Part Three

I awoke.

The first thing was the perfume. That was the first thing I noticed. The soft sweet smell of Sheila’s body drifting into my senses.

I opened my eyes and turned my head. Sheila was in a deep sleep. Dark auburn hair tumbled over the pillow and over her bare shoulders. Her breath was soft and slow. I could feel the light warmth of it on my neck. I looked at her a long time before I turned away. Then I just lay there and enjoyed the luxury of the traffic sounds in the high street beyond the bedroom window. Rumbling lorries and swishing cars and blaring motorhorns. It was music.

After a while I slipped from the bed and walked quickly over to the door of the adjoining bedroom and opened it without making a sound. Timmy was still asleep in his cot. I moved across the room and knelt down and looked through the bars. Timmy was lying on his back, his arms stretched out above his head, palms turned upwards, his face blank with innocence.

I knelt there, waiting for him to wake up.

After a time, I felt a shadow behind me. I turned my head. Sheila was standing in the doorway. I saw from her face that she’d been watching me for some time. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look a certain way. But almost as soon as I saw her I got up and walked towards the door. Then she moved too, away from the door, back towards the bed in our room. As she lay down and I lay down on top of her she whispered in my ear:

“You can wake Timmy up later. Only otherwise we’d have to have waited till tonight again, wouldn’t we?”

Breakfast. The transistor’s tiny burble. The all-embracing smell of fried bacon. Timmy chattering in his high chair. Sheila talking as she prodded along the breakfast in the frying pan.

“ . . . so there was no bother. He never thought anything of it. Just accepted that you were on nights and that was it. In any case, you don’t actually have to go through the shop to get in and out. Well, you probably saw last night. You go down the stairs and along the passage and out through the other door. It’s perfect.”

“Did you tell your ma?”

She shook her head.

“She knows I’m with you. But she doesn’t know where.”

“And?”

“What do you think?”

“Yeah.”

I poured another cup of tea.

“And nobody else knows where we are.”

“Only Ronnie.”

I drank some tea.

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Sheila said. “Only I thought . . .”

“No, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “Ronnie’s all right.”

“I mean I played it safe. I only came here the once, to take the place. And I came in the wig and all . . .”

“It’s all right, love. Don’t worry about it. You’ve done fine.”

I mopped my plate with a piece of bread and crumpled up the bread and ate it. Sheila poured me another cup of tea. I drained the cup and leant back in my chair and gave Sheila a cigarette and lit us both up.

As Sheila blew out the smoke she said:

“Do you feel like talking yet?”

I grinned at her.

“Do me a favour,” I said. “You didn’t exactly give me much chance last night. Or this morning.”

“You know what I mean, Billy, and don’t be so bleeding saucy. I mean about the future.”

“Yeah, all right,” I said. “I don’t mind talking about the future.”

She put her elbows on the table and looked into my face.

“Well,” I said, “this is how I see it: we’re all right for money. We’ve no immediate worries on that score. In fact if we were going to stay put we’d be all right for well over eighteen months. It was lucky for me that Ronnie was on the job with me. Some of them wouldn’t have handed over if they didn’t have to.”

“He let me have it the day after you went down.”

I nodded.

“But anyway. We’d be all right if we were going to stay put. But we can’t stay put, can we?”

Sheila looked down at the table.

“If we want a future it’s got to be bought. Somewhere other than this country. And that’ll take care of most of the money, the way we’d have to go.”

I stubbed my cigarette out in the ashtray.

“But it’s a vicious circle. We can’t move yet. Not for six months. Maybe not for even a year. And by that time we’ll be well into our money and there wouldn’t be enough left in the kitty to pay for the kind of passage we’ll need. So where does that get us?”

She waited for me to tell her.

“For a start,” I said, “you don’t have to worry about me. Whatever happens, I’m not going out on any more jobs. That’s out. I’m here now and I’m not going back. I wouldn’t have gone on the last one if it hadn’t been because of that commitment to Ronnie.”

She didn’t say anything and I knew what she was thinking from the way she wasn’t saying it.

“Anyway, there’s no point going into all that. It’s what I do from now on that matters. And I’m doing no more jobs. So where does that leave us? Maybe a year lying low and at the end of it not enough readies to get us out.”

She looked up at me again. I leant across the table and took hold of her hand.

“There’s only one person I can trust to do me a favour and that’s Ronnie. We know that. Ronnie and I are real mates. Now the only way I’m ever going to get the kind of readies we need is to get Ronnie to place some of the money for me. To buy it. There’s The Stable Club and there’s Little Egypt and he could maybe even fix something up in the Chesterfield. He’d do that for me, I know. I mean, if he’d gone down with me then he wouldn’t be in those places either. So in his position all he has to do is every now and again stake a tame punter on a good red number, nothing greedy, say twenty back at a time, give his punter a percentage, take his own percentage, funnel the rest back to me. In a year or so I can double what we have now.”

For a while Sheila didn’t say anything. Then eventually she said:

“Only this, Billy. Maybe Ronnie will do it for you. On the other hand he might reckon on having done it all already. But the main thing is who he works for now. I mean, those clubs are Walter’s.”

I smiled.

“Sure they’re Walter’s. That’s one of the lovely things about the idea. Wally’s boiling his nuts up in the nick while I’m sitting down here in the bosom of my family playing the stock market on his tables.”

There was another silence. Then she said:

“Don’t do anything that’ll send you back, Billy.”

I looked at her.

“Like what?” I said.

I sank back in the bath. The third bath in twelve hours. It was the quickest way of getting rid of the stiffness. But that apart, the novelty of the locked bathroom door and the smell of Sheila’s toiletries mixing in with the steam, and the flowered wallpaper and the pink bath, they were all equally necessary.

I stretched an arm out and swivelled the dial round on the transistor. I stopped when I got to the news. The newsreader was talking about Billy Cracken. About how the search had moved to London. About how the Yard had moved in on the scene.

I listened until the item finished then I switched off the radio.

Then I leant forward and ran some more hot water into the bath.

I pulled the polythene wrapper off the shirt and held the shirt out in front of me. It was soft and woolly with a button down collar, one of those casual sportshirts with just the three buttons at the neck. Two more shirts of the same kind in different colours lay on the bed.

Sheila said: “I like the brown best. Brown suits you.”

The one I was holding was red. Bright red.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I think I like this one best.”

I took all the newspapers that Sheila had saved and spread them out over the dining table and read each of the reports about the escape. The only fact that was consistent throughout was the description of Tommy’s capture. And that was only because he’d never got down off the roof. They couldn’t very well get that wrong.

Most of the papers carried pictures of the outside of the prison, pictures littered with speculative arrows describing my progress over the wall. Only one of the papers came near to the truth, and then for the wrong reasons.

I even rated an editorial in one of them. One of those civic-minded hands-up-in-horror ones, bleating on about the safety of citizens in their beds while Public Enemies found it easy to get out of maximum security. Tightening of restrictions, tougher conditions, all that kind of cobblers.

Only one of the photographs made me look at all human. A picture she’d taken of me herself, at Brighton, on our honeymoon. The rest were police stuff, in some cases specially retouched under the eyes and round the cheekbones.

Just so nobody got the wrong idea, like.

“Now then,” I said, “this one’s all about Peter Rabbit. See Peter Rabbit? And that’s his mummy and all his brothers and sisters. Now Peter’s a very naughty bunny rabbit. Because he’s always getting into trouble. Never out of it. See, here he’s in the vegetable garden and he shouldn’t be there, should he. No, he shouldn’t. Because his daddy was once in the vegetable garden and Mr. McGregor shot him with his shotgun, didn’t he? And he put him in a rabbit pie and ate him all up, didn’t he? Yes he did. So Peter ought never to be in that old vegetable patch, ought he. He ought to keep well out of it if he doesn’t want to finish up in a pie, shouldn’t he?”

I lowered Timmy down into the cot and slid him under the sheets but he wasn’t having any of it. Immediately he pushed the sheets back and squirmed round and sat up and stretched his arms out to me. I picked him up again and held him tight to me. His arms went round my neck and small fingers gripped the hair at the back of my head. We stood like that in the semi-darkness for a while. Then I dislodged his arms and put him down again. This time there was no squirming, no sitting up. This time he was content to lie there, just looking up into my face. Slowly the eyelids began to droop, but I stayed where I was, looking down, because every now and again his eyes would snap open, as if to reassure him that I was still standing there. Each time that happened he would smile and his eyes would flicker and close, and the smile would gradually drift away until the next time his eyes opened. After a while, when he was finally asleep, I left the bedroom and went back to Sheila.

“Look,” I said, “Ronnie’s all right. You don’t have to worry.”

“I know he is. But it just worries me. I mean, even me mam doesn’t know we’re here.”

“You’re only talking about the bloke that had me fetched from Aston.”

“I know. But I didn’t know he was working for Walter. I just didn’t cotton on about the clubs.”

“He’s been there for ages. Besides, Ronnie isn’t Walter’s man. He’s got his own operations. He just uses Walter. Screws him to pay the rent. Ronnie’s my mate.”

“And Walter knows that.”

“All right, what’s Walter going to do? Get Ronnie to grass me? You don’t know Ronnie.”

“But I know Walter.”

“And I know Ronnie. Ronnie’d never let Walter get a lock on him.”

Sheila showed Ronnie into the living room. He was as sharp as ever. Beige mohair, black shoes, dark shiny tie, his black hair cut immaculately. He smiled his wide smile.

“Well now,” he said. “What do we call you now? Blondie? Or is it Danny La Rue?”

I smoothed a hand over my hair.

“What do you think?” I said, smiling back.

“Great. Bobby Moore’ll want to know the name of the salon.”

“That’s one address nobody’s having.”

“Right.”

We shook hands.

“Thanks for the lift,” I said. “I appreciate what you did.”

Ronnie sat down.

“Forget it.”

“Sheila,” I said. “Do the drinks for us. What is it these days, Ronnie? Still rum and black?”

“Vodka tonic. Lemon if you’ve got it.”

“That the In Drink now, Ronnie?” Sheila said.

“With me it is. You stay fresh as a daisy next morning.”

“I’ll have a scotch, Sheila.”

Sheila began to make the drinks. Ronnie lit a cigarette.

“No, I mean it,” I said to Ronnie. “Well, anyway I don’t have to say it. You know what I mean.”

“Sure.”

Sheila gave us the drinks. I raised my glass.

“Absent friends,” I said. “Even Walter.”

“Absent friends.”

We drained our glasses and Sheila filled them up for us. We drank again, but this time not all the way down. I looked at my glass.

“You might not believe this,” I said, “but this is the first one. Well, the second. It is, isn’t it, Sheil?”

“That’s right.”

“First one. I waited until you came.”

Ronnie drank a little more and said cheers. Then Sheila got up and took her coat off the hook and began putting it on. Ronnie said:

“You off, Sheil?”

“Going round to see my mother.”

Ronnie tried not to show anything but he couldn’t help it. I grinned and said: “Forget it, Ronnie. Sheila’ll never get copped for. She’s too sharp for them.”

“Won’t they be covering her ma’s place?” Ronnie said, but he didn’t say it like a question.

“Sure,” I said. “Only she isn’t going to her Ma’s place. Her Ma’s meeting her in the Barley Mow off Upper Street. Her brother and her sister-in-law are going as well. Sheil wants to let them know things are fine.”

“What about her Ma? Won’t they have someone on her?”

I shook my head.

“Her Ma went shopping up West this morning. She’s been dodging about all day.”

Sheila leant down and kissed me on the forehead.

“Don’t tie too big a one on, Billy,” she said. “Remember, you can’t run round the Green tomorrow to get rid of it.”

“No, all right,” I said. “I’ll take it easy.”

Sheila said goodbye to Ronnie and went out.

Ronnie emptied his glass and I stood up and took it from him and refilled it.

“Don’t worry about Sheila,” I said. “She’s been with me long enough to know the form.”

I gave Ronnie his glass and poured another for myself.

“Anyway,” I said as I sat down, “how’s business?”

“Quite rosy at the minute,” Ronnie said. “Lots of prospects.”

“What, with Walter?”

“No, I’m not with his firm.”

“What about the clubs?”

“Just bunce. It suits me to let Walter think I’m one of the family.”

“So who are you with?”

“I’m with myself. Freelance. Sort of an agent. A promoter.”

“Promoting what?”

“Anything likely. Mainly van work. Done two in the last three months. I get a bit of intelligence, pull a few trusties together, do the job, back to the dress suit in the evening, Bob’s your uncle. Don’t see any of the fellers till the next time. Just supposing they’re the same fellers, that is.”

“Sounds as though you’re doing well,” I said.

“Never mind, Billy. Old Bill can’t make up his mind. Whether it’s me or whether I’ve really settled down like what it looks like. I mean, I’m on a sweet number with Walter. Why should I chance anything?”

“Clever,” I said. “So you’re rolling in greengage.”

