The Criminal Escapades of Geoffrey Larkin (9 page)

The night watchman was an old electricity board employee who was just working off the years before he retired permanently. Geoff had discovered by some discreet enquiries that the watchman also threw darts for the local pub on the council estate. On darts night, which was Thursday, he would slip off the site for a couple of hours to participate in his favourite sport.

Geoff had called a meeting at his digs and was putting his proposition to the rest of the team. There were only two chairs in the small bed-sit so when he called a conference they assembled one of the fold-up beds to form two more seats.

‘You mean, Geoff, we remove this rear wall to get at the safe?' asked Derek Bolton.

‘Yes!' answered Geoff. ‘The alarms are fitted to the door and the windows of the office. We remove just a sufficient amount of this crappy wall to slide out the safe and then we take the safe to where we can open it at our leisure.'

‘Yeah, but won't someone hear us banging? Even if the wall is crap there will still be a lot of noise,' added Derek's older brother, John.

But Geoff had got everything planned. ‘The night watchman won't be there and people living nearby are used to men working at night to repair some of the big machinery. There shouldn't be any problem. We park at the far end of the compound and all we have to do is enter the compound using the same gap as the watchman uses to go to the pub. If it goes pear shape we disappear out through the same gap in the fence, which is the farthest point from the offices. We carry the safe back to John's van and we're off, nobody's any the wiser until they open the office early on Friday morning.'

Whatever obstacles the rest of the team came up with, Geoff had an answer. So after a lot of mumbling it was reluctantly decided that the following Thursday night they would put his plan into action.

Everything started off well on their chosen night. Derek driving his brother's work's van, taking the opportunity to improve his driving skills before his forthcoming driving test in several days' time. They parked the van in a quiet lay-by while they fitted the false number plates, waiting until they saw the watchman leave through the gap in the fencing.

Giving the watchman sufficient time to get out of earshot, all four slipped out of the van into the compound. Geoff, using his spare key, unlocked the store; they quickly removed some signs to give them a clear access to the rear wall.

Sooty was given a sledgehammer then pointed in the direction of the wall. A few well-directed blows from the hammer removed several large pieces of clinker block, the sound of the demolition echoed and vibrated within the confined space of the small store room. This panicked John, who was on watch at the store room door. ‘Quiet! It's too noisy!' he shouted.

‘You be quiet, you're making more noise than any of us with your shouting,' came back the angry retort from his brother, Derek.

‘Shhh!' whispered Geoff loudly. The last thing he wanted was a shouting match between the two brothers. They all stood still for several minutes but there was no sign of any alarm from the occupants of the nearby council houses.

The hole allowed access for a crowbar to remove several more loosened blocks, leaving a larger opening and exposing the office safe. Slipping a rope over the large metal box Sooty attempted to drag it into the storage shed. But for all the big lad's straining the container stayed stationary.

It took the effort of all four lads to eventually drag inch by inch the heavy lump of metal into the storage shed. ‘Each one of you takes a corner. OK! Lift!' Geoff directed. The combined effort of all four managed to lift the safe about nine inches clear of the floor.

‘I can't hold it, it's slipping,' gasped Derek and the corner of the safe slowly slipped from his grasp, landing across the boot of Sooty and his own footwear. There was no problem with Sooty because he was wearing his steel toe capped working boots but Derek was wearing ordinary, soft sneakers.

He gasped out a scream, ‘AHHH!' as Sooty stifled his shout of pain with a big hand over his mouth. Geoff used the crowbar to ease the pressure and Derek released his trapped foot from under the safe. He then proceeded to hop around the confined space in the store shed, cursing loudly, ‘Shit! Shit! Shitting Shit!' Banging into the road signs, they crashed to the floor sending a cloud of fine choking dust into the air.

This brought another loud, ‘Shhh!' from Geoff. The situation was too much for Sooty who burst into a fit of uncontrollable nervous giggling.

Geoff just managed to restrain John Bolton as he made a bolt for the open door at the same time Derek burst into a fit of sneezing no doubt caused by the dust.

For several minutes the group stood perfectly still, looking at one another in expectation of someone nearby raising the alarm. There was no noise from outside the compound. Slowly they relaxed a little as everything seemed to be normal. ‘We'll never carry this across the compound Geoff,' voiced a panting Sooty as he gave up trying to move the safe.

‘OK!' said Geoff, making a decision. He had never imagined that something so small could be so heavy that the four of them could not carry it. ‘We've still got plenty of time. Let's split up and see if we can find something to move the heavy sod.'

They returned after twenty minutes of desperate searching of the depot but none of them had found anything that would carry the safe.

‘Where's our kid?' said John Bolton, with the hint of panic in his voice as he realised his brother was not with the group.

‘He's hobbling across the compound now,' said Geoff from the doorway. ‘Hang about, he's pushing something. He's found something to move the safe.'

Derek had found something to try and move the safe but not from in the compound, he'd noticed it while waiting for the watchman to leave. It had been at the side of one of the nearby council houses.

‘What have you got there, Derek?' whispered his brother loudly as Derek entered the store room.

‘The only thing I could find was this pram.' All four looked at the frail pram with large wheels at the front and smaller wheels at the rear.

‘Jesus Christ! We'll never lift it in there,' said a despondent John.

‘We won't if we don't try,' said Sooty, grabbing the underside corner of the safe, quickly followed by the others who also grabbed a corner.

With a lot of cursing and a supreme effort from all of them they managed to get one corner of the safe on the edge of the pram. Then, with a mighty heave by Sooty, while the other three stopped the pram from tipping up, the safe slowly slipped into the well of the pram. ‘Good job the occupant's not in residence,' said Derek Bolton as the safe settled precariously on the pram's base, pushing out one of the sides of their unusual transport in the process. It was badly balanced and no matter how they tried they could not get the safe to move into a better, more secure, position.

