And then a man comes in by the east door. He comes in quietly, as if they weren’t all waiting for him. He grins and shakes hands and waves, and lets the rumour make him bigger. He flings wide his arms and embraces a respectable geezer whose bank specialises in discretion.
“Liam!” the fellow says. “As I live and breathe! Liam Doyle, of all the things, they said you were dead!”
“Not me,” cries the oldster, much delighted, “I haven’t gone on yet, and bollocks to those as wish I would! There’s cash yet in the old cow!”
“I’m sure there is!” replies the other. “I’m sure indeed. Can you still dance, though, Liam? You danced the foxtrot with Caro once, in the Primrose Hill house.”
“Blow me!” replies Liam Doyle. “I’m sure I did! I would have danced anything in those days! Well, I’ve no idea. I haven’t danced in… oh, well…” And his voice trails away.
But before it can become maudlin, Liam’s friend says “I bet you’ve still got it!” And Liam says it’s true, he has, of course! Of course he has. And then it’s “Hullo, Simon, I know that’s you, my God, is this your wife? How superb, I swear, she looks like a queen, and I’m not talking about our bloody queen, God bless, I’m talking Titania! Yes, I am! May I kiss the bride?” And he does, planting a smacker on the gentle, homely face and grinning as if he’s won a prize. “And Big Douggie! I see you there! Come off the bench, man! You remember Douggie, don’t you, Simon?” And Simon does, in fact they had a brawl back in the day, and bloody Hell, if Douggie wasn’t the toughest bastard ever threw a punch, I swear to you, Douggie, I still dream about it, seeing that fist on its way!
“Well,” says Douggie, “I don’t mix it up, now. I teach the young ones. But, well, every now and again I show them a thing or two, for laughs. I think they go easy on me, mind…” And he grins, gap-toothed, and everyone thinks Not if they bloody want to get out of the ring alive, they don’t. “How about you, Simon?”
“Oh, well,” says Simon, a bit sad, “I’ve moved on a bit. I still follow the boxing, or… I used to…”
And once again the whisper of regret. So many things we used to do. So many laws we used to break and laugh at. And now we creep around and make more money and what are we, if not crooks?
Well, rich, of course, and happier for it.
Happier, absolutely.
Around and around it goes. Joe has the touch, the memory for every face, and there’s a fire in him, a rich desperate longing for days everyone had forgotten about, and the strength in his arm to make you believe. Behind him goes the whisper: that’s Joe Spork. He’s putting a job together, and he’s going to ask us to help.
It must be some job.
He will ask, won’t he?
Sure he will.
And finally, when the nerves and the nostalgia are about ready to boil over, Joe climbs up on the back of an extremely expensive Italian leather sofa in his workman’s boots, and he says:
“I expect you’re wondering why I asked you all here this evening!”
They are. Of course they are.
“I may have misled you a bit, in a way. I think I told Jorge I was planning a big job. Well, I’m not.” He grins, a naughty-boy grin, Mathew’s face staring over a mustard polo neck and a tan bullhide coat, superimposed on the weathered, blockish features of his son. “I’m not planning a big job. I’m planning ten. Or a hundred. However many it takes to make the point. I’m talking about the brass ring. I’m talking about robbing every bank in London and half of Hatton Garden, hitting the payroll and the Mint and everything in between.
“Now I know, because I’ve seen you, that you don’t do those things any more. I know, at least, that that’s what you think. And I also know, because I’ve seen you, that when you see the Bond Street caper, with those lads lifting a hundred grand a pop and busted by the end of the week, or the Heathrow diamonds, or the Millennium Dome, you look at those sorry jobs and you think to yourselves: I could have done that twice as fast and taken twice as much and I’d be sitting in bloody Duke’s Bar when the Lily came and nothing to say I was ever anywhere else. Because those jobs were grand, but they had no exit, and they were brassy, but they had no class. And you’ve got class.”
The Old Campaigners grin at one another. Sure enough, they have class. They know the importance of balls, for sure, but also of smarts and timing, and above all, of getting away with it. Robbing is easy. Robbing clean is hard—but that’s what separates the men from the boys, isn’t it?
“I remember, don’t I, how it’s done? I remember when the Boldbrook delivery was taken by person or persons unknown, and the police were swarming the Crespind Club because they’d had a tip-off the place was a brothel. Which it unquestionably was. But when they got there it was all awash with bigwigs in their drawers, so when the same fellow called in a robbery at Boldbrook—ten minutes before it happened—they told him to stick it in his ear, and then of course when Boldbrook himself called they told him the same thing. And no one ever told a bloody word of how it was done, not the cracksman nor the lookout nor not a one of them, because they were men of the life. Women of the life. (I won’t name names, but I could. We all know who they were. And not a one of us has ever told, have they?)
“But I look at you, and I see one more thing. I see talent going to waste. I see skills like no one ever had before or since. I see the long con and the short, I see high-score planners and forgers and dippers and smugglers and high-wall men and strong arms and gunhands and lead-footed getaway drivers and what have you done for us lately? You’ve let crime get white-collar and dull. You’re rich and you’re dying of respectability. I see you, Boy Reynolds. I see you with your arm in a sling! Crashed a souped-up Mercedes into a sand dune at one hundred and eleven miles an hour between Paris and Dakar.
“Because you are bored. You are so bored you could die of it.
“You’re all respectable and safe. And not one of you is having any fun.
“Well, I’m in deep shit. I touched something I wasn’t supposed to. I know things I mayn’t. I’m at war with Brother Sheamus of the Ruskinites and Mr. Rodney Titwhistle of the Legacy Board, and what they will do to me if they get me doesn’t bear discussion. I’m on the run from the law, and these days that’s a short course. They’ve had me once: not again. No more white rooms and torture for this lad. Not again.
“They’ll have SO19 out there, anyway, so no matter. God help any poor bugger caught outside in a fedora this month!” Joe grins again, and this time it’s the wolf grin, the wartime grin, the Englishman’s inner barbarian, which every one of them keeps close at hand for the dark days.
A flash of Argyle socks as Joe shifts his weight and opens his arms to them again.
“And I’ll tell you, people. I’m having more fun than I have ever had in my entire, safe, taxpaying life!
“What’s it all about? I’ll tell you. There’s a wicked sort who wants something he can’t have. He can’t have it because if he gets it he’ll likely kill us all. He’s a lunatic and a bad egg. He’s not a crook, he’s a devil, and that’s all there is to it. I mean to put a stop to him. I mean to stop him dead. And if I don’t, well, it’ll be down to you lot anyway, because he’s bought the government or some such thing, and is sheltered in their breast. If I don’t do the job, my lords, ladies, and assorted crooks, we shall all go down six feet. Think of him as a mad bugger who wants to test a nuclear bomb in Trafalgar Square. He doesn’t, but it’s as good as. But here, you leave that to me. I’ll take care of the Opium Khan. All I want you to do… is steal every blighted thing that isn’t nailed down and preferably most of what is!