Two men in twenty

'Oh, you do? And do you go about telling everybody?'

'No, I'm tellin' you.'

Cain reflected that this geezer was dead serious. He looked around. They were at a table in a corner of the snack bar, and nobody could hear their talk.

'Lots of blokes can use XXC.'

'Is that what you call oxy-acetylene? Happen lots can use it, but I'm an expert, an' I know where to get the tackle. Besides, the police don't know me. No police, nowhere, know me. They wouldn't come lookin' for me after I done summat.'

'You've got no form?'

'Form?'

'You have no police record?'

'I did a bit of pinchin' when I were twelve. Probation, I got. That's been forgotten.'

'You've nothing since?'

'Nothin'.'

Cain found that he was becoming really interested. 'H'm,' he said thoughtfully. 'The coppers won't have your dabs, then. Not that it matters. Everybody I work with has to wear gloves all the time.'

'You wear gloves when you're cuttin' steel, all right.'

Cain had no practical experience of XXC, but he had heard talk. He had met men in prison who had done very well out of it. The equipment was cumbersome, but the actual business of opening a safe was both quick and quiet.

'There's more to it than just burning a hole in a safe door,' he said.

'Happen there is. That's why I'm talkin' to you.'

'Well,' Cain admitted, 'I'm not really what you'd call a burglar. I organize jobs. A while back I had the tidiest little mob you ever saw, and we did some nice work. Quick grabs was more our line. Jewelry, furs, payrolls. Then one day I got picked up by two bogies who'd happened to see my clock in the picture book, and they run me in for something I never done. When I come out of the nick, where's my mob? Scattered to the four winds. Three of 'em is inside, for a long time. Without me to look after 'em, they soon got theirselves done. That's what I mean when I talk about my line. I'm sort of a team manager.'

'But now you don't have a team.'

'I can soon get a team. But the payroll snatch isn't what it was. They got armoured cars now. So I might consider tickling a peter or two.'

'I was thinkin' of one big bank job, then divvy up an' fade away.'

'Have you got the griff?'

'Griff?'

Really, this man was ignorant. Cain explained. 'Have you got the place in your notebook? Some particular bank you've got your gleamers on?'

Husker shook his head. 'I were just thinkin' of banks in a general way.'

'Banks are big jobs. You need to be a real expert. It isn't just a matter of opening a strongroom, though that's hard enough. They've got burglar alarms you've no means of finding, and they're silent. They just flash a light and ring a bell down the road. You walk through solenoid rays, too. You have a copper feeling your collar before you know what day it is. No, I'd have to be real team-handed before I tackled a bank. And I'd need a professor or two on the team.'

Husker looked disappointed.

'With a bank job you've got to case the tickle for weeks, and you're liable to get noticed and remembered,' Cain told him. 'Mostly it's a tunnelling job, and then you come up against a strongroom like Fort Knox, and the alarm is going before you can even touch it. Commercial premises are better than banks. Cosy little places with a thousand or two in the safe, and the safe not bang up-to-date, and no watchman. You pick 'em and you do 'em. With the XXC, how long would it take you to burn a hole in an ordinary sort of safe, like you might find in the Co-operative stores?'

'Happen twenty minutes, happen less.'

'Not bad at all. 'Course it's been done before many a time, and lots of fellows who've done it are now in durance vile, as they say. That's where I come in. I organize it so's we don't get caught. I keep the lads in hand, so's they don't go flashin' their money around, or telling it all to a judy. Some geezers are so silly you wouldn't believe. They come out, do a job and get some crinkle, pick up a fairy to bed down with and tell her all about it, they then find theirselves back in the same cell before they've took their number down.'

'How do you go about your organizin'?'

Cain raised a finger. 'Don't you worry your head about that. Leave it to me. The first thing is to get team-handed. I know some good boys. I've got one in mind already, one of the best picklocks in the business. Had you thought how we were going to get into the place, to get at the safe?'

Husker confessed that he had no constructive ideas about getting into a place.

'And,' Cain pursued, 'had you thought how we were going to put in all that XXC stuff without being noticed? And how we were going to transport it? I can arrange all that.'

'You think you're good. Happen you are.'

'I'm so good the cops never got me right, except through some other fool acting the goat. That's another thing, you see, picking your men. You need good mates who can carry corn, though you don't always get 'em.'

'You can trust me. I can carry corn.'

'That's what they all say. We're only talking about this thing yet.'

'Well, you're talkin', I'll admit.'

'I'm having to talk because you don't seem to know nothing. When I start working on it, that'll be different. Nobody will talk. Nobody. Nothing is decided yet, but when I get going you'll know you're in a real mob.'

Husker tried to look impressed.

Cain went on: 'You're sure about your cutting equipment?'

'I'm sure. I can get it easy and safe. But like you said, I'll need transport.'

'Will you get it somewhere in London?'

'No. Far from London.'

'That'll be better, because London is where we'll start operating. Right. I'll give the matter some thought. We won't keep on meeting at the same place. See that pub across the road? I'll meet you there at twelve noon tomorrow.'

'Twelve o'clock. Right.'

'And in the meantime, you haven't seen me.'

'I don't know you from Adam,' Husker said.

'Fine,' Cain replied.

They parted without a handshake.

* * * * *

Cain was late home for lunch that day, because he had been following Husker about London for three hours. During that time he perceived something which he had often been told-that London is the loneliest city in the world for a friendless stranger. Husker spoke to nobody except to order food or drink, and he was not spoken to. He was not seen to make a telephone call. He had a few glasses of beer, standing solitary at a bar. He had a meal at a cheap restaurant. He went into a news theatre. Cain followed him into the theatre, and saw that he sat apart, not close enough to make contact with anybody. After the news theatre, Cain left him.

Husker seemed all right. But it was only the beginning. Cain did talk a lot when his brain was seething with ideas. With regard to specific plans he was the most silent of men. And he was cautious in his choice of partners in crime. His next sentence, he knew, would be ten years P.D. He did not intend to serve any such sentence.

3

Cain saw Husker twice, and talked inconclusively, before he found Ned France. The encounter was in a Soho club, where Cain had gone in search of Bill Coggan, one of the best wheel men he knew.

Cain said: 'Hello, Jimmy. I been looking for you.'

France merely nodded, and held out his hand palm uppermost. Until he remembered, Cain looked at the hand in surprise, then he said: 'I haven't come to pay you back. Not yet.'

'Oh. Well, I can't spare any more.'

'Be nice, be nice. I came to talk business.'

'You're goin' into business?' France clipped some of his words, but not in the way that Husker did. His speech was a drawl, Husker's was a burr. The accents of the two men were a world apart.