Stuart by Alexander Masters Page A

wicked. Just one small thing. What about the owner?’
    â€˜An old woman, on her own.’
    â€˜It don’t matter if she’s 104 with no legs. She isn’t going to want to give it to us. She won’t be able to give it to us. It will be in her safe, on a time lock.’
    â€˜Exactly,’ crowed Smithy. ‘We do it
before
it gets in her safe, on delivery day. I’ve got the times, everything. Every fortnight, Monday, 10.30 a.m.’
    It was early in the day, but Smithy was usually a bit brighter than this. ‘Smithy, on delivery day there’ll be guards. Remember them? The big fellas what likes hitting people with truncheons?’
    â€˜No, Stu, that’s the point. A friend worked there. The old dear doesn’t lock the money. She puts it under the counter until closing time. It’s down there, four, five hours, asking to be nicked. Twenty fucking grand. Then we’ll go back to my missus’ and have a proper party.’
    In the swirls of dust and summer leaves, Smithy and Stuart cracked open another round of cans and celebrated. A big winner. Twenty grand! Arabic riches! Stuart would be able to buy a caravan, and retire somewhere quiet and sympathetic, like Swansea.
    Three questioned following robbery *
    DETECTIVES were today questioning two men from St Ives and a third from Whittlesey in connection with a raid on a sub-post office near Whittlesey.
    Two raiders smashed their way into the post office at the Green, Coates, in broad daylight yesterday morning.
    They broke open the door and made off with an unknown quantity of cash. One raider, believed to be carrying a screwdriver, forced open the till and grabbed the money.
    The pair headed towards Whittlesey at 11.13 a.m. in an X-registration red Ford Cortina estate. It is believed they dumped it between Coates and Eastrea, changing to a red Escort car.
    He and Smithy figured it out afterwards, as they lounged in remand. ‘We were set up. How’d the Old Bill know it was us? We got away. We weren’t followed. The descriptions from the witnesses were terrible. Every one was different about the two assailants. How’d they get to your missus’ house so quick?’ said Stuart.
    â€˜The police were waiting outside, hidden, when we got back,’ he repeats to me, shocked by their duplicity. ‘They didn’t jump on us straight away. His missus–he was bang in love with her, and she had expensive tastes–she was looking right excited, then, crash. Loads of Old Bill on me back. Like insects. Old Bill crawling up the curtains, Old Bill under the sofa. Wherever you looked, fucking everywhere. Old Bill in the sink.’
    Stuart refuses to be drawn on the name of who set them up. He is old-fashioned about such things.
    â€˜Let’s just say it was funny the way as soon as we was sent down Smithy’s missus moved in with the fella who’d told us about the job. I’d only been out six months from my previous when I got banged up again for a five-stretch for this, and the joke was the old lady didn’t get no money that day. There wasn’t £20,000 there. The police had gone through the fucking routine of pretending she’d got a delivery, hadn’t they? Left a few hundred quid in the till. Didn’t want us to be put off, did they?’
    â€˜Five years. That’s pretty strong for stealing nothing, isn’t it?’ I ask.
    â€˜Not really. I’d been doing loads of silly things. Stupid things. They was getting pissed off with it.’
    â€˜Were you armed?’ I suggest.
    â€˜No,’ replies Stuart. ‘Well…only with a crowbar.’

    Stuart has forgotten to tell me something. (Perhaps, in fact, he does not remember. He does not keep a scrapbook of the newspaper reports of his notable moments as an ordinary person would. Any cuttings he might own have long since been destroyed in one of his periodic rages that purge his flat of possessions.)