“Can’t complain. Mind you, we go out tooled up, so that makes the odds better.”

“Heavy?”

“Why not. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a pea-shooter or a sten gun. You get done just the same way whatever you happen to be holding.”

“You’re chancing getting what I got.”

“You got yours for different reasons, Billy. Everybody knows that.”

“Maybe.”

“So anyway,” Ronnie said, after a pause, “what’ve you got scheduled?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Not for a year at least.”

Ronnie didn’t say anything.

“I’ve got to lie low, haven’t I? And after that I’ve got to get out of it. Right out. There’s no future for me on this island. Sure. I might last a long time. Three years, five years, maybe more. But one day they’d have me. And next time they’d throw away the key. I’d have no chance.”

Ronnie lit another cigarette.

“I suppose you haven’t any choice.”

“Too right. I’ve got a life to live.”

“Where would you go?”

“Ireland, first. Then I’d fix things for South Africa.”

Ronnie nodded.

“It’ll cost you,” he said.

“I know.”

“Can you manage it?”

“Right now, yes. In a year’s time, I’m not sure. I’ve got to promote some bread in the meantime, that’s for sure.”

“You can always come in on one of my tickles.”

I shook my head.

“Sheila wouldn’t wear it.”

Ronnie grinned.

“Come on, Billy,” he said. “Do me a favour. Sheila wouldn’t wear it? Since when has a bird decided things for you?”

“Listen,” I said. “I got out for Sheila. And for Timmy. If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t be sitting here now. I’d have been to Liverpool and off.”

“All right, Billy,” Ronnie said. “All right.”

“Just so as you know.”

There was a short silence.

“So what are you going to do for bread?” Ronnie said.

“I was wondering if you could give me a hand. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean a loan.”

“And don’t get me wrong either, Billy: I don’t mind lending to you. If I’ve got it, I’ll lend it, depending on who it is.”

“I know,” I said. “But no thanks. I already owe you.”

Ronnie shrugged.

“Then how?”

“At your tables.”

Ronnie thought about it. Eventually he said:

“How, exactly?”

“I give you some bread. You give the bread to a punter who’s into you for something or other and your operator lets him win a couple. You knock ten per cent off the punter’s account and take a few off the top for yourself and give the rest to me. Do it half a dozen times and I’d have the capital I’m looking for.”

Ronnie’s tongue clicked against the back of his teeth.

“Don’t get me wrong, Billy,” he said. “But there’d be problems.”

“It’s done all the time,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. But not at one of Walter’s places. Not unless Walter says so.”

“You run them, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I run them. And there’s plenty of other geezers as’d like to as well. All working for Walter. There wouldn’t exactly be a shortage of grasses if I started pulling strokes like that. I’d rather give you the money. It’s not me, you understand. It’s not me I’m looking out for. It’s Doreen and the kids. You know what Wally’s like. He’d put his heavies straight on to them. They like that sort of thing.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You know what I mean, don’t you?” Ronnie said.

I took a drink.

“Well, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“I’d do it if it wasn’t Walter. I really would.”

I nodded again.

“I can lend you some. Let me lend it to you.”

“No,” I said. “I can’t take your money. Besides . . .”

“Besides?”

“You couldn’t lend me enough. I’d need at least a grand on top of what I’ve got. Maybe two.”

“Jesus. I thought you meant half a grand tops.”

“When I go I want to go right. And that’s expensive.”

Ronnie didn’t say anything.

“Well, as I said, I can help you out a bit. Just let me know if you change your mind. And of course, if you change your mind about going on a tickle. You’d certainly raise it that way.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

I took Ronnie’s glass again and filled us both up.

“Anyway,” I said, “I’ve only been out five minutes. Plenty of time to fix something up.”

“Sure there is.”

“Didn’t bring you here just to pull you for that. This is meant to be a celebration. Born Free and all that.”

“Yeah. Let’s sink some.”

“We’ll do that.”

Three o’clock on a warm Sunday afternoon.

I looked out of the window and down into the street. Bright sunlight lightened the shop windows and leftover drunks from the lunch time sessions stood in the shop doorways. Kids with nowhere to go slouched along the pavement. I turned away from the window and sat down in an armchair and picked a newspaper up off the floor. It was no use waiting by the window to watch for Sheila and Timmy coming back from the park. It was like standing by a stove waiting for a kettle to boil. Besides, they’d only been gone an hour. And the afternoon was warm and bright. Why should they hurry back?

I found an item in the paper I hadn’t already read but after the first couple of paragraphs I lost interest. I got up out of my chair and turned on the television. The station was showing an old movie with Greer Garson and Ronald Colman. I stood five minutes of it and then I switched over to the other side. Football. That was better. I settled down to enjoy it but the commentator began saying there were only a few minutes to go, they were in the dying seconds of the game and all that crap. Then the whistle went and the adverts came on. I stood up again and switched the set off.

In any case, watching television on a Sunday afternoon had reminded me of the nick. That dead period between dinner and tea, the time when the thoughts of outside were hard to keep out of your mind.

I went over to the window again. A bus rolled by, almost empty up top. One of the passengers was a blank-faced man in his fifties with a check scarf round his neck and the collar of his mac turned up. We stared into each other’s eyes as the bus jolted by. He probably wouldn’t have changed his expression if he’d known who he was looking at.

But at least he was going somewhere. I wondered where someone like him was going on a warm Sunday at three o’clock in the afternoon.

Ronnie phoned up one Wednesday evening and asked if he could come round and discuss something with me.

He got there about half an hour after he’d phoned.

“I’ve been hearing things I think you ought to know about,” he said.

I got him a drink and sat him down.

“What things?” I said.

“To do with Walter.”

“Oh yes?”

“He’s after getting you sent back.”

I smiled.

“What else would he be doing? You know Walter.”

“Sure, but he’s really coming it strong. He’s got Tobin working on it.”

“Tobin!” Sheila said. “Jesus.”

“Tobin’s still on the force then,” I said.

“He was lucky. It worked out perfect for him, Walter going down when he did. Now Tobin gets his cake and eats it. He’s still on the payroll and the geezer that foots the bill is inside on a thirty stretch.”

“And now he’s being paid to turn me over.”

“Right,” Ronnie said. “He’s appearing nightly. He’s been through every grass south of the Shell building. He’s even put pressure on a couple of geezers who are paying in a century apiece each into West End Central so you can tell how dedicated he is.”

“Who were the geezers?”

“Maurice and Alec.”

“How did they react?”

“They gave him the elbow and reminded him about a couple of deals they could drop him in over, no trouble. But that’s beside the point. He’s working at it. I thought you should know in the light of any movements you or Sheila might be thinking of making.”

“Has he been to see you?” I said.

“Yeah, he’s had a word with me.”

“Has he any idea of what you laid on for me?”

“If he had I wouldn’t be here now. And Walter wouldn’t care, either. He’d trample me to death to get at you. But nobody knows anything. I arranged everything by remote control.”

After Ronnie had gone Sheila said:

“What do you think? Move on now or sit it out?”

“Sit it out. Tobin won’t get anywhere because nobody but Ronnie knows anything. If we move we give him the kind of chance he’s looking for.”

Sheila came and sat on the floor by my chair and leant against my legs.

“So now it’s both of us,” she said. “I’ll have to do my shopping next door, once a week.”

“I expected this would happen,” I said, just to make her feel better. “I’m only surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”

The next day I awoke at half past five. My eyes snapped open and my brain was working straight away, as if I’d been awake for hours.

I lay in bed, listening. I was listening even before I was fully aware of what I was doing. A reflex. Ronnie’s message must have really stirred me up.

I could hear nothing out of the ordinary. The fridge was humming away in the kitchen. A bus rattled by outside. The ticking of the alarm. Next to me, Sheila’s breathing. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I got out of bed and went into the living room and over to the window that looked out on to the street. I parted the curtains ever so slightly.

The street was empty.

No big removal van was parked twenty-five yards down the road. That was the way they always did it. They always came in a big removal van, or something like it. They’d sit inside and talk into their handsets until it was time to move and then they’d pile out and surround their objectives. And they always made their move before eight o’clock. Nobody had ever been picked up after eight in the morning. If you got past eight o’clock you could fairly bank on being safe for at least the rest of the day.

I went into the kitchen and lit the gas and filled the kettle and put it on the stove to boil. I stood by the stove and looked at my reflection. I saw the kitchen door swing open. Sheila was standing there. I turned to face her.

“Just making a cup of tea.”

She nodded and pushed a strand of hair from her eyes. Then she sat down at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. The kettle boiled and I poured the hot water into the tea pot. When the tea had mashed I poured us two cups and took them over to the table and sat down. I lit one of Sheila’s cigarettes and looked at the clock on the cooker. It was five past six. I wondered if Tobin was at home, tucked up in his bed. And if he was, I wondered what he was dreaming about.

“It’s no good,” I said. “I’ve got to get out.”

“Billy, you mustn’t. Not yet. Not with Tobin on the lookout.”

“That was a month ago. In any case, he can’t be everywhere at once.”

“But knowing our luck . . .”

“Our luck,” I said. “Listen, living this way I may as well be back in Aston.”

“Up there you’d have me and Timmy, would you?”

“Look, Sheil, you know what I mean. I’m going out of my skull. It’s been two months. Over two months. I just have to go out. Even if it’s only for an hour.”

Sheila sat down and lit a cigarette.

“Where do you want go?” she said.

“I don’t know. Anywhere.”

“Round here?”

“Well you don’t think I’d hop on a bus and make straight for the Skinners Arms do you?”

“I don’t know what you’d do.”

I knelt down next to her.

“Look, all I want to do is go out for an hour. Just walk around a bit. I’d be careful. You know that.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I mean, you’ve been out.”

“Yes, I’ve been out, but if I’m nicked it’s not exactly the same. is it? I’d be out in six months. I mean, you do see the difference, don’t you?”

“There’s no need for that . . .”

“Yes there is. There is if you’re thinking of going out. Risking it all just for an hour outside.”

“Sheila, you don’t know what it’s like . . .”

“I do, Billy. I do. I know how you must feel. But you’ve got to stick it out. Just for another month or so. Then when Tobin’s eased off, well, maybe then. But not now. You know I’m right.”

I stood up and went over to the window. She was right. I knew that. It would be madness to go out.

I looked down into the street and watched the people move in their enviably aimless directions.

“I shan’t be long,” Sheila said. “But I’m going to the launderette so if I’m held up a bit, don’t worry.”

“I won’t,” I said. “You could bring me some paperbacks if you’ve time.”

“Anything in particular?”

“James Hadley Chase, something like that.”

“I’ll find something.”

Sheila took Timmy’s hand and manoeuvred the fold-up pushchair and the laundry bag out of the door.

“Say, ‘Bye-Bye, Daddy,’ Timmy,” Sheila said.

Timmy beamed up at me.

“Bye-Bye, Daddy,” he said.

He began waving his arm

“Bye-Bye, Timmy,” I said. “See you later.”

“Seelater,” he said.

Sheila ushered Timmy out on to the landing.

“And some lemonade,” I said. “Get us some lemonade.”

“You and your bleeding lemonade,” Sheila said, closing the door behind her.

I listened to the pushchair being bumped downstairs. Then I walked over to the window and waited to see Sheila and Timmy emerge on to the pavement below. I watched Sheila unfold the pushchair and negotiate Timmy into it. Then she balanced the laundry bag on the back of the pushchair and started walking towards the zebra crossing twenty yards down the road. I watched as she waited for the traffic to thin out, looking right and left, just another mother with her kid on her way to the launderette. Then she moved forward on to the crossing. A minute later and I couldn’t see her any more.

I walked away from the window and into the bedroom and took my overcoat out of the wardrobe. I stood in front of the mirror on the wardrobe door and put the coat on. It was the first time I’d worn it in three years. The coat felt strange and heavy. I went over to the chest of drawers and took out a dark blue scarf and wound it round my neck. Then I took my black leather gloves from the same drawer and slipped them on. I turned and looked in the mirror again. I felt like a tailor’s dummy, unreal, with the bleached hair and the waxy complexion and the stiff overcoat and the shiny gloves.

I bent my arms and flexed my shoulders and tried to shrug some life into my reflection but it didn’t seem to make any difference. The only answer was to turn away from the mirror and ignore the reflection.

I walked into the lounge and opened the door into the passage but before I closed it I checked that I’d got the spare key. Then I closed the door behind me. The Yale lock clicked shut.

I walked the few feet to the top of the stairs and looked down. Daylight from the street doorway flooded the grubby hallway below and illuminated the shiny green paintwork. I lowered a foot on to the top step. A part of my mind kept telling me how crazy I was but the light at the bottom of the stairs drew me downwards. Halfway down I became aware of the draught from the street. The traffic noises got louder and then I could hear the sound of voices in the street. And then I was at the bottom of the stairs, looking straight ahead of me into the light.

