44
August 2018
Leon, Alex, Vickey, Maxim, Greg
At about four thirty in the morning, Leon awoke in bed in his apartment, in a panel-built block of flats in Balham, after a sleepless night. His mother was sleeping in the next-door room. She was snoring, as she almost always did. “She must’ve got drunk again,” thought Leon and sighed. Leon went up to the window and looked out. He saw shabby looking housing blocks built in the 1960s and 1970s, dilapidated garages, a few shops, a cheap shoe and clothing repair workshop, and an equally cheap hairdresser’s. Then he looked at the peeling wood of the window frame which must have been about forty years old.
“It’s all cheap and dirty,” thought Leon. He imagined how, in a few hours’ time, he would go down the staircase of his building. Jam-jar lids with dozens of cigarette butts sticking out of them. The peeling banisters. Old walls stinking of cheap nicotine, their original color couldn’t even be made out anymore. Dirt everywhere.
For an instant his face was lit up by a smile. “I can change all this,” he thought. “Please let me get lucky today. I just need to get lucky one time.”
Leon suddenly realized that he’d never been lucky.
A chill went through his body. As if a stranger had come up to him from behind. A skinny, bony, muscled stranger, who quickly slipped a noose over his neck.
Leon shivered and looked round. Greg had ordered that they take light sedatives the night before the job so that they’d get a good night’s sleep, but Leon was so terrified that he’d forgotten that instruction.
He looked out the window again. There were several guys standing around by the entrance. Some workers, no doubt waiting to be picked up and taken to their building sites. A police car drove up to them and a couple of cops began checking their documents. Suddenly, one of the policemen turned round for some reason and headed in the direction of the entrance to Leon’s building. Leon started to panic again. What if they would come for him like that one day? Lord!
“Lord, help me,” he whispered under his breath. Leon never prayed. His mother had been a hardcore left-winger and she’d rejected all religions. And Leon hadn’t thought about the subject at all.
He looked aside to a box of computers disks. People had stopped using disks ages ago. That box, for him, was a kind of safe. That’s where he kept his cash. He hid it from his mother, who would drink her way through it if she found it. Right now, he had about twelve hundred pounds in the box. That was enough – he could throw it in a sports bag with a few essentials and disappear from the city. He would’ve no doubt done that, if it wasn’t for his mother. “You signed up to it,” Greg had said to them, looking each of them in the eye. Those words were ringing in Leon’s head right now. At that moment, Leon had looked at Max. At his cousin who had protected him throughout his life. And he’d seen a brutal confidence in his eyes. There was no way back now.
“He’ll simply come here and shoot my mother,” thought Leon, and that thought made him even more afraid. “He’ll just take out his gun, put it to her head and pull the trigger. And then he’d just go to the nearest café, without a care in the world, and have a snack, smiling his chipped teeth at the waitress.”
In an instant, it occurred to Leon that if it all went wrong he’d never get to use that secret hoard in the box, and he almost broke down in tears at the thought. He looked at the cardboard box with its useless disks in it. For him, that old cardboard had suddenly turned into an island of warmth where everything was calm and quiet. Maybe not very clean, not a huge amount, but quiet. “Am I really never going to see that box again?” he thought. “Am I never coming back here?” The place that a few moments before had filled him with disgust had suddenly turned into something dear to him.
Leon gave his head a shake and slapped himself on his chubby cheeks.
“God,” whispered Leon. “I need to get ready, it’s time.” He had to carefully pack up the network of squares for the explosives, to just as carefully wrap it all up in foam and put it in his rucksack.
“God, god,” whispered Leon. “God, forgive me. Forgive and help me.”
***
At the same time, in one of London’s hippest neighborhoods, in Shoreditch, at No.5, Alex and Vickey were lying on the couch. Vickey had moved in with Alex when they’d started preparing for the job.
