The Not So Perfect Escape
The small crew changed vehicles twice.
It seemed, to Nick at least, as he sat quietly in the backseat of the stolen car, it was a universal misconception that "jobs" of these types needed to be meticulously planned. This was bullshit. Illegal operations of this nature needed to be well thought out, sure, but more than anything they needed to be meticulously executed. Hollywood had been mainly to blame in successfully convincing the masses that heists and robberies needed to be pointlessly intricate and complicated affairs, involving impressive gadgets and preparations that always included night-time stakeouts, rooftop reconnaissance, careful tailing, laser-cut entry, computer hacking, or all these things and more combined.
The real world was in fact much simpler than all that. Anyone with half a brain could plan a robbery, and, in theory, there was little difference between executing a job of this size and holding up a corner shop. All one needed was the patience to do their homework; to observe the mark, note down all routines that took place on the proposed day of the job and the staff members that would be present.
It was all common sense. Pick a day when the shop is going to be least busy. Normally, this instantly rules out the weekend. Nick preferred to opt for a Tuesday or a Wednesday. This allowed for people to make any purchases they had perhaps been feeling a bit indecisive about over the weekend, or return anything that they had bought and had second thoughts about. Next, try and make sure that the staff members present are going to cause you as least grief as possible. The situation may arise when one has to choose between pulling the job on a day when there are female, male or a mix between female and male staff present. Nick's preference was, unequivocally, to go with the women. This wasn't because women were weaker physically, less brave or easier to intimidate than men. Nick's reason lay on the bed of truth; because women were a fuck load smarter than men. Women knew that the easiest and quickest way out of a tense situation was to be as obliging and helpful as possible. They weren't going to entertain notions of grabbing a gun off an armed intruder and wrestling him to the floor. They were going to do what they were told as efficiently as they could because it was the logical solution to a potentially deadly problem. Even if there was a male staff member present, the presence of a woman negated any possible problematic macho bullshit that may have occurred to him. This scenario was ironic, because the whole time that the man did not try to play the hero he believed he was protecting the woman through his not acting, when, in fact, the woman was ensuring his safety just by being there, which, in turn, stopped him from trying to save the day and, consequentially, getting his face blown off.
That's assuming that the man in question was of the hero persuasion. In Nick's experience, he had yet to find a man working in a prestigious jewellery store who was willing to risk his life for anyone. However, just to play it safe, if there were only ever two male staff members in the target establishment Nick had found it advisable to show he wasn't there to piss around with one of the oldest methods in the book.
Violence.
A pistol-whip to the side of one of their heads usually got the point across quite well and was far more effective and understandable than merely saying, Do not fuck with me.
Once the staff members had been scouted and the day chosen, the shop itself must be scoped out thoroughly. This in itself, if done methodically (which it should be), could take a bit of time. Obviously, one could not expect to stroll into one of these places just the once, have a cursory and inconspicuous glance about and leave again with a solid and decisive mental picture stored in the memory bank. It took more than a run through to get acquainted with the surroundings of a place before you were comfortable enough to rob it for over fifty million pounds. No, it took more than a handful of inspections before a team could breach the selected place with confidence, and then there arose the problem of drawing suspicion. One man, coming and going day after day, would quickly become recognised by staff in such an exclusive shop, where genuine browsers are rare and paying customers even rarer. Attention is one of those things that a professional criminal does well to avoid, which means that a team of preferably four, but at least two, would alternate reconnaissance duties. Nick settled for three sets of eyes, his own, Baggo's and his father's. Key facets of the location that needed to be accurately noted were the type, number and placement of security cameras, entries and exits to the building, the layout of the shop floor, number and disposition of security personnel, what security systems were being implemented, and – of course – what financial incentives were being housed in those lovely, gleaming display cases.
Last but not least one had to know where the nearest police station was and what the average response time could be expected to be. This helped in calculating the time limit for the job and allowed for the "tits-up factor", giving a rough safety estimate for the getaway, just in case an unidentified silent alarm or some such was tripped.
A fair bit to consider, Nick mused, but hardly rocket science. Thank God for movies like The Italian Job, and the inherent laziness and spinelessness of modern men.
Last, but not least, a prospective jewel thief must have an excellent escape plan. Nick's favoured method was to steal a few cars and switch a couple of times on the way to the safe house. This left the police with an insurmountable game of catch-up, which granted Nick and his crew all the time they needed to get far, far away, leaving the authorities scratching their heads, whilst Nick and his team counted their money.
The Driver pulled into the car-park of a supermarket. Nick, Baggo and the Driver all hopped out, leaving the keys in the ignition. Hopefully some bored teens would take it for a joyride, further hindering the police in their investigation and muddling the trail.
