khasi, and nicks a set of trade plates and these overalls.”
He nodded eagerly, as if to lend his own approval to his actions. “Then
I come on here.”
Tony stared at him in amazement, then burst out laughing. “You mad
bastard!” he chuckled.
Jesse looked relieved. “I done the best thing for it, though, didn’t I?”
Tony’s laughter subsided. “You mad bastard,” he repeated. “Here you are,
with a fortune in hot money in the van, and you stop”-his chest heaved,
and he wheezed with renewed laughter’ you stop at a garage and nick a
pair of overalls!” Jesse smiled too, not from amusement but out of the
pleasure of a fear removed. Then he became serious again. “There is
proper bad news, though.”
“Gorblimey, what else?”
“The van driver tried to be a hero.”
“You never killed him?” Tony said anxiously.
“No, just knocked him on the head. But Jacko’s shooter went off in the
fracas”-he pronounced it frackars–and Deaf Willie got hit. In the boat
race.
He’s bad, Tone.”
“Oh, balls.” Tony sat down suddenly on an old three legged stool.
“Oh, poor old Willie. Did they take him up the hospital, did they?”
Jesse nodded. “That’s why Jacko’s not here.
He’s took him. Whether he got there alive …”
“That bad?”
Jesse nodded.
“Oh, balls.” He was silent for a while. “He don’t get no luck, Deaf
Willie. The one ear’s gone already, and his boy’s a mental case, and his
wife looks like Henry Cooper–and now this.” He clicked his tongue in
sorrow. “We’ll give him a double share, but it won’t mend his head.” He
got up.
Jesse opened the van, relieved that he had managed to convey the bad
news without suffering Tony’s wrath.
Tony rubbed his hands together. “Right, let’s have a look at what we
got.”
There were nine gray steel chests in the back of the van. They looked
like squat metal suitcases, each with handles at both ends, each secured
by a double lock. They were heavy. The two men unloaded them, one by
one, and lined them up in the center of the- barn. Tony looked at them
greedily. His expression showed an almost sensual pleasure. He said:
“It’s like Ali Baba and the forty bloody thieves, mate.”
Jesse was taking plastic explosive, wires and detonators out of a duffel
bag in a corner of the barn. “I wish Willie was here to do the
bang-bangs.”
Tony said: “I wish he was here, full stop.”
Jesse prepared to blow open the chests. He stuck the jellylike explosive
all around the locks, attached detonators and wires, and connected each
tiny bomb to the plunger-type trigger. Watching him, Tony said: “You
seem to know what you’re doing.”
“I’ve seen Willie do it often enough.” He grinned.
“Maybe I can become the firm’s peter man-” “Willie ain’t dead,” Tony
gruffly.
“Not so far as we know.”
Jesse picked up the trigger and, trailing wires, took it outside. Tony
followed him.
Tony said: “Drive the van outside, in case of the petrol going up, know
what I mean?”
“There’s no danger–”
“You’ve never done a peter before, and I’m not taking the risk.”
“Okay.” Jesse closed the rear doors and backed the van into the
farmyard. Then he opened the bonnet and used crocodile clips to connect
the trigger with the van’s battery.
He said: “Hold your breath,” and pressed the plunger.
There was a muffled bang.
The two men went back inside. The chests stood in line with their tops
hanging open at odd, twisted angles.
“You done a good job,” Tony said.
The chests were neatly and tightly packed. The bundles of notes were
stacked twenty across, ten wide, and five deep: one thousand bundles per
chest. Each bundle contained one hundred notes.
That made one hundred thousand notes per chest.
The first six chests contained ten-shilling notes, obsolete and
worthless.
Tony said: “Jesus H. Christ.”
The next contained oncers, but it was not quite full. Tony counted eight
hundred bundles. The last chest but one also contained one-pound notes,
and it was full. Tony said: “That’s better. Just about right.”
The last chest was packed solid with tenners.
Tony muttered: .”Gawd help us.”