by Ezekiel King
When you don’t know what to say, it is best to say nothing, so I did not reply. I just took his advice on-board while feeling stupid for offering shopping tips to someone that dressed better than I did. I would definitely be visiting the suggested shops though, then I’d get my haircut before going home to get showered up. My final plan being to find some girls were worth going through the effort I would have gone through to look good for them.
Hours passed as I sat down doing absolutely nothing. I served a few customers personally, purely out of boredom. I had two puffs on John’s joint reluctantly and walked to the chip shop with Tom.
The shop had taken £460 by the time I decided I had been there long enough. It was about to start getting dark as I said my goodbyes to everyone, John’s mum and dad included.
“Bye, Cyrus,” the McBrides’ mother had said as if it was a pleasure to have had me turning her home into my own personal drug den. Surely, one of the loveliest women you could ever wish to meet, I thought as I started up the street in the direction of my estate.
The sky was left incomplete darkness by the time I entered the scruffy council estate I called home. The night air was cool and fresh as I took deep breaths in to wind down after the 10-minute walk. Sitting down all day had given me the worst stamina ever, so I was slightly out of breath after my walk. The air felt clean and pure in my lungs as I inhaled deeply through my nose. A few of the younger kids were still hanging out near their houses, their parents obviously not caring that the 12 or 14-year-old kids were on the street at nearly 10:00 at night. It was at this stage I’d always think, I can’t be bothered to go in; but after five minutes and having no alternative, I would just give up and go inside my house.
Tonight was different.
Tonight, I had a great alternative.
Tonight, I would rob the Kosovans.
Tonight, I would rob the Kosovans or Turks, or whoever the fuck they were.
I was different from them idiots who sat around drinking cheap beer, congregating around parked cars, telling stories; reason being, as soon as I remembered about the ‘Kosovans’, if that’s who they were, I wasn’t going home until I had seen what was in those boxes. That is of course if: A) Luke was right, and B) I didn’t get caught in the process.
To decrease the risk of getting caught, I thought it best not to attempt getting inside the garage alone. The two 12 or 14-year-old kids were the only people that I could see that were out on the dark estate. “You two, come here,” I said as I approached the two kids.
“Hi Cyrus, what’s up?” one of the two asked—the younger kids on the estate liked me. I think they looked up to me because the older lads had respect for me, mainly because everyone knew I had a bad temper and wouldn’t take any shit.
“Will you two be able to stay out for an hour to help me do something? If you do a good job, I will give you both £20 each?” I asked, knowing if there was any possibility they could help, they would do so knowing they’d earn more than two weeks’ worth of pocket money.
“Yes, we can stay out, what do you need us to do?” Callum asked excitedly
“Come with me, I’ll show you exactly what I want you to do,” I said as I started to march towards the house that Luke had told me was occupied by the Kosovans.
The house the Kosovans lived in was right at the bottom of our estate; it was about a two-minute walk from my house on the edge of the estate. The house backed onto a field and was the end house on its row. The street was pitch black with darkness around the houses and bushes and trees to the point it made the setting eerie. Truthfully, I found comfort in having the two younger boys with me; not that they could protect me in any way, but at least if these foreigners caught me trying to steal from them and killed me, at least my killing would be witnessed. One of my main motives behind taking the two young kids with me was, if we had to run away, it increased my odds of getting away. This way, whoever would follow us would have three people to pursue instead of one. Another example of manipulation, but I didn’t care; for me, ‘self-preservation’ was key.
The house the Kosovans lived in was bigger and better then the house I lived in, it looked as though its owners had spent a lot of money on the house at some point. It was probably the best house on the estate. It had an extended garage that looked different to every other garage.
The doors of this garage were huge wooden doors that met in the middle, thick wooden slacks painted white; the garage doors had four arm-length, huge, heavy-duty hinges towards the top of each door on the right and left, and two more hinges towards the bottom of the door symmetrically. The hinges were painted black and shiny.
I knew the Kosovans hadn’t extended the garage themselves or put this garage door on because I had seen it over the years when I had been running around the housing estate playing. The giant wooden doors painted white with the giant hinges painted black made the garage door look almost Victorian.
The house was in complete darkness which was good from one point of view, but it was also bad from another because I couldn’t tell where these Kosovo/Turks were. To the right of the garage door was a dull brown gate—a far better constructed gate than the one my dad had built. Then to the right of the gate, there was a garden wall that was brick and the same height as the gate at above my head height. The garden wall led to the corner of the house, then turned on a right angle left towards the side of the house. The whole place was in darkness.
The entry that pedestrians could use to walk around the back of the house worried me. I hoped whoever lived in the house wouldn’t sneak around the side of the house under the cover of darkness and ambush me. The two 12-14-year-old kids had no idea what I was up to, as I stood looking at the house and garage.
“Cyrus,” one of the kids said.
“Ssshh, stop talking… I need you two to be quiet,” I said to stop the kid talking before he said another syllable.
