“So, that’s the story of my Aunt Kaylin. It’s really a story of an innocent person being put in a situation where he is forced to become a thief. Not because he will benefit from the things he takes, but because it could have helped to protect the vulnerable from any more pain. I think that’s why she’s in the dream, although I hadn’t really wanted to talk about all this out loud. It’s about doing what is needed to protect someone that needs help. It’s not about enjoying the spoils of the haul. That is why tonight should not be about robbing the entire bank. It’s about doing just enough to support someone that desperately needs it. Now I know I failed when I was needed to help my brothers and sisters back then in the village, but this time I want to get it right. This isn’t just about the money. It’s about doing the thing that needs to be done. Maybe it’ll make up for the time that I failed my brothers and sisters.”
Kheng looked over at Meebor. Meebor was looking a little sympathetic. Possibly. It was hard to tell. The dim light from the torch was fading to almost nothing so there was just the light from the moon shining through the high window to help them see. Salt was looking on in awe at Kheng. He felt guilty that the conflict between the three of them had forced Kheng to share a painful history that he’d clearly rather have kept to himself.
Kheng cleared his throat:
“So then, Mr Meebor. Maybe it’s time we heard your story? Tell us why you think you know all the answers when it comes to what’s happening tonight.”
37. The Two Man Job
“I’d been nicking stuff ever since I was a little kid. Small stuff. I had a kind of upper limit on the sort of job I would take on in one go, as a type of self-protection. My approach was to pinch enough to get by, but not enough to be in serious trouble. So at night I’d take a roosting chicken from the compound outside someone’s house, or I’d wait for them to go to work, and then pull the mangoes and jackfruit from their trees and sell what I got at the roadside market. Kids’ stuff – I was a kid. If I was feeling confident I’d try and get into people’s houses and take their things. Just small things that were easy to pass on. Money, if I could. If someone saw me coming or going, and I was questioned later, it would be impossible to prove whose money it was. Possessions were different though. If they were valuable, then the owner would be trying hard to get them back. People had much less back in the day than they do now, so selling valuable stuff on wasn’t easy, as people would wonder where it had come from. No, I had it all sorted. I’d spread myself thinly. Not taking too much from any one person. That way, if somebody caught me then I’d only done enough to mildly annoy them, but not enough for them to bother to pursue it through a police complaint. In fact, the police demanded a fee from them to fill in the complaint form and send it to the Superintendent to see if he was interested enough to follow up on it. So, it made more economic sense to be annoyed with me rather than turn me in. I was like this for most of my youth. It was my living. I’d steal enough to eat, pay for a few things, but nothing on a scale that would actually lift me out of poverty. However, it was then that I got mixed up with ‘Tannoy Doi’.
“Tannoy was a small time criminal like myself. We actually met ’cos we were robbing the same place at the same time. I’d broken into the house of the District Administrator via a bathroom window, and Tannoy had come in through a gap under the eaves in the roof. We met in the corridor on the way to look for cash in the bedrooms. It was fairly clear how he’d earned his nickname of Tannoy. His exclamation of annoyance on finding that I was there robbing the place as well was loud enough to wake the whole street. I immediately scarpered back through the bathroom window and Tannoy followed me out of the building. Once we’d both legged it far enough, we stopped to catch our breath and had a bit of a laugh about it. It was the first networking I’d ever done as a burglar. Being an occupation that has to remain very low-key, it’s quite difficult to meet fellow professionals, unless you’re born into a family that’s gone that way. Anyway, me and Tannoy became mates after that, and started working together.
