The way we are

Now here's a thing. Would you bother to steal £22 worth of wood?
Clearly someone has.
To start at the beginning, I went to the depot of a national timber merchant, and bought 2 planks of wood, each 4.7m long. That's about15 plus feet long. Total cost £22. I was told to go round the back and collect them. I drove round, but then common sense prevailed when I noticed that about 10 feet would be hanging out the back of the car.
So I drove back to the job, gave the line to the joiner, and told him to take a saw with him when he went to collect.
This morning, the joiner phones me.
" Somebody collected they planks yesterday"
To cut a long story short, the warehouseman and the security guard both swore blind I had collected the wood, and they even had a car registration to prove it. And a time ; ten past four.
Needless to say it wasn't my car registration.
To cut a long story short, after threatening legal action, the papers and their head-office, grudgingly we were delivered the wood as a " goodwill" gesture - but on a separate line, with the original being retained for " investigation".
Now whatever way you look at this, someone at some point has blagged these two pieces of wood. Maybe it was a stock shortage they were trying to cover. Maybe the whole workforce have a consortium that disappears stuff that's not collected by 4:10 pm. The manager kept saying to me " But noone would steal two pieces of wood" in a sort of " You are clearly an idiot" voice.
But someone somewhere has that wood, and at least two people in the depot are in on it.