“We are going to rob this garage. Keep your mouth shut, and do what I say when I say it, and I will give you both £20 each if it goes well,” I whispered. I was sure to look both of the kids in their eyes, so I knew I had their full attention.
I stepped closer to the garage to inspect the lock. It had a keyhole in the middle of the door that would open and close what looked like a heavy duty and sturdy lock. Also, the doors met perfectly in the middle, so there was no way of trying to pry them open. The silence was piercing. It made the atmosphere seem so calm and safe in one sense, but also unnerving and charged at the same time. The silence was interrupted only by the occasional rustle of leaves as the wind passed through the trees and bushes around us. Shit, how the fuck am I going to get in here? I thought eager to find the solution.
I studied the construction of the garage doors. The hinges. Almost in disbelief, I realised that the bottle-cap-sized rivets holding the hinges in place were actually giant flat-point screws! There were four of these giant screws inserted into each of the four hinges, holding the four corners of the garage doors in place. “I need a screwdriver,” I whispered to my two youthful accomplices.
“Where are you going to get one from?” Little Callum asked. I shined the light of my phone onto the head of the screws. The screw heads were huge and covered with what looked like at least two or three coats of thick black paint.
“Follow me,” I said to the kids as I marched quickly back towards my house—right, left, right, left—I turned through the little entries and walkways that led back towards my house.
I opened my wedged closed gate and knocked my door quietly, hoping it would be my mum and not my dad that answered the door. The light in the kitchen flicked on as a figure reached the door to let me in. “Hi, Cyrus,” my mum said. “Is that you in for the night now?” My mum asked.
“In half an hour,” I said quietly. When my mum had walked back through to the living room, I walked into the kitchen and opened the drawer that seemed to just have bits and bobs in it, like a draw dedicated just to clutter. I had seen a screwdriver in their before; and
luckily for me, I found the sturdy black rubber-handled flathead screwdriver exactly where I thought it would be.
Back outside my house, I found the two young boys waiting right where I had told them to wait. The estate was silent as I closed my gate. The gate squeaked loudly as the two pieces of warped wood rubbed together as the gate closed. The two young boys were leaning against the side of my house looking lost, like they had no clue what was going on. Callum, the kid I knew better out of the two was small and skinny. His little body clearly not fully developed. He had a small frame and straight soft hair. As I looked at Callum, it became apparent to me that he should be at home drinking hot chocolate and getting ready for bed, but the combination of poor-parenting combined with me needing to take advantage of him had the poor little fellow waiting beside my house to commit a burglary. “Come on, let’s go,” I ordered the two kids as I walked body full of determination in the direction we had come from. From my gate, the three of us took ten steps right of my gate, then turned left 30 steps, then right through our little entry between houses, then left through another entry between more houses; then right another 30 paces, and there we were, back outside the big Victorian-looking double garage doors.
The house and street was exactly as we had left it. Still in complete darkness, still in complete silence.
Screwdriver in hand, I knelt down and tried to unscrew one of the big circular screw heads holding the hinge in place. It was impossible. The black shiny paint allowed my screwdriver no grip whatsoever. I tried again, this time applying as much pressure to the screwdriver to keep it in place. Still no joy. “For fuck’s sake,” I whispered as the two kids looked on nervously. Their facial expressions told me that they both wanted to leave. They knew better than to even suggest leaving as they could see I was determined and would by no means allow them to leave. I took the screwdriver away from the hinge and assessed the situation. “How the fuck can I open this?” I asked myself silently. Then it came to me. I put the screwdriver back in the groove of the screw head, but this time I used the corner of the flat sharp side to scrape the paint out of the grove.
The shiny black paint came away almost effortlessly, revealing the steel that was underneath, I scraped the paint away until a flat line of steel was visible in the middle of the screw head.
Then I put the screwdriver in place as I had before, applied a fair amount of pressure and turned slowly but forcefully. ‘Crack’, the paint around the side of the oversized screw broke away, making a distinctive but not too loud noise as the screw finally gave way.
My body filled with excitement as I turned my head to look at my little apprentices in the eye and gave them a menacing smile and wink as if to say ‘we have lift off!’ None of us said a word as I unscrewed the giant screws from where they had sat for probably the last five years undisturbed. When the first screw was out, I pulled the screwdriver away and repeated the whole procedure. When I had disconnected the hinge completely, I pulled it slightly away from the garage door to ensure it was totally detached.
The hinges at the top of the garage door were too high for me to work on effectively. I was too short to apply the pressure needed to scrape the paint away or turn the giant screws. There was no merit in asking one of the two younger kids to help as they were smaller than me. Using my resourcefulness, I improvised, one of the Kosovan/Turks neighbours had a big, square-shaped bin outside of their gate. Stepping away from the big garage door, I walked to the bin, tipped it back onto the wheels that allowed it to be moved easily and wield it quietly and slowly towards the garage I was breaking into. I put the big, square-shaped, government-issue bin on its side underneath the hinges.