People and traffic hurried past the doorway. I moved forward. A woman glanced in as she went by, glanced away again before she was even out of sight. Now the dusty outside air was on my face, and I was standing in the doorway itself. There was nothing else between me and outside. I stepped out on to the pavement. I felt much lighter, almost as if I needed some kind of anchor. I looked into the faces of the passing crowd. Nobody was taking any notice of me. I hesitated for a moment, then I turned left in the opposite direction to the one Sheila had taken and began to walk. The pavement felt hard beneath my feet. I imagined that my footsteps were louder than everybody elses. I imagined that my walk was different, and my clothes. But nobody took any notice.

I got off the main road as soon as I could and weaved my way through back streets of warehouses and scrapyards and run-down offices and small shops. There was hardly anyone about. As I walked I’d sometimes look up beyond the skylines of the buildings, just to watch the clouds drift across the sky.

I walked for over twenty minutes. Turning into a new street I saw that at the end of it there was another main road. I stopped and looked around. Behind me there was a street narrower than the others. Halfway down this street was a pub. I looked at my watch. It was quarter past eleven. The idea of having a drink in a pub appealed to me. After all, it’d been over two years. And I was in an area where no one knew me. If the landlord had an arrangement with the law he’d only be on to the local villains. Again the warning voices filled my head but I began to move towards the pub. I’d just have one, I told myself. Just one drink, at a bar.

I pushed open the door.

There were no customers in the pub. Once it had been split into two or three bars, but the brewery had done it up and now the pub was all one bar, circular, with a pink laminated plastic top and plastic wrought iron work making pointless divisions.

A woman was standing behind the bar. The till had No Sale rung up on it and she was looking thoughtfully into the cash drawer. On the counter a freshly lit cigarette was burning away on the edge of an ashtray. The woman didn’t turn her head until I reached the bar. Then she turned abruptly, released from her thoughts by my presence.

“Yes, dear,” she said. “What would you like?”

I cleared my throat.

“I’d like a lemonade shandy,” I said.

“Half or a pint, dear?”

“A pint, please. I’ll have a pint.”

“Pint of lemonade shandy,” she said, already holding the pint mug underneath the beer-tap.

The woman was getting on for fifty, but she’d taken care of herself. Her platinum hair and Ruth Roman lips were immaculate.

“There we are, dear. Seventeen p.”

I took a handful of silver out of my pocket and gave her two two-bob bits.

“Ta, dear.”

She rang up the till and came back to the bar.

“Three p change, dear.”

“Thanks.”

The woman turned back to the till and began writing something on a pad.

I took a drink and sat down on one of the bar stools. There was a folded copy of the Express on the bar. I picked it up and opened it out and pretended to read it. But instead of reading I just sat there savouring the atmosphere of the pub.

A few minutes later the woman finished what she was doing at the till and came and leant on the bar near where I was sitting. I turned a couple of pages of the paper.

“Nothing worth reading in there,” she said.

I looked at her.

“I say there’s nothing in the paper today.”

I shook my head.

“Never is these days. Only gloom and despondency.”

“That’s right,” I said.

The conversation lapsed. I carried on pretending to read the paper. But inside I felt human again. I’d talked to another human being and that was what I’d needed: outside contact, to prove I was real.

I drained my drink and left the pub.

I got back five minutes before Sheila. I was sitting in the chair reading when she and Timmy came through the door. Timmy ran towards me and threw his arms round me.

“Timmy back, Daddy. Timmy back.”

I kissed him and picked him up and whirled him round at arms’ length above my head.

“So I see,” I said. “And has Timmy been a good little boy for his ma?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“He’s been a little sod,” Sheila said, kicking off her shoes. “Kept trying to open the dryer door.”

“Have you been trying to open the dryer door, then?”

“Come on, it’s time for your sleep,” Sheila said, taking Timmy from me. “It’s a wonder you’re not worn out.”

Sheila put Timmy to bed and came back into the lounge and flopped down in an armchair.

“Mind you,” she said, “I’m almost dead on my feet, trying to get round in no seconds flat.”

“Fancy a cup of tea?” I said.

“You must be joking.”

“I’ll put the kettle on,” I said. “Or . . .”

“Or what?”

I knelt down on the floor by Sheila’s chair.

“Or shall I make it after?”

“After what?” Then she cottoned. “Here, now hang about . . .”

“Timmy’s in bed, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, I know, but . . .”

“But what?”

“It’s the middle of the day.”

“Since when did that worry us?”

I pulled her down on to the floor.

“I still got me coat on,” Sheila said.

“Quiet,” I said. “It won’t get in the way.”

A few days after I’d gone out Ronnie phoned to say he was coming over. He said he’d got a proposition.

After I’d put the phone down Sheila said:

“What did Ronnie want?”

“He’s coming over. Said he’s got a proposition for me.”

“And what sort of proposition would that be?”

“I don’t know till he gets here, do I?”

“Well if it’s a job . . .”

“It won’t be a job. Ronnie knows I wouldn’t go on a job. So he won’t offer one, will he?”

“I don’t know. But if . . .”

“Sheil, leave off, will you? Just wait till he gets here, eh?”

Ronnie arrived half an hour later. After we’d exchanged the usuals, Ronnie said:

“It’s like this: there’s this little firm I’ve got an interest in, not an active one, you understand. But an interest. Now they’re doing not too badly at the moment, and things are going to get even better over the next two or three months. They’ve got several things lined up . . .”

Sheila cut in on him.

“Ronnie, I thought Billy told you all that was out.”

Ronnie kept on looking at me.

“Leave it out, Sheila, will you? Ronnie’s trying to do me a favour. He doesn’t have to come here.”

“He’ll do you the kind of favour that’ll get you straight back into the nick.”

“Sheila, I’m telling you . . .”

“It’s all right, Billy,” Ronnie said, showing all over his face that it wasn’t all right. “I don’t mind.” He looked at Sheila. “Sheila, I’m not asking Billy out on a job. Honest. I wouldn’t. I know how he feels.”

“Then what are you asking?”

“Why don’t you shut your fucking trap and listen,” I said, standing up.

“You going to belt me, Billy?” she said.

I managed to stop myself. But only just.

“Are you?”

I sat down again.

“You can piss off, the pair of you,” Sheila said and with that she slammed off into the kitchen.

Ronnie was looking at me.

“I’m sorry about that, Ronnie,” I said. “But you know how it is. She’s just scared . . .”

“Sure she is.”

“I mean, she feels the same as me about what you’ve done. Straight up.”

“I’m with you, Billy. It’s all right, I’m telling you.”

“Anyway. Carry on. She’ll be taking it out on the kitchen for a while.”

Ronnie lit a cigarette.

“Well, it’s like this. They’re pretty well tooled up. A shooter for every occasion. But of course they’ve all got forms and if they’re done in possession, well, I don’t have to tell you, do I?”

“Go on.”

“So they’re looking for a minder who’s not likely to get turned over himself. And it occurred to me that you’d be the very man. Because you’re not going to get turned over, are you? Not unless you’re very unlucky. And I’d make sure it was worth your while, because, as I said, I’ve got an interest in the firm and I know the firm can afford it. So what do you say?”

I took a sip of my drink. It sounded good all right. It didn’t matter whether I was in possession or not if I was turned over again. No difference at all.

“Who’d know?” I said.

“Only me,” Ronnie said. “I’d be middleman. The stuff would have to be brought here by a couple of the boys but you and Sheila could stay in the bedroom when they came. You could lend me the key and we’d let ourselves in, dump the stuff and leave. After that it would only be a matter of me coming here and collecting what was actually needed. What do you say?”

“It sounds good, Ronnie,” I said. “Thanks for putting me in it.”

“So you’re on, then?”

I nodded and stood up.

“I’d just like to tell Sheila before you go. So you’ll see that it was just worry that made her act that way.”

“Look, Billy, you don’t . . .”

“You stay there. I won’t be a minute.”

I went into the kitchen. Sheila had got the ironing board out. She didn’t look up from what she was doing.

I leant against the kitchen door.

“Ronnie wants to put me in a bit of minding.”

She stopped ironing for about ten seconds, then carried on again.

“So he didn’t come here to pull me on a job,” I said.

She didn’t answer.

“He came here to help me. To help us. It’ll be good money and Ronnie wanted to put it our way.”

She still didn’t answer.

I walked over to her and put my arm round her shoulders.

“Look, love,” I said, “I know you were only thinking about us. I know that. But Ronnie’s done a lot for us and it looks as if you don’t appreciate it. And that makes me look bad. So why don’t you make us all a cup of coffee and bring it through and let Ronnie know you’re pleased the way he’s looked out for us.”

Sheila put the iron down and leant against me.

“I was just so frightened that you’d want to go if he had a job lined up,” she said. “I mean, what with being cooped up the way you are. I know you. I just thought you’d go.”

I turned her round so that I was looking into her face.

“Listen, love,” I said. “All I care about is us. Me, you and Timmy. Our future. If we can sit this one out and we have the breaks then we’ll be all right. Do you think I’m going to put chances on that not happening?”

She shook her head.

“Well, then,” I said. “So you make us that cup of coffee and bring it through in a minute when I’ve arranged things with Ronnie. All right?”

I heard the key turn in the lock. Sheila and Timmy were sitting on the bed behind me. Timmy was asleep in Sheila’s arms.

I bent down and looked through the keyhole. Ronnie came in first, pushing the door wide open. Then he stood back and two young tearaways carried a packing case into the room.

“Anywhere,” Ronnie said. “Just dump it anywhere.”

The tearaways placed the packing case in the centre of the living room floor. Then they had a good look at their surroundings.

“Nice gaff,” one of them said.

“Yes, it is,” Ronnie said. “And now you’ve been here forget how nice it is. And the nice neighbourhood.”

Ronnie ushered them out. Before he went he placed the key on the dining table. Then he closed the door behind him.

I opened the bedroom door and went over to the packing case. The top was open and there were some objects wrapped in newspaper packed in the straw. I unwrapped one of the objects. A cut spirit glass. I smiled. Ronnie must have noticed we weren’t very well off for glasses. I took all the glasses out of the packing case. There were a dozen altogether.

Sheila came into the lounge. She’d laid Timmy down on our bed.

“Ronnie’s brought us a present,” I said.

Sheila looked at the unwrapped glass but she didn’t say anything.

I rummaged under the straw until my fingers touched something very cold. Much colder than the glass. My fingers closed round the object and I lifted. I pulled out a sawn-off shotgun. It was a beauty. Almost brand new. Sheila watched me, her arms folded, while I broke the gun and snapped it shut again and held it the way it was meant to be held.

The snap of the shotgun must have woken Timmy up. He came through the door, running towards me.

“Dat, Daddy?” he said. “Dat, Daddy?”

I looked at Sheila. She turned and went into the kitchen.

“This?” I said. “Nothing. Nothing for little boys.”

Sheila and Timmy were out. Rain streamed down the windows, muffling the noises from the street outside. The air in the flat felt hot and sticky. I tried to read but I couldn’t concentrate. I got up and went into the bathroom and turned the bath taps on. While I was waiting for the bath to fill I looked at my face in the cabinet mirror. My complexion was the colour of old newspapers.

I went into the bedroom to get a bath towel from the airing cupboard. But instead of doing that I went over to the wardrobe and got my hat and coat and put them on. Then I went back into the bathroom and turned off the taps.

This time there were people in the pub. Quite a crowd, considering where the pub was situated. And this time the woman wasn’t alone behind the bar. Two young barmen, Kilburn Irish, were scurrying up and down doing the drinks while the woman occasionally dished out shepherd’s pie. I ordered a shandy and went and sat down at a table by the window. The pub felt stale. The smell of cigarettes and damp macintoshes filled what air there was. None of the customers could be called locals. Just lunch-time trade from the offices. And there were too many of them for my liking. I wasn’t used to so many people squeezed together in one spot. They all seemed to be pressing in on me. I’d wanted company, a change of scene, but I hadn’t expected it to be like this, and this was too much to take.

I finished my drink and got up and left the pub. The street was almost deserted. I pulled my hat down against the driving rain and began to walk back towards the flat. I turned into the street that led back to the High Street. Halfway down I was aware of a car turning in off the main road, coming towards me.

By the time I realised that it was a police car there was nothing I could do about it.

I couldn’t turn and run. There was nowhere I could shelter myself before the car got to me. I could do nothing.

Except keep walking.

I froze all thoughts about my own stupidity that had come flooding into my mind. Those could wait. I tried to blank my mind of any thoughts at all, as if by doing that it would be easier for me and the police to pass each other without me being recognised. Make myself an ostrich and everything would be all right.

The car was nearly up to me now. The street was narrow, a one-way, and the car was sitting on the crown of the road. Four feet, five feet away from me at the most as it passed.

