Quo Vadis?

6 January 1998 London Road, west Croydon

I didn't feel at all conspicuous in my bulky leather coat and woollen hat. The wind was whistling around my ears, chill with the promise of snow. My hands, thrust deep into my pockets, were sweating inside the surgical gloves. My right hand gripped the butt of the Walther 9mm pistol, and I kept flicking the safety-catch on and off. It was a sign of nerves. I hated the waiting, I always had. To the casual glance of a passer-by, I hoped I looked like a normal man, just waiting for a bus. But I wasn't normal. And I wasn't waiting for a bus.

Andy caught my eye from the public phone-box across the street and grinned nervously. His voice crackled loudly in my earpiece.

'Just unloading now,' he said. We were using hands-free mobile phones, and we kept communications to the minimum.

I nodded slightly, and turned my gaze toward the plate-glass windows of the Midland bank, which was situated to the left of the phone-box. I could see the blue crash helmets of the two security guards as they handed over the money-box to the chief cashier. Despite the cold, my back felt clammy under the layers of clothing, and my mouth was drier than a witch's tit.

I turned slightly and nodded to Danny. He was pretending to be engrossed in the small-ad cards in the window of a newsagents, but he had one eye on me. He shrugged and slapped his gloved hands together against the cold. He was ready. I hunched my head into my upturned collar and spoke into the hands-free mike without moving my lips: 'T? It's a "go". Start her up.' Tommy was parked around a corner in the getaway car, monitoring the airwaves.

My heart rate kicked up a gear as the adrenaline began to flood my body. I was itching to be on the move, and it took all of my willpower to keep standing still and outwardly calm. This was the moment that every adrenaline junkie lives for; the intoxicating rush that comes from knowing that you are about to step into a dangerous unknown. Professional robbers call this 'the buzz', and it can be just as addictive and destructive as any Class A drug habit.

The two guards came out of the bank and climbed back into their security van. The driver indicated and pulled out into traffic. I was vibrating like a tuning fork. I took a deep breath which seemed to shudder into me. My limbs were starting to feel leaden, as though I was rooted to the spot. I suddenly felt very tired and knew it was the effect of an adrenaline overload. It was flight or fight time. I swallowed, hard, and my mind let out a massive roar — 'GO!'

As soon as I stepped off the pavement it was like the world had just come into sharp focus. My senses switched to maximum input; I could taste acrid exhaust-fumes on my tongue, I could hear the click-click-click of a car indicating at the traffic lights and the tension-heavy breathing of Danny as he fell into step beside me. We crossed the road at a brisk pace, our eyes seeking and checking every parked vehicle and shop doorway one final time. As a team we were top of the Flying Squad's 'most wanted' list, and they loved nothing more than a 'ready-eye' ambush. Their propensity to shoot first and shout warnings only when the gunsmoke had cleared was legendary.

Andy stepped from the phone-box and fell into step behind our march across the wide pavement. As I reached for the door of the bank a strange and unfamiliar thought fleetingly crossed my mind: 'You can stop now. It's not too late to walk away.' My hand hesitated six inches from the door handle, and Danny bumped into me. I immediately forced the treacherous notion from my consciousness and pushed the door open.

As I stepped into the bank I was instantly aware of a rush of warm air on my chilled face and the hum of quiet conversation

coming from the banking hall. We slid through the familiar motions like a well-oiled robbery machine. Woollen hats were pulled down over features to reveal only eyes and mouth. Danny produced a fearsome-looking fireman's axe, Andy shook out a folded plastic bag and I got a good grip on the gun.

We had honed our performance over many such bank robberies. We each had a part to play and we knew those parts intimately. I was always the gunman, the 'heavy', the 'frightener'; it was my job to put the fear of God into bank staff and civilians and make sure everything ran smoothly and quickly. Any 'have-a-go heroes' would be dealt with by me. I was first man in and last man out. Danny was the 'doorman'; his job was to make sure nobody left the premises before the job was done. He also had to make sure that anyone who came in while the robbery was in progress stayed in. Andy was the 'bagman'. He would collect and bag up the cash.

There were two customers in the banking hall, both males in their mid-thirties. Four cashiers, including the chief cashier, were busying themselves behind the counter along with several clerical staff. I came into the hall like a whirlwind. Before anyone knew what was happening I had my pistol pointed at a customer's head.

'Down! Get the fuck down!' I roared menacingly.

He dropped like a stone, and the other customer quickly followed. I stepped up to the counter and pointed the gun at the bullet-proof screen so the staff could get a good look at it.

'You all know the drill,' I shouted. 'We're here for the reserve. No fucking about, just hand it over and no one gets shot.'

Andy was already up at the counter, bag at the ready, but the staff were still in shock. I was used to this, and I knew how to get them moving. I stood over one of the downed customers and pointed the gun at his head. I pointed my free hand at the chief cashier.

