April and his mum as he pulled on a pair of leather gloves; but he was confident about pulling the raid off. Sasha had always protected Junior from actually being involved in robberies committed by the Mad Dogs, but he’d heard Wheels and the rest of the crew talking about crimes they’d committed and their constant bickering over the best ways of doing stuff.
While opinions differed on the details, everyone agreed the basic: case the joint, use overwhelming force, be quick, don’t leave forensic evidence, wear bland clothes, cover your face so that you don’t get picked up on CCTV cameras and mix it up so that the police can never predict what you’ll do next.
There are no certainties when people go around with guns and almost everyone’s luck runs out, but when crooks stick to the rules, their chances of getting caught on any individual robbery are slim.
An electric chime startled Junior as he stepped through the agency door. As expected, the shop had been unlocked by Praful Patel, an elderly man who’d set up Indian Sun more than twenty years earlier. The giant bunch of keys was hooked to his belt loop with a spring-loaded clip.
The only trouble was, there were two tough-looking dudes sitting across the desk from him. The stocky men looked like they hailed from the Balkans and the dried-out mud on their boots suggested that they were builders. A small bunch of ten-and twenty-pound notes sat on the desk and Praful Patel was patiently filling out a three-part counterfoil with the brightly coloured logo of a wire transfer agency at the top.
‘The fee is five pounds plus two per cent,’ Praful explained, as he carefully tore the bottom sheet off the form. ‘Your wife must give the password to collect the money at the other end.’
The men looked thuggish, and with their wages piled up on the desk, Junior reckoned it best to let them go before pulling the gun. Waiting was tricky because there was always a chance someone else might walk in, but he felt that his only option was to head for the rack of brochures and pretend to browse.
It felt longer, but within two minutes the men were on their way out of the door, moving briskly to their cash-in-hand labouring jobs at a hotel under construction behind the department store.
‘Can I help you, young man?’ Praful said, acutely aware that people Junior’s age don’t have much call for travel agents.
‘Open the safe,’ Junior ordered, backing up to the door and sliding the latch across as he whipped out the gun.
Praful raised his hands warily. ‘I don’t keep large sums here,’ he warned. ‘I’ve been robbed too often.’
Junior unzipped his school bag and dumped it on the floor. ‘I didn’t ask for your bloody life story,’ he snarled, as he swept the cash on the desk into his bag. ‘Open the safe and give me what you’ve got.’
The elderly man had back trouble and groaned as he went down on one knee to put the key into the door of the safe. Junior was disappointed as it swung open: there was a whole bunch of aeroplane tickets in envelopes and the cash drawer from a till containing about £100 in British currency and small bundles of euros, US dollars and rupees.
Junior had been expecting more. ‘Where do you keep the rest?’ he asked bitterly.
‘There is no rest,’ Praful said, as he picked out the money and placed it in the bag.
‘Bullcrap. I’ve seen people come in here and change five hundred pounds at a time.’
‘Two-hour service,’ Praful said, pointing at a sign on the wall that said: For security reasons, we now require two hours’ notice for all currency exchanges of more than £150. Please call ahead!
‘Give me a bloody break,’ Junior moaned. ‘Where’s the rest of the money?’
‘Off premises,’ Praful said. ‘This is the third robbery. The last two times I lost many thousands of pounds. Now I can’t get insurance.’
Junior tried to figure how the system might work. The money was probably stored at Praful’s home, or perhaps the safe was a red herring and the money was stored elsewhere on the premises.
Junior reckoned there might be a way of getting it, but he’d heard Wheels and the Mad Dogs say that hanging around a crime scene was the most dangerous thing you could do. And maybe he hadn’t made the thousands of pounds he’d hoped for, but he reckoned that the bundles of foreign currency would be