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dozed off because around three in the morning I was woken
by Tony and told to get ready.
    We left by the front door. The receptionist was long
in bed and, back then, night watchmen were a luxury few small hotels needed or
could afford – so no one saw us leave. We hailed a taxi and headed south and
over the River Thames.
    I remember being surprised at how quiet the streets
were. I had always imagined London to be a 24/7 sort of place but around us the streets
were more alive with rubbish than people.
    We reached an industrial district and got out of the
taxi. George took a battered A to Z from his pocket and orientated himself
before plunging us into a maze of canyons created by warehouse walls. For
twenty minutes we wandered, sometimes backtracking until Tony pointed at a
small two storey building. George nodded and we crossed the road, all the time
keeping our eyes open for signs of life.
    There was a double door to the building - I didn’t
need to be asked and went straight to work on the lock and cracked it in
seconds. A set of stairs faced us, leading up to the second floor, and my
services were required again at the top.
    We stepped into a barnyard of a place. Steel columns
stretched into the distance like soldiers on parade. In between the columns
there were long stretches of workbenches, each attended by row upon row of
stools. At the far end there was a small smattering of offices and we made for
the last one.
    It was locked but, before I could pull the locksmith’s
kit from my pocket, George picked up a block of wood from a nearby table and
put it through the glass in the door.
    Inside I was faced with a steel door on the far wall,
not unlike the one in the bookies that I had cut my teeth on. I set to work and
once inside I had expected to find a safe but, instead, the room contained rows
of small boxes built into the wall, floor to ceiling, each with its own
keyhole. I had never seen inside a bank vault but I thought this is what the
safety deposit room would look like.
    I asked which box we were after and George shrugged
and told me to do them all. I gasped - there were easily two hundred boxes and,
outside, the light was moving from night to dawn.
    I started on my left and it took a few minutes to pop
the first one but once I had the measure of the locks, the rest fell with ease.
Even so it took over an hour before George called Tony over and examined the
contents of the latest box I had opened.
    They removed what lay inside and told me to call it
quits and we made for the exit and this is when the world went south.

Chapter 10
     
    As we exited the office the first sign of trouble
barrelled into the work area in the shape of four men, three armed with
crowbars and one with a sawn off baseball bat. They were at one end of the
workspace and we were at the other.
    As soon as George saw them he reached into his coat,
took out the package from the safety deposit box and handed it to me.
    ‘That way,’ he pointed to a fire escape. ‘We’ll take
care of this.’
    I didn’t argue. The intruders were eating up ground
between us like cheetahs on heat. I put my head down and ran. Behind me there
was a brief silence and then a grunt as wood connected with flesh and bone.
    I hit the fire escape door at full tilt but in the
seventies quick release fire doors were still to be introduced, and I bounced
off it - ending up on my backside. The noise behind me was racking up and I
grabbed a quick look see.
    George and Tony were holding centre stage. George with
a cosh that I knew he kept in his jacket and Tony with a lump of two by two he
had ripped from a table.
    I returned my attention to the door, realised my
mistake, flipped the door handle and was gone. Dropping down the metal
staircase onto the alley below I struggled to get my bearings, so I mentally
flipped a coin and began running.
    Soon I was swallowed by the warehouse labyrinth and,
after a while my energy levels fell off, forcing me to drop to a walk. I