Stranded (5 page)

Keeping on the Right Side of the Law

J
ust imagine trying to get a straight job when you've been a villain all your life. Even supposing I could bullshit my way round an application form, how the fuck do I blag my way through an interview, when the only experience I've got of interviews, I've always had a brief sitting next to me reminding the thickhead dickheads on the other side of the table that I'm not obliged to answer? I mean, it's not a technique that's going to score points with the personnel manager, is it?

You can imagine it, can't you? ‘Mr Finnieston, your application form was a little vague as to dates. Can you give us a more accurate picture of your career structure to date?'

Well, yeah. I started out with burglary when I was eight. My two older brothers figured I was little enough to get in toilet windows, so they taught me how to hold the glass firm with rubber suckers then cut round the edge with a glass cutter. I'd take out the window and pass it down to them, slide in through the gap and open the back door for them. Then they'd clean out the telly, the video and the stereo while I kept watch out the back.

All good things have to come to an end, though, and by the time I was eleven, I'd got too big for the toilet windows, and besides, I wanted a bigger cut than those greedy thieving bastards would give me. That's when I started doing cars. They called me Sparky on account of I'd go out with a spark plug tied on to a piece of cord. You whirl the plug around like a cowboy with a lasso, and when it's going fast enough, you just flick the wrist and bingo, the driver's window shatters like one of them fake windows they use in the films. Hardly makes a sound.

Inside a minute and I'd have the stereo out. I sold them round the pubs for a fiver a time. In a good night, I could earn a fifty, just like that, no hassle.

But I've always been ambitious, and that was my downfall. One of my mates showed me how to hot-wire the ignition so I could have it away on my toes with the car as well as the sounds. By then, one of my brothers was doing a bit of work for a bloke who had a secondhand car pitch down Strangeways and a quiet little back-street garage where his team ringed stolen cars and turned them out with a whole new identity to sell on to mug punters who knew no better.

Only, he wasn't as clever as he thought he was, and one night I rolled up with a Ford Escort and drove right into the middle of a raid. It was wall-to-wall Old Bill that night, and I ended up in a different part of Strangeways, behind bars. Of course, I was too young to do proper time, and my brief got me out of there and into a juvenile detention centre faster than you could say ‘of previous good character'.

It's true, what they say about the nick. You do learn how to be a better criminal, just so long as you do what it tells you in all them American self-help books in the prison library. You want to be successful, then hang out with successful people and do what they do. Only, of course, anybody who's banged up is, by definition, not half as fucking successful as they should be.

Anyway, I watched and listened and learned and I made some good mates that first time inside. And when I came out, I was ready for bigger and better things. Back then, banks and Post Offices were still a nice little earner. They hadn't learned about shatterproof glass and grilles and all that bollocks. You just ran in, waved a shooter around, jumped the counter and cleaned the place out. You could be in and out in five minutes, with enough in your sports bag to see you clear for the next few months.

I loved it.

It was a clean way to earn a living. Well, mostly it was. OK, a couple of times we ran into one of them have-a-go heroes. You'd think it was their money, honest to God you would. Now, I've always believed you should be able to do a job, in and out, and nobody gets hurt. But if some dickhead is standing between me and the out, and it's me or him, I'm not going to stand there and ask him politely to move aside, am I? No, fuck it, you've got to show him who's in charge. One shot into the ceiling, and if he's still standing there, well, it's his own fault, isn't it? You've got to be professional, haven't you? You've got to show you mean business.

And I must have been good at it, because I only ever got a tug the once, and they couldn't pin a thing on me. Yeah, OK, I did end up doing a three stretch around about then, but that was for what you might call extra-curricular activities. When I found out Johnny the Hat was giving one to my brother's wife, well, I had to make an example of him, didn't I? I mean, family's family. She might be a slag and a dog, but anybody that thinks they can fuck with my family is going to find out different. You'd think Johnny would have had the sense not to tell the Dibble who put him in the hospital, but some people haven't got the brains they were born with. They had him in witness protection before the trial, but of course all that ended after I went down. And when I was getting through my three with visits from the family, I had the satisfaction of knowing that Johnny's family were visiting his grave. Like I say, families have got to stick together.

