Life Goes On Read Online Free PDF

Limited? Not a patch on that racket. At least this stuff doesn’t weigh a ton. I brought in a hundredweight, all nicely hidden. In the East a column of porters carried it, and at London Airport they provide them nice squeaky trolleys for you to zig-zag your stuff through the Nothing to Declare gates. A word of advice, though: always get the squeakiest trolley. It’s made for you these days. No rough stuff, or straining your muscles with three hundredweight of gold packed in your waistcoat pockets. No sweating with fear, either, as long as you act your part and keep a straight face, which we’re always able to do, eh? Get me another cup o’ tea and a custard, there’s a good lad.’
    â€˜Fetch it yourself.’
    â€˜I was brought up in poverty,’ he said, ‘at Number Two Slaughterhouse Yard. If I don’t stay at luxury hotels I feel deprived and underprivileged. You understand what I’m trying to say, don’t you, Michael?’
    â€˜I think so.’
    â€˜Then get me another cup of tea, then, and two custard pies, the ones with the pastry a bit burnt.’
    His face had a pallor, and his eyes a shine, that suggested he was about to die. ‘What’s up, for God’s sake?’
    He wiped a salt tear from his face. ‘I’m in danger. I can’t tell you – though I will. I’ll come to it. I’m not afraid of dying, not me, not after going through the war with the Sherwood Foresters. That Normandy campaign was very rough. I nearly got killed once or twice.’
    â€˜I’ve heard that before.’ I’d never seen him so frightened. ‘Pull yourself together.’
    He smiled. ‘Another custard and a cup of tea will see me right.’
    I came back with his supplies, and watched him devour them. ‘Get on with your rigmarole.’
    He wiped his lips. ‘That little courier job brought me fifty thousand quid, but money doesn’t stick to me, Michael. I like it too much to have it long. I give with my left hand, and grasp tight with my right, which means I get rid of it sooner than if I was just plain generous. I’m jittery with so much wadding in my pockets. I like to go round the clubs and have a good time. Shove fifty quid in a tart’s hand and not even go to bed with her, then give another woman a good pasting because she won’t let me have a feel. What’s life for if you can’t fix yourself up with an orgy now and again? Ever had three women in bed with you? You ain’t lived.
    â€˜Anyway, I was broke, and then, providentially as I thought, I get this offer from the Green Toe Gang to be the driver of the third getaway car in a robbery. Now it ain’t a bank or post office or a wages snatch, but the flat of a former member of the gang who had half-inched a hundred thousand of their money, and now they wanted it back, meaning to deal with him later. The Green Toe Gangers had been told he was on holiday in St Trop, and had left his loot in a suitcase under his bed. You still get people like that, though to do him justice he thought it was just as safe where it was than in a bank with people like him and the Green Toe Gang around.
    â€˜You can imagine how they trusted me absolutely? I’m a fool, Michael, always have been. You see, a few days before The Day one of Moggerhanger’s men, Kenny Dukes, that bastard whose arms are so long he ought to be in a circus, and who used to be chief bouncer at one of Lord Claud’s lesbian clubs, said Moggerhanger would like to see me. Well, I thought, I’ve nothing to lose, and let myself be taken to his big house at Ealing, and over a whisky and soda he persuaded me to drive the getaway car straight up north to a bungalow in Lincolnshire called Smilin’ Thru’ on the outskirts of Back Enderby, and deliver the cash there. Instead of me getting five per cent, which was what the Green Toe Gang had promised, he would give me half. Well, I ask