Powder Wars by Graham Johnson Page A

and goings and so on and loads of details about the security. Little sketches and all that carry on. ‘Bonus,’ I thought, ‘this is going to be a pure walkover.’ I was half kicking myself for taking a year out when crime was this easy peasy. Lazy twat at times, though, I am.
    He said that every Sunday night the whole family would fuck off to the pictures or something. After the de-brief with the card-marker, we decided to put the house under surveillance. So the next day I went down and clocked the regs of their cars and the layout of the house and that. ‘Good,’ I thought as I watched it from my car. There was a fenced-in courtyard where they parked their cars. That was a pure godsend. We would need that to park our van in so we could lift the safe into it and blow it in an underground tunnel later.
    When I got back, me and Ritchie met up at me mam’s and he revealed the plan round the kitchen table. He said: ‘This is the way it is. The card-marker has told me the exact make of the safe and I’ve been to a safe shop. It’s light enough to carry. I know because me and the salesman in the shop fucking carried one.’
    There was a bit of an argument about the fact that we should blow the safe in the house. We decided not to for three reasons:
    1. I wasn’t really a jelly head and didn’t like explosives.
    2. The house was in a quiet residential area, it was very old and it was stuffed full of antiques and that. The explosion might have caused untold noise, knowmean, windows, the lot, going in and brought it ontop straightaway.
    3. We would have been covered head to toe in dust. When you blow a safe the ballast in the back goes everywhere, putting the evidence all over you. There’s half a chance that in a quiet residential area that’ll get noticed and if you get stopped by the busies you’re fucked.
    Ritchie concluded: ‘So we go in through the windows and carry it to the van and fuck off.’
    Simple as. End of. Every Sunday for a month we continued to watch the gaff.
    There was a pub opposite and every Sunday I’d stand in the doorway with a pint and watch the family drive out of the house. It was a brand new Jag driven by the dad or the son. We sussed out that if they didn’t come back by 8.30 at night they’d be out till about 10.30. Give or take various factors that gave us an hour to do the job. It was all set for the following week. Everything was going allday, but on Friday morning I woke up to find the busies had towed my jalopy away. The usual caper – said they wanted it as evidence for something or other. In fairness, they were just giving it to me.
    Bad one, la. I was too busy to be without mon danny today, especially before going to work, knowmean? I had fucking loads of running about to do over the weekend. Ritchie wanted me to have a last look at the gaff. Christine wanted me to run her into town. Billy wanted me to pick him up and run him to this sit down with a team from Manchester. There was only one thing to do – the Fisherman.
    The Fisherman was a bent busie who used to come in the Oslo. We called him the Fisherman because that’s what he loved to do – go fishing and that. He was all right for a busie, just sat there at the bar talking about pike and the Liverpool–Leeds canal and that, ignoring the vast amount of organised crime that was going on around him. Fair play, to him. His drink was free and we took care of him, so he did us favours in return.
    I looked at the paper. ‘Fuck,’ I thought, ‘it’s Friday. He’ll be halfway to fucking Bala Lake, by now, with his rod and can of Party 7,’ knowmean? They love all that, busies. I phoned the Oslo and told one of the lads to get a message to him at the busie station. Luckily, we’d caught him just before he was going off duty. They told me that he’d pop down the Oslo later to sort it. Is right. That night all’s I