30

All the time I had been talking to Mr Markby, and having discussions about my future if I managed to get a bit of further education into me, I still told him that I was simply helping out in a couple of restaurants round Notting Hill Gate.

This wasn’t entirely true. I was still working for Chippy, no longer doing the important jobs but some of the routine house-breakings he left to less important members of his group. Why was I still doing it? Because crime had been a way of life to me since I was a kid and there didn’t seem to be another way to make sure of a reasonable income. I don’t say I didn’t feel bad about going on with crime when Mr Markby was doing so much to help me, because I did. But once I was away from his office and went to get instructions from some of his staff round the maisonette or the Beau Brummell Club, I could forget Mr Markby, or at least put him to the back of my mind and promise myself to attend to him later.

I was no longer part of the ‘A’ team and I was kept well away from Screwtop and Ozzy Desmond, I suppose because of my connection with Lucy. They were always afraid she was going to tell the police about them. They needn’t have worried, because Lucy may have slipped into dishonest ways but grassing was not one of them. In fact she kept to the code of ordinary decent criminals as though it was something she’d been brought up to since her school days.

So I was sent out with what was definitely a ‘B’ outfit, with Romeo Robinson and Alfie Barnet, who could be relied on provided they weren’t asked to do anything unexpected and the instructions were brilliantly clear. What led Mrs Robinson to call her child Romeo I can’t imagine. I suppose some African mums living round the East End of London have romantic ideas about their children, but this Romeo looked less like a heart-throb than a lightweight boxer grown old before his time. He’d been put into a number of fights to entertain the paying customers when he was younger and his nose had been well broken and his ears well cauliflowered before he gave it all up for the safety of life as a thief.

Alfie had probably, like me, never followed any entirely honest occupation. He was small, cheerful, able to squeeze through small windows and climb drainpipes. He could deal with simple burglar alarms and locks. Faced with anything more complicated, he would shrug his shoulders and grin as though it had all been a big joke anyway.

They weren’t highly qualified for what seemed like a routine job. It was a house on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Romeo had been keeping observation and listening to neighbours and he was sure the family were away on holiday. The back door could probably have been forced by an intelligent child with a penknife, but Alfie seemed to expect a round of applause when he managed it. The burglar alarm was also no problem. So we made a routine entrance in search of such routine articles as silver, television sets, money and other possibly valuable pieces.

I told the others I’d take the bedrooms and walked up the main staircase. Oddly, there was a light on in the corridor and I remember wondering vaguely why. But the main thing for me was that the feeling I’d described to Lucy, the excitement of being in someone’s house wondering if you were going to get caught, had gone completely. Quite honestly, if I felt anything at all it was boredom. I was sick and tired of the whole business. And then I heard the soft sound of music coming from an open doorway.

It seemed that I was past caring what happened, because I went to the doorway and looked. There was enough moonlight for me to see an old man with wispy grey hair fast asleep. The radio at his bedside was still playing long after he’d fallen asleep. Of course I could have gone in and nicked the radio, but you know what I did? You won’t believe this, and I hardly believed it of myself. I went in and switched the radio off for him.

Then I went down the stairs and out of the front door while the others were still at work in the dining room. I was away across Hampstead Heath, away from the crime I didn’t want to commit, and then I was back in Notting Hill Gate, still amazed at the change that had come over me.

Most of all I was looking forward to telling Lucy about it.