By the time I got out, things had changed. The banks and building societies had wised up and sharpened up their act and the only people trying to rob them were amateurs and fucking eejits.

Luckily, I'd met Tommy inside. Honest to God, it was like it was written in the fucking stars. I knew all about robbing and burgling, and Tommy knew all there was to know about antiques. What he also knew was that half the museums and stately homes of England – not to mention our neighbours in Europe – had alarm systems that were an embarrassment.

I put together a dream team, and Tommy set up the fencing operation, and we were in business. We raped so many private collections I lost count. The MO was simple. We'd spend the summer on research trips. We'd case each place once. Then we'd go back three weeks later to case it again, leaving enough time for the security vids to be wiped of our previous visit. We'd figure out the weak points and draw up the plans. Then we'd wait till the winter, when most of them were closed up for the season, with nothing more than a skeleton staff.

We'd pick a cold, wet, miserable night, preferably with a bit of wind. That way, any noise we made got swallowed up in the weather. Then we'd go in, seven-pound sledges straight through the vulnerable door or window, straight to the cabinets that held the stuff we'd identified as worth nicking. Here's a tip, by the way. Even if they've got toughened glass in the cases, chances are it's still only got a wooden frame. Smack that on the corner with a three-pound club hammer and the whole thing falls to bits and you're in.

Mostly, we were off the estate and miles away before the local bizzies even rolled up. Nobody ever got hurt, except in the pocket.

They were the best years of my life. Better than sex, that moment when you're in, you do the business and you're out again. The rush is purer than you'll ever get from any drug. Not that I know about that from personal experience, because I've never done drugs and I never will. I hate drug dealers more than I hate coppers. I've removed my fair share of them from my patch over the years. Now they know not to come peddling their shit on my streets. But a couple of the guys I work with, they like their Charlie or whizz when they're not working, and they swear that they've never had a high like they get when they're doing the business.

We did some crackers. A museum in France where they'd spent two million quid on their state-of-the-art security system. They had a grand opening do where they were shouting their mouths off about how their museum was burglarproof. We did it that very night. We rigged up pulleys from the building across the street, wound ourselves across like we were the SAS and went straight in through the skylight. They said we got away with stuff worth half a million quid. Not that we made anything like that off it. I think I cleared fifteen-K that night, after expenses. Still, who dares wins, eh?

We only ever took stuff we already knew we had a market for. Well, mostly. One time, I fell in love with this Rembrandt. I just loved that picture. It was a selfportrait, and just looking at it, you knew the geezer like he was one of your mates. It was hanging on this Duke's wall, right next to the cases of silver we'd earmarked. On the night, on the spur of the moment, I lifted the Rembrandt an' all.

Tommy went fucking ape. He said we'd never shift that, that we'd never find a buyer. I told him I didn't give a shit, it wasn't for sale anyway. He thought I'd completely lost the plot when I said I was taking it home.

I had it on the bedroom wall for six months. But it wasn't right. A council house in Wythenshawe just doesn't go with a Rembrandt. So one night, I wrapped it up in a tarpaulin and left it in a field next to the Duke's gaff. I rang the local radio station phone-in from a call box and told them where they could find the Rembrandt. I hated giving it up, mind you, and I wouldn't have done if I'd have had a nicer house.

But that's not the sort of tale you can tell a personnel manager, is it?

‘And why are you seeking a change of employment, Mr Finnieston?'

Well, it's down to Kim, innit?

I've known Kimmy since we were at school together. She was a looker then, and time hasn't taken that away from her. I always fancied her, but never got round to asking her out. By the time I was back in circulation after my first stretch, she'd taken up with Danny McGann, and before I worked up the bottle to make a move, bingo, they were married.

