Once Upon a Crime by Jimmy Cryans Page A

three feet to the left of the window which could be reached at a stretch. We were in luck but I knew that this would be no easy task for Alison.
    I turned and faced her and said, ‘Now, listen to me, Alison. The cops will be here any minute. I’ve bought us a wee bit of time by locking our bedroom door and they will take a bit of time before they try this door, so we have to move fast. There is a drainpipe outside this window which can be reached. I’ll go out first with the bag and I will guide you out and stay on the pipe until I have you secure. I will stay right below you all the way down and guide you. I know it won’t be easy but it is our only chance. Are you up for it, sweetheart?’
    ‘Yes, James. I’ll be shitting myself but we have no choice, do we?’
    I have to give Alison bundles of credit for courage because it wasn’t easy, not even for me, but she did not flinch and in a few moments we were standing in the courtyard. But we were not safe yet. The exit from the courtyard to the street was through an arch and standing on the pavement at the exit were three uniformed coppers. We retreated to the rear of the courtyard and encountered a six-foot high wooden fence.
    I threw the holdall over and then gave Alison a punt over and followed her in a second. We found ourselves in the rear of some commercial premises and I very quickly found a wayonto the adjoining street. We moved through a series of back streets and came upon a quiet little pub. For the moment we had evaded the trap but I knew that we had to put some distance between ourselves and the law, and quickly. We had a quick drink – I think Alison was in need of one – and then I asked the governor of the boozer to phone us a taxi, saying that we wanted to go to Bracknell.
    The taxi arrived and once we were inside I told the driver to head for Maidenhead – the opposite direction to Bracknell. From there we got a train into London, getting off in Paddington. I managed to find us a quiet little hotel and we booked in for the night. The two of us were exhausted but the funny thing, and I had experienced this before, was that the two of us couldn’t wait to rip the clothes off each other and we made love in a frenzy. It was some of the best sex I have ever experienced. Whatever it was I had no complaints and when it was over we fell asleep naked in each other’s arms.
    The following morning we caught the first available train to Glasgow where my da Hughie had some bad news for us. The cops had been to his door that morning looking for us. They hadn’t mentioned the robbery in Reading but had said they were trying to trace Alison, whose mother had reported her as a missing person. Hughie told us that he would take us over to an empty house he had access to in another part of the east end. It was a two-room apartment and fully furnished. I was so grateful to Hughie – he always came through for me and he never asked too many questions.
    I had been out of the loop in Glasgow for a few years so my contacts were limited. It really became a case of fending for ourselves, which meant that I had to get out and look for some earners. For me, the best solution was to stick to whatI knew and I went back to looking at bank jobs which kept our heads above water.
    Alison did not complain once and I know it must have been tough for her. And of course I was missing my own family, but for the time being we would have to stay put, at least until things had settled down, and to give me the chance to try to find out exactly why the law were looking for me. Was it because I had absconded from? Was it to do with Alison being on the missing list? Or, worst case scenario, was it to do with the robbery in Reading? The big question for me was: how did the cops know what hotel we had been in, and how did they know that I had registered under the name of Mr Stewart? Apart from Alison and myself, the only other person who knew was Graham Pierce. I had to find out if he had been