“The key to working with Tannoy was to pick somewhere that it didn’t matter if you made a noise. When he was a kid, their house had been next to the lamp-post with the public address system attached to it that belted out the news from five-thirty each morning. From an early age he’d just got used to talking loudly so he could be heard over the sound of the speakers giving the latest updates from the capital. It was a habit that he couldn’t shake. Tannoy was a bit like me when it came to burglaries: going for easy pickings, and not taking risks. And, like me, he was starting to feel like it was time to scale things up and get himself out from the bottom of the pile. The trouble with the type of work that we were both in was that there was a lot of planning, staking out and taking risks. Overall though, we weren’t any better off than other people with low paid jobs, but who had no particular risk of a run-in with the authorities. It was time to take things up a notch if the risk-taking was going to be worthwhile. By teaming up we had a new opportunity. For the first time, we could think about doing the type of robbery that was a two man job. It was time to find a more exclusive target with a bigger payout.
“The jobs I normally did involved sneaking around, casing a place to make sure it was empty and then striking when I knew no one was about. It took a lot of preparation, often for not much profit. With two of you working together, there was less need for all of that pre-planning. You could steal from under people’s noses. One of you could be a distraction whilst the other one focused on swiping stuff. Tannoy, with his loud presence, was usually the distraction and I’d do the swiping. We started off doing a bit of pickpocketing in the provincial towns. Tannoy would approach someone, loudly asking about directions or pretending to be drunk, something like that, and I’d come in close behind them with my fingers in their bags taking out their purses or whatever they had.
“We soon learned that a better use of two people was for one of us to be a lookout whilst the other did the robbing. People are much less cautious about their stuff if they think they’re only stepping out for a minute. It was easy enough to spot small shops on the street where the owner would pop out for ten minutes to get noodles. Normally they might just lock the door rather than pull down the shop front shutters or anything, sometimes not even bother with that. I’d pick the lock and then go inside and swipe all that I could while Tannoy watched out for their return. Normally there was an unlocked drawer at the top of the desk where they made their sales and it would be full of cash. Nobody believes they will be robbed. Even now, people happily assume that their neighbourhood is safe and filled with good people, and seem genuinely surprised when some crime befalls them.
“One time we got cocky and decided to rob the house of the police commissioner. It sounds more risky than it was. No one expected the police to get robbed so the duty officers were all standing outside the governor’s house or monitoring the traffic. There was nobody for security at his place. We knew that the commissioner always played badminton with some government staff on a Friday evening. It was often announced on the community radio that he’d won some contest or other. Tannoy also knew that on his way to the sports hall each Friday he would drop his wife off to have her hair and make-up done, all ready for the weekend. Tannoy’s sister-in-law worked at the hairdresser’s and her conversation when she got back home was usually around who had been in to be beautified. As a result, Tannoy had a fairly solid knowledge of the comings and goings of the various well-to-do ladies of the town. Anyway, the point was that the house would be empty on a Friday evening for at least an hour. That gave us plenty of time to slip in, take the valuables, and make our get-away. Tannoy kept watch, just in case they came back. It was unlikely, but there might be a sudden emergency or security situation in the province which required a change of plan from the immediate routine. I shimmied up the drain pipe at the back of the house and got in through a bedroom window.
“From force of habit, I immediately went to the dresser and started rummaging
around in the drawers for jewellery or money. It took me a while to notice, but in the end my attention was drawn to the commissioner’s dress uniform, which was laid out on the bed. I guess he had some important function to attend later in the evening. I was young and immature and so my first instinct was to do something stupid like cut holes in it and hope he wouldn’t notice until he turned up at the event and looked embarrassed. As my warped mind started scheming, my attention was eventually drawn to the large leather belt and holster. The holster had the commissioner’s gun inside it. I guess you don’t need to be heavily armed to play badminton, but it was a bit silly to leave the gun out in the house like that. However, like I said, the police commissioner was the last person expecting to get burgled. I took the gun and then went back through his drawers looking for the bullets. It took a while. I could hear Tannoy calling up at the window, wondering what I was messing about at. Normally this type of robbery didn’t take that long. I wasn’t leaving without the full set though, gun and bullets. Eventually I hit the jackpot. I found a small box of ammunition, underneath the bed, kept inside another metal box. Inside the metal box was a second gun.
