Читать книгу Gypsy Jane - Jane Lee - Страница 10
ОглавлениеI loved my sawn-off straight away.
By 1980 I was 14 and hanging around with a couple of older lads and we got into armed robberies together. How did I go from eating my sister’s goldfish to pointing shotguns at people for money? Well, I’m not too sure myself. What I do know is that money was scarce, I wasn’t attending school and it seemed like a good idea at the time. And you have to understand that the world I had been brought up in meant it wasn’t such a big deal. Everyone was up to a bit of this and a bit of that. When you consider I was barely living at home and was fending for myself, the idea of having a few quid in my pocket was quite appealing. So where was I going to get it from? I didn’t have that many options until the day one of my mates told me to pop round to his house. He was there with another mate talking about doing an armed robbery to make a lot of money. They were polishing there sawn-off shotguns and asked me if I wanted in. The excitement and adrenalin had already taken over and I told them I was in all right. This was my big break. I might have only been 14 but I was a lot older than my age suggested. I had grown up fast and I was more streetwise than most other people I knew. I was trusted by everyone. It was a life-changing moment but that didn’t mean it was complicated. I didn’t think twice.
‘I’m in, boys,’ I said.
‘We knew you would be, Gran. That’s why we came to you.’
A few thousand pounds to a 14-year-old is a lot of money – and that was even more so 30 years ago. The prospect of a few grand made me feel like a millionaire and I loved my sawn-off straight away. It started me off on a lifelong love affair with guns. There wasn’t all this CCTV stuff in those days, safes weren’t on timers and we didn’t come across triple-locking doors. Back then security for most businesses was a bell above the door and a mirror in the corner, and nobody ever got hurt because the staff didn’t want to die heroes for nothing. We never had any bullets in the guns but they didn’t know that. We weren’t going out to hurt anyone. We were just doing our job and we were good at it.
I don’t want to go into too many details about the jobs we did because I don’t want to remind the coppers of what happened. I mean, we did a few jobs in those days and I never got caught, and I could see how the police might be a bit upset about that. So the less said about that the better. Mind you, the coppers got their payback later on so, in a way, we are all square.
On the first job I ever did, one lad stayed in the getaway car and me and the other lad put on black balaclavas in broad daylight and went inside. We pulled the guns from under our coats and, before anyone could say anything, I just pointed my gun at the man behind the counter and screamed, ‘Give us the fucking money. Now!’ He must have been terrified because it all went into a brown cloth bag quicker than you can say Billy Whizz and we were away on our toes, into the waiting car and gone. I was giggling when I got in the car. It was a rush and my share was around two K.
I didn’t feel bad about it afterwards because nobody got hurt and it was not as if we were mugging people in the street and taking their hard-earned money. We weren’t going into their homes and taking what was theirs. I mean, we did the workers at the places we robbed a favour really. They would get six weeks off work with full pay because of their ordeal if they were smart enough to play their cards right. They could have a right touch just for getting robbed by us.
By this time Mum wasn’t doing any work herself. She hadn’t for a good couple of years because, to be brutally honest, the drink had fucked her. What Dad was earning as a painter and decorator was getting them by but I soon found out what made Mum smile – cold, hard cash. By giving Mum money, she turned a blind eye to what she thought I was up to because she could go out and spend it on whatever she wanted to. ‘Where is it coming from, Jane?’ she would ask and I’d reply, ‘I’m doing a bit of this and a bit of that, Mum, but don’t worry, I’m doing none of the other,’ and I would be gone. She didn’t want to hear the truth, even though inside she guessed what I was up to.
We all kept it from Dad but don’t get me wrong. He didn’t go without. We just made out that Mum got the extra money from buying and selling knocked-off gear here and there. Mum was happy, Dad was happy. In fact, everyone was happy – especially me!
This went on for two years. I was no longer looking scruffy. In fact, I felt like I had it all, which meant everyone around me did, as I’ve always been a giver. If I’ve got it, you can have it as far as I’m concerned. But one day the CID turned up at Mum and Dad’s door asking for me. Dad was in the pub at the time so Mum took over and said I wasn’t living there, which was true enough. Anyway, Mum said she didn’t know where I was and they can’t have had much to go on so they went on their way.
When Dad got home and heard the news, Mum said he went white with shock. Thank God they didn’t have Crimewatch in those days. Anyway, they had nothing on me, just some jealous local snitch giving information about what they thought was going on but didn’t really know. My mates had warned me not to tell anyone what we were up to, no matter how much I trusted them. People had to be treated on a need-to-know basis and most people didn’t need to know. That’s how people get caught and that’s why we never did. But that little visit spelled the end of my armed-robbery apprenticeship. I decided never to do another job. I knew it was coming on top and my luck would run out. I might have been wild but I wasn’t stupid. Then again, life doesn’t always let you do what you want.
By now Dad was getting suspicious as to what I had been up to and he searched the house for my gun but he didn’t find it because it wasn’t there. He said that, if the police ever found a gun in the house, they would take him away, as he was on a lifetime firearms ban for the crimes he did as a young man. That shook me up a bit. ‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ I told him. ‘My gun wasn’t here. You are never going down on account of me.’ I’d been keeping my gun hidden at a derelict pickle factory in Silvertown. It was well buried and I had no plans to dig it up.
