The Job: Part Four

~ beetleypete

This is the fourth part of a fiction serial, in 773 words. Some swear-words may be used.

Richard Alexander.

When Reg had left and Gloria went back to bed, Alan sat in the kitchen thinking about whether or not he could be bothered about the job. It depended on a lot of things. How much was involved. How many he would need to pull it off, and Graham and Carly keeping their mouths shut. He would decide for sure once he had met the bloke.

Alan Gill had been a professional criminal all his life. But he had never once been arrested, had his fingerprints taken, or had to give a DNA sample. In every respect bar one, he had never really existed once he had left school. He had never paid taxes or National Insurance, never been employed legitimately by anyone, and certainly never claimed any social security benefits, or registered to vote in elections.

When there was a census, his mum and dad had known to leave his name off of the form, and he had never applied for a passport, or been abroad on holiday. The only document he had ever had that bore his real name and address was a driving licence. Not to have one of those was asking for trouble if he had been stopped for some mickey mouse driving offence. If he needed a dentist or a doctor, he paid privately for one that asked no questions.

He had watched his dad working for basic pay as a delivery driver for John Lewis. Happy to get overtime for a Saturday morning, acting like the manager was doing him a favour letting him work. Although he could have done well at school, he chose to leave before he was seventeen, and go to work for Frankie Toland. Frankie had the local detectives straightened up, so nobody ever asked who the new kid was when they saw him helping out at one of the warehouses. By the time he was eighteen, he was driving one of Frankie’s vans and delivering juke boxes and gaming machines to pubs and clubs that had been told they had to have them.

Alan had an interest in guns. He read about them in magazines, played around with the ones at Frankie’s place, stripping them down and cleaning them. All of the older blokes working for Frankie carried shooters, though mostly just to wave around and frighten people with. By the time he was twenty, people were calling Alan ‘The Armourer’, and it seemed only logical that he should embark on a new career, away from Frankie’s seedy businesses.

He wanted to be an armed robber.

Permission had to be sought of course. Frankie agreed to Alan branching out alone, so long as he got a good earner out of it. Fortunately, he wasn’t greedy. “Ten percent is acceptable to me, Alan. But don’t you dare stitch me up, or believe me you will be sorry”. With a couple of decent pistols, bought from Frankie on credit, he set up a job with one of the other van drivers, another Alan known as ‘Little Alan’ because he was so short.

Keeping well away from home territory, they hit three post offices on three consecutive days. Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Buckinghamshire. Then they went to ground as the news was all over it, describing it as a ‘home counties crime wave’. After that success, everyone wanted to work with Alan The Armourer. He had shown he had a cool head, and was a natural meticulous planner.

The good years that followed started to build up to bigger and bigger jobs, until Alan set up one of the biggest robberies in British history. A robbery that never got any news coverage for fear that it would set off a wave of copycats. It was simplicity itself. Dressed as airport workers, the team were supposed to load bullion into a cargo plane at the edge of Heathrow, using forklift trucks. Naturally, security guards were in attendance, but when the robbers produced a small arsenal of automatic weapons, they did as they were told and lay face down on the ground. Then the gold was simply loaded into another aircraft, already arranged to fly it out of the country.

There had been a lot of ‘fixers’ taking their cuts, and they also had to pay off the genuine airport workers. Too many people were involved, but it was enough to set him up abroad. He already had a new identity, a genuine passport, driving licence, and bank documents. They had cost enough too.

When he drove his hire car onto the ferry to Santander that night, he was Richard Alexander.

30 thoughts on “The Job: Part Four”

  3. Very clever, Pete I know too much about this from my hubby…and from some who live here the good old days…or not …I love where this is going on to read the next installment 🙂 x

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    1. Growing up, I knew a lot of criminals. They were actually ‘serious’ criminals, real hard gangsters. I still know some now, though I moved a long way from where they live. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  5. As I was reading this chapter, I found myself wondering how many more “Richard Alexanders” there are in the world. Good stuff, Pete.

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  7. (1) “Alan Gill had been a professional criminal all his life.” It all started the day Gill fished a cookie out of a kitchen jar…and then used the cookie as bait to lure the neighbor’s kid up into his tree fort…where he proceeded to rob the kid of his weekly allowance. Gill was only five years old at the time. He’s been hooked on crime ever since!
    (2) Not having a driver’s license would be asking for trouble if Gill were ever stopped for some mickey mouse, donald duck, porky pig, or bugs bunny driving offence.
    (3) Alan, when asked to fill out the census: “Count me out!”
    (4) Those early music players were called Duke’s Jukes because their needles wobbled like John Wayne’s walk.
    (5) Unarmed robbers, unarmed swimmers, and unarmed aircraft carrier semaphore signalmen rarely succeed.
    (6) Bad citation: “You can shoot me if you want, Alan. But don’t you dare stitch me up until after you’ve dug the bullet out!”
    (7) Overheard:
    Little Alan: “What about Hertford?”
    Big Alan: “Sure!”
    Little Alan; “What about Bedford?”
    Big Alan: “Sure!”
    Little Alan; “What about Buckingham?”
    Big Alan: “Sure!”
    (8) When Alan Gill drove his car into the fairy that night, he claimed he was Alexander the Great. But the fairy wasn’t fooled, and subsequently sued Alan the Armourer for medical expenses.

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    1. He grew up watching his dad work hard, surrounded by criminals who lived the high life from not working. It must surely be an ambition of some robbers to become one, I think. As well as the easy money, there’s that element of excitement. Glad you like the story, Stevie.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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