Thief by Greg Curtis

became a way of life. It wasn’t just the guilt, though that was there. It was his certain knowledge that there was so little worth saving out there, so few decent people mixed in with so much evil. They had to be protected at all costs.
     
    He had long since accepted that there was no God to look after the good people of the world. If he existed then he’d never given a damn about Mikel or any of the other poor souls on this pitiful hunk of dirt. The law was also a pitiful defence against organized crime and its agents were often criminals themselves. There was no one and nothing to stand between the darkness and the light. There was no afterlife to reward those who suffered now. Therefore Mikel had to be that. He had to protect and encourage the lives of those that lived now, and leave the question of souls for priests to play with. He hadn’t been in a church since he’d been driven from his family.
     
    It was a view that was now suffering a horrible demise as he spoke with an angel of the Lord.
     
    From those early days it had been a simple progression to the present. The scale and complexity of his crimes had grown over the decades, as had the profits, but he’d kept little of them back for himself. Once he was housed and fed he found he had little use for the excess money. Some people, he knew, would have spent every last cent on a magnificent edifice with countless servants, but it just wasn’t him. His own modest home on the island was more than comfortable enough for him, and he had lived here for so long he couldn’t have faced the thought of living anywhere else.
     
    He kept a modest cash reserve for himself, a just in case fund, and an operational budget, but that amounted to the tiniest fraction of his takings. Then again he had to admit looking at the angel, that he was by no means poor either. That tiny fraction he’d kept back for himself, amounted to multi-millions in anyone else’s books. He had bought himself some expensive toys, an E type Jaguar housed in his Paris apartment, and a fleet of other expensive cars that he never used. He had other houses and apartments all over the world. Partly they were convenient, but still all were much more luxurious than he really needed. He had a yacht, something he’d bought on the spur of the moment and then never really felt at home in. Crime had done well by him also.
     
    Yet if he was rich, then those he stole from were often richer still, and their money was steeped in the blood of the innocent. Many times he’d stolen hundreds of millions from single crime lords who’d lived like kings. They had so much money they scarcely knew what to do with it. Yet they still wanted more, and the innocent would have to pay for it. All things were relative.
     
    As a result he found he had an enormous amount left over to give to those more in need, and that did appeal to him. He knew too well what it was like to be poor and homeless, never knowing where your next meal was coming from, or if you’d find shelter that night. And there was a certain justice in taking the profits of his crimes and giving them to the victims of those he stole from. Besides, somewhere along the way he had found there was a greater reward in giving than in spending. And he needed all the reward he could get. Rage couldn’t keep a man warm all the days of his life.
     
    In memory of Samantha he had started with alcohol and drug programmes across the world. And for her sister he had started sponsoring women’s refuges. Third world countries had needs all of their own and so benefited accordingly with hospitals and schools by the score. School had been his refuge as a child so it seemed only fitting he should return the favour.
     
    In fact, his biggest problem of the last decade or so had been how to donate such enormous amounts of money without being spotted. For even though it wasn’t a crime to give, not paying tax was, and worse it was highly frowned upon by governments. Meanwhile