Get a bit of a shock when, just before we reach it, blooming thing opens. And out comes this well dishy WPC. She takes in the situation immediately and, wrinkling her dainty little nose at the niff of Terence, says, “Looks like he’s going to have a night sobering up in the cells.”
Which is good. Means our cover has worked. Even a genuine cop thinks we’re the real deal.
“God, he smells disgusting,” she observes.
And it’s a pity she says that. Because what none of us had taken into account in our planning for the job is the vanity of youth. Boy like Terence is very sensitive about how he smells — that’s why he soaks himself in that disgusting aftershave. And he can’t bear the thought of this dishy WPC thinking he’s niffy. So he does a knee-jerk reaction and says — forgetting that he’s meant to be smashed out of his skull — he says in perfect, polite English, “Oh, it’s not me that smells, it’s the Parmesan.”
Well, the WPC looks rather suspicious at that, and, though we’re through the door before she has time to say anything else, Hopper and me recognise that this has got the job off to a bad start. Always going to be a risk bringing a Work Experience kid along with us.
Anyway, this isn’t the moment to tear the boy off a strip. Through the door, up the stairs, and, as Louis had promised, Hopper opens the door easy as if he’d had his own house key.
We’re inside the flat’s sitting room, and no one’s seen us except for the WPC. We listen for sounds of pursuit, but there’s nothing. We breathe sighs of relief, we’ve got away with it. I still don’t say anything to Terence, but his uncle gives him a quick dressing-down. Then we get out our torches and concentrate on the loot.
Bloody hell, Blob’s information was good. Everywhere our torch beams go, there’s gold and silver coins. Glass-fronted display cases all over the walls and on every other surface. We get out the nylon bags we’ve brought for the purpose and start filling them up with the clinking stuff. We’re not greedy, but there doesn’t seem much point in leaving any of them behind.
When all the display cases are empty, we do a quick shufti round the rest of the flat, but there’s nothing. All the collection was in that one room. Not that we’re complaining, mind. The haul we’ve got, once it’s been converted into readies by a specialist friend of mine on Westbourne Grove, will keep the lot of us in clover for a good few years.
I look through a window down to the parking lot at the back of the station. I flick my torch on and off with the prearranged signal. Headlights flash on one of the Pandas. Milton’s got our getaway car ready. Job very nearly done.
Then the phone in the flat rings.
Hopper and I stand still as statues, as if the handset could, like, see us if we moved. We grin at each other sheepishly and relax. The phone rings on and on.
And then — bloody hell — Terence only goes and answers it, doesn’t he?
“Hello,” he says.
Hopper’s across the room in nanoseconds. He’s snatched the receiver from the boy’s hand and ended the call. And he just stands there, looking at his nephew and shaking all over, at first too furious for his mouth to form words. Finally, he manages to say, “Why the hell did you answer it?”
“I thought it might be important,” the boy replies limply. “My mates at school who’ve done Work Experience say most of it’s answering phones.” His uncle just glares at him. “And photocopying,” adds Terence.
I’m in no mood to hang around. What should have been a straightforward job is now becoming a dead complicated — not to say dangerous — one. “Come on, move!” I say. And me and Hopper are out the door to the staircase. We don’t say a thing more to Terence. He’s got himself into this mess. He can get himself out of it.
But he’s not the only one in a mess. Soon as we emerge onto the staircase, we can’t help noticing that the area down the bottom of it is full of the Filth. And we’re standing there clutching nylon bags full of gold and silver coins. If you’re ever wanting to explain the meaning of the expression “caught red-handed,” you could do worse than describe the situation we was in at that moment. And all thanks to trying to give young Terence some Work Experience.
The dishy WPC’s there. I reckoned she alerted the others. And there’s a very senior-looking cop — at least a chief superintendent, I reckon — standing there holding a mobile phone. I’d put money on the fact it was him who just dialled the number of the flat.
“So,” he says, all silky-like. “Caught red-handed.” Proving the point that I just made.
Neither Hopper nor me can think of anything very bright to say by way of comeback to this, so we just stand there, totting up the likely sentence for combined Burglary and Impersonating a Police Officer. We’ve both got a bit of previous, so the tariff could be pretty harsh.
There ensues what I think Louis would describe as “an impasse.” We don’t move any farther down the stairs, the Filth don’t come up to get us. A Mexican standoff without the guns. Hopper and me have a nasty feeling we know how it’s going to end, though. The chances of us getting past the massed cops and out to Milton’s Panda are about as strong as those of a Premier League footballer speaking English.
Given the direness of our situation, we’d both forgotten about Terence. Then we hear the door behind us open and there he is.
He’s got his camcorder up to his eye, like he’s filming everything. Round his neck he’s wearing the identity pass he was bragging to Milton about in the car.
And Terence says to the cops, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” They look at him dead suspicious. They aren’t about to go soft on him because of his youth. They reckon he’s as much a part of the gang as Hopper and me. And he’s going to go down the same way we are.
But then Terence says, “You’ll be glad to know that your station has been selected to appear on Danger: Men at Work!”
The reaction to this is really amazing. The Filth’s faces, which a minute before were all stem and forbidding, suddenly break out into grins. Laughter even. All of them want to show what good sports they are. They can take a joke.
“Yes,” Terence goes on, “you don’t know it, but what you’re doing is at this moment being beamed by hidden cameras to the viewing public of Great Britain. You have been the victims of a Danger: Men at Work setup. I and my colleagues...” he gestured to me and Hopper “...are in fact actors... But I don’t think you can deny that you were about to arrest them, can you?”
Filth shuffle their feet a bit at this, and the chief superintendent geezer admits that yes, the thought had crossed his mind. Then he roars with laughter, still desperate to show what a good sport he is.
“And now,” Terence continues, “our hidden cameras will catch your reactions as my colleagues and I go through to the parking lot, where another actor is waiting in a hot-wired police Panda car!”
They think this is even funnier. Terence has been walking down the stairs as he speaks, and we’ve been moving ahead of him, so we’re all three at floor level by now. Carefully Terence puts his camcorder down on the newel post of the staircase, so that it’s facing right at the Chief Superintendent. The Chief Superintendent looks directly into the lens and beams like his daughter’s got married on the day he won the lottery.
“Gangway, please,” says Terence, and the Filth obediently move to give us a route out to the parking lot.
How long they stay grinning at the nonexistent cameras we don’t know, because as soon as the three of us are in Milton’s Panda, he puts his foot down and we’re out of there.
Everything else went smooth as you like. We met up with Louis, got the coins converted into legal tender, and went our separate ways. In my case, that meant taking the missus to the Seychelles for six months.