Somehow my legs kept working and I kept going forward. The car kept moving at the same speed. No slowing down prompted by recognition. I sensed rather than saw that there were three rozzers in the car. Two uniforms in the front, plainclothes in the back. All eyes would be on me, however briefly: there was nothing else in the street for them to look at. I couldn’t turn my face away. That would really do it. I just kept walking into the rain as the car swished past me.

The head of the plainclothes man turned in my direction.

Then the car was past me.

It didn’t stop. When I reached the end of the street I turned right and I ran.

I lay in the bath, staring up at the ceiling. Sweat poured off my head: it hadn’t stopped since I’d seen the police car. I felt weak, both physically and mentally. I’d nearly blown everything. Just for the sake of going to that fucking pub.

I heard the front door open and the sounds of Sheila and Timmy coining in the lounge. Then Sheila’s footsteps as she hurried from room to room, looking for me. I called out to her:

“I’m in here.”

The bathroom door banged against the side of the bath. Sheila burst in and stood by the bath, looking down at me to make sure there wasn’t just bathwater in the bath.

Then she went limp and leant against the edge of the door.

“Jesus, Billy,” she said. “Jesus.”

“Thought they’d been and gone with me, did you?” I said.

“Don’t joke,” she said. “I really did.”

There was a silence. I said:

“Why don’t you go and make a cup of tea?”

Sheila looked at the glass of brandy at the end of the bath.

“What, you as well?”

“Makes me sweat,” I said. “So does tea. I’ve got to keep myself in trim somehow.”

I looked at my watch. The luminous face told me it was quarter to five. The faint blue of dawn was beginning to lighten the oblong shape of the bedroom window. I hadn’t slept all night. My mind had been too full of the turning head in the police car. I’d seen that head turn a thousand times since I’d got into bed at eleven thirty. The minute Sheila had switched off the light, the face had been there. But it was a face without features, as impressionistic as when I’d actually seen it. And however hard I tried I couldn’t imagine what I hadn’t seen: the expression. Had it been curious, blank, full of recognition, what?

I couldn’t have been recognised. The car would have stopped, wouldn’t it? But if the recognition had been late in coming, and by the time it had dawned on them I’d made it round the corner, then that would be different. They’d have thrown in everything they’d got. They’d check out the occupants of every house, flat and room in the area. And sooner or later they’d check who was living over that tobacconist in the High Street, and for how long, and then in no time at all they’d have it sorted. The removal van would be out and I’d be answering the door sometime shortly before eight in the morning.

I got out of bed, pulled on my dressing gown and went into the lounge. I turned on the gas fire and lit it and lit up a cigarette at the same time. I sat for a while crouched over the fire watching the whistling gas-jets.

When I’d finished the cigarette I got up and went into the bathroom and opened the door to the airing cupboard. I carefully took a pile of washing from one of the shelves and put the washing down on the bathroom floor. Then I slid forward the cardboard box that had been hidden behind the washing and opened the lid. I took out one of the snub-nosed revolvers and a box of ammunition and loaded the chamber. Then I put everything back the way it had been before. After I’d done that I unscrewed the top of the lavatory cistern and took some bandage tape from the bathroom cabinet and taped the gun to the underside of the cistern lid. After I’d done all that I went into Timmy’s bedroom and sat by his cot until he woke up.

Sheila came into the kitchen at a quarter to eight. I’d already given Timmy his cornflakes and I was mashing up his boiled egg for him as Sheila came through the door. I could tell from her face that she knew I was worried but I also knew that she wouldn’t say anything until we were well into a safer part of the day. Sheila didn’t believe in tempting fate.

“One thing about old Tim,” I said as Sheila poured herself a pot of tea, “he doesn’t half like his eggs. Don’t you, me old son?”

Timmy grinned and a globule of yellow ran down his chin.

“Funny,” I said, “because when I was a kid I couldn’t stand them. Probably something to do with not having them during the war: by the time you could get them again I’d probably got set in my likes and dislikes. You know how kids are.”

I shot a glance at the clock as Sheila drank some tea. Ten to eight.

“Timmy’s always liked his eggs,” Sheila said.

Timmy dropped his spoon and I picked it up for him.

“What are you going to have?” Sheila said.

“Nothing,” I said. “I had some toast.”

“Shall I do you some bacon?”

“No thanks,” I said. “I’ll have another cup of tea, though.”

“It’s stewed. I’ll make some more.”

Sheila filled the kettle and lit the gas and emptied the tea-pot. Timmy finished his egg and squirmed off his chair. He ran out of the kitchen and into the lounge, got one of his comics and ran back into the kitchen again.

“Daddy read,” he said. “Daddy read.”

I hoisted him up on to my knee and spread the comic out on the table in front of us.

The clock said five to eight.

Instead of reading to Timmy I pointed to things in the comic and asked him what they were. Sheila made the tea and put my cup down on the edge of Timmy’s comic. A moment later Timmy violently turned over one of the pages and upset the cup of tea. I jolted the chair back but some of the tea went on Timmy’s legs and he began to scream.

“You stupid bloody bitch,” I shouted. “Have you no fucking sense?”

Sheila took Timmy from me and sat him on the edge of the table and sponged the tea from his legs with the dishcloth.

“It’s all right, darling, never mind, you were frightened, weren’t you? Wasn’t very hot, was it? You were just frightened, that’s all.”

“Bloody stupid thing to do,” I said.

“If you’re so bloody clever why didn’t you see it coming and do something about it?”

“I’d no time, had I?”

“No, course not.”

“Now look, don’t go trying to blame it on to me.”

“There now, lovey, that’s better. Feeling better now? There’s a brave little soldier. Let’s give you a biscuit for being so brave. All right? There we are.”

Timmy sniffed a bit and munched on the biscuit. I poured myself another cup of tea and sat down again. Sheila turned to the sink and began to slam dishes about in the bowl.

I looked at the clock again. It was five past eight.

I got up and carried my tea into the lounge and pulled the door to behind me and walked over to the window. I parted the curtains slightly and looked down into the street.

The Avengers blurred across the TV screen, out of focus in my mind. The sound seemed to come from a long way away. Sheila was sitting opposite me, knitting a cardigan for Timmy. I was thinking of the night ahead. Would I be able to sleep now that a day and a half had gone by or would it be worse now that the odds had shortened? I wanted to talk to Sheila about what had happened, but of course I couldn’t, not without admitting what I’d done.

As if she’d been reading my mind, Sheila said:

“What made you think it was going to happen this morning?”

I looked across at her. She still had her head bent over her knitting.

“Nothing, really,” I said. “Just one of those feelings. You know the sort.”

“Yes,” she said. “But I just wondered . . . maybe you’d heard from Ronnie. Maybe he’d said something to worry you.”

“If I’d heard from Ronnie I’d have told you.”

“You might not. Not if you didn’t want me to worry.” She let her knitting fall on her lap. “I’d rather know if there was anything, Billy.”

“There isn’t, love. Honest. I just had one of those feelings. I couldn’t sleep last night. It sometimes happens.”

Sheila went back to her knitting. The Avengers finished and the commercials came on. In a minute it would be News at Ten so I got up to get myself a beer while the commercials were on.

The cool of the kitchen cleared my head a little. I opened the fridge door and took a can of Bass out and poured it into a glass. I drank some of the beer and topped the glass up.

The door bell rang.

I just stood there. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think, nothing. I was vaguely aware of Sheila’s panicked movements in the lounge. Then the kitchen door opened. I turned round and I was looking at Sheila’s staring eyes. We stayed like that until the door bell rang again. Then I rushed out of the kitchen and into the bathroom and began to unscrew the cistern lid. Sheila followed me.

“Christ, Billy, who is it? Who is it, Billy?”

“I don’t know.”

I lifted the lid and ripped the shooter off it.

“Billy, what are you doing? What . . . ?”

“Don’t be bloody silly.”

I put the shooter in my pocket.

“Billy, don’t . . .”

I took hold of her by the shoulders.

“Listen, we don’t know who it is. So we go back into the lounge. Whoever it is knows we’re in because of the telly. So we answer the door. If it’s the Filth we’re snookered. There’s no way we can get out now, not without the shooter. So we answer the door and if it’s the law I cop for the first one and put the shooter on him. That’s the only chance I’ve got.”

“But you said you’d never . . .”

“I know what I said. This is now.”

The door bell rang again.

“In any case,” I said, “it could be anybody.”

Sheila looked at me. I looked away and walked past her. She followed me into the lounge.

“Just open the door,” I said, pressing myself against the wall.

Sheila didn’t move. I saw that she was crying.

“Sheila . . .”

There was nothing I could say to help. It wasn’t a time for saying things. This could be the last time ever we would be together; but to act as if it was would make things even worse.

Sheila dried her eyes and slid back the bolts and turned the lock. I braced myself.

There was no great rush into the room. Sheila just opened the door and looked at whoever was standing there.

A voice said: “Can I come in, Mrs. Cracken?”

I knew the voice but for a moment I couldn’t place it. Then it fell into place with the features of the face in the police car. Pettit. Detective Sergeant Pettit. And at that moment I knew I wasn’t going to be done. Not because I knew Pettit particularly well, but because of the whole atmosphere of the scene.

“Who are you?” Sheila said.

“A mate of Billy’s.” Pettit said. “Or at least I will be.”

Sheila wanted to look at me to see what she should do, but she daren’t, still thinking that I wanted to stay hidden against the wall. Then Pettit walked into the room and Sheila stood back and I said: “Come in and make yourself at home.”

Pettit turned his head briefly in my direction but he didn’t stop moving.

“What are you going to do? Chop your way through a dozen uniforms?”

Pettit drifted round the room, like a bored tourist in a museum.

“There would have been that many, would there?” I said.

“For Billy Cracken?” he said, pursing his lips. “All of that, I would have thought.”

“But there aren’t any, are there?”

“No,” said Pettit. “That’s right, Billy. There aren’t.”

Pettit stopped moving and looked at me properly for the first time.

“Close the door, Sheila,” I said.

“Mind if I sit down?” Pettit said.

I gave a tired smile. Pettit sat down. Sheila stayed where she was, by the door. Pettit looked at her, then at me.

“Mr. Pettit wants to talk to me alone, Sheila,” I said.

“Billy . . .”

“Don’t worry, love. It’s all right. Everything’ll be all right. Just go into the kitchen.”

Sheila looked at me for a while. Then she turned away and went into the kitchen.

I sat down opposite Pettit.

“I didn’t know you were bent,” I said.

Pettit smiled.

“You’re sure about that, are you?”

“Do me a favour,” I said.

There was a silence. Pettit said:

“I almost did for you yesterday.”

“I wonder what made you change your mind?” I said.

Pettit carried on as if he hadn’t heard.

“In the car, when I saw you, I nearly called out your name, I was so surprised. In fact the driver went so far as to ask if I’d seen a face and did he want me to stop? I just said I thought I had, I’d been mistaken.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Thought you’d been lucky, did you?” Pettit said.

“I had, hadn’t I?” I said, looking him straight in the eye.

He smiled again.

“I could really do myself a lot of good by taking you in,” he said.

“So you could,” I said.

He looked at me for a long while, as though he was deciding what he was going to do.

“Know why I’m not going to?” he said at length.

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes, but the reason.”

I shrugged.

“All I want to know is what you think it’s going to cost me. That’s all I want to know.”

“The reason I’m not going to take you in,” Pettit said, “and I want you to know this, because, in a way, you ought to know, the reason I’m not turning you over is because I’m sick of it all.”

I watched and waited.

“Just sick of it all. Sick at the thought of sixteen straight years doing my job, and getting fuck all out of it while those others . . .”

“Don’t give me that crap,” I said. “Or else I’ll be sick. And I haven’t paid for the carpet.”

Eventually Pettit smiled.

“All right, Billy,” he said. “I heard you were a direct sort of a person. I’ll tell you what it’s worth to me. It’s worth a grand. In fact it’s worth a lot more, but I’m realistic. And I shan’t keep coming back for more. In the circumstances I think that’s very reasonable of me.”

I gave the matter some thought.

“As I see it,” I said, “there are three things I could do. First, I could tell you to piss off. If I told you to piss off, you could either piss off or try and take me in single-handed. And you’re not going to do that. Or I could take you apart and throw you down the stairs and before you came to I’d be somewhere other than sitting in front of this fire. Or I could tell you I haven’t got that kind of money and there wouldn’t be any alternative for you but to piss off or, as I said, try and take me in. Now, where, among the alternatives, is a course of action which gives you an advantage over me?”

“Billy,” said Pettit, “in a way, you’re underestimating yourself. You don’t think I’d come to Billy Cracken wide open, do you? If I’m not out of here and back with my driver in . . .” He looked at his watch. “. . . in fifteen minutes from now, then my driver’ll radio through to send them up here mob-handed.”

I smiled.

“And for why?” I said. “Why should they? That’d mean you’d have had to let on, and you daren’t do that.”

It was his turn to smile.