'Move!' I screamed. 'Or I'll put his brains all over the carpet!' One of the women cashiers gave a little groan and then fainted.

The chief cashier, an Asian man with a pencil moustache, hurried forward and began to unlock his safe. I kept the gun pointed at the customer. He had both his hands crossed over his head and he was sobbing in terror. The second customer looked up at me, anger on his face. I switched the gun to him. 'Who you fucking looking at? You even attempt to get off that fucking floor and I'll put one in you,' I growled at him.

He put his head back down.

Andy was loading the packets of money into the bag as fast as they came across the counter. We had been told that there would be £100,000 in cash in the reserve. For a moment the only sounds in the banking hall were the sobbing of the customer and the swish of the packets hitting the bag. I looked over at Danny. He had his back to us, keeping his eyes on the street outside. A movement behind the jump caught my eye and I saw one of the clerical staff duck into a back office. Probably gone to press the silent alarm. It didn't matter, we were just about finished.

'How we doing, Number Two?' I called to Andy.

He brushed the last packets into the bag with his arm, then gave me a thumbs-up. 'That's the lot,' he said. 'Unless you want me to get the cash drawers as well?'

There might be another five grand in the cash drawers, and so far we were ahead of schedule. 'Fuck it, get the lot,' I said.

I knew I was pushing it, but the buzz was on me strong and I was reluctant to end it, the comedown was a bitch. I knew that even if the silent alarm had been activated it would take a good eight minutes before the police would be on their way. The alarm would sound at the bank's security HQ; they would try to confirm that it had not been pushed by accident, then notify the nearest police station and Flying Squad office, who would then have to radio whoever was close and mobile. The chances of being caught in the commission of a robbery, unless the police knew in advance, were very low.

Only one of the cash drawers was unlocked, so the cashiers had to come forward and unlock their own drawers. After the third one, even I was getting itchy. I looked up at the security cameras that dotted the banking hall; they had been getting some cracking smudges from the moment we burst in. It was time to go.

'How many left, Number Two?' I asked.

'Three more,' said Andy.

'Leave them,' I said. 'We're off.'

Andy came past me, clutching the bag in both arms, and headed for the door. I heard Danny in my earpiece, checking with Tommy and letting him know we were on our way out. I stepped over to the customer who had given me the angry look. I crouched down by his head and kept the gun pointed at him. He looked up at me and still looked pissed off.

'It ain't your money, pal,' I said. 'Now, it's all over and nobody's been hurt. So just fucking chill out. 'Cos if you try to come after us, I won't hesitate to kill you. Understand?'

He nodded.

I joined the rest of the team at the door. This was the most dangerous moment for us. If anyone had noticed anything suspicious we could be walking out into an ambush. We had only been inside the bank for a few minutes, but the street outside was once again unchecked territory. I held open the door and let Andy and Danny slip out. I glanced back into the banking hall to make sure the customers were still prone. I stepped out, pocketed the gun and rolled my mask up into a hat. The boys were waiting for me, and they had rolled their masks up too. We walked briskly away.

My scalp was crawling and my back felt like one huge target as we hurried across London Road. I kept expecting to hear the sounds of shouting or gunfire, but nothing happened. We reached a sidestreet and ducked into the alley where Tommy was waiting behind the wheel of a four-door Vauxhall with the engine running. We piled into the car and drove sedately away without attracting any attention.

By the time we reached the flop, I was really feeling the comedown. My hands were shaking, my guts were churning, and I had the makings of a blinding headache. For every high there is a low. Normally, the fact that we had got away with the prize would be enough to buoy me up, but all I felt was sick, and slightly depressed. I remembered how I had hesitated on reaching the bank door. That was a first for me. I had always been supremely confident when committing crime: it was my element. I craved the feeling of power from taking over a strip of pavement or a banking hall and imposing my version of reality on it, for even a short time. It was a rush that no amount of cocaine or Ecstasy could imitate. But now I just felt guilty.

The boys were laughing and joking as they emptied the money on to the floor. Cruising on post-job euphoria and relief, they seemed like children let loose in a chocolate factory. Big, ugly kids, mind you. Andy held up two sealed packets of £50 notes and kissed each one in turn. Tommy and Danny were singing a chorus of 'We're in the Money'. I flopped into an armchair and peeled off my surgical gloves. The gun was digging into my ribs, so I pulled it from my pocket, checking that the safety-catch was on. I had always liked guns, and I had a particular liking for the weight and feel of the Walther. Guns were the tools of my trade, and without them I would not be able to make such a good living. A good gun is to be prized and taken care of, and the Walther was a good gun. I had paid £500 for it, which was about average for a handgun in London. It had been nicked off a burglary out in the sticks by a couple of junkies. I had only fired it twice, but the Walther had served me well. Now, looking at it, I felt an irrational loathing for it. For the first time, I saw how ugly and evil it must look to someone who has it pointed in their face. It felt too smooth and oily, too black and deadly. I dropped it on the floor and wiped my hand on my T-shirt.