That evening, Alex had asked Vickey not to go off to the bedroom, and she’d stayed with him. They’d watched television with zero interest. They’d barely slept at all that night. Mostly because of Alex, who just couldn’t settle himself down.
“I didn’t have the right to get you involved in this,” he told Vickey.
Vickey stared at him for a long time.
“You didn’t have the right to get to know me at all,” she said, entirely serious.
Alex looked at Vickey and thought about how much she had come to mean to him. Now. When his body was as tense as a bowstring, barely holding a sharp arrow back, cruelly biting into the fingers that had drawn it.
He hadn’t trusted himself for a long time. All of those sexual experiments, the host of partners, the adventures over the last couple of years, had brought him nothing other than torturous soul searching.
He had tried everything in search of love, and love had been waiting for him here for the whole time, on his yellow couch. Vickey’s love. A vast, all-forgiving love in which Alex, for a long time, hadn’t been able to believe. He hadn’t even believed in the possibility of such a love, that someone could love him the way he is. That he wouldn’t have to prove anything to anyone. That it wouldn’t end, that it wouldn’t disappear.
Yesterday, when they’d been lying on the sofa, he’d told her: “I was punished by my mother so often for absolutely nothing, that I wanted to do something that was really wrong. And get away scot free… Remember, like in Basic Instinct: ‘To see if I can get away with it.’ That’s how robbing the chemist’s with Max got started. But then the thrill of those small-time robberies wasn’t enough. I couldn’t admit that to myself. And then you and I broke up. Then the suggestion from Max and Greg. And that’s it. We’re here now.”
Vickey was with him now as he prepared to cross a line that would cut them off from their normal lives forever.
Alex was overcome by a wave of gratitude.
“Do you understand me?” Vickey’s voice brought him back into the heavy reality of those early morning hours.
He sensed her breath. He sensed the whole of her. He wanted to dissolve in her. To put his head on her lap. And cry. Like a little child. To ask for help, knowing in advance that she would forgive him. Knowing that, but nevertheless honestly asking for forgiveness.
“Alex,” she repeated, very quietly.
Vickey stretched out her palm and tenderly touched his face. Alex fought back his tears with difficulty.
“Why, why? How? How did we get into this situation? How did I get drawn into something so awful, with no way back?”
Alex realized that even if they tried to flee London, Greg would find them. Alex didn’t know how. He had no idea about that kind of thing. But in his gut he knew that Greg wouldn’t just let them go. He’d turn them in to the cops in vengeance. “This is my whole life’s work. It’s my freedom. It’s your freedom, guys.” For someone like Greg, those weren’t empty words.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you,” he told her for the first time.
***
That night before the main robbery, Max slept calmly in his little two-room apartment on the Caledonian Road. He himself was surprised at how well he’d slept when he awoke at about six in the morning. His Samsung phone bleeped its morning ringtone, an AC/DC track. Max turned to it, lifted up the mobile to look at it, and turned the alarm off. And in that instant, it was as if he was giving himself an order. A countdown to the beginning of the job began. As if an electronic screen had popped up before him, the hours, minutes and seconds ticking away. The figures for the seconds began to turn with an unpleasant screeching that only he could hear.
Unexpectedly, he sensed that his body was beginning to ache as if he had a very high temperature. Getting up and walking around the kitchen for a few minutes, Max realized that he couldn’t concentrate on anything. He thought about making a coffee, but immediately rejected the idea, sensing that he wouldn’t be able to get or keep anything down. Walking around for a little while longer, Max, working on automatic, poured himself a glass of water from the tap. He took a first gulp, then spat it back out into the sink, writhing. He was sick from fear. It was only now that Max realized that his hands were shaking.
Max suddenly sensed that he was physically afraid. Not afraid of the coming crime. He was afraid of killing someone. The idea that today’s job couldn’t be compared in any way with what they’d done before ripped through him. Small chemist’s with unfortunate girls behind the till. Even the bowling club. They were nothing compared to a bank. All the personnel at the bank would have been through some proper training. There were secret alarm buttons to call the police hidden throughout the bank. A guard from the main gates could walk past the bank. There could be a guard hidden somewhere. Absolutely anything could happen.