“Don’t be naive, Billy. All I’ve let on to my driver is I might be on to something big. That’s all. Given him the impression I’m glory-seeking. What could be more natural than wanting to case Billy Cracken’s place on my own. I mean, all I was doing was making sure before I called the hounds in. Just unlucky, being clobbered. But it happens to us all.”

After a while I said: “I don’t believe you. You’re on your own in this one.”

Pettit shrugged.

“Believe what you like,” he said. “But if you’re wrong then there’s no way other than that you go back inside. And you’ll have the next twenty-five years to work out how much a grand is actually worth.”

I rubbed my temple with my little finger.

“What’s to stop you coming back at me once I’d paid you off?” I said. “After all, that’s been known before as well.”

“True,” he said. “But you won’t be here an hour after I’d gone. So I’d have to start looking all over again.”

“Not if you went back to your driver and said Billy Cracken’s up there, he’s moving, let’s get the lads down to give him a hand.”

Pettit laughed.

“Billy,” he said, “you should learn to trust people.”

There was a silence. I thought about things.

“I could only manage eight,” I said.

Pettit looked at me, lips pursed again.

“Is it here?”

“Yes.”

Pettit leant back in his chair.

“All right,” he said.

I stood up.

“I’ll go and get it,” I said.

I walked towards the kitchen door. As I passed the chair Pettit was sitting in, I said:

“Oh, by the way . . .”

Pettit leant forward in his chair so that he could turn and look at me. As he was twisting round in his seat I took the shooter from my pocket and hit him just to the right of his ear, at the base of his skull.

He rolled off the chair without making a sound.

I ran to the kitchen door but before I could get to it Sheila had burst into the room.

“Billy, what’s happened? What have you done?”

She tried to get past me to examine Pettit but I grabbed hold of her.

“Listen,” I said. “He’s all right . . .”

“But . . .”

“Listen. We’ve got to get out. He said he wasn’t on his own. I think he was lying but we can’t chance it. We’ve got to get out anyway now. But don’t panic. If you panic we’re sunk. Are you listening to me?”

She nodded.

“Start packing. Two suitcases. Anything you can’t get in, leave. They’ll do the flat for prints so that doesn’t matter. While you’re doing that I’ll call Ronnie. But don’t wake Timmy yet. Do the packing first.”

Sheila ran into the bedroom. I picked up the phone and dialled Ronnie’s number.

Ronnie’s wife answered the phone.

“Doreen?”

“Speaking.”

“It’s Billy.”

“Billy. I was . . .”

“Where’s Ronnie at tonight?”

“Tonight? He’s at the Stable. But . . .”

“Doreen love, I can’t talk. I’ll be seeing you.”

I killed the line and dialled again. Eventually a woman’s voice said:

“Stable Club.”

“Ronnie, please.”

“Who’s calling?”

“A friend of Walter’s.”

The woman went off the line and there was some clicking at the other end of the line. Then Ronnie came on.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Billy. Can I talk?”

“Hang on.”

Silence. Then Ronnie came back on.

“What’s up?”

“I’ve had a visit. Everything’s all right but I’ve got to move on. I need somewhere for us tonight. And I need fetching from here.”

“Jesus.”

“Ronnie?”

“Yeah, yeah. Listen. Tobin’s got a man here tonight. And he’s covering the flat pretty regular. I’ve got to be careful.”

“I need moving fast, Ronnie. I might only have ten minutes.”

“I couldn’t be there inside of ten minutes anyway. Listen, Billy, can you meet me somewhere?”

“Where, for Christ’s sake?”

“I don’t know. Can’t you walk somewhere, and wait?”

“Hang on.” I called through to Sheila. “Sheila, is that park open at night?”

“What?”

“The park where you take Timmy. Is it open?”

“I don’t know.”

I cursed and said to Ronnie:

“Look, there’s this park near us, five minutes’ walk away, on the road we’re on. We’ll meet you there. At the gate.”

“I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

I put the phone down and ran into the bathroom and pulled the cardboard box from the airing cupboard and carried it into the bedroom. Then I got Timmy’s carrycot and set it on its wheel base and lifted the carry-cot mattress and stacked the unassembled guns in the bottom of the cot. Then I got a blanket and folded it up and wadded it over the guns and put the mattress on top.

Sheila finished packing the suitcases and opened the wardrobe and took out my jacket and my coat and handed them to me. While I was putting them on she went into Timmy’s room and I heard her disturb him. I followed her in case I could help. Sheila was lifting Timmy out of the cot, bedclothes and all. She hurried back into our bedroom again, and again uselessly, I followed her. Sheila made a cocoon of Timmy’s bedclothes and eased him down into the cot. He moaned a bit, but he didn’t open his eyes. Then Sheila tucked her mac over the top of the bundle and adjusted the hood of the cot. I went back into Timmy’s bedroom and stuffed his Teddy and his Matchbox combine harvester into my coat pocket.

“Billy!”

I hurried back into the bedroom and picked up the suitcases. Sheila was already by the open door. She pushed the carry-cot out on to the landing. I followed her with the suitcases. I put the cases down and closed the door behind me and together Sheila and I manhandled the carry-cot to the bottom of the stairs. Then I ran back up the stairs to get the cases.

The park gates were locked. We couldn’t stay on the main road so we kept going until we came to a left turning which ran alongside the park. Halfway down this turning there was a smaller park gate.

“You stay here,” I said to Sheila. “I’ll walk back to the corner and wait for Ronnie.”

“Billy, they’ll see you.”

“What else can I do?”

“You stay here, I’ll go.”

“Supposing the Filth think you’re a tart? The park and all.”

“It’s still safer.”

Sheila walked back to the corner. I looked at my watch. It had been nearly twenty minutes since I’d phoned Ronnie.

Timmy stirred in his cot. I leant over him and peered into his face. His eyes were still closed. I tucked the blankets more snugly round his head. Then I straightened up again and looked back towards the comer. Sheila wasn’t standing there any more. Then a black Dormobile rounded the corner. Christ, no. I turned and looked at the carrycot. I couldn’t run. I could do nothing. The van slowed down. I sagged at the knees. The van stopped. Sheila got out one side and Ronnie got out the other.

Tears of relief sprang to my eyes.

“Christ, I thought it was the Filth,” I said.

Ronnie was round the back opening the van doors.

“No chance,” Ronnie said. “In ten minutes’ time, maybe.”

Sheila and I loaded the carry-cot in the back and Sheila got in after it. I followed her and Ronnie handed me the suitcases. Sheila and I sat down on the floor and leant against the bench seats. Ronnie slammed the doors and ran round to the front and got in the driver’s seat and we took off.

“Thanks again,” I said to Ronnie.

“What happened?” he said.

I told him.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Pettit. That bastard would have sold you right back inside again. He’s a real twisted little bastard. You can’t trust him no way.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Anyway, the point is, what about accommodation? My place is right out. Too dicey for all of us.”

“I know. And we daren’t risk the night in a flea-trap.”

“There is one answer,” Ronnie said.

“What’s that?”

“This,” Ronnie said.

“What?”

“The Dormobile. I was thinking when I came up: I garage this very private, know what I mean? Secluded, in Kentish Town. Nobody goes there except me. Once the garage doors were locked behind you you could kip down in this, no trouble. I could come round tomorrow and we could sort something out from there. What do you reckon?”

Ronnie and I stood by the garage door.

“I’ll take a cab over to the Doll’s House,” he said. “Then if anybody asks they can’t prove nothing. I was just travelling between one club and another. Anyway it won’t come to that.”

“Thanks again, Ronnie.”

“Forget it,” he said. “I’ll be round as soon as I can with some nosh and tea and stuff.”

“Look out for yourself,” I said.

“Don’t worry about me.”

Ronnie stepped through the inset door and was gone. I bolted the door behind him and went back to the Dormobile.

Sheila had made pillows out of a couple of my sweaters and laid out two blankets apiece: she’d been bright enough to pack one entire suitcase with bedding. At least we weren’t going to freeze to death.

We both lay down on our respective bench seats. In the darkness I stretched my arm across the aisle and found Sheila’s hand and squeezed it in my own hand. Neither of us said anything. I could hear Timmy’s breathing coming from the carry-cot in the aisle between us.

He’d never woken up once.

Ronnie didn’t show the next day.

I started getting worried about midday. Timmy was crying for his dinner. Sheila had stuffed some chocolate in her pocket the night before and Timmy had thought this was great, chocolate for breakfast, but by one o’clock he was beginning to get upset with hunger. As to the rest of it, he’d thought it was the best thing yet, waking up in the Dormobile.

“Billy,” Sheila said. “We’ve got to do something if Ronnie doesn’t come soon. I’ve got to see to Timmy.”

“He said he’d get here early,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind if he wasn’t so bleeding reliable.”

“Supposing he . . .”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

I wandered round the garage and tried to think of reasons why Ronnie hadn’t shown up other than the one that was charging about in the front of my brain. But no reasons I came up with could supplant my real convictions.

I sat down on an oil drum and looked round the garage.

In the van Sheila was trying to get Timmy to go down in his carry-cot. I got up off the drum and walked over to the van and got in the driver’s seat and twisted round so that I could see her.

“It’s no use, Billy,” she said. “He’s got to have something. I mean if Ronnie’s been . . . well, we just don’t know, do we? We don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“No,” I said.

“I’ll have to go and get something. We could be still waiting this time tomorrow.”

I thought for a while.

“All right,” I said. “I suppose you’ve got to. So as long as you’ve got to, you could call Ronnie’s flat, see if anything’s happened. Then at least we’d know what to do next.”

After the half hour I started to get the twinges. I started to wonder whether I should have let Sheila go. I mean, we could have sat it out. Ronnie might show up any time. Anything could have happened. Needn’t necessarily have been the law. He might just be playing it safe.

I looked down into the carry-cot. Timmy was asleep now. I’d soothed him down within ten minutes of Sheila leaving.

I shouldn’t have let her go. The last six months cooped in the flat had eroded into my sense of reality. I’d got like some of them get in the nick: unable to sort my thoughts and make the right decisions.

I shouldn’t have let her go.

An hour passed. All she’d had to do was to go to the nearest shops and then to a phone box. Where was she?

Timmy woke up. He began to cry immediately. I picked him up and tried to comfort him but he wasn’t having any. I looked at my watch. Another quarter of an hour had gone by.

Then the inset door opened. It was Sheila.

“Billy, we’ve got to get out,” she cried, running towards me.

Still carrying Timmy I scrambled out of the Dormobile and met her halfway.

“What’s happened?”

“Ronnie. They’ve fixed Ronnie.”

“Who fixed him? The law?”

“No, Walter. Walter’s boys.”

Walter.

“Fixed him? How?”

“Billy, we’ve got to move.”

“Tell me.”

“Listen, I phoned Ronnie’s flat. First couple of times there was no answer, right? Then Doreen came on. She was in a hell of a state. They came for Ronnie in the night and took him away. They found out he’d been helping you and they knew about Pettit and they wanted to know where Ronnie’d taken you. So they took him away. They brought him home half an hour ago. They did him something awful. Fingers, everything. Doreen’s . . .”

“Did he tell them?”

“He must have done. You know yourself.”

We looked at each other.

“Christ,” I said. “Ronnie. That cunt Walter. I . . .”

“Billy, we’ve got to move.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Right. You’re right. We’ll take the van. You drive.”

I put Timmy down in his cot and hurried over to the garage door and slid the bolts back on the main doors. Sheila was already backing up the Dormobile. I was about to swing back the doors but something stopped me. The sound of a car drawing up in the street outside.

I looked at Sheila. She was twisted round in her seat, wondering what was stopping me. A car door opened. Footsteps. Whoever it was stopped on the other side of the garage door. Listening to the Dormobile’s engine. I pressed myself against the door. Then the latch lifted on the inset door. The door swung open. Sheila screamed at whoever she could see. The barrel of a sawn-off shotgun appeared round the door.

“They’re here,” a voice called. “At least the bint is.”

Another car door opened.

I moved.

I stepped forward and took hold of the barrel of the shotgun and pulled with all my force. A figure fell through the inset and I lashed out with my foot before the geezer hit the floor, catching him low in the gut. He hit the floor face first and I put the other boot in the side of his head and grabbed the shotgun.

I looked through the inset.

Halfway between me and the car the other heavy stood frozen in the road. There were three more heavies in the car, a driver and two others about to get out. All staring at me and the wrong end of the gun.

“Right, cunt,” I said. “Don’t move a fucking eyeball.”

He didn’t.

I pulled back the garage door. The heavies in the car were still motionless.

“Can you get through, Sheil?” I shouted.

Sheila let the handbrake off and the van began to back out. I walked out of the garage and stood between the car and the van. I was close enough to the heavy to smell his aftershave.

Inside the car there was a movement. It was only a slight movement, but it was enough.

I fired one barrel into the windscreen. The other I fired into the nearside front tire. The heavy in front of me screamed and dropped to his knees, covering his head with his hands. I walloped the visible part of his head with the barrel of the shotgun and threw the gun to the ground. The heavy reached the ground first.