“So, I returned to the window and dropped the bag with the jewellery and the guns down to Tannoy, shimmied down the drain pipe and we made our escape. It was the first time me or Tannoy had had access to guns. It was something of an opportunity. It would open the door to a whole new realm of criminal possibilities. It was not long after that we decided to get into highway robbery.”
38. Highway Robbery
“Highway robbery, or at least the type we were going in for, was at a minimum a four person job. More was better really, but at least four on the job was essential.
“The way it worked was like this. You found a rural road, one in the provinces where there was lots of forest. You’d pick a route that people had to travel on but with stretches along the way with few or no houses at the roadside, just the bush. Deeper forest was better. You’d then wait for a bush taxi or car full of people to come along. You’d all wear hats, and then tie scarves to cover up the bottom part of your face so you couldn’t be recognised or described later on to the authorities. One of the gang would then flag down the car, aiming a weapon at the driver. The people in the car were instructed to get out. These people were told to take off their outer clothes so they can be searched for money. You’d be surprised how many older women sew money into their clothing. It dates back to the old days when security was much worse than nowadays. The people being robbed were then taken by the second member of the gang about fifty metres out of the way into the forest where they would sit and be held as hostages, a kind of insurance policy in case the authorities accidentally stumbled across the proceedings. The third and fourth members of the team would then search through the belongings and bag up any loot they found. A second car comes along and you would do the same. Only this time, the people being robbed are just kept at gun-point on the ground by the side of the road. They are easier to control that way, and so are the original group of hostages. You have one of the crew stopping the cars, one watching the people that are being kept at the roadside, one sorting through the loot and one in the forest still with the hostages. Then after twenty minutes or so, once you’ve stopped a few more cars and have bagged up as much as the four of you can carry, you all disappear like shadows into the jungle. The people that you just robbed have to try and find their clothes again, which is a great way to give yourselves a head start should anyone be thinking of becoming rash and giving chase.
“Tannoy and I were only two people, so we recruited two more. My cousin, Duck-foot, had just been kicked out of secondary school at around that time. He seemed to be someone of suitably limited opportunities and with a low respect for the system, so I drafted him in. Tannoy followed suit. He had words with his younger brother, ‘Bullhorn’, so he came on board as well.
“The first time we robbed a vehicle we chose a fairly quiet provincial road to the south of Maklai. Our first car arrived at about two in the afternoon. We followed the plan. Tannoy held up the car and orchestrated the whole thing so that any bags and clothes people were wearing were dumped on the side of the road. It was the perfect job for Tannoy: someone who can only speak by shouting at you can be a bit intimidating in a hold-up situation. Once Tannoy had done his bit, I then took the hostages at gun-point into a clearing just inside the forest. Bullhorn and Duck-foot then set about searching all the belongings. It all went perfectly. Then we waited. And we waited. We waited for half an hour and no other car came down the track. Not a motorbike, an old boy on a push-bike, a hardworking woman fetching firewood from her farm, nothing. It was embarrassing. I was stood there, holding these five hostages at gun-point, meanwhile they could see that the whole thing was a total wash out. It undermines you as a kidnapper when that sort of thing happens. I mean, you start off looking all imposing and powerful, and half an hour later on after standing around and kicking at stones and shuffling your feet, well, you’re no longer commanding the kind of respect and fear that you need to intimidate a group of hostage detainees. Meanwhile the hostages start muttering to each other, and then one of them needs to take a pee. If you let the first one go to ease themselves then they all need to go. The control rapidly slips away. In the end, we gave it another hour and a half and then we split. It was starting to get dark by then and we had a couple of ks to do, finding our way through the forest to the track where we’d left our motos. Anyway, at least we’d had a practice, and the two younger guys had received a fairly easy introduction into the highway caper. It’s easy to forget that Tannoy and I had enjoyed a lifetime of minor criminal activity leading up to the dizzying heights of armed highway robbery. Duck-foot and Bullhorn were just freshmen. A couple of days later we tried again, and chose a slightly busier road.