Nick glanced around him, more out of instinct than any real fear of pursuit, as they walked the fifteen meters to the Honda Accord parked across the car-park. He lit up another of Baggo's cigarettes as he went.
You have got to cut down.
The trio unlocked and stepped calmly into the vehicle. All three let out unconsciously held breaths only once the doors were closed and the engine started.
The only hiccup occurred during the transition between vehicle number two and vehicle number three. The Driver had parked a purloined blue Mercedes outside – Nick had a sneaking suspicion the Driver hadn't used the old common sense on this particular occasion – a pub. What is more, it was a pub that was clearly full – full of Tottenham Hotspurs supporters, supporters that were pissed out of their skulls and pissed off that their team was down to Arsenal.
A drunken patron, clad in the white of a Spurs jersey, complete with regurgitated lunch and beer stains, stumbled towards his car as the Driver stopped the Honda, looking for a place to park it. The man literally fell into his car – after he had spent a good minute or two giving his car door a liberal stabbing with his key, as he tried doggedly to find the lock – and reversed jerkily out of his parking space.
'Fuckin' idiot,' Baggo muttered.
The Driver inched forward in the Accord.
Suddenly, the drunken Spurs fan hit the accelerator and his car lurched backwards. The three in the car tensed as, with a solid, rending crunch, the back of the Spurs fan's car rammed smartly into the front of the Honda Accord.
Nick and Baggo were thrown back into their seats, and even the Driver almost rocked in the driver's seat, his big frame wedged as snugly as it was into the front.
'Stupid pissed dickhead!' hissed Baggo from the passenger seat.
'Come on you two, let's get the hell out of here before anything else can happen,' Nick urged. He unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the back door.
'What the fuck was that, you stupid fucking wanker!' yelled the drunk. He had clambered unsteadily out of his car and was now leaning on it. He stared with bug-eyed incredulity at the buckled front of the Honda. Steam hissed periodically from the crumpled bonnet.
'What were you doin'? You silly, silly shit…' he slurred.
Nick didn't waste breath in answering. He walked around the back of the Accord, opened the Driver's door and hauled the big man out. The Driver clapped him on the shoulder appreciatively and nodded his head towards the waiting blue Merc.
'Yeah, let's go,' Nick agreed. 'Baggo?'
Baggo was walking towards the drunk.
'Ah, for Christ's sake,' Nick sighed.
'Are you gonna pay for this or what, mate?' the drunk was still yelling.
Baggo stalked towards him, hands balled into fists.
'You wanna go, mother fucker!' the drunk screamed, clearly confident that he could easily smash this posh looking bloke in the fancy suit.
'Baggo!' Nick yelled. He glanced at the Driver, an intimidating man thanks to the combination of his massive size and apparent muteness, but he had already clambered into the driver's seat of the Merc and Nick knew it would take him half a fucking hour to get out again.
'Baggo!' he yelled again.
Baggo help up a hand, not looking back as he stopped squarely in front of the drunken yob.
Surprisingly there was no empty bluster from the fan. He swung gamely at Baggo, aiming to switch his lights out with one huge punch. Baggo stepped neatly backwards as the man's fist went sailing past his nose. A frown of amused contempt flickered across his brow, and then Baggo stepped back towards the drunk driver as he lurched forwards and, with no fuss, cracked the man sharply in the side of the head with his elbow, dropping him like a used Kleenex. His head bounced off the boot of his car with a satisfying thump as he fell to the ground, to land in an undignified starfish formation.
'Oi! Oi, you bastard! What the 'ell do you think you're doing with Muzza?'
Nick looked up from the man at Baggo's feet. Standing just outside the doorway of the pub was a group of about fifteen white-clad football supporters. They didn't look like the sort of chaps that spent their time pouring over voluminous books of law and politics, expanding their minds. In fact, the last book that they were likely to have delved into was a match-day programme. As for expanding their minds, well, you had to have a brain to do that, and these fellows looked about as well endowed in their cranial compartments as a swarm of particularly dim-witted and obnoxious bees.
Big, burly bees with beer-guts, thought Nick, and broken bottles. Wow, my old English teacher would have been stunned by that tasty example of alliteration, he also noted drily.
A bottle smashed on the pavement next to him. He looked up and saw the group of drunken Spurs fans advancing noisily towards them.
'Time to go, Baggo,' Nick ordered. There was nothing in his voice that hinted that this was negotiable.
Baggo didn't protest – the main reason that Nick trusted him so much and could rely on him on jobs such as these – he just turned on his heel and walked towards the waiting Mercedes muttering as he went, 'What kind of shit-house name is Muzza?'