Behind me Sheila was grinding the Dormobile’s gears, almost hysterical with panic. I jumped in her side and pushed her over on to the passenger seat. Timmy was screaming in the back. Sheila was saying something about how I should never have used the shooter but all her words were running into one another, one senseless shriek. I swung the Dormobile round and jammed down on the accelerator and took off down the street. In the driving mirror I could see the car doors open and the heavies fall out and take off on foot in the opposite direction before the street filled up with sightseers.

I went up through Finsbury Park and Manor Park, making for the A11 and the forest. If the law was going to be in on this one the Dormobile would be suicide in London. The quicker we were out of it the better.

Sheila was calmer by the time we reached Epping, but not calm enough. I was still having to go over what had happened, to try and make her see that I’d had no choice in doing what I’d done.

“What could I do?” I said. “What could I bleeding well do? Just stand there and say, ‘Yeah, well, I know I took a dead liberty in leaving Wally behind, I’ll come along and take what’s coming?’ Sure. I mean, they might even have been after taking me to Tobin. That would have been great, wouldn’t it . . .”

“It was the gun, Billy,” she said. “You shouldn’t have used the gun.”

“Then what should I have used? Timmy’s pea-shooter?”

“There’ll be real law in on it now and everything. And when the papers find out you were involved the law’ll really pull its finger out.”

“Love, there was nothing else I could do. Tell me, what else could I do?”

“I don’t know. But . . .”

“Right. You don’t know.”

She fell silent for a while. Eventually she said:

“So now what do we do?”

“Spend tonight in the forest. Tomorrow we dump this and get back into London and get a new place.”

“Just like that?”

“Well, what else can we do?”

“We can’t risk going back without a place to go to, Billy.”

“So what do we do? Stay in the forest for ever?”

“I’ll have to phone Mum. She’ll have to fix something up.”

“And how long’s that going to take?”

“I don’t know. No longer than it’d take us to fix something up. And a damn sight safer.”

I didn’t answer. But she was right. Her mother could sort a place for us, then Sheila could go into town on her own and fix it up for us. There was nothing else we could do. But the forest was only safe for a couple of nights at the most. And staying in a hotel was out.

I saw a telephone kiosk a hundred yards ahead of us.

“You better phone her now, then,” I said. “Get her on it straight away.”

It was getting dark when we finally parked the Dormobile. We were as deep in the forest as we could get. Sheila unpacked what she’d bought at the shop earlier: bread, butter, cheese, corned beef, tinned ham, biscuits, milk, tinned beans and a tin opener. She opened one of the tins of beans and we had them cold, then she made bread and cheese. After that she gave Timmy some chocolate and a drink of milk and he went down without any bother. We both felt exhausted after the day we’d had. Too exhausted to think or to worry or to consider the future. It was enough just to lie down on the bench seats and close our eyes and black out everything with sleep.

At eight next morning I drove the Dormobile as close to the edge of the forest as I could without the van being visible from the road. Then I left Sheila and Timmy and the van and took some money from my money belt and left the forest and walked back into Epping. Sheila had kicked up about me going instead of her but I told her I had to take the chance: she might be even more suspicious—a bird buying a used car, cash. I stopped at a newsagents and bought the Express. The shooting incident was written up as a second lead on the front page. There was a photograph of the street and the car and the police had pulled in the two heavies I’d laid out but there was no mention of me. Which meant either that Walter had intended for his boys to finish me off, or that Tobin had been involved and it wouldn’t have looked good for him that Walter’s heavies had been bringing me in on his behalf. I skimmed the rest of the paper. There was also no mention of anything connected with Pettit. I hadn’t really expected there to be: that would have meant a mention of myself. Pettit must have decided that discretion was the better part of valour. But none of all this meant that I was clear. The whole of West End Central could know where I’d been yesterday and have kept it out of the news for their own reasons, surprise value being perhaps one of them.

I folded the paper and carried on walking until I came to the garage I’d sorted as we’d driven through the day before. There were about fifteen cars for sale parked out on the forecourt, set out in two neat rows. I walked along the front row until I came to a clapped out ’66 Mini marked up at a hundred and ninety-five pounds. It was the cheapest car on the lot and its anonymity was just what I needed. I tried the doors and looked inside and waited for someone to appear. A minute or two later one of the lads came out of the service kiosk and strolled over to me.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“Just looking at the Mini,” I said. “That its real mileage?”

“Course.”

“You must he joking. 1966?”

“Maybe you’d like to try her out? Then you’d know how well she’s been looked after.”

“Looked after? I look after my old lady better than that.”

I walked away from the Mini and looked at the next car, a Cresta marked up at three-five-five.

“Make me an offer, then,” he said.

“You really must be wanting it off the lot.”

“Just interested to see what you think.”

I turned and looked at the Mini and pretended to think about it.

“A hundred and thirty,” I said. “That’s what I think.”

He smiled and shook his head.

“And I think you’ve got a sense of humour.”

We went on like this for a couple more minutes until I told him I’d got cash. A hundred and fifty quid worth. Five minutes later I was driving the car off the lot.

I parked the car near the first phone box I saw and rang Sheila’s mother. She’d managed to fix up a flat in Beckenham. A basement. One room. Use of toilet and bathroom. Eight quid a week. She’d told the landlord we’d been up in Scotland and I’d changed my job fast and needed her to fix something for us while we travelled down. The landlord had swallowed and she’d paid a month in advance plus a bit over the top. We could pick up the keys from the landlord’s office any time during the day. After she’d told me all that I came in for the usual earful but in the light of her getting us fixed up I let her go on for more than usual. I finally got off the phone by pointing out that Sheila was waiting for me and the longer I was away the riskier it was for her.

I drove back to the Dormobile. The phone call had made me feel better. We’d got a place to go to again. Four walls.

“Can I speak to Ronnie, please?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Billy.”

There was a silence.

“You want something, do you?”

“No, I don’t want something, Doreen,” I said. “I just want a word with Ronnie.”

“Last time you had a word . . .”

“I know what happened last time,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You know what they did to him, don’t you?”

“I can imagine.”

“And you’re sorry?”

There was no way of replying to that.

“Is he there?” I said.

Doreen went off the line. I could hear voices in the background. Then the phone rattled at the other end and Ronnie said:

“Hello, me old son.”

“Ronnie,” I said. “I was just phoning to see how you were getting on.”

“Not too bad,” he said. “Can’t complain. I’ll be back in action in a fortnight or so.” There was a pause. “About what happened . . .”

“Don’t worry about it. I know what Walter’s boys are like.”

“If I hadn’t told them . . .”

“How’d they get on to you?”

“Somebody grassed.”

“Who? I mean nobody knew anything about me and you. Except the two boys that fetched me down.”

“It wasn’t either of them, Billy. You know that. No, somebody’s been watching me closer than I thought. They couldn’t know anything, but they could guess.”

“Yeah. Maybe Pettit filtered something to Tobin.”

“Maybe.”

“Look, Ronnie,” I said. “I wouldn’t have put you in it if I’d known Walter was going to turn it on.”

“You couldn’t know that, Billy, so stop worrying.”

“Yeah, I know, but . . .”

“Forget it. Water under the bridge. I’ll get my compensation when I find out who the grass is.”

“I’d like to be there.”

“Listen, Billy, about the shooters. There’s a job on day after tomorrow. I’d better have your new address so I’ll be able to pick them up.”

“When do you want to come?”

“I shan’t be able to come myself. I’ll have to send somebody.”

“Look, Ronnie,” I said. “I know you wouldn’t send anybody you couldn’t trust, but I’d rather you came yourself.”

“I can’t, can I, Billy? I’ll still be on my back. Otherwise I would, wouldn’t I?”

There was nothing I could do about it, the way I owed Ronnie. He’d given me to Walter, but that didn’t change anything. That couldn’t be helped. I still owed him.

“Yeah, all right,” I said. “When?”

“Wednesday morning. Half nine.”

“Billy, I don’t like it,” Sheila said. “I don’t like anyone knowing where you are. Not even a mate of Ronnie’s.”

“So what’s the alternative? I’ve got to let Ronnie have his shooters.”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to hide.”

“Where, in the bathroom?”

“Where else is there?”

“Oh, Christ,” I said. “I’m sick of this. I’m not fucking about hiding in bathrooms any more. If I’m going to be out of the way I’m going outside.”

“Out of the house?”

“Yes, out of the fucking house. I walked about in Epping without being collared. So why shouldn’t I walk about round here?”

“Billy, that was different. This is London.”

I took hold of her shoulders.

“Look, love, there’s a little cut a couple of houses down over the road. Leads to some waste ground at the back where the kids play. I could go there. It’ll only be for half an hour. And I could take Timmy. I’ve never taken Timmy out to play in my life. It’d be great. The only risk would be in getting from here to the cut. I’d have to be bloody unlucky to be picked up between here and there.”

“You’ve been unlucky all your life, Billy.”

“Not this time I won’t be,” I said. “Not with little Timmy with me.”

I looked at my watch and put my jacket on. Sheila zipped up Timmy’s anorak.

“Going out, Mummy,” Timmy said. “Going out.”

Sheila looked at me. There was an odd expression on her face.

“What’s the matter?” I said.

She shook her head.

“Come on. What is it?”

“Just a feeling. I don’t know what it is.”

“About what?”

She shook her head again.

“Look,” she said, “just in case . . . just in case anything happens . . .”

“What happens?”

“If something’s wrong when you come, I’ll leave the bathroom window open. Wide. You can see it from over the road.”

“And what sort of thing do you think’s going to happen?”

“Nothing. I’m just saying. Just in case.”

A warm breeze whipped the dead wasteland grass from side to side. Cloud shadows raced across the earth. Timmy clutched my hand and struggled happily through the tall grass.

Halfway across the wasteland I sat down on an old brown drainage pipe and watched Timmy rush about and fetch the ball I’d thrown for him. I lit a cigarette and looked up at the sky and watched the clouds rush across the face of the sun. There was sun all the time in South Africa. But there was no way we could go, not yet. Buying the car had made a hole in the money. It would be another six months before I’d be able to move. Unconsciously I put my hand to my stomach and felt the money belt. Another six months of living like this. But the warm breeze on my face and Timmy’s cries made me feel better about things. I’d been lucky so far. Six months wasn’t so bad. It would be worth waiting for.

I looked towards the opposite edge of the waste ground. There’d once been a row of houses there but at some time they’d been bull-dozed down. I could see the gleaming sunlit road and on the other side of the road a row of shops. The shops were only about a hundred yards from where I was sitting. I stood up.

“Come on, Timmy,” I said. “Let’s go and get some sweets.”

“Sweets, Daddy!”

I took his hand and we walked over to the edge of the waste ground. The traffic was thin and there weren’t many people walking up and down in front of the parade of shops. We crossed over the road and went into the tobacconist’s.

The shop was empty except for the man behind the counter. I asked Timmy what he’d like and he pointed to the Smarties. I took a bottle of lemonade from its rack and bought Timmy a lollipop as well as the Smarties and paid the man and Timmy and I left the shop and crossed the road.

When we got back to the drainpipe again I sat down and uncorked the lemonade and took a great swig. It tasted beautiful, and it reminded me how lucky I was.

When we got back to the end of the cut I looked across the road to the house where the flat was. The glance was automatic, without thought, instinctive. I expected to see nothing unusual or startling. Just a glance at the house I lived in, nothing more.

So it took a minute or two for the fact that the bathroom window was open to register on my brain.

When it dawned on me I went cold as ice. The bathroom window. Open. Sheila had said the bathroom window. Eventually I became aware of Timmy pulling on my arm, not realising why I’d stopped in my tracks.

I knelt down and said:

“Timmy, love, just stay here a minute will you? Daddy wants to have a look round the corner.”

“Why, Daddy?”

“I just want to have a look. Now you stay here. All right? Here, here’s your lollipop. Have a go at this.”

I unwrapped the lollipop and gave it to him. Then I walked the few steps to tie end of the cut and looked round the corner.

The front of the house was clear. Nothing. But down the road, on the same side as the cutting, about fifty yards down, there was a white Zephyr parked by the curb. There was nothing on it that said it was a police car. But I knew. And because the van was plain I knew it must be Tobin. And Ronnie had given me to him. Tobin was in the flat now, with Sheila, waiting for me.

I turned away from the end of the cut and knelt down and said to Timmy: “Listen, mate, I want you to do something for me. I want you to cross over the road and go into the house on your own like a big boy. Will you do that?”

“Why, Daddy?”

“Because Daddy’s forgotten to get something at the shop and he’s got to hurry before they close.”

Timmy didn’t say anything.

“Daddy won’t be long.”

He put his lollipop in his mouth and sucked.

“Can you do that?”

Timmy nodded.

“All right then, son,” I said. “I’ll see you shortly.”