The police. The mere thought alone had him retching with a new force. If the police would turn up, or some guy tried to play hero, he would probably have to shoot. Shoot to kill. And try to flee the city.
Today it would be all or it would be nothing.
Max didn’t plan on going to prison. Under any circumstances whatsoever. He knew perfectly well what they thought of cops or former cops in the slammer. It was hell. The convicts would wreak vengeance. And that was the end of the line. He couldn’t put up with daily humiliations, maybe even rape. So, if anything unexpected happened he would have to shoot.
And get away. First, he’d make it to the design school’s fence. That would take about forty seconds. He’d jump the turnstile and then blend in with the crowd. Then he would lie low. For a few weeks. Max knew a few people in a small town not far from London, Luton - petty thieves, people who owed him, who he’d done some nasty work with a couple of times. They wouldn’t turn him down. He knew that for certain.
Then he’d have to get as far from London as he could. Out into the sticks. Get some new documents and live quietly. But if anything unforeseen came up, in order to make it to that quiet life in some forgotten hole out in Wales, he’d have to shoot. To kill.
Max didn’t have any pangs of conscience about maybe having to kill someone. He’d chosen to take part in this job, he’d chosen to take the chance. Unlike Alex, Vickey and Leon, Max knew full well where Greg was taking them right from the beginning. Greg was like an open book to Max. At one and the same time, he held Greg in contempt and valued him. If anyone could come up with a great plan that was also very simple it was Greg. “Soon all the girls in London will be yours.” Yes, Greg had come up with a great marketing slogan. Max had seen how Greg had gently and elegantly tightened the noose around the necks of the guys. Max had understood everything from the very beginning.
But, all the same, now he was afraid.
Max looked at his hands. There could be blood on them today. As a cop he’d had to interrogate prisoners accused of murder. He remembered that wild, primal fear in their eyes. Those who had been caught stealing but didn’t have blood on their hands had a different look in their eye. They hadn’t crossed that line. Murder. Depriving someone of life. Those without blood on their hands could believe that things might just work out for them. It didn’t matter how. They’d get a sentence and serve it. Or they’d get off on a technicality. Or cut a deal with the prosecution. But those who’d crossed the line knew that now there was no way back. You can only become an outcast once. In the moment of the killing, if he carried it out, he would finally sell his soul to the devil for once and for all. And he would quiver not only at the sight of a policeman, but at the slightest mention of a cop in a conversation, or at the sound of police siren a few blocks away.
Max remembered how he’d gone through fire arms training. Many years ago. He remembered how long it had taken him to get over that, how his body had been shaking for so long. For months afterwards he had difficulty getting off to sleep. He vividly imagined the bullet coming out of his gun, piercing someone’s body a few instants later, tearing open the skin and blood vessels, blasting blood out.
Max walked up to the cupboard over the sink in the kitchen. His hands shaking, he took out an opened bottle of cheap White Horse whiskey, quickly unscrewed the cap and took a slug from it. The poison almost immediately warmed his stomach, for a while distracting him from the thoughts pressing in on him. For a few seconds he thought that it would be a good idea to take some food from the fridge, bread, some sliced sausage, he could lie down on the sofa and watch a football match. He could finish off the whiskey watching the game, and then have a snooze under the blanket. These simple joys now seemed an impossibility for him. They were distant. Almost a luxury.
Max looked at the bottle of White Horse, fighting his internal desire to take another gulp. But he didn’t want to lose control of himself, aware of his tendency to drink too much. Max screwed the cap back on and hid the bottle away. He stood there in silence for a while, then went into the bedroom to get changed and put his disguise on.
***
In London’s far from prestigious neighborhood of Lewisham, Greg stood at the only window of a single room in a rented apartment. He looked out onto the thrum of traffic as it started to pick up.
