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.