I lit a cigarette and leant back in the chair. Images from the bank flooded my mind: the shocked faces of the cashiers, the woman who fainted, the sobbing customer who thought he was going to die and the anger and, yes, contempt on the face of the second customer. What were they doing now, right at this moment? Telling their story to the police? Struggling to recover from their ordeal? I had never given a second thought to my victims before. When you do what I do for a living you can't afford to think of the target as having any human dimension. It's them or me. They've got it and I want it, and if anything gets in my way, tough.

I had always had this strange notion that armed robbery was an honourable profession. I didn't go around coshing pensioners for their bingo money, or burgling people's homes or raping women and children; I was the cream of the criminal classes, a 'blagger', one of the heavy mob, a modern-day highwayman. I didn't steal from poor people's pockets, I robbed the rich, the banking and insurance institutions. People who could afford it. The only 'victims' of my crimes were the faceless money-shufflers who had to tally up what was nicked. I was almost a Robin Hood figure, for fuck's sake! Or was I?

Not once in my life had I questioned my criminality. I just accepted it as my lot. I embraced the life of crime and punishment as though it was my only friend. I loved the excitement and danger of living life on the edge, the vagaries of fate deciding whether I would be shot, stabbed or nicked. I craved the recognition of being a 'face' in, and out of, prison, and I loved the respect I got from others in my world. I relished the courtroom battles in which I could pit my wits against the top people in the educated straight world, and sometimes beat them at their own game. What else could someone like me hope for? It was odds on I was never going to play midfield for Chelsea and marry a popstar.

Why was I feeling like this? Is this how it happens? Can you suddenly just have enough of something, get so sated that it begins to make you sick? I could imagine eating so many cream cakes or crabsticks or watching so many Chuck Norris videos that they would make me ill; but this was my life I was thinking about. I tried to analyse what might be different about today that would make me think like this. Maybe I was losing my bottle. I was thirty-seven years old and I had been committing armed robberies since I was fifteen. Most of my life had been spent either in prison or on the run. What a waste. And here I was, fast approaching middle age, doing the same old self-destructive shit I had always done. I felt uncomfortable with these thoughts.

I watched the boys as they counted the money. No one noticed that I didn't join in. Andy and Danny were experienced robbers; they had both already served long prison sentences in some of the toughest jails in the country for it. Tommy, the wheel-man, had a background in cannabis cultivation, for which he had served time in the same prisons as the rest of us, and had only joined the team originally to get the cash to bankroll a huge skunk-growing operation. But, like the rest of us, once he got a taste for the money and excitement, everything else took second place.

We were a good team — staunch, loyal and totally committed to our profession and each other. I would trust these men with my life and I knew they felt the same about me. When not 'working', we socialized with each other and each other's families. One phone-call in times of trouble, from any of us, would be enough to get the other three to drop everything and come running.

On the surface we had our lives sorted. We made decent money and had plenty of leisure time in which to spend it. But deep inside, we all knew that one day — maybe tomorrow, maybe next week — we could be brought to book and forced to pay for what we were doing. Our payment might involve a bullet in the head from a Flying Squad ambush or a long stay in a top-security prison via the Old Bailey. We were professional career criminals and we knew the score. The best we could hope for was a good long run before the hammer dropped. We would cram as much 'good living' as we could into whatever time we had, storing up experiences as memories to sustain us during the bad decades. Every single moment was lived to the full and then carefully packed away; we were like bears gorging themselves before hibernation.

Nobody spoke about going back to prison. That kind of thing was a bok, a bad omen, and I have never met a robber who was not superstitious. We all had our little good-luck moves. Andy, though not religious, would cross himself before stepping into a bank. Danny always had to wear the same Reebok jacket on a bit of work and walk the getaway route the day before the job. Tommy had his lucky driving-gloves. And me? I always removed one bullet from the gun and put it in my pocket. The rituals of armed robbery.

We would hit two or three targets per month, mainly banks, working on snippets of information given, or bought, from our vast network of criminal associates, or sometimes from unsuspecting members of the 'straight-going' public. Mini-cab drivers are the best, they just cannot keep their mouths shut for five minutes. When the first Ikea superstore opened in Croydon, they had an account with local mini-cab firms to ferry their management to and from work. I learned that they had taken a quarter of a million pounds on their first weekend and that they were worried about their 'sub-standard security' just by talking to a mini-cab driver who drove Ikea's accounts manager and his secretary to work. The driver had no idea that I was a robber, but I gave him a £10 tip at the end of my journey and took his personal card for future reference. Coming a close second to mini-cab drivers in the information stakes are disgruntled employees who think that what they blurt out in their local pub at the weekend is covered by the rules of the confessional. The information is out there, floating around all the time, and there are people who make a good living from catching it and selling it on.