‘No!’ Mr Lucey said.
That was it, the moment I made a weird sound I’d never heard from myself or anybody else. Mr Lucey and my dad looked around at me.
‘Are you all right, son?’ Dad said.
I nodded, but I wasn’t all right at all – that was Freaky Fitzer’s mam and dad’s door they broke down! He was a bully, but he didn’t deserve that.fn2
‘Word on the wind is they didn’t find Roland’s cash,’ my dad said.
Of course they didn’t – my friends and I had it! The local newspapers had carried loads of stories about it. One of the articles featured a comment by Jim Roland’s granny. ‘I’m not the same since,’ she said.
It was terrible to read. I thought I’d be sick. I was still off my food and my mam wasn’t happy.
‘Maybe I’ll take you to the doctor.’
‘I’m fine, Mam.’
‘I’m not sure you are.’
‘I am. I’m just not hungry.’
I heard her talking to Rachel on the phone. ‘He’s losing weight, and the smell in the bathroom after him. It would burn the eyes out of your head.’
‘MAM!’ I said, and I could hear Rachel laugh at the other end of the phone. I left when she started talking to Rachel about the robbery. I couldn’t listen to it any more. Jim Roland’s granny’s words – ‘I’m not the same since’ – really played on my mind. What if we’d ruined her life? It was a huge burden. What if we do succeed in robbing the security men and they lose their jobs? What if they can’t get any other jobs? What if their families end up starving and homeless? I had started something that I couldn’t stop. I was trapped. I was tormented.
23
The Question
On the night before the Ireland–Netherlands match, Johnny J asked me to eat dinner at his house. By that point I was so sick and so scared that despite the hummingbird, or maybe because of it, I decided I was going to tell him I just couldn’t rob again. Auntie Alison cooked spaghetti bolognese. Uncle Ted read the newspaper. Johnny J and I watched some of the highlights from Italy v Czechoslovakia and Germany v Colombia on the telly. When dinner was ready, Uncle Ted went upstairs (on Auntie Alison’s instruction) to bring Johnny J’s mam down for dinner. Auntie Alison directed Johnny J and me to the table and it took ages before Uncle Ted arrived down with Mrs Tulsi. She saw me and smiled a big wide smile. Uncle Ted was holding her up, keeping her close. She had a scarf on her head and you could see she was completely bald under it. Her eyebrows were gone too, but she still had those big watery grey eyes that Johnny J had and his Auntie Alison did too. She was really thin, but the veins in her arms and hands were fat and sticking out.fn1 It was shocking. I wanted to cry. I closed my eyes and remembered how she used to look.
‘I haven’t seen you in months, Jeremy, and look how you’ve grown.’ Her voice sounded different.
I couldn’t talk, so I just nodded and messed with my ponytail.
Uncle Ted helped her to her chair. She sat beside Johnny J. She gave him a kiss on the cheek, and when her hand dropped under the table, I saw him reach for it and they sat beside one another quietly holding hands, but only for a few seconds.
‘What’s this?’ she said to Auntie Alison.
‘Spaghetti bolognese. It’s good for you, so just try to eat some,’ Auntie Alison said.
‘Very fancy,’ Mrs Tulsi said, and Uncle Ted laughed.fn2
‘Nothing but the best for our Alison,’ he said, and Auntie Alison just gave him that look, the one my mam gave my dad when she was unimpressed with him.
‘And why not? Don’t I deserve the best?’ she said coldly, and Uncle Ted shut up and ate. Mrs Tulsi ate a few bites and everyone praised her.
‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘That must be the first meal I’ve had in a good while.’
‘Five weeks, Mam,’ Johnny J said.
Uncle Ted ruffled Johnny J’s hair.
Mrs Tulsi asked me about my plans for secondary school.
‘I’m going to Luke’s cos that’s where Johnny J is going.’ That wasn’t strictly true. I was really going there because my brother went there, but I just wanted to make a point. Everyone stayed quiet, but Mrs Tulsi looked sad, Auntie Alison looked annoyed, but then she always looked annoyed, she had that kind of face, and Uncle Ted smiled and winked at me.
