Sure enough, within ten minutes of the College Boy leaving, a bearded, lanky heap of methadone-using stardust is on my doorstep, trying to ingratiate himself, his pink eyes swimming in a pallid head that nods and twitches as he asks me for “a few quid – just for a few days, like”. I invite him in, give him the money in exchange for some essential “local” information.
He’s called Rambling Ian – apparently – and has served the usual amount of time in the past. We talk about various jails, wings, screws – not reminiscing but testing each other for truths, lies, connections, mutual friends and enemies we’ve made along our less-than-merry way. I think he’s probably all right, and he goes on to describe himself as a “standard human road accident on the heroin highway”.
I ask him about others in the block. He tells me we’re the only two “insiders”, the other flats housing the predictable assortment of single mothers, forgotten pensioners, unemployed divorcees, and immigrant workers. No rich pickings to be had here, then. But I’d guessed that already. Rambling Ian follows up with a few possible opportunities for a spot of nocturnal thievery just a few streets away.
“Big places,” he says. “Fancy.”
“And full of alarms,” I reply, knowing where this is heading.
“Maybe, but with the two of us… you know…”
I smile. I’m not about to shatter his illusion that he’s on the verge of hooking up with a latter-day Raffles, because however ridiculous the notion may be, I need him onside for a while; he may have his uses. So I tell him I’ll think it over, and he makes for the door.
“’Course,” he adds on his way out, “there’s always Buzz on the top floor. He’s an odd old geezer.”
“Buzz?”
“As in Lightyear, from the kid’s film. You know, all those toys comin’ to life an’ that?”
I shake my head. Children’s films were never my thing, unless it was to try and pick a few adult pockets or rob a hassled mum’s handbag in the gloom of the cinema. My spoils from the Hollywood film industry.
“American, he is,” he goes on. “Crazy old fella. Lives on his own at the very top with just a telescope. Never lets anyone through the door. Rumour round here is that he used to be some sort of spaceman or something.”
“Spaceman? As in an old druggie?”
My new “partner” looks a little hurt by this. “No. The real deal. That he went up on one of those Apollo missions back in the seventies. Walked on the moon, drove one of them buggy things, the lot.”
“And, naturally, he ends up living on top of a crummy block of flats in South London.”
“I’m telling you what folk say about him,” he replies. “Never met the fella myself.”
“Yeah,” I say, trying to sound sympathetic. “Well, I reckon there’re a few people pulling your leg, Ian.”
“Ask around if you don’t believe me,” he insists. “They’ll maybe even tell you about the moon rock he keeps up there. Size of your fist, it is, and he brought it back from the moon itself. Smuggles it out of NASA, brought it over here.”
“Be worth an awful lot of loot for a lump of stone?”
“A moon rock,” he replied, wide-eyed, clearly not getting it. “A sacred piece of the heavens.”
“And right now,” I said, closing the door, “I need to get a sacred piece of sleep.”
Rambling Ian was right about one thing: we were the only two “probys” in the block. Indeed, from mostly law-abiding observations over the next few days, I began to realize that of the twenty-six flats, maybe a third of them were empty, boarded and shuttered. One day an Asian family moved out, the next day the boards and shutters appeared. The whole block felt like it was dying – a good thing, probably. I guessed that I was the last “resident” who had been allowed in, and now the powers that be were simply waiting until people moved out, or on to pastures new, in order that it could be pulled down without the cost of rehousing remaining residents. Robbery in its own way, but conveniently legal.
As for me, familiar urges were beginning to return, fuelled by dwindling money, lack of real employment opportunity for someone like me, and just… let’s call it old habits dying way too hard. It’s not excusable what I do, it’s not exciting – or glamorous – it’s just what I do. And like I say, I’m not even that good at it. But just as some are born to be judges, I reckon some are born to be judged. Without us, there’s no them. Universal balance, I guess.
Of course, the eternal problem for the burglar is cash conversion. Finding a trusted fence to whom to pass over your liberated goods in exchange for some of the lovely folding stuff. A dying breed, the local fences, literally. None of the youngsters see the opportunities presented by the profession, preferring the easier, more obvious routes. Granted, there’ll still be a bloke in the local pub who’ll mention that he’ll give you a couple of hundred quid for a wall-mounted plasma television, but honestly, you try getting those things off the damn wall in the first place. I guess you could say I’m part of a dying breed, too. Forty-seven and too old to rob and roll…
So, I’m looking for easier places, easier things to swipe. Never been good with any kind of vehicle, so they’re out. Leaves me with houses – big ones, mostly, for obvious reasons. Not too big, though, as I’ve never had the know-how to bypass alarm systems. However, as most medium-sized places nearly always have unlinked alarms, they don’t present the same problem an engine-disabled Mercedes does. In fact, as any competent housebreaker will tell you (and I do count myself as competent at breaking in, it’s the getting out and away with it that tends to be a little more problematic), the appearance of an alarm box on the side of your home is the finest advertisement for opportunists like me. Forget a blaring siren, just have a recorded message that shouts: Hey! Up here on the wall! Yeah, look at me! Lots of lovely stuff inside, and no one’s going to give a damn if I start screaming! Get in, help yourselves! The same with half-drawn curtains, lights blazing away inside. The genuinely rich got that way by saving money, not wasting it on electricity. Their curtains will be drawn, just one light in the room they’re in. Couple of pointers from the other side for you, that’s all. Happy to oblige.
Anyway, one night I’m returning after a little late-night work a few streets away from the block, not much of a haul, jewellery mostly, but enough to last another week if I can fence the stuff, when I get back to the flat and discover a note has been slid under the door:
You went in the front downstairs window. Used a glass cutter. Turned the lights off once you were inside. You went to the front upstairs bedroom. Again, turned the light off. Then left three minutes later. I may have some work for you. Number 26.
I’d been spotted.
It was an impressive telescope. Very impressive. Not that I’m the least au fait with optical devices, but this was impressive because it didn’t even look like a telescope. Not the normal kind, anyway, the type you might see jammed over a pirate’s eye in a swashbuckling yarn. No, this was something you’d expect from a fifties sci-fi B-movie, a great white barrel of a thing, with pipes, meters, and humming electronic devices secured to it, mounted on a sturdy tripod. And, at this precise moment – pointing from its vantage point right at the house I’d just broken into.
I had my eye pressed to an insignificant-looking tube at its side, but the image was crystal clear. Made more impressive by the green night-vision.