59 Minutes Page 3

  Just making his point.

  I lay on the cold pavement and waited. I knew better than to ask any questions. Questions led to pain.

  I looked up at the church and from the back end of my mind I remembered being told that Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army had encamped around the church’s walls after the disastrous invasion of England in 1745. I think I knew how he felt.

  The two suits lit up cigarettes but said nothing and I watched as the crappy street lighting played games with the smoke.

  I heard footsteps and a heavily over coated man rounded the corner. He was stocky and walked with purpose. A man used to getting his own way in life. The two suits parted and he walked up to me.

  ‘Stand up.’

  I did as I was asked and he turned and told the suits to take a walk. Obviously I was no threat.

  ‘I’m here. Talk.’

  I launched into my story. Disjointed and without purpose he looked bored until I told him about my break in to his house and his eyes darkened. I told him I had taken nothing and seen nothing. His eyes dropped another shade. He didn’t believe me.

  I told him where I had got the info on the house and I told him I was in the shit however this played out.

  ‘How did Rachel Score know that I wouldn’t be home tonight?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘How did you know to find me at the club?’

  ‘I didn’t but I knew your dad used it. If you hadn’t been here I’d have left a message for you to contact me.’

  He laughed. It sounded odd in the dark. But I could see his point. Me leave a message for him — good joke.

  ‘So why don’t I just get my friends to teach you to swim with a chain round your legs?’

  I tell you my heart was racing at twenty to the dozen and then some. I had no plan other than to offer up Martin and Rachel in return for my safety.

  ‘Because if I hadn’t come here Martin would have done over your house. Still might.’

  He looked at me. The way a boy looks at a bug just before he squashes it. He shouted back to one of the suits for a cigarette and, as he lit up, he never let his eyes stray from mine.

  ‘Your not as daft as you look,’ he said. ‘Any other boy would have either trashed the house or run. But you figured you were dead meat either way. Not bad. What did you see that told you not to fuck with me?’

  I didn’t want to talk about the chest but I did. As soon as I saw it I knew that Read was not someone to mess with. There was serious shit in that chest and that meant someone who was a lot heavier than Martin and I. Much heavier.

  He blew out a cloud and threw the butt to the ground.

  ‘Tell you what. I’ll give you one chance to make good. Fuck up and you’re history.’

  He told me what to do.

  Chapter 9

  Eleven fourteen and twelve seconds.

  Suffice to say that night I entered the circle of Mr Read and his associates. A then unknown circle but one that was to prove a hell of a stepping stone.

  I left him by the church and sprinted all the way to Martin’s. I told him what I had done and made it clear he had one hour to leave town. I finished by telling him that Mr Read’s friends would be paying a visit if he didn’t vanish.

  He flapped like a cat on a cooker ring. I may not have known who Read was but Martin did and I left with no end of threats to my person but Martin’s rantings were nothing compared to the verbal abuse that Rachel Score heaped on me when I delivered her the same message. She was less restrained on the physical front and opened a gash in my cheek with a vase that was at hand.

  I went home that night shaking with the adrenalin rush. I couldn’t sleep and spent the night waiting for Mr Read, the suits, Martin or Rachel to break down my door.

  The next morning a kid of about twelve arrived at my door. I recognised him as Mary Templeton’s, the wife of the local corner store’s owner, youngest offspring, He pushed a piece of paper into my hand and ran off.

  The paper had a time and place on it — nothing else. Three o’clock. Hillhead Underground station.

  I turned up half an hour early and hung around until one of the suits from the previous evening appeared and gave me another note. It was from Mr Read and I now had a new boss.

  The next few years were a turning point for me. After a few months of thinning my shoe leather, Mr Read’s right hand man, a brutal beast called Craig Laidlaw, sussed out I had a talent for breaking and entering. He watched me at work a few times and, quite rightly, ranked me as nothing more than a talented amateur. He sent me to meet a man called Kelly Greenlaw.

  Kelly was an ex-housebreaker well into retirement, who now spent as much time as possible staring at the bottom of an empty whisky glass in the local pub.

  In his day he had been the dog’s bollocks as a burglar and now earned his dram money as a part time professor and tutor in the art of breaking and entering.

  When I first met him he said nothing until I bought him a nip. It transpired that this was how things worked. I bought whisky and he opened up a little.

  Kelly was an expensive tutor. When we graduated to hands on practical work I was expected to buy a quarter bottle from the Stockwell Off Sales. He watched as I jimmied locks, cracked window catches and smashed and trashed what couldn’t be picked. If I took too long I was despatched to the off sales for a second bottle.

  To earn cash to feed Kelly’s habit I went back to loan collection for Mr Read but I didn’t mind. Kelly might have been an out and out alcoholic but he knew his stuff.

  Then, one day, after a trip to the pub, Kelly took me to meet a couple of men up a back alley off Argyll Street in the centre of Glasgow.

  I was presented with a door and made mince meat of it in seconds. Once inside we all climbed two floors and I was shown another door. I cracked it and we entered an office dominated by a row of mesh-protected windows, each with a customer slot. Each slot was attended by a till with its drawer wide open — empty for the world to see.