The spaghetti bolognese was probably the best spaghetti bolognese I’d ever eaten, but I was still glad to go. After seeing Mrs Tulsi I couldn’t tell Johnny J I wasn’t going to do the robbery, though by that point I was such a mess I wondered if they would be better off without me.
Auntie Alison told Johnny J to be home by 10 p.m.
‘Don’t go too far,’ she said.
‘I’m only going to Jeremy’s,’ he said.
‘Well, make sure you don’t go any further. Until they catch those thieves, you wouldn’t know what you’d find yourself up against,’ she said.
Johnny J blushed red. I wasn’t sure if he was embarrassed because he was one of the thieves she was talking about or if he was annoyed that she was acting like she was his mam already. Mind your own business, Auntie Alison!
I tried to be cool, to remain calm and pretend. I wasn’t very good at it and my friend knew me well. He could see I was panicking.
‘You’re still with me, aren’t you, Jeremy?’
‘Of course,’ I said, and I meant it even if it killed me.
Johnny J spent the rest of his evening rehearsing with the band. It was their third night practising in a row. If Johnny J was honest with himself he was starting to enjoy it, and if I was honest with myself they were starting to sound a lot better. Now that Johnny J was playing with them they dropped the backing tracks and he played guitar.
Rich was on a high. ‘We’re going to be the next U2,’ he kept saying, and I felt sorry for him, because Johnny J made his band good and Johnny J was only there for one gig. This time next week we’d probably either be in prison or Johnny J would be in England living with Auntie Alison. So that last night, while Johnny J lost himself in his guitar, playing and singing sad songs about roses, thorns, cowboys, I wrote a letter to God.
Dear God,
I hope you are well. This is Jeremy Finn here. I confess that I have sinned. In my thoughts (I planned a robbery) and words (I talked about it too), in what I have done (I robbed a granny) and what I have failed to do (I failed to get enough money to send Johnny J’s mam to America). And I’m doing it again, all of it – planning, talking, robbing and hoping not to fail again. I’m asking for forgiveness for what I’ve done and what I’m about to do, and I’m begging you to help us save Mrs Tulsi. You can put us in prison if you really feel you need to punish us. I understand we are committing very big sins, but please, God, save Mrs Tulsi.
Thanks very much,
Jeremy.
PS Please make me better at maths.
PPS And help me fit into my new secondary in September. (If I’m not in jail.)
PPPS And if my dad could win the Lotto, that really would be brilliant.
I folded up the letter and put it under my mattress for God to find.
After that I covered my head with my pillow and thought about the kind of letters I’d write home from prison.
‘Dear Mam, I used to like bunk beds. I don’t any more.’
‘Dear Mam, my new cellmate is called Stab-a-Rasher. I’m really scared.’
‘Dear Mam, I miss food.’
‘Dear Mam, I miss you.’
I cried myself to sleep the night before we robbed Walker’s dad’s security van, and in the weeks and months that followed I realised I wasn’t the only one.
24
The Hiccup
I told my mam that the lads and I planned to cycle to the beach and spend the day there. I said I’d be up and out before the rest of the house got up for breakfast. I didn’t say I would be leaving at 4.30 a.m.! She didn’t ask and was happy enough about it. She liked it when I was out of the house, and she also thought getting up early was a healthy and good thin
g. My nerves were gone. I was a shuddering, shaking wreck of a boy, but I was trying my best. As I was lying to her and she was smiling at me and reminding me to take the sun cream just in case the sun came out, I realised I might never speak to her again without the presence of a police officer or prison guard, so I hugged her tightly and held on, even when she rubbed my head, and I hated when she did that.
‘Everything’s OK isn’t it, Jeremy?’ she said.
‘Everything’s fine, Mam,’ I lied.
‘I know you’re worried about Johnny J and his mammy,’ she said, and tears sprang into my eyes because, yes, I was worried. I was worried all the time.