He nodded again and walked across the road. I watched him for a moment then I turned and ran back down the cut.

I looked at the clock on the pub wall. A quarter to one. I’d been there since eleven thirty. After I’d crossed the wasteland I’d hailed a cruising taxi and had the driver bring me here, to a pub in Clapham, behind the common.

Ronnie had put Tobin on to me. And Walter had put the pressure on Ronnie. It was no use getting hard with Ronnie. He’d done all he could. Knowing Walter he’d have used Ronnie’s wife and kids as stakes. And Ronnie loved his wife and kids, like I did mine. So it was no use getting hard. And in any case, I hadn’t the time. Sheila and Timmy had been taken. Sheila was in line for three years if they decided to stick it on her. I had to think. I had to clear my head and think. They’d taken Sheila.

I went to the bar and bought another drink but that didn’t help. There wasn’t a thing I could do to help Sheila. All I could do was to concentrate on not getting myself caught. Because there was just a chance, just the one chance: Tobin might not press charges. He might let her go. So that she’d lead them to me. That was the only chance we had. But if Tobin pressed it—three years. She could get three years.

I ordered another drink and went to the phone and phoned the flat. There was no reply. That meant they hadn’t got anyone staking it on the inside. They’d all be out in the street and the neighbouring houses, just waiting for me to show up.

I put the phone down and went back to the bar and drank some of my drink. I swore to myself. This was it. If they let Sheila go, then we’d be off. Out of it. Whatever it cost. But to pay for it I had to take a risk. There was no other way. I had to put myself on show.

I kept the Mini garaged in a lock-up a mile away from the flat. When the pub shut I took a taxi to the garage and went in and sat in the Mini and waited for the night. Then, at about seven thirty, I drove the Mini out of the garage and made for Richmond, stopping on the way to buy an evening paper. I found a nice quiet little pub and bought a drink and phoned Sheila’s mother. She told me that she’d got Timmy and he was all right, and that my lawyer had been in touch but as yet he didn’t have any news. Before she could get into her diatribe I cut in and I’d told her I’d phone again tomorrow. And I told her to kiss Timmy for me.

Then I sat down and looked through the flats in the evening paper. There were about a half a dozen likely-sounding numbers. All pricey, all flash, none of them the kind of place the law would be looking for Billy Cracken.

I made the phone calls and arranged to go and see the four that hadn’t already gone. Twickenham, Barons Court, Fulham and Parsons Green.

Three hours later I’d secured two of them. Barons Court and Fulham. The one in Fulham had a fire escape.

Then I drove back to the garage and spent the night in the Mini.

I phoned Sheila’s mother at six o’clock the next evening. But it was Sheila who answered the phone.

“Billy! Are you all right?”

“They let you go! The bleeders let you go!”

“It was Tobin. He thinks I’ll bring him straight to you.”

“I can’t . . . Are you all right? How was it?”

“Not bad. I let Tobin think I was all folded up. Which is what he wanted to think. There’s a man outside me mum’s right now.”

“Christ,” I said. “I was sick. I thought . . .”

“I know. So did I until Tobin started. He’s barmy, Billy. He really wants you and he doesn’t care how he gets you. One of the other coppers wanted to do it legal, commit me for trial with a recommendation for a suspended sentence but Tobin said he couldn’t wait that long and as far as he was concerned I hadn’t even been brought in.”

“Listen,” I said, “we’ve got to get out of this lot. We can’t last much longer if we don’t.”

“But how, Billy? We haven’t the money. Especially now, now Tobin’s started up again. It’ll cost twice as much.”

“Don’t worry about the money,” I said. “I’ll see to that.”

“Billy . . .”

“Listen, love, I’ve got to take a chance. If I don’t then Tobin’s going to get us. Sooner or later he’ll have us. Do you understand that?”

“Yes. Yes I do. But . . .”

“So I’ve got to take a chance. I’ve got to get us out of it.”

There was a silence.

“What are you going to do?” she said at last.

“I don’t know yet. I’ll have to fix something up. It might take time. But I’ll tell you what I want you to do. I want you to stay put until I tell you. I’ll phone you at the weekend. And don’t worry. I’ll be all right. You’ll hear from me at the weekend.”

“For God’s sake be careful, Billy.”

“I’ll be careful, love,” I said. “Don’t you worry, I’ll be careful.”

After I’d phoned Sheila I went and had another drink. This time I actually enjoyed it. Sheila was safe. With Timmy. But I had to get us all out of it if we were to have any chance of ever living properly together again.

I downed my drink and went back to the phone. I dialled a number and waited. At the other end a receiver was picked up and a voice said:

“Yes.”

“Could I speak to Jimmy?” I said.

“Who wants to know?”

“A mate of his.”

“All his mates are here.”

“One of them isn’t.”

I heard Jimmy’s voice in the background asking what the fucking hell the performance was all about.

The voice told him some joker was on the other end of the line saying he was a mate. Then Jimmy said well for Christ’s sake ask him his bleeding name.

The voice came back on the line.

“Now look here, Jokey, let’s be having you. Jimmy only talks to names.”

“I’ll give you one. Benny Beauty.”

“Do me a favour. Are you out of your tiny mind?”

“Just tell Jimmy Benny’ll hear that he wouldn’t talk to a mate of his. Benny won’t always be where he is now.”

The voice started to explain that bit but Jimmy must have got sick of the game and the next voice that come on the line was his:

“All right, cunt. What’s your problem?”

“Christ, Jimmy,” I said. “It was never so difficult to get to you in the old days.”

“Who’s this?”

“Billy. And don’t say my name.”

“Jesus. I’ve been hearing it all over the place during the last few days.”

“But not reading it in the papers, eh?”

“Hardly surprising.”

“Not really.”

I heard Jimmy clear whoever was in the room with him out of it and then there was a pause while Jimmy frantically tried to work out how to phrase the question that was scurrying around in his brain.

I saved him the trouble.

“Don’t worry, Jimmy,” I said. “I’m not after a bed for the night. There’s no danger of you ending up like Ronnie.”

“What do you mean?”

“Leave it out, Jimmy. You know what I mean. I’m not after any embarrassing favours. Except maybe one. But nothing that’ll put you out on a limb.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I want putting in something. Doesn’t have to be one of your tickles. But it has to be in with a safe firm. No ex-associates of Walter. No arse-lickers. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. But everybody’s heard about Ronnie. They might not want to wear anything with you.”

“Maybe not. But you know as well as I do, Jimmy, the scene changes. There’s plenty of young tearaways out to make a name who don’t give a stuff about people like Wally. They’d be glad of the experience of working with Billy Cracken. And you know who they’d be, Jimmy. That’s all I want you to do for me: just put me in with a firm that’s about to go.”

“You’re taking a big chance, Billy. You know that. You can’t trust anyone nowadays.”

“Let’s face it, Jimmy, I’m taking a chance talking to you. You could do yourself a bit of good here and there if you turned me over.”

“I’m no Walter lover, Billy. You should know that.”

“I know. I know what he did.”

There was another silence. Eventually Jimmy said: “All right, Billy. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks.”

“I can’t promise anything.”

“I know.”

“Phone me back Sunday.”

“Thanks, Jimmy. I’ll do that.”

I spent the following two days and nights at the flat in Barons Court. It was strange to wake up in a bed and find myself without Sheila and Timmy. The flat was lifeless and depressing. Only the rumpled bed and the few bits of multi-purpose crockery gave any sign that someone was living there. I spent my time on the phone to a few contacts I had, getting the current gen on what it would cost to get us out of it and what was available over the next month or so. When I wasn’t doing that I sat around reading the papers and when I wasn’t doing that I’d break up the monotony of prowling round the flat by doing my exercises. I’d neglected them over the last few weeks.

On Saturday I phoned Sheila. She told me she was being followed everywhere. She wasn’t bothered by it. She said she got a lot of satisfaction out of the fact that the law thought any minute she was going to lead them to me.

On Sunday I phoned Jimmy.

“How’s the job hunting going?” I said by way of a kick-off.

“Not bad,” Jimmy said. “I’ve got something that might interest you. If it’s a goer, that is.”

“Tell me all about it.”

“There’s a firm in Finsbury Park set to go on a Post Office van. Could be worth a few bob.”

“Why shouldn’t it be a goer?”

“No reason. I mean, the firm’ll take it on.”

“But?”

“Well, you know as well as I do, Billy. Some of these young tearaways . . . all cock and no balls.”

“I know all that, Jimmy,” I said. “But beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Well, it’s the only thing I can put you in right at the moment.”

“Have you mentioned me?”

“To one of them. The heaviest of them.”

“And?”

“He gave me some smart talk but he’s interested. He wants to meet with you tonight.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Out of town. Pub in Woodford.”

“Woodford? Christ.”

“Well, there you are. I said they were like that. If I was you . . .”

“What am I likely to make?”

“I’ll be honest, Billy. I don’t think they’ll be divvying-up. They know the position you’re in.”

“I thought it’d be like that. Just so long as it’s worth my while.”

“That I couldn’t say, Billy. But they know why you need it. So they must know what you expect.”

“Yes,” I said. “Anyway, I’ll give it a throw. What’s the name of the pub?”

I parked the Mini on the pub forecourt and got out.

The pub had a string of fairy lights draped across its mock-Tudor frontage and soft pinks and oranges glowed behind the frosted glass casements. Just the kind of place I’d imagined they’d choose.

I walked across to the saloon bar entrance. I noticed a big Zodiac parked at the far end of the forecourt. That would be them. Apart from that there was an Eleven Hundred and a Viva and nothing else. There was nobody about. But I was past caring about that kind of scouting. The thoughts of the job and the money and getting Sheila and Timmy out of it made the risks seem light, negligible. In an odd way this biggest risk of all had given me a kind of fatalistic calm. I had a peaceful feeling that I wouldn’t be caught, that the job would progress through smoothly, that Sheila and Timmy and me would make it with no trouble. Maybe I had these feelings because I had no choice: that to think the other way would automatically bring everything down on my head. I didn’t know. All I knew was that this was what I had to do to clear up the mess we were in. There was no way I could allow myself to fail.

I walked into the pub.

They were sitting in a corner, in one of those booths carved in a phony medieval style. There were only two of them. Both flash, all the gear, beige leather and soft suede and rings and identity bracelets and the hairstyles and the arrogance. Nobody was ever going to put them away. Nobody was smart enough.

I walked to the bar and got a drink and waited for them to come to me. They didn’t move for a while. They were playing the same game. After three or four minutes one of them left his seat and came over to the bar and stood behind me. I could tell he was behind me because of his aftershave.

“Evening,” he said.

I turned round and looked at him. He was grinning at me, but I didn’t like the grin. It was arrogant, full of condescension.

I nodded in reply.

“You must have missed us,” he said. “We’re over in the booth.”

“Thanks for telling me,” I said.

I walked past him and over to the booth and sat down. The other one watched me all the way. This one wasn’t grinning but the same arrogance and conceit were there.

The first one slid into the seat, next to me.

There was a silence.

“I’m Vince,” said the first one. “And this is Dave.”

I nodded again.

“And you’re Billy,” said the one called Dave.

I didn’t answer.

“And you want to work,” he continued.

“That’s right,” I said.

There was another silence.

“Jimmy tell you what we’re on?” Vince said.

“Yes.”

“All we want,” said Dave, “is some extra muscle.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Five minutes’ work, really.”

I waited.

“Thing is, for five minutes, we can’t count you in on the divvy. I mean, we’ve been sorting this one for a couple of months now.”

“See what we mean?” Vince said. “We’ll be glad to give you the work. But as to the divvy . . .”

“Did Jimmy tell you I’d expect to be in on the divvy?” I said.

“No, but . . .”

“Then the conversation we’re having’s pointless, isn’t it?”

“Just wanted to make sure you understood our position,” said Dave.

“Fine,” I said. “Now you understand my position: I’m working for a grand. Half first, half after. No ifs, no buts. Just tell me what needs doing and I’ll do it. But leave out the lip and leave out the clever glances and on Wednesday evening you’ll both be a lot better off. Thanks to me. Because you two couldn’t knock over my Auntie Nora’s karsi on your own. And she’s been dead ten years.”

I took a sip of my drink. They both looked at me. After a little while Dave said: “We don’t need you, cunt.”

I smiled at him.

“Then why am I here?”

“We’re doing a favour for Jimmy.”

“Don’t make me tired,” I said. “You’ve never done anybody a favour in your life. You need me. You can’t get any of the pros to work with you. It’s plain as day. You’re only getting me because I want out of my present situation. You’re just a couple of wankers. Without me you don’t stand a snowball’s chance.”

“Listen, clever sod,” Dave said, “there isn’t only you, you know. There’s two other geezers in on it. You’re just insurance. One more isn’t going to make all that much difference.”

“If it’s me it will,” I said. Vince began to speak but I cut him off. “Look, is it on or isn’t it? Otherwise I can think of other places to do my drinking.”