“The second robbery went much better. We stopped five cars: two private cars and three bush taxis. We did quite well out of it. People don’t travel out to their villages in the provinces without taking gifts for their relatives or money to socialise with their friends, they need to put on a bit of a show on coming home. Meanwhile if you’re heading out to the big city then you’re taking your savings to do some spending on things you can’t normally get. Either way is good if you’re the one doing the robbery.
“After the fourth robbery we decided to take a break. There was a danger that the police would start to get a bit wise to what we were doing. Once you’d identified the best spots for this kind of thing there was a danger of falling into a bit of a routine, and that the police would be keeping an eye on those locations. Also, there was a good chance that the taxi drivers and travellers would start bringing guns in their cars if they knew the chances of being robbed were getting high. We were starting to make some serious money. The question was: where did would we go from there?”
39. Duck-foot’s Bus
“Duck-foot had the initial idea. It wasn’t bad for him, considering he wasn’t really drafted onto the team to be the main ideas man. The brains of the set-up was usually Tannoy or me. Anyway, Duck-foot complained that the part of the robbery we couldn’t control was when or how often the cars came round the corner to be stopped by the crew. You can’t just pick and choose which cars to rob when everyone is stood at the side of the road in their underwear at gunpoint. If two cars come along at the same time, you can’t just wave one past and stop the other ’cos it’s more difficult to handle. We’d had a few dodgy moments when cars had come from two directions at the same time, and Bullhorn had had to stop the one while Tannoy did the other. It was risky ’cos we only had two guns, and one would be in the forest with the hostages. On the last robbery, we had four cars parked up when three other cars came round the corner at once. It had all got a bit chaotic, and in the panic, Tannoy had let off a shot from his pistol. We didn’t stick around long after that, as you never know who you’re going to alert: there might be some villagers hunting wildlife nearby in the forest who are feeling cocky enough to come and take you
on.
“Anyway, Duck-foot’s point was that we could always control all of this randomness if we robbed just one vehicle. To make it worthwhile then, it needed to be one with a lot of people on it, so either a train, an aeroplane, or a bus. Of course the security around an airport was too much for a bunch of small time criminals like ourselves, and they were usually crawling with well-armed military back in those days. There were no trains operating at the time. They had all stopped during the war and the infrastructure had been damaged beyond repair. What did make an interesting prospect, however, was the bus.
“We spent a bit of time thinking on this one. There were less buses around in those days and they normally took the more travelled roads between the larger towns. Our usual M.O. of picking a secluded country road and lying in wait was not an option any more. The main roads all had houses built regularly along the sides so there were no really ideal isolated spots to follow the routine. Therefore, we needed to hijack the bus and then somehow divert it to a quiet spot so that we could get on with our work of robbing all the passengers uninterrupted. We spent about a week staking out various by-roads and options. In the end it was decided that we would rob a bus coming out of Maklai on the road going north to Fai-dan Province. Maklai was a more central trading town than Fai-dan. People on the bus would include traders and passengers who were either returning from selling their products in the markets and so cashed up, or those who had just spent their money on the type of expensive goods you couldn’t get in Fai-dan. Either way, there would be a lot of valuable stuff for us to take. On top of that, the traders in Fai-dan usually paid the bus owners to fill up the floors with goods, as it was a cheap way to transport the stuff they needed to sell in their shops. The roof of the bus was usually hugely over-burdened with goods as well so it would look like a double-decker. This overloading was all to our benefit as the bus wouldn’t be travelling very fast. However, as it was on its way out of Maklai it would be even slower as it had to climb the hill up to the plateau, and the driver would also be looking out for extra passengers that would be flagging down the bus as they wanted to travel north.
The Feiquon Heist Page 15