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Anyway, like I said, Louis cased the joint. We always work that way — get a place looked at by someone who’s not going to be involved in the actual thieving. Louis’s good for that kind of work. Seeing him for the first time, it’d never occur to you that he’d ever broken the law in his life. And certainly not that he’s the brains behind our outfit. We don’t have a leader as such, but Louis is the one we all refer to, check stuff out with. You’d never know it, though. He looks like a retired schoolteacher, all thick glasses and shapeless corduroy. And he’s got this bumbling way about him. No one’s surprised when he takes wrong turnings and walks into places he shouldn’t.

That’s how he played it when he was casing the police station. Told us all about it at the planning meeting. “It was my intention,” he says, “to make a cursory preliminary examination of the exterior, and to that end I wandered about in the manner of a superannuated gentleman whose mental faculties were challenged by the task of finding the main entrance.”

(Another thing about Louis, he does tend to use a lot of long words. Rest of us don’t always understand all of them, but most of us usually get his gist.)

“My scrutiny confirmed our most optimistic expectations. Though the police station itself is guarded by a plethora of CCTV cameras and other security devices, there is nothing to monitor who enters or leaves the first-floor flat”

“Except,” objected Milton, who, despite the contrary impression given by his looks, reckons he’s quite quick on the old logic, “surely anyone who gets up to the first-floor entrance is going to have to go through the police station’s surveillance system? Unless you’re suggesting we use a helicopter.”

Louis holds up a hand to quieten him, like Milton was some kid talking out of turn. The way he done it suggested the old boy really must have been a schoolteacher at some point, before he saw the light and come over to our side.

“What you say is correct. And any attempt to gain access to the upstairs flat by its main entrance would be extremely hazardous.”

“You suggesting we smash in through the windows, then?”

“Milton, Milton, if you have a fault, it is that you tend to be too precipitous. You want everything to happen immediately. Which, while an excellent and desirable quality in a getaway driver, is an instinct which must at times be curbed during normal social intercourse.”

“Er...?” says Milton, who’s never been as good at getting Louis’s gist as the rest of us.

“What I am asking is that you allow me to make my report in my own style. And at my own pace.” This was said in a way that must have made a good few fourth-formers cower over the years. It certainly had the effect of shutting Milton up.

“Having ascertained the security situation on the exterior of the building,” Louis went on, at his own pace, “I then decided I should extend my investigation to the interior. Not wishing to raise suspicions, I developed the already-assumed persona of a somewhat confused elderly gentleman. My cover story was to be that, while entrusted with the care of my grandson’s gerbil, I had inadvertently allowed it to escape through my open back door, and I was hoping to enlist the assistance of the police to secure the rodent’s recapture.

“When I entered the building, I discovered that there was a queue of other complainants and the desk sergeant was preoccupied by a large lady, bearing a more than passing resemblance to Boadicea, who was insisting that, unless her neighbour could be persuaded to clip his leylandii, blood would flow.

“After some minutes of sitting waiting, I rose and, with a mumbled explanation about ‘prostate trouble,’ asked a passing WPC to be pointed towards the gentlemen’s lavatory.

“I was directed through a door into a central area where, serendipitously, the male and female conveniences turned out to be placed either side of a substantial staircase. The space was occupied only by a few filing cabinets and some broken-down chairs. It wasn’t anyone’s office, just a glory-hole on the way to the police cells and the station’s back entrance.

“Anyway, at the top of the staircase I could see a wall not included in the building’s original design, into which was set another door. This, I felt certain, must give access to the flat upstairs. Exaggerating my assumed decrepitude — just in case anyone should come in and see me — I climbed the stairs, which were dusty with disuse, as was the small strip of landing in front of the wall. And the good news is that the lock on the door up there is of such simplicity that it would take someone of Hopper’s talents a matter of seconds to open it with his bare fingernails.”

Our lock-man accepted the compliment with a modest smile. Louis also smiled and placed his hands flat on the table to indicate that his report was finished. Milton was still cowed by the schoolmasterly reprimand he had received, so I was the one who asked the obvious question. “You’re saying we should make our way into the flat from inside the police station?”

“You have a very acute understanding, Chico. That is exactly what I meant.”

We were all silent for a moment. Then I showed I was prepared to ask another obvious question. “But won’t the Filth notice? I mean, look at us. Say it’s just Hopper and me does the job. The only way we two would look right in a cop shop is with handcuffs on.”

“Dressed like that, you would indeed, Chico. But were you to don the habiliments of a member of Her Majesty’s constabulary, you would present a much less incongruous picture.”

Okay, I’d never heard the word “habiliments” in my life before, but I was still getting Louis’s gist. “You mean we dress up as coppers?”

“Indubitably.”

Hopper and me exchanged looks. One thing neither of us likes doing is committing more than one crime at a time. A burglary of gold and silver coins is one thing, but doing it while “impersonating a police officer”... well, that’s dead iffy.

“What about me?” asks Milton. “Won’t people smell a rat when they see two coppers legging it into the getaway car?”

“No, they won’t,” Louis purred. “They will think it the most natural thing in the world.”

“How’dya mean?”

“Milton, Milton, what could be more natural than for two police officers to get into the back of a Panda car driven by another police officer?”

“You’re saying I’m going to be in fancy dress and all?”

“Yes, Milton.”

“And I’m going to hot-wire a police Panda?”

“Yes, Milton.”

There was another silence. Long one, this time. Then I says, “Come on, Louis, tell us how it’s going to work.”

So he told us. We asked a lot of questions, we pulled the plan apart, tested it for weaknesses. And at the end, not for the first time, we all agreed that Louis was a blooming genius.

It was then that Hopper shuffled in the idea of his nephew Terence coming along for Work Experience.

I thought teenagers was meant to be silent. Grumpy, always going off to their bedrooms in a huff, shutting the world out with their iPods, never giving their parents or any other adults the time of day. Well, that evening, soon as Terence, escorted by his uncle Hopper, joined Milton and me in the car on the way to the job, it was clear he didn’t fit the moody teenage stereotype. Blab, blab, blab all the time with him. I tell you, spend half an hour with that boy and you’ll come away with permanently bent ears.