  Kelly nodded at the far wall and to another door. This one was different. For a start it was made of metal and build into a steel frame. There was also the matter of two keyholes and a padlock — all keeping its contents nice and secure. Kelly pushed me forward.

  It took a little longer for me to crack it but we were in soon enough. This seemed to impress my colleagues.

  The room beyond was wall to ceiling with shelving. Each shelf was stuffed with paper. I pulled out one of the bits of paper and recognised it as a betting slip. That explained the windows and tills. This was a back street bookie’s shop.

  In the centre of the floor stood a small safe bolted to the floor. It looked new and solid and reminded me of the safe at Malcolm Smillie’s place. Kelly grunted and got to his knees. I stepped back but was pushed forward by one of Kelly’s friends and sat down next to the safe. It was clear I was here to learn.

  Kelly walked me through what he was doing; downing the obligatory quarter bottle as he did so. He explained how the safe worked and what we needed to listen for. I thought the stethoscope he used was a joke but, back then, safes really could be cracked by listening for the tumblers falling.

  He popped it open and I stood up, expecting the men to empty the contents but Kelly closed the door, spun the tumbler and handed me the stethoscope.

  It took me three minutes — a good ten quicker than Kelly to crack it. He was impressed. Mr Read had the need of a good safe cracker and I had just pulled on the team strip.

  That was the last night I saw Kelly. He vanished and turned up in the King George V dock a week later. Nobody suspected foul play. I reckon he just got tired of life and went for a swim — blind drunk. But I always wondered if my little demonstration in the bookies had been the straw that had broken his booze-soaked back.

  Mr Read worked me hard. I was hardly an expert at my craft and I had no choice but to learn as I went. At first my jobs were far from Glasgow. With a varying set of companions I travelled the length and breadth of the country —
Newcastle, Liverpool, Cardiff, Manchester, Derby, Carlisle, Plymouth — the list was endless.

  Each time the routine was the same. I would get my orders via Mary’s kid and meet a variation of my new friends at Central Station. They would have the destination, tickets and a carry-out.

  On arrival at the town of choice we would meet up with some locals in a dingy pub. Always a dingy pub. They would explain the gig and point us in the right direction. Job done we never hung around and, on the occasions that we could not get the last train out, there would be a car to take us home. For two years I saw the UK by night.

  After a while I realised that we never touched London and I once asked why, only to be told to mind my own fucking business.

  A year later I found out why.

  With my cash flow improving I had moved out of my flat and bought a semi-detached house on the south side. Nothing too grand but I was on the up. The jobs were regular and so far trouble free. I wasn’t high enough up to get the big cut, but I got a fair wage and my skills as a safe cracker were growing.

  By now Mary’s kid had given way to the phone and when I received a call to go to the train station I packed my bag as usual and met up with two of Mr Read’s elder statesmen — George Cummings and Tony Wright.

  George and Tony were heavyweights and usually reserved for big jobs. I’d never been with them on a gig before. When we boarded the London train I knew this was something different.

  The journey south was done in near silence. George and Tony slept most of the way. The silence made me nervous and I didn’t close an eye for the whole journey.

  When we pulled in at Euston, I was exhausted and they looked fresh. This time there were no locals and no dingy pub. We took a taxi and jumped out near the Albert Hall and checked into one of the myriad of small hotels that surround it. I had never been to London before but was destined to see little on this trip.

  Once in the hotel room George and Tony got to work on the phone and told me to get some shuteye. I thought I was still too uptight to sleep but must have dozed off because around three in the morning I was woken by Tony and told to get ready.

  We left by the front door. The receptionist was long in bed and, back then, night watchmen were a luxury few small hotels needed or could afford — so no one saw us leave. We hailed a taxi and headed south and over the River Thames.

  I remember being surprised at how quiet the streets were. I had always imagined London to be a 24/7 sort of place but around us the streets were more alive with rubbish than people.

  We reached an industrial district and got out of the taxi. George took a battered A to Z from his pocket and orientated himself before plunging us into a maze of canyons created by warehouse walls. For twenty minutes we wandered, sometimes backtracking until Tony pointed at a small two storey building. George nodded and we crossed the road, all the time keeping our eyes open for signs of life.

  There was a double door to the building — I didn’t need to be asked and went straight to work on the lock and cracked it in seconds. A set of stairs faced us, leading up to the second floor, and my services were required again at the top.

  We stepped into a barnyard of a place. Steel columns stretched into the distance like soldiers on parade. In between the columns there were long stretches of workbenches, each attended by row upon row of stools. At the far end there was a small smattering of offices and we made for the last one.

  It was locked but, before I could pull the locksmith’s kit from my pocket, George picked up a block of wood from a nearby table and put it through the glass in the door.

  Inside I was faced with a steel door on the far wall, not unlike the one in the bookies that I had cut my teeth on. I set to work and once inside I had expected to find a safe but, instead, the room contained rows of small boxes built into the wall, floor to ceiling, each with its own keyhole. I had never seen inside a bank vault but I thought this is what the safety deposit room would look like.