In the distance, the sun could just about be seen rising. Pressing a Marlboro between his weather-beaten lips, he visualized the main job of his life. As if he was a military commander before a decisive battle, he ran through the various scenarios that he’d been developing in his thoughts for six long years. Greg felt wonderful, he even felt a certain high. He stood square, his back stretched long, as if he was a general inspecting a parade, and savored the tiniest details of the robbery.
Having run through it twenty times, Greg allowed himself to imagine, for a moment, that he’d accomplished the job that lay ahead of them. To imagine that he already had those millions and he was living in the center of London, somewhere off the Tottenham Court Road, or maybe even in Knightsbridge. Where the only people living there were third or fourth generation Londoners or “New Londoners”, as he called them – people who’d already prospered in the modern capital. London scum, as he and people like him called these people who ate at the best restaurants, drove around in expensive cars with personal drivers, who were never in a hurry to get anywhere and spoke at an affectedly slow pace. Or maybe it wasn’t an affectation – maybe they just spoke slowly. Which was even worse. What was the hurry for them? They have everything, they’ve already grabbed everything and sorted themselves out in this big city of big opportunities.
Suddenly, Greg’s stomach turned slightly. Greg, after all, could live like they do. He could dress well, and smell good.
Greg closed his eyes. His thoughts carried him off into the distance, to places he’d seen many times, but through glass, from the street where, in the autumn, a cold wind blew and, in the summer, it was baking hot under the London sun.
How many times had he, and people like him, passing by, say, the expensive restaurants in the West End, looked in and seen that soft, warm light, the beautifully dressed people sitting in cozy red and white chairs around a round table with expensive, beautiful crockery and cutlery? Waitresses swished to and for, almost unnoticed, and there was an extraordinary atmosphere. Like in the movies. But the whole point was that this was no movie now; it was through the glass, within reach. Just try reaching for it. And you can touch it.
Greg, after all, could start a family, begin a dynasty, and his children could go to private kindergartens and high-class schools, like the one he’d worked as a guard at for a time. His children could make friends, they’d be friends of successful people, and then, thanks to those connections, they could all open successful businesses together.
And after all, Greg could meet a sweet girl who’d bear him happy kids, she’d look after them, teach them how to use a spoon, knife and fork the right way, how to talk beautifully. She’d take care of Greg. She’d adjust his tie and shirt collar before kissing him and wishing him a good day. Anything could happen! He could take off into the sticks with the money. Open a successful business there, build it up, and then come back to London with honestly earned cash and live the highlife.
Greg opened his eyes. The depressing sight of Lewisham was still right in front of him. His heart was warmed by the thought that he’d done everything he could to make sure the job would be pulled off. Everything that had been done had been done well. The plan was ideal and it couldn’t be changed now. “Let’s just hope that luck will be on our side,” he thought.
Greg felt a pleasing warmth in his body and, happy with himself, he rubbed his hands together.
Now, when they’d gone so far, when there was just the last, key step left, he was ready for any outcome. He knew that a lot would be down to luck. Of course, a lot, almost everything, would be down to the prep and the team working well together. But it was luck that would put the final full stop on the whole deal. He’d heard of incredible coincidences so many times, of stupid coincidences that had put hardnosed thieves, real masters in their crafts, away for many, long years.
Greg was honest with himself, and his conscience didn’t balk at thinking through how he could rip the gang off once they’d got away with the robbery. The only thing that stopped him in his thoughts was Max. He was an ex-cop, after all, and when it came to something like this, as the saying goes, there are no ex-cops. Perhaps Max had come up with some sort of insurance policy just in case something didn’t turn out right. Greg also didn’t know if someone would be following him on Max’s orders. In any event, he’d decided to play by the rules that he and Max had established. And if something didn’t turn out right, he’d decide on the spot. He had a lot of experience.
Let’s just hope that luck will be on our side. Let us be lucky.