The small mob charged forward. An alcohol fuelled fire was burning in their eyes as they sprinted (or near enough sprinted, they had, after all, been drinking copiously for the past four or five hours and some still had cigarettes planted in their spit-flecked lips). Even Baggo knew enough basic maths to know that fifteen against three did not constitute a fair fight. He ran back to the car as the Driver started it, but the gap between the rabble chasing him was too small. By the time he had got into the car and closed the door the horde of drunken hooligans would be all over the vehicle.
For the second time that day Nick pulled out his gun from under his jacket. He had hoped the mere sight of it would give the bunch of twats pause for thought, but there was no such luck. Nick was quietly surprised that half of them could see where they were going they were reeling so badly, their curses slurring from their disgusting mouths.
Bugger and balls to it, then, he thought. He took one step towards the pack of hooligans and pointed his gun out to the side. He squeezed the trigger twice, the sound of the shots cracking through the car-park, seeming to bounce pinball-like from parked car to parked car.
The rush of angry drunks skidded to a halt.
Baggo raced past Nick and slid into the backseat of the waiting Mercedes.
Nick gazed in disgust at the group of louts before him; his disdain doubling as one man at the back of the assemblage leant over, spewing a delightful, foamy mix of beer, peanuts and crisps over his own feet. Nick's continued to stare coolly at the collection of dickheads before him for a couple of seconds more. Then he shooed them away with a casual wave of his hand.
'Right, fuck off then, lads.'
The trio thought that it would be prudent, after leaving a buckled Honda Accord and a group of shit-scared, pissed up Tottenham supporters in the car-park of a pub, to switch cars once more. They hadn't planned it, but the chances that at least one of the louts would remember the blue Mercedes, especially after having a gun brandished in their faces, was fairly high. The quicker they swapped vehicles, the better.
After a tense ten minute search, they finally opted for a run of the mill beige Vauxhall that they found down a side street. ('Who in their right mind buys a beige car? That's the worst colour that was ever invented. I mean really, when was the last time you ever bought something and thought, "Hm, that would look fantastic in beige"? You never have because it is a fucking terrible colour and you deserve a swift sharp slap to the face if ever you choose it,' Baggo had said, getting quite fired up about it.) It had an air of neglect about it that made the three men optimistic that it wouldn't be reported missing for some time.
Finally, a full two hours after leaving the jewellery store, the three associates cruised unassumingly into the small village that had been chosen as the rendezvous. The Driver parked the Vauxhall discreetly down a winding road that branched off from the high street. The team had elected to meet at a small pub in the village square. They would debrief – if one could call celebratory drinks debriefing – and stay for a couple of nights. This would give them a slight cooling off period whilst they assessed the police reaction. Then they would all go their separate ways, avoiding contact with each other for at least two weeks.
Nick and Baggo did not want to saunter into a village pub dressed in two-thousand pound suits. The village they were in was the sort of quiet country place where two strangers in fancy clothes would be a hot topic of conversation among locals. It seemed the sort of cosy little place, with its thatched cottages and winding lanes, where everybody more or less knew everybody. The appearance of four new faces in the local watering hole would probably be intriguing enough, and if two of those people were dressed in finely cut suits and the police just happened to pass through asking questions about a robbery and whether anybody had seen anyone suspicious, well, the first people to spring to mind would be those chaps in the suits.
The Driver, a man who was fairly conspicuous wherever he went due to his sheer enormity, looked like a country gent in his three-piece tweed suit and porkpie hat. He loitered on the corner of the high street as Nick and Baggo got changed, smoking a cigar and stroking his moustache in a thoughtful manner. They had packed a bag with a change of clothes and given it to the Driver who had kept it under the seat of the blue Mercedes and bought it along when they switched into the beige Vauxhall.
Ten minutes later the two men emerged onto the high street, Baggo carrying the bag which now had their suits stuffed inside it. Both men were sporting jeans, Nick wearing a white t-shirt and brown leather jacket with a scuffed pair of Chuck Taylors. Baggo had thrown on a grey hooded sweatshirt and a pair of chunky boots.
'Pub?' Baggo asked. He lit up and cigarette and passed it to Nick before lighting up a second for himself.
'Pub,' Nick agreed.
'Which pub was it?'
Nick regarded him while he took a pull on his cigarette. 'Seriously?'
'What?'
'How many pubs do you think this place is going to have, Thomas?'
'Jesus, Nick, don't call me Thomas,' Baggo said with a pained expression. 'I get it, silly question.'
Nick laughed and clapped his friend on the back. 'It's called The Plough, I think, mate. Come on.'