‘All we can do is help them, the best way we can,’ she said, and she was right. That’s what I was doing, helping my friend and his mam in the best way I could. That thought got me out of bed at 4.30 in the morning, it helped me get dressed, and then I packed the Ireland gear and the stupid face paint in my backpack just in case we didn’t make it home in time to change before the game. I crept down the stairs, jumping over the two middle creaking steps, and ran out my front door without making a sound, even though my hands and legs were shaking so much my bones rattled!
Johnny J was sitting on the wall waiting for me. He was pale and his hair and eyes were bigger than usual, making him kind of mad-looking.
‘OK?’ I asked.
‘I threw up,’ he said.
I hadn’t. I had nothing left in me.
Charlie cycled to meet us. She was red-eyed. I think she’d been crying, but when Johnny J asked if she was OK, she smiled and said she was great. We just nodded, even though we knew she was lying. She was trying her best. We cycled to Walker’s. He and Sumo were waiting there. His dad’s work was a fifteen-minute cycle from Walker’s house. We cycled in silence.
It was 4.59 a.m. when we arrived. We ditched the bikes in some bushes and Walker took out his trusty binoculars as we hunkered down behind some thorns. A lot of ‘Ouch’ and ‘MOVE OVER!’ followed. Walker told everyone to ‘SHUSH.’ We did, even though we were lying in thorns.
He watched the building and we waited. The security men left at 5 a.m. on the dot. They both got in separate cars and they drove in separate directions.
‘Let’s go,’ Walker said, and we all stood up, slowly and painfully.
Sumo had a thorn sticking right into his cheek. He didn’t seem to notice. Charlie pulled it out and showed it to him.
‘Cool,’ he said.
We followed Walker through the hole in the fence that he knew was there. He said his dad always complained it needed fixing. Sumo didn’t fit through. Walker ran around to the gate and opened it for him. We walked up to the door, and that’s when we heard the dogs, barking and snarling.
‘Dogs!’ I shouted.
‘Big dogs,’ Charlie shouted.
‘They’ll kill us all,’ Johnny J shouted.
Sumo ran into a wall, trying to escape. Walker just laughed.
‘It’s a recording they put on to frighten anyone off,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of minding in real dogs.’ He pressed the numbers on the keypad. The door made a buzzing sound. He pushed it hard. It opened and we were in.
The place was empty of people but full of vans and the sound of vicious dogs barking. It was dark and terrifying.
‘Follow me,’ Walker said, and we walked in line behind him. Johnny J, Me, Charlie and Sumo, each one of us holding on to the person in front of them. Walker tried to put the key in a van to open it. It didn’t open. He went down the line, trying to open each van with no luck.
‘Do you not know your dad’s van?’ Charlie asked.
‘They all look the same, not to mention it’s dark,’ he said.
It was a good point. The fourth van he checked was his dad’s van. It clicked open. He opened the back door and revealed the inside. As soon as Titch opened the doors he’d see Sumo standing there with pepper spray, and Johnny J and Walker standing behind him. Sumo was there to hold down Titch, Johnny J to take in the money through the slot and Walker because he knew how to open the double-locking system in the back of the van. Charlie and I were to follow the van on bikes. Johnny J kept one walkie-talkie. I had the other. Charlie and I needed to stay close enough to them to keep in touch – anything over ten metres apart and the walkie-talkies were useless. It was our job to tell the boys what was happening in the outside world, because there were no windows in the back of the van. We needed to access escape routes and alert them when it was the best time to jump out and make a run for it. Ideally we were looking for somewhere where they could jump out undetected and just blend in as quickly as possible.
In the cold light of morning our plan was already in trouble. If Titch saw the lads just standing in his van, he’d run and shout for help.
‘Sumo needs to get out of the van,’ Charlie said as she walked over to some security uniforms hanging in an open wardrobe against the wall. She picked up a large uniform.
‘Where do I go?’ Sumo asked.
‘Put this on and sit in the corner, keep your head down, don’t talk to anyone,’ Charlie said.
She turned to me. ‘Change of plan,’ she said. ‘I can see the whole floor from the top window over there.’ She pointed as she spoke. I looked up. She was talking about a second-floor window.
‘Eh, how do you get up there?’ I asked.