‘We'll have to go,' said Geoff looking at his watch, ‘the night watchman will be coming back soon.'

‘Yes! Let's get out of here, bloody pronto!' voiced a panicky John Bolton.

With a Bolton brother on either side of the pram trying to balance it, Sooty pulling with a rope from the front and Geoff trying to steer from the rear, they started their precarious, winding journey across the electric company's compound.

They were between two lorries when Geoff quietly called a halt. ‘Stop! The watchman's coming back!' he whispered. All four froze as the faint sound of whistling, getting louder by the second, could be heard from the far side of the fencing.

There was the rattling sound of chain link fencing as the watchman passed through the gap he had been using for years. Followed by the slight sound of tearing material, the whistling was replaced by cursing. ‘Fucking hell! Fucking Fucking Hell! I've been using this bloody gap for five years and the first time I put on a decent fucking coat it gets stuck in the fucking fence.' The four lads could hear the watchman climb up the short embankment still cursing, then stop on the other side of the lorry just several yards away, relieving himself against the wheel, before carrying on to a building about twenty yards away that was used as a canteen by the workmen during the day.

‘OK. Let's give it another go!' whispered Geoff after several more minutes and no further movement from the direction of the canteen.

They made several more yards progress but as the bank dropped away towards the fencing the pram's large front wheel buckled, tipping the safe to one side of the pram. It would have tipped out altogether if Sooty had not quickly moved from the front to support that side of the pram.

‘OK. Let's try again!' gasped Geoff, realising that things were not going the way he had anticipated. He now accepted that even if they ever managed to get to their vehicle they could not possibly lift the dead weight of the safe from the pram into the much higher back of the van. Geoff was at this point having serious doubts they would ever reach that far.

The group struggled manfully on several more paces, with Geoff using all his strength to support the side of the pram in an attempt to keep as little weight as possible on the by now badly buckled pram wheel. Even Sooty's great strength was not sufficient and, slowly, the weight of the safe settled on that side of the pram. The buckled wheel collapsed without warning, tipping the pram along with the safe and Derek Bolton, who was on that side, down the small embankment and up against the fence, causing a great rattling of the chain linkage. Much more serious than the amount of noise caused by the mishap was that the safe had trapped Derek by his leg against one of the fence supports.

The watchman must have heard the noise as suddenly the security lighting came on which illuminated the whole compound. Luckily, the two lorries and the slight dip in the ground shielded the group from anyone looking in their direction from the canteen. Unfortunately, the compound lights being turned on was the last straw for an already very nervous and frightened John Bolton. He scurried on all fours along the side of the fence to the gap and disappeared across the waste ground in the direction of the distant lay-by.

Geoff and Sooty were pulling and Derek pushing, as best he could, but their efforts would not budge the pram and safe that was trapping Derek against the fencing. All three had stopped for a breather and Geoff was struggling to keep down the feeling of panic that he could feel in his stomach.

The watchman could be checking the perimeter of the compound and it would only be a matter of time before they would all be discovered hiding in the ditch, the police would be informed and they would all be marched off to Stockport police station.

There was a scuffling from the direction of the gap in the chain link fence making them all jump in fright, as John Bolton appeared out of the shadows.

‘You've come back then,' said his brother, sarcastically.

‘I couldn't leave you bruv,' replied a sheepish John.

‘I know why. You got as far as the van and then realised I had the ignition keys; otherwise you would have been off, leaving us here in the shit. You bloody coward!'

John Bolton said nothing in his defence at the severe rebuke by his younger brother; he just joined the others in pulling and pushing the heavy metal container. Their combined effort managed to ease the weight of the safe sufficiently to allow Derek, with a deep groan, to drag his leg clear.

Luckily, Derek had only sustained a badly bruised and not a broken leg, with the help of Sooty he managed to hobble behind the other two lads as they hurriedly left the compound. They left the safe still wedged against the fence support with the partially flattened pram trapped beneath it. ‘
Hope for the best and prepare for the worst,'
said Geoff, as they all piled into John Bolton's van.

‘That was a bit of a disaster lads, sorry about that,' he added as they drove off, leaving the electric company's compound behind them bathed in light. The night watchman was standing between the two lorries, cursing the opportunistic thieves he believed came from the council estate who he could see driving off into the night on the far side of the fencing.

‘Those bastards are always trying to pinch any piece of equipment that might be left in the compound; a couple of those German Rottweiler's are what they need here,' he muttered, as he made his way back to the warmth of the canteen, smiling to himself at the thought of the dogs ripping the pants off any unlawful intruders in the compound.

As the van left the estate and joined the main road John Bolton started to laugh. An uncontrollable, hysterical laugh which was infectious and soon all four lads were laughing until their stomachs ached, more with relief than merriment.

The only consolation that the group had was that they made the headlines in the local paper the following week. There was a photograph of the night watchman who, according to the paper's reporter, through his diligence to duty had single-handedly disturbed and thwarted an attempt by a professional gang of experienced robbers in their efforts to steal the safe containing the local electric company employees' wages.

In truth the break-in had not been discovered until the office was opened early at 7.30am on Friday morning by the wages clerk. The safe itself was not found until the lorries were moved later that morning at 10.30am.

*

Geoff had used some of his money from the pool of cash to buy some new clothes. This smart attire gave him a massive boost of confidence when he went for several interviews arranged by his probation officer. All, unfortunately, were without success. Until, that is, he was interviewed for one that was advertised as an ‘Assistant House Sales Person'. In reality it was a general dog's body in the sales department at one of the large private housing estates nearby.

‘Have you any previous experience in selling, Mr. Larkin?' said one of the directors of the building firm who also ran their own house sales department.