  I asked which box we were after and George shrugged and told me to do them all. I gasped — there were easily two hundred boxes and, outside, the light was moving from night to dawn.

  I started on my left and it took a few minutes to pop the first one but once I had the measure of the locks, the rest fell with ease. Even so it took over an hour before George called Tony over and examined the contents of the latest box I had opened.

  They removed what lay inside and told me to call it quits and we made for the exit and this is when the world went south.

  Chapter 10

  As we exited the office the first sign of trouble barrelled into the work area in the shape of four men, three armed with crowbars and one with a sawn off baseball bat. They were at one end of the workspace and we were at the other.

  As soon as George saw them he reached into his coat, took out the package from the safety deposit box and handed it to me.

  ‘That way,’ he pointed to a fire escape. ‘We’ll take care of this.’

  I didn’t argue. The intruders were eating up ground between us like cheetahs on heat. I put my head down and ran. Behind me there was a brief silence and then a grunt as wood connected with flesh and bone.

  I hit the fire escape door at full tilt but in the seventies quick release fire doors were still to be introduced, and I bounced off it — ending up on my backside. The noise behind me was racking up and I grabbed a quick look see.

  George and Tony were holding centre stage. George with a cosh that I knew he kept in his jacket and Tony with a lump of two by two he had ripped from a table.

  I returned my attention to the door, realised my mistake, flipped the door handle and was gone. Dropping down the metal staircase onto the alley below I struggled to get my bearings, so I mentally flipped a coin and began running.

  Soon I was swallowed by the warehouse labyrinth and, after a while my energy levels fell off, forcing me to drop to a walk. I was heaving in air but still kept some pace on. It took me an hour to find my way back to the main road and another twenty minutes to get a cab.

  My instructions were simple. If we were split up we were to meet up at Euston Station and if no one was there I was to jump the first train to Glasgow.

  Euston was quiet. It was over an hour until the first train was due north and I bided my time by wandering between the toilets and a side entrance — trying to keep a low profile.

  With five minutes to go there was still no sign of George and Tony and I boarded the train bathed in sweat.

  I breathed deeply as it pulled out of the station.

  The journey was long and full of questions but no-one to ask them of. When the train pulled into Glasgow I headed straight for Craig Laidlaw. I took him to one side and told him what had gone down. I handed him the package and he told me to ‘fuck off’ for a while.

  Three days later London invaded Glasgow.

  I never saw it but I heard plenty. Some of it is now legend. Bar fights, street brawls, one on ones and even shooters. The guys from London were good and well used to a fight but this was home turf for Mr Read and before the day was out the London gang had turned tail and fled.

  I was summoned to a rare meet with the victor. He told me I had done well. I thought I had turned chicken by running — go figure. George and Tony were on their way back up — a bit of a mess but they would live.

  London was pissed off, Mr Read was basking in it all and I was dying to ask what was in the package that had kicked all this off — but I didn’t have the nerve to ask.

  As it turned out I didn’t need to. Mr Read reached into his pocket and took out the small cloth pack that I had carried from London. He opened it up and the world was full of glinting light.

  Diamonds, dozens and dozens of diamonds lying in the palm of his hand. I knew nothing of their value but the smile on Mr Read’s face told a story. He reached into the pile, picked out two and handed them to me.

  ‘Joey will sort you out when you want to trade them in.’

  He patted me on the head like a kid
, wrapped up the gems and was gone. I was twenty five and I felt like a ten year old. I had just been handed near on a grand’s worth of diamonds.

  It was time to move on.

  Chapter 11

  My step into the big time was not an easy one and I could fill the remaining time we have together with stories of woe and times that were hard. Of how I had to struggle to rise above the mob and sacrifice my every want and desire as I strove for a brighter future. I could but I won’t. I’ll keep to the real juice.

  It was late August and the Scottish summer had been the usual mix of pish and rotten. I was recovering from a late one at the Griffin — my new pub of choice and witness to a quiet night out to celebrate a nice haul from a job in Edinburgh.

  The next morning I was sitting nursing my head thinking that the share from the London job would put a nice dent in my mortgage when the doorbell rang. I rose expecting to find the postman trying to force fit an unwanted catalogue into my letterbox. Instead I found two men, neither of whom I had laid eyes on before, standing on my doorstep.

  They were polite and well dressed and I guessed them for Jehovah’s Witnesses. I told them I was Buddhist but they politely smiled and asked if they could come in. I refused and the smaller of the two reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a gun.

  I let them in.

  They asked for a cup of tea and I felt it would be a wise move to acquiesce and returned ten minutes latter with two brews and a plate of digestives. They sat and sipped the tea without a word.

  I waited, assuming there was a point to the visit. I wasn’t unduly worried about the gun. If they had intended to kill me the job would have been done by now.

  ‘Do you enjoy working for Mr Read?’

  The man with the gun’s accent was laced with a southern lilt.

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Smart kid,’ said the other. ‘Nice tea as well.’

  The man with the gun leant forward.