The Guv'nor by Lenny McLean Read Free Book Online Page A

The reason was that our parents had a sort of double standard of what was right and wrong. I’ve already said that everybody in the neighbourhood was at some kind of villainy, some of it mild, a lot of it serious. Dad was a thief, using crime to put steam on the table. But just let them catch their kids up to any nonsense – it’d be a good hiding. It wasn’t a big problem, though, all we earned went on the pictures, in the machines or into our bellies. We weren’t into clothes,not like today where kids will kill for a pair of fancy trainers or a jacket with the right label.
    We became more daring as time went on. My cousin Tony McLean had joined our little firm and he always thought big. It was his idea to start ‘creeping’. It had loads of variations, but usually it meant going into a big office block and pretending that we had a message to give our mum or dad or uncle or whoever. Because we were kids, nobody thought much of it. Then when we found an empty office we’d collar anything portable that could be turned into a few bob – stationery, petty cash boxes, handbags, even typewriters if they weren’t too heavy.
    We didn’t all go in, just two of us at a time. We were never nicked, though Tony and me got caught red handed once in one of the offices. I made myself look innocent and Tony pretended he was going to burst into tears. He was all choked up and said we were only looking for somewhere to have a pee and we’d got lost. What an actor! But it worked, though, and we got away.
    A bit more serious was nicking wages from factories on a Friday. The set up was the same, really, but as the haul was in cash it was well worth the risk. We weren’t stupid though, we spread our little operation all over the place. Then as we picked up a few quid we could afford to travel out a bit on trains or buses. It couldn’t go on, though. The law of averages said that, sooner or later, we’d take a tumble.
    It came sooner. On one of our trips out we were heading for Romford in Essex. The three of us, (Tommy, Andy and me) had just jumped on the first train that came in. We were in a carriage all on our own and, as usual, we were messing about – we didn’t know what to get up to next. Tom had the bright idea of nicking the pictures from the walls. That was in the days when every carriage had a couple of country scenes screwed up behind glass to brighten up your journey.
    He took one off and was just starting on the other one when Andy pulled the communication cord. Suddenly, it’s like the train’s run into a brick wall and we ended up on the floor. We started shitting ourselves. We opened the door and jumped on to the grass bank, looked up and down the track, then somebody shouted, ‘Oi, you little bastards!’ and we took off up the bank, over the fence, and just ran and ran over the fields. So now we were miles from anywhere, covered in shit and mud and scratched from head to foot. Tom had lost one of his shoes.
    We wandered about for hours, mostly walking behind hedges or in woods in case Old Bill was looking for us. Tom never stopped moaning about his foot, but he did look funny hopping along. It had just started to get dark when we came across a big garage, all lit up, with nothing else around.
    I said to Andrew, ‘Andy, do you reckon you can cream that place?’ He said, ‘No problem, just keep a look out for me.’
    So while we hid in a ditch opposite, he sneaked over and tucked himself behind a van. After a bit, a motor pulled in and the bloke in the office came out to fill it up with petrol. It wasn’t self-service like it is now. From where we were hiding we could see Andy, and as soon as the coast was clear he was in the office. Half a minute and he was out. We lost sight of him for a bit, then we saw him running like mad up the road. Still in the field, we started running after him, laughing and giggling. When we had a divvy