‘There’s a tree right beside it,’ she said, and she said it in a tone that suggested I was stupid.
‘I’ll keep watch, and when Titch approaches the van, I’ll radio Sumo, and, Sumo, you walk over and as soon as he opens the door you push him in. Johnny J, be ready to gag and tie him up immediately. Sumo, jump in straight after.’
Johnny J nodded.
‘I don’t want to hurt him,’ Sumo said.
‘We push each other all the time – do we get hurt?’ Walker said.
‘No,’ Sumo said.
‘Exactly,’ Walker said.
Sumo nodded to himself and eyed the suit and grinned.
‘That will work,’ Walker said. ‘As long as you don’t mess it up, Sumo.’
Sumo hunched. ‘I’ll do my best.’fn1
25
The Wait
The plan had changed. It was sink-or-swim time. I felt like I was drowning.
‘You’ll have to stash all five bikes,’ Charlie said.
‘Impossible to cycle and hold four bikes. I’d have to walk. I’d never make it back in time,’ I said. When we’d practised cycling, we only had five minutes to spare.
Walker thought about it. ‘There’s a bike stand at the library. It’s just down the road. Put them in that and we’ll grab them later.’
I agreed to stash three bikes at the library, and I’d leave Charlie’s and my bikes outside and wait for her in the thorns.
First, Walker had to spray the back door of the van with a little black spray paint so Charlie and I knew which one to follow. He did that. Then Charlie and I walked the lads as far as the cleaning room. Johnny J was worried that Charlie would get caught up the tree.
‘Adults never look up,’ she said.
‘But you’ll have to come down at some point,’ I said.
‘And when I do, I’m a little girl waiting for her dad,’ she said, and she batted her eyelids, and when she did it she seemed really innocent.
We left the boys hiding in the cleaning room and Charlie climbed the tree while I hid the bikes in plain sight in front of the library and waited in the bushes with the backpack. I could see Charlie in the tree, looking through the window, but nothing else. So I just sat there. WAITING!fn1
It seemed like forever went by, and then I saw Charlie run across the yard. She crawled out through the small hole in the fence and joined me beyond the bushes, where I was waiting with the binoculars and our bikes.
‘He did it,’ she said. ‘He pushed Titch into the van and the door closed behind him. It was cool.’
‘So where is he?’ He was supposed to get out of there and join us in the bushes.
; ‘He’ll be here – give him a minute,’ she said.
I ignored her and looked through the binoculars. It was then I saw a number of vans leaving the warehouse and in the third van I saw my friend Sumo sitting up in the front seat, dressed as a security guard.
‘Uh-oh,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Sumo’s in the front seat of the van!’fn2
Charlie slapped her hand against her forehead, I threw on the backpack and then we were off and chasing them.
26
The Chase
We pedalled as quickly as we could to keep up with the van, but it was hard. Luckily, the roads were busy enough for it to have to slow down and stop a lot, giving us time to catch up whenever we fell behind. We bobbed and weaved through traffic. Charlie threw me the walkie-talkie, and as I put it in my pocket it crackled to life.
‘Brown Bear, come in, Brown Bear.’ It was Johnny J! But Sumo had been the last one to have the walkie-talkie. I was confused and beginning to regret using the handle Brown Bear.
‘This is Brown Bear. You OK, Number One Buddy? Over,’ I asked.
‘I’m OK, but where’s Cash? He threw in Titch and the walkie-talkie and closed the door. Over.’
‘He’s in the front seat of the van. Over,’ I said.
‘WHAT?!’ Johnny J said. He was so freaked out he forgot to say, ‘Over.’
‘Don’t panic. We’re on your tail. Do you have control of the van? Over?’
‘Titch bit me, but we’re fine. What are we going to do? Over.’
I didn’t know what to do, and it was hard to think when I was trying to keep up with a van on a bike with a backpack full of Ireland gear and face paint on my back.
Suddenly Walker was on the walkie-talkie. ‘Is he insane? What did he do that for? How are we going to come back from this?’ He sounded frantic. Then he disappeared because the van got too far ahead for the signal to work. I had to speed up.
The Fearless Five Page 9