had no idea what she should say. She knew a good tactic was to keep the story small, close to the truth, and to offer the most likely and simple explanation possible. Barron gave her an encouraging thumbs up. She opened her mouth and hoped for the best.

‘Magic.’

That was a bad start. Any conversation that started with a lie about magic working while under the gaze of a full security team and several cameras, the one condition magic couldn't operate in, had nowhere to go.

‘Magic?’ said Sergeant Holloway, with a look of scepticism that Amy thought was rude and unnecessary.

‘Yes, magic.’ There was a pause and Amy realised she was going to need to add more detail. ‘Magic that works even when you are looking at it, which is why our cameras didn’t stop it.’

Thomas and Bradon looked at each other with open disbelief, and even Amy was having trouble hiding how surprised she was at the sheer scale of the lie she was producing. This was bad. The manager and Sergeant Holloway looked as disbelieving as any two people had ever looked. Unhelpfully, Thomas and Baron were wearing something very close to the same expression. Constable Emmerson’s expression was unchanged, a mild and open smile. The non-uniformed woman who had accompanied the police officers approached and Amy realised with horror that she was a reporter. Amy tried to find a reasonable way out of the narrative trap she was setting for herself, but the only thing in her head was the word ‘no!’ being repeated rapidly on an endless loop.

‘Do you know what you are saying?’ said the reporter, ‘I mean, the implications …’

‘Yes. I’m fully aware of the implications of what I’m telling you,’ said Amy, furious at herself for doubling down so confidently.

‘Are you seriously telling us someone did magic directly in front of all these cameras?’ asked Constable Emmerson.

This time her mouth just made an indeterminate sound that might mean anything. Why was this happening? She needed to de-escalate. Maybe it wasn’t too late to come clean.

‘That’s what I’m saying’ her mouth said, ignoring her.

‘Someone has come up with magic that can be observed?’ asked the reporter. She gestured towards the painting, ‘And they used it to try and steal that?’

‘Rude’ said Amy, who quite liked the painting of the old woman on the … maybe a mule?

‘Then how did you stop them?’ queried Sergeant Holloway.

Amy pushed past the ‘no’ loop and reached around in her head for a plausible explanation that would get her out of the magic bullshit hole she was digging.

‘Magic.’

Why? Why was her mouth not listening to her?

‘Magic …’ repeated the mall manager back to her.

‘Magic.’ she inexplicably repeated.

‘But with all the cameras … I mean … how? Can you do magic when being observed as well?’ asked the reporter. Amy wasn’t sure which was more stressful, the open disbelief of the police, or the possibility the reporter might be buying it.

‘No! That’s ridiculous,’ said Amy.

‘Then how?’ asked the reporter.

Amy was in a full panic now, her reasoning constricting as her stress rose.

‘I mean who knows how magic works? No one! That’s the whole thing about it right? So we, I mean, our magic was … it’s not observable magic, but It’s not ordinary either, obviously,’ she escalated. ‘It’s …,’ she dug around again for an impressive but ambiguous word to describe the magic she didn’t do. ‘It’s cool. It’s very … cool … magic.’

They looked at her like she was an idiot, which she thought was fair.

She tried to come up with more detail to salvage things a little.

‘It’s very cool.’

‘Kick ass possibly?’ offered Sergeant Holloway consulting his notebook.

‘Proprietary!’ yelled Baron from the corner.

They turned around and looked back at Baron. ‘What?’

‘It’s proprietary, it’s very secret, and um … cool, and proprietary um .. magic.’

‘Cool!’ said Constable Emerson for whom the story had seemed perfectly plausible and not lacking in detail at all.

Holloway cleared his throat, ‘So your thief broke every natural law of magic and was only stopped because you …,’ he paused to gesture at them as if looking at them was enough to make his point about how unlikely this all was ‘... stopped them with secret, proprietary magic. Which worked because it is …,’ he checked his notebook, ‘... because it is “very cool”.’

Amy looked around nervously, surveying the disaster of a debrief she had just created.

‘Yes.’

This felt bad. But at least the stack of lies she was assembling had reached its natural end point. What she didn’t know was that the bullshit stack she had just built was the least of her troubles. It was just the trigger for a more serious drama that was building up steam and heading her way.