Powder Wars by Graham Johnson Page B

had to do was tell him the make and model. The next day he got it back for me. Back on track.
    On Sunday we got into position. The family in the Jag left at about six thirty in the evening and didn’t come back at eight thirty. Game on. One by one we went over the back wall. Dick the Stick got busy opening the various doors and windows. Need not have bothered, in all fairness. The back door was unlocked. I just walked straight in and gave them the fright of their lives, as they were all crawling around like cat burglars.
    Between the four of us we picked up the safe, but it was fucking heavy. It wasn’t the safe-lite model that this card-marker had said it was. We pulled, pushed, dragged the fucker across the ground floor and down a flight of steps into the garden. Fuck’s sake – there was a tow truck blocking us from driving our van into the courtyard. The gates wouldn’t even open. No way, la. We’d have to drag the safe right across this fucking rolling estate, acres it fucking seemed, and hoist it over the garden wall into an alleyway.
    Time was not on our side, in all fairness. It took 30 minutes of pure World’s Strongest Man -style feats of heroism for the four of us to get it to the garden wall. Were well over budget on this one by now. The Countdown clock was just getting to the bit where the musical finale starts, but one last Geoff Capes impersonation, safe over wall, and we were at least £50,000 richer.
    Literally, it was balancing on the top of the wall when we heard the noise – the unmistakable sound of the Jag coming down the driveway. Crunching gravel it was, but it sounded like thunder to me. Finished, we were. F-U-C-K-E-D. I spelled out in my head. Finished. Let the safe go, crashing into the alleyway. We all did the offski over the wall into the night. We had to leave the safe next to the back gate.
    We didn’t get collared but we were totally fucking sinkered anyways. No one could believe it. We’d been inches away from getting the safe away, no two ways. Fucking seconds, knowmean? Total gutter. Kites on us said it all, but there was only one thing to do: find the card-marker and give him a good thrashing, which we did, by the way. Apportioning blame in those situations was always a good way of relieving the stress of a no-gooder.
    We gave him a few slaps but the card-marker saved himself from a pure pummelling by offering up another job there and then. Penance, it was. It was a big Volvo garage with a cash-rich safe. We hit it a short while later. Walkover. Had the safe off, got £800 quid each out of it. Wasn’t too good wages, in fairness.
    After that I fucked the safe-cracking off and decided to move into being a sneak thief. I got into it through one of my doormen called Bobby Chalendor. I brought him in to replace Joey Duvall. One night he said: ‘Do you fancy doing a bit of work? I know a butcher who drives round with £7,000 takings in his boot.’
    I got a set of pass keys off one of the lads in the Oslo. These were a bunch of keys which would fit most cars. Car locks were piss poor in those days. Bobby said: ‘This butcher owns a string of shops and every Saturday he collects all the takings and drives home.’
    So the following Saturday night we followed this butcher coming out of his shop. Sure enough, he throws a bag in the boot. We carry on trailing him and he stops at a pub to go in for a bevvy. I goes over, pops the boot and has the bag off. Very heavy, mind you. Sure enough, there was six, seven large in it. Get paid. I kept £5,000 and Bobby had the remnants. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
    It turns out that Bobby knew a card-marker who worked in the meat trade who knew all these big butchers, who drove around with huge fucking bags in the car, thinking it was allday. We did about four or five of them sneaks before the source dried up, but they were all good payers. So good in fact that we decided