Standing on the bin, I was now at the optimum height needed to work on the higher hinges. Implementing the same procedure to the letter, I removed the remaining hinges slowly and methodically. Effectively, this left the garage door not connected to anything on the left side or the right side. The only lock on the garage door now was in the middle keeping the two doors together. The worry of being caught had completely gone since the first turn of the first screw. As long as my surroundings stayed as quiet as it had been, I would not have a care in the world. My only concerns were (A) If there were any boxes in this garage? In which case if there was not, I would go straight to Luke’s house and break his nose. (B) What was in these boxes? I had been standing by this garage door for the best part of an hour. My greed and boredom had seen to that. I had no intention of leaving until the job was done.
After a moment’s thought, I wedged my screwdriver in between the wall and the disconnected garage door. Forcefully but quietly, I pried the door between the wall and the door.
At first, it moved a millimetre, then a centimetre, an inch; the door was made of thick and solid wood. It must have been just shy of three-inches thick. Eventually, I made a gap big enough for me to peer inside. It didn’t make sense opening the door any further. The gap wasn’t big enough to stick my head or body through, but it was big enough to enable me to see inside. I took my phone out to turn on the little flashlight on top. I shined the light inside. “Oh my gosh!” I said to myself as a new and fresh load of excitement mixed with adrenaline coursed through my body. It is a feeling that only a robber can explain. The excitement of attaining something significant for nothing mixed with the emotions of doing wrong.
Huge brown boxes stacked almost to the garage roof. The garage was huge inside, and there were too many boxes to count by glancing inside. Boxes in front of boxes stacked on boxes on top of boxes. They were rectangular-shaped and about a metre in length and probably 500cm in width and height. “What could possibly be inside all of these boxes?” I asked myself as the excitement turned to curiosity. I had enough of a gap to use my hands to pry the garage door open further. I had created a gap big enough to get inside the garage and get the boxes out if their contents warranted being stolen.
I took the first step inside of the garage. Clear pieces of plastic crinkled noisily under my feet. The noise was not loud enough to deter or worry me. I walked slowly and cautiously to the nearest box. I recognised the manufacturer’s logo almost instantly. I opened a loose flap on the top of the box. I couldn’t believe my eyes or my luck. There must be over £1, 00,000 worth of goods here, I thought to myself. Two hundred cigarettes in one box, and more sleeves than I could count in one box without opening it properly and at least 40 boxes. I picked up the same box I had looked inside and started for the gap in the garage door.
“Grab this,” I told one of the two young kids as I pushed the box through the gap in the garage door. Picking up another box, I checked its contents; another box full to the brim of the same goods pushed through the gap in the garage door quickly, this time leaving the garage to join the two younger kids outside. “I want you both to grab that box and follow me,” I whispered as my heart rate began to increase to the point I could feel it beating in the top of my throat. Acting on instinct, I started back towards my house.
I couldn’t take these stolen goods home, I concluded. Desperation had my brain working overtime. Trish’s house, I thought instantly. It must have been a little after 11:00 at night as I banged Trish’s door to get her out of bed and let me in her house. The two younger kids and I stood waiting with what must have been 15,000 cigarettes in the two boxes we had stolen. “Cyrus, what’s going on? And what the bloody hell have you got there?” Trish asked with a face full of concern.
“I’ve got Christmas here, that’s what this is,” I said as I practically pushed past her to place the box on her living room floor, quickly followed by the box the two young boys had carried. “Trish, have a look in these boxes, but keep your back door open because I will be back in five minutes,” I explained while slightly out of breath. “Come on, you two, hurry up,” I said as I barked orders at the two younger children to follow me.
Back at the garage, I had a look inside to check the scale of my job. I saw a box with a different logo.
Expensive, I thought to myself. Knowing
that this box may potentially yield the most profit, I rammed it through the gap in the garage door to the children outside. Picking up a box that was identical, I followed the two younger children back to Trish’s with our second haul. I opened Trish’s aluminium and glass door to find her now sitting in her living room wide awake.
“Cyrus, where have you got all of these from?” she asked as she sat puffing on one of her own cigarettes.
“I will explain when I come back, don’t worry though; just keep your back door open,” I replied while placing two more boxes on her living-room carpet.
Ten trips later, I could see the change in the sky colour—it was almost light. It had felt like I had been doing this for ten minutes due to excitement and adrenaline, but as it was practically daylight now. The sun beginning to rise allowed me to work out I had actually been stealing these boxes for hours. Putting the last load in what very little space there was left available in Trish’s living room, I decided to quit while I was ahead. Her living room was full from floor to ceiling of boxes of cigarettes and loose sleeves we had collected from the housing estates floor when two of the boxes had split. This was the most cigarettes I had ever seen. From wall to wall, width and length-ways, the living room was rammed of boxes. They took up more room than her three-piece sofa, her single seat sofa, TV and TV-unit combined.