They looked at one another. Dave said:

“What makes you think we can put the bread up front?”

“Oh, you can,” I said. “Couple of affluent lads like yourselves. You’ll be able to manage that.”

“Supposing we don’t want to?”

“Then you don’t want me, do you?”

There was another silence.

“Are we having another drink, or what?” I said.

Dave looked at Vince. Then he nodded.

Vince got up and went to the bar. Neither of us spoke until Vince got back with the drinks. When Vince sat down I said: “The other two you mentioned. They know I’m in it?”

“Not yet,” Vince said.

“Who are they?”

“What does it matter?”

“I said who are they?”

“George Fulcher and Mickey Reeve.”

I shook my head.

“Don’t know either of them.”

“Well, you wouldn’t, would you,” Dave said.

I looked at him.

“Well, you know what I mean,” he said.

I left it and took a drink.

“All right,” I said. “Tell me all about it.”

“Nothing to tell,” Vince said. “It’s a doddle. Just a Post Office van. Ram and scram. Two cars, one posted on the route, one following the van. Once we’ve stopped the van we take the stuff in the second car, drive two streets and get into the straight cars.”

“A doddle,” I said. “I’ve been on doddles before.”

“What can screw it up?”

I scratched my head.

“Well?” said Vince.

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.”

I finished my drink.

“And you want me to supply some muscle,” I said.

“You and the other two. Dave and me’ll concentrate on the rear doors.”

“Which car am I in?”

“The first one. The waiting car.”

“I take it you don’t intend going tooled up.”

“Tooled up? On this kind of job?”

“Just so’s I know what I’m into,” I said.

“Christ, we don’t want ten-stretches.”

“I thought you were the types that were never going to get your collars felt. I thought that was just for old timers like me.”

“Yeah, well. There’s always the possibility. I mean, you have to think of these things, don’t you?”

I didn’t phone Sheila when I got back to the flat. I felt too tired and depressed.

The two tearaways had put the mockers on me. Had I been like that ten years ago? Christ, I hoped not. I’d hate to have thought I’d been nicked as a result of being as stupid as they were.

I made a cup of tea and put the pot and the milk on a tray and set it down on the bedside table and got straight into bed.

The job had sounded straightforward enough. Even if they screwed it up I reckoned I could get myself out of it without concerning myself with them. And have the half a grand. But the whole thing seemed unreal to me. There was none of the old elation, no excitement at the prospect of action. Maybe the tearaways were right. Maybe I was an old man without any appetite.

I drank my tea and switched out the light. Outside the distant sound of traffic drifted up into the sky. For some reason I thought of myself as a boy, lying in my bed just this way, listening to the noises of the outside world, wondering what was happening out there, inventing stories to fit the sounds of the night.

“Sheila, it’s me.”

“Billy, love. I thought something had happened . . .”

“Nothing’s happened, sweetheart. Look, I think it’s time for us to get back together. I think it’ll be OK now.”

“Billy, that’s marvellous.”

“Yeah, well listen. I want you to go to this flat in Fulham. Now you’ll be followed, we know that, but don’t worry about it. Just go to the flat and go in. The door’ll be open. On the hall table there’ll be an envelope with the keys to the Mini and the address of where I’m living, right? Don’t bother reading it then. Just pick it up and go through the flat to the back bedroom window and out and down the fire-escape. You’ll be quite safe because there’s a courtyard that can’t be seen from the way you go in. Just cross the courtyard and there’s a passage under the flats behind, right? Go down the passage and the Mini’ll be opposite the passage in the next street.”

“What time shall I come to where you are?”

“About seven o’clock tonight,” I said.

We talked a little while before I put the phone down but I didn’t tell her about the job. I’d tell her about that tonight, in the flat, when it was over.

I sat in the car and looked out of the window. The side street was empty. Next to me the driver, George, flexed and closed his hands over the steering wheel, regularly, monotonously. On the corner, about ten yards away from us at the end of the street, Mickey waited for the van to round the corner of the street that formed the junction to the street where we were parked.

I looked at my watch. Approximately two minutes to go. I felt the pick-handle that lay across my knees. Above us light fluffy clouds drifted across the deep blue sky.

Then, at the end of the street, Mickey turned and began to walk towards us. George and I pulled on our stocking masks. George slid off the handbrake and the Jaguar began to move forward. I leant back over my seat and opened the back door for Mickey. Mickey got in and George put his foot down.

“She’s here,” said Mickey, putting on his mask. “Vince and Dave are right behind her.”

George swung the Jag round the corner and there it was, the Post Office van, trundling down the empty street towards us, the Dormobile in tow right behind.

They must have known. The minute the Jag pulled out, they must have known. But there was nothing they were going to be able to do about it.

George wrenched the wheel over and pulled the Jag broadside on in the path of the van. The driver of the van pulled on his wheel, too, but there was no chance. The van hit the Jag between the nearside front door and front wheel. The Jag twisted round, carried on the path of the van, but came to rest when the van ploughed into the side of the empty warehouse. Almost before the van had stopped we were all out of the Jag, making for the driver and his mate. I heard the sounds of Vince and Dave going to work on the van’s rear doors.

George and Mickey took one of the front doors. I took the other. As I pulled it open and yanked out the driver I saw his mate anticipate the door opening on the other side: he kicked out at the door with both feet. I heard George cry out as he got the full force of the door in his face, but Mickey grabbed the legs of the mate and pulled him out of the cab so that his head cracked against the bottom of the doortrip and again on the pavement.

My one was easy. I didn’t even use the pick-handle. I just dragged him out and slung him against the side of the van and gave him a couple round his head and he sank to the floor, no fight in him. I left him where he was and ran round to the back of the van. Vince and Dave had got the doors open and were already shifting the sacks into the Dormobile. I began to help them. Mickey appeared from the other side of the van, supporting George. George’s mask was soaked with blood. Mickey pulled the mask from George’s head and almost immediately George sank down to his knees and was sick. The blood was still pouring from his nose.

“Get him in the back, quick,” Vince shouted at Mickey. “You’ll have to drive now.”

Mickey got George to his feet and shepherded him round to the back of the Dormobile and bundled him in.

“Right, that’ll do,” Dave said. “Let’s get going, sharp.”

The driver began to get up.

Mickey got in the driver’s seat and Dave got in beside him. Vince and I got in the back with George. Mickey reversed the Dormobile and began to swing it out so that we could get past the Jag.

“What did I tell you,” shouted Vince over the noise of the engine. “A doddle! A fucking doddle!”

I looked through the rear window. There was a car rounding the corner behind us.

It began to slow down. Then it stopped. The driver got out and ran halfway to the van and looked at the men lying in the road. Then he looked down the road towards the Dormobile.

“We’re spotted,” I said.

Dave twisted round in his seat. The man ran back to his car and got in and reversed back down the road until he got to a spot where he could turn round.

“Fuck him,” Dave said. Then to Mickey: “Get moving, son, we’re red hot for the next couple of minutes if that bastard tips the law.”

Mickey put his foot down. He turned right, then left, then left again. Now we were in a main thoroughfare. There was no other way to get to where the clean cars were parked. We only had to be on it for a couple of minutes, but now it was dicey, now we’d been spotted.

The traffic couldn’t have been worse. Ahead of us, traffic lights were reducing the flow of vehicles to a snail’s pace. Pedestrians were moving faster than we were.

“Fucking Jesus,” Vince said. “Let’s bleeding move it.”

The traffic ahead of us started up and we moved a few more yards before stopping again.

In the opposite lane, traffic going in the opposite direction was flowing much more easily.

“For Christ’s sake,” Dave said. “Make a U-turn.”

“That’ll take us away from the cars,” said Vince.

“We can make it another way. Let’s for Christ’s sake get off this street. We’re like fish in a barrel.”

“What do you want me to do?” Mickey said.

“Make the bleeding turn.”

Mickey threw the van into reverse to give him the space to begin the turn. But as he did that the lights changed and the traffic began to move again.

The car behind went straight up the Dormobile’s arse.

“You fucking idiot,” screamed Dave.

People on the pavement stopped, staring. The door of the car behind opened and the driver began to get out. Mickey screwed the steering wheel right over and pulled out into the opposite lane. A Cortina, travelling at about thirty, was headed straight for the nose of the Dormobile. The Cortina braked but it carried on skidding towards us. Dave and Vince screamed at Mickey. Mickey put his foot down and tried to complete the turn, get the van straight to avoid the Cortina, but instead of straightening up, the van mounted the pavement and ploughed into a news-stand. Magazines and papers scattered everywhere and slapped up at the front window.

“You cunt!” Dave screeched.

And as he screeched the Cortina hit us, shuddering the rear of the van along in its path until the Dormobile was almost pointing the way we’d been travelling in the first place.

Dave and Mickey slid open their doors. I kicked at the rear doors and smashed them open and slid out over the sacks. Women were screaming and the traffic had stopped completely. I straightened up and found myself staring in the windscreen of the Cortina. The driver was lying back in his seat, stunned, blood pouring down his face. I ran round the corner of the van, on to the pavement, and collided with Mickey.

“George,” he said. “Help George.”

George had rolled out off the sacks and was leaning against one of the rear doors, looking round him as though he couldn’t quite comprehend what had happened. Mickey went to him and grabbed hold of George’s lapels and began to shake him.

“Come on, George,” Mickey said. “Get a grip. We’ll get you out of it.”

I looked down the street. Vince and Dave had already taken off, charging away from us down the pavement through the crowds of lunch-time shoppers. I looked at Mickey and George. There was nothing I could do by staying, other than to make sure three of us got nicked instead of just the two. So I took off after Vince and Dave. I ran along the pavement and above the racing wind I could hear Mickey’s voice screaming after me to go back.

I didn’t know the area. I knew the name of the street where the cars were, but that was all. I had to stick with Dave and Vince if I wanted to make it by car. I could have stayed on my own, tried to make it alone, but making it by car was safer.

Dave and Vince turned right before they got to the traffic lights. I did the same and found myself in a side street similar to the one we’d been in earlier. Dave and Vince were about twenty yards ahead of me. The street was empty but for the three of us. Away in the distance I could hear the Hee-Haw of police cars. Dave and Vince took a left turn and again I followed. Then left and right again and we were there, in the street where the cars were parked.

The street was a new development. Where there’d once been nineteenth-century workers’ dwellings and warehouses, now there were clean new flats down one side and a low modern school on the other. The cars, a Zephyr and a Rover, were parked twenty feet apart, facing in different directions, by the school railings. The playground was full of kids, chanting and running and playing.

Vince reached the Zephyr and Dave carried on running towards the Rover. Vince got in and gunned the engine of the Zephyr. The car began to pull away from the curb. Dave was almost up to the Rover. Vince’s car accelerated towards the Rover but suddenly he slewed the car across the road and jammed on his brakes.

A police van had rounded the corner of the school and manoeuvred itself broadside across the road.

I stood stock still in the middle of the street. Vince jumped out of the Zephyr and began running back towards me. Uniforms began to pile out of the police van. Children were running towards the railings to get a better view. Dave was in the Rover by now and had started the engine. The Rover accelerated forward and made for the gap between the Zephyr and the railings. There was just enough space for the Rover to get through. Vince ran past me, careless of Dave’s Rover. Sheer panic was making Vince’s decisions for him.

I ran towards the gap between the Zephyr and the railings. Dave would have to slow down as he went through the gap. If he stopped for a second I’d be able to get in. It was a chance I had to take. I’d get nowhere taking off like Vince.

I stood poised by the boot of the Zephyr. Kids were crammed against the railings, eyes wide. One of the uniforms shouted to the kids to get back but they didn’t take any notice. The Rover mounted the pavement. But it didn’t slow down. I stared into the windscreen. Dave’s face was set with concentration. He was going to try and go through the gap without slowing down. I stepped out into the space and waved my arms at him. But the expression on Dave’s face didn’t change and the Rover didn’t slow down. He must have been doing fifty.

I threw myself out of the gap and landed face down by the Zephyr’s rear wheel.

Then there was a crash as the nearside wing of the Rover connected with the boot of the Zephyr. I heard the screams of the kids as the two cars hit.

Then I heard another scream and felt a terrible weight crushing down on the small of my back. The weight was only present for a second. Then it was gone. At first I wasn’t sure what had happened. I tried to move my head but when I did that I felt the pain and the scream sounded out again. I could see the Rover racing away from me. I swivelled my eyes and I saw the kids re-grouping at the railings, staring down at me. And between me and the kids was one of the Zephyr’s rear wheels. That was what had happened. The collision had bounced the Zephyr’s rear wheel across my body.

I tried to move again and again I screamed. The scream was echoed in the crowd of kids. There was the sound of footsteps, coming at a run. I thought of Sheila and Timmy on their way to the flat, getting there, waiting. And among the hubbub in the playground I thought I could hear my own voice, as a child, challenging Bas Acker to a fight, to see who was best.