I ran into her again about a year ago. She was on a girls' night out in Rothwell's, a gaggle of daft women acting like they were still teenagers. Just seeing her made me feel like a teenager an' all. I sent a bottle of champagne over to their table, and of course Kimmy came over to thank me for it. She always had good manners.

Any road, it turned out her and Danny weren't exactly happy families any more. He was working away a lot, leaving her with the two girls, which wasn't exactly a piece of cake. Mind you, she's done well for herself. She's got a really good job, managing a travel agency. A lot of responsibility and a lot of respect from her bosses. We started seeing each other, and I felt like I'd come up on the lottery.

The only drawback is that after a few months, she tells me she can't be doing with the villainy. She's got a proposition for me. If I go straight, she'll kick Danny into touch and move in with me.

So that's why I'm trying to figure out a way to make an honest living. You can see that convincing a bunch of suits they should give me a job would be difficult. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Finnieston, but I'm afraid you don't quite fit our present requirements.'

The only way anybody's ever going to give me a job is if I monster them into it, and somehow I don't think the straight world works like that. You can't go around personnel offices saying, ‘I know where you live. So gizza job or the Labrador gets it.'

This is where I'm up to when I meet my mate Chrissie for a drink. You wouldn't think it to look at her, but Chrissie writes them hardasnails cop dramas for the telly. She looks more like one of them bleeding-heart social workers, with her wholemeal jumpers and jeans. But Chrissie's dead sound, her and her girlfriend both. The girlfriend's a brief, but in spite of that, she's straight. That's probably because she doesn't do criminal stuff, just divorces and child custody and all that bollocks.

So I'm having a pint with Chrissie in one of them trendy bars in Chorlton, all wooden floors and hard chairs and fifty different beers, none of them ones you've ever heard of except Guinness. And I'm telling her about my little problem. Halfway down the second pint, she gets that look in her eyes, the dreamy one that tells me something I've said has set the wheels in motion inside her head. Usually, I see the results six months later on the telly. I love that. Sitting down with Kimmy and going, ‘See that? I told Chrissie about that scam. Course, she's softened it up a bit, but it's my tale.'

‘I've got an idea,' Chrissie says.

‘What? You're going to write a series about some poor fucker trying to go straight?' I say.

‘No, a job. Well, sort of a job.' She knocks back the rest of her pint and grabs her coat. ‘Leave it with me. I'll get back to you. Stay lucky.' And she's off, leaving me surrounded by the wellmeaning like the last covered wagon hemmed in by the Apaches.

A week goes by, with me trying to talk my way into setting up a little business doing one-day hall sales. But everybody I approach thinks I'm up to something. They can't believe I want to do anything the straight way, so all I get offered is fifty kinds of bent gear. I am sick as a pig by the time I get the call from Chrissie.

This time, we meet round her house. Me, Chrissie and the girlfriend, Sarah the solicitor. We settled down with our bottles of Belgian pop and Sarah kicks off. ‘How would you like to work on a freelance basis for a consortium of solicitors?' she asks.

I can't help myself. I just burst out laughing. ‘Do what?' I go.

‘Just hear me out. I spend a lot of my time dealing with women who are being screwed over by the men in their life. Some of them have been battered, some of them have been emotionally abused, some of them are being harassed by their exes. Sometimes, it's just that they're trying to get a square deal for themselves and their kids, only the bloke knows how to play the system and they end up with nothing while he laughs all the way to the bank. For most of these women, the law either can't sort it out or it won't. I even had a case where two coppers called to a domestic gave evidence in court against the woman, saying she was completely out of control and irrational and all the bloke was doing was exerting reasonable force to protect himself.'

‘Bastards,' I say. ‘So what's this got to do with me?'

‘People doing my job get really frustrated,' Sarah says. ‘There's a bunch of us get together for a drink now and again, and we've been talking for a long time about how we've stopped believing the law has all the answers. Most of these blokes are bullies and cowards. Their women wouldn't see them for dust if they had anybody to stand up for them. So what we're proposing is that we'd pay you to sort these bastards out.'