‘I’ll put the word out, how hard can she be to find. Plus, I think she’ll stay close, she seems fond of you.’

‘You don’t think I need get another shooter.’

‘Naw, I’ll do it, a fella offered me a grand yoke last week, I was going to buy it anyway.’

‘What is it?’

‘A Smith and Wesson 38. The Bodyguard Airweight one. It holds a little heavy in yer hand but I like that.’

‘Where’d he get it?’

‘You know those holiday apartments over in Kensington, the Arabs rent them? Turning one of those over, he found it in the fridge.’

‘On ice so to speak.’

‘Yeah. Best of all, it has a shrouded hammer.’

‘Which does what exactly?’

‘Stops it tangling if you’re carrying it in yer pocket.’

‘Ammunition?’

‘Does the Pope have beads.’

The first bank we took was in Chingford. Yeah, like that, how many folks have you met who’ve been there… let alone heard of it. These small areas, who’d rob them… who’d bother. Yet they usually hold a shitpile of money. Can’t be bothered moving it on and security is a joke. We didn’t see it as a career move, we were hurting for readies and didn’t want to play in our own manor. Doc said to me, ‘I’d like to rob a bank in Chingford.’

‘They have a bank?’

‘Let’s find out.’

First we had to find the whorin’ place. But even then, the pattern was being set. We ‘borrowed’ a car in Ealing and hit off. Went in hard. Wearing balaclavas and boiler suits, shouting like fuck. I thought all the roaring was to intimidate the customers and staff. But it’s to keep you rolling, keep you hyper. It was so easy, they near threw the money at us. In and out in six minutes and the buzz was so manic, we took down the post office as well. Fuck knows, we’d have gone in the building society but they’d closed. I was cooking, a white energy moving through me, like sex, I wanted to rob every premises on the High Street. Doc grabbed my arm, shouted, ‘Enough, let’s go… get a fucking grip on yourself.’