“My brother’s car,” Jennifer explained when she saw me admiring the Audi. “He got it with last year’s bonus.” I didn’t know what it was he did, but to buy a TT with the bonus he got for doing it meant he must be doing well. I looked at Jennifer’s Dad’s house, which loomed above us as we walked toward it, our footsteps crunching on the gravel. The house was enormous, red brick, white windows on two stories with a steep roof. It loomed over us as we approached, not menacing but not friendly either. Either side of the front door the house jutted out like it had stately home style wings, and the grandiose effect was finished by a large garden. No nosey neighbours on this street. I wanted to ask Jennifer why she lived in a little flat on the edge of a council estate in Norwich when the rest of her family seemed to be minted, but I thought better of it.
The man who opened the door as we approached was the same guy I’d seen in photographs in Jennifer’s flat. He was in his early sixties by my guess, and still in good shape. Six-foot two or three, about the same height as me, and he had broad shoulders. The man didn’t have an ounce of fat I could see. Smart brown trousers, an open-necked blue shirt under a multicoloured jumper with a large diamond pattern. He wouldn’t have looked out of place on a golf course, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d owned a golf course.
“You must be Gareth?” he asked, an inscrutable look on his face.
“I am, sir,” I replied, following Tommy’s advice about meeting the parents, or in this case parent. Be respectful, Tommy had said. Always call them sir and ma’am, rhymes with jam. I extended my hand outwards. “Pleased to meet you.” He looked at my hand, frowning before his face split into a wide smile. He grabbed my hand and almost crushed it.
“Ha! I’m Andy, Jen’s Dad, obviously. So you’re the boy who’s had such an effect on my baby girl?” he said, shaking my hand up and down. I tried to grip his hand back, but he’d got my fingers like a vice.
“Dad, please,” Jennifer said, her face reddening as she pushed past him and walked into the house. He laughed in response, a loud booming laugh that endeared him to me straight away.
“She’s only my youngest by a few minutes, but she’s still my baby girl,” he said, looking at me. The wide smile on his face faded, and he looked at me with an earnest face. “I am pleased to meet you though, Gareth. She’s not shut up about you for the last couple of weeks, and you look a hell of a lot better than most of the tossers she’s been out with over the years.”
I was suddenly uncomfortable. Although I’d been with Jennifer for a few months, we’d not discussed previous partners. I knew about Robert but knew nothing about anyone else. At least my revelations wouldn’t take long — I’d been with exactly two and a half women in my life before meeting Jennifer. The half was an experience in Amsterdam that I’d rather forget, with a Thai lady who’d looked mighty fine in the window but turned out to be not quite as advertised.
“Come in,” Andy said, still gripping my hand. “Please, come through. Welcome.” He let go, and I resisted the urge to massage my fingers as he walked into the house. I followed him through the front door into a hall that was bigger than my entire flat. His downstairs toilet was probably bigger than my entire flat. Family photos covered one wall, and there were a few of a much younger Andy playing cricket and holding up trophies. As we walked through the hall, a bunch of framed medals on the wall caught my attention. They were mounted one above the other, large bronze discs surrounded a thick walnut frame. Leaning towards them as I passed I saw that they were medals for finishing the London Marathon. The most recent one was only last year. Andy went up in my estimation. Although I used to run a bit when I was younger, I could barely run for a bus these days, let alone finish a marathon, and he had to have forty years on me.
We walked into a light, airy kitchen with an industrial size cooker in the centre taking pride of place, and the most fantastic smell of cooking meat in the air. Leaning up against the cooker was a man who I knew was Jennifer’s brother, Jacob. I knew it was him as I was expecting him to be there, but what I wasn’t expecting was how much he looked like Jennifer. She’d told me they weren’t identical twins, but they still looked pretty damned similar.
“Gareth, is it?” he said, walking toward me, hand extended. Jennifer’s family were big into handshakes.
“Yes, and you must be Jacob?” I replied, shaking his hand. A normal handshake this time. “Jennifer’s told me all about you,” I said. He sighed before replying.
“Oh, really? What’s she said then? Just so you know, I’ve got more dirt on her than she’s got on me.” He flashed a smile at Jennifer, who was leaning up against the kitchen counter with a glass of wine in her hand. She grinned in response and raised her glass in our direction.
“Don’t worry Jacob,” I said. “It’s all good.”
“I should hope so,” he replied, smiling again at Jennifer. It was strange talking to him, knowing he was her twin brother. Looking at him, he wasn’t anything like her. He spent a fair bit of time in the gym, that was obvious from his oversized arms, broad shoulders, and tapered waist. But he shared some of her mannerisms, like the way he stood and the way he smiled. Jacob glanced at Andy and lowered his voice. “Jennifer told me how you two met. That was good of you to help her out.” I shrugged my shoulders.
“It was nothing. Her ex just needed some gentle persuasion, that was all,” I replied.
“Is he still hanging around then, your ex?” Jacob turned to Jennifer. “You said he was the other night.” I looked across at Jennifer. She’d not mentioned that.
“Robert’s fine,” Jennifer waved her hand at Jacob. “He’s got the message, don’t worry.” I could tell from the look on Jacob’s face he was worried and wondered if perhaps I needed to have another word with Robert. As I thought about the best way to do this, Andy walked up and handed me an ice-cold can of lager and a glass that felt like it was fresh from the fridge.
“There you go, Gareth,” he said. “Get that down you. After you’ve had a couple of beers, we’ll all seem normal.” He laughed at his own joke, and the rest of us gave polite chuckles. “Right then,” he rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get this show on the road then, shall we?” I caught Jennifer rolling her eyes at her brother. In fairness to her, she had warned me about this. Dinner was a family affair in Andy’s house, and that included the preparation.
For the next hour, I peeled potatoes, diced swede, and took the top of my finger off trying to cut an X into the bottom of a Brussels sprout. Jennifer and Jacob both gave up after about half an hour, Jacob offering to nip out to get more tin foil. Jennifer went with him, saying he’d need a hand. She avoided my eyes as she walked past me, but I could see her trying to keep a straight face. She pinched my backside as she brushed against me on her way out, and it was my turn to try to keep a straight face. Thinking back, they must have planned it in advance to give me some time alone with Andy.
“I meant what I said earlier, Gareth,” Andy said, his eyes meeting mine for a second before returning to whatever he was chopping up. “Jen seems thrilled being with you. I’ve not seen her this happy for a long time, in fairness.” He paused, knife mid-chop, and looked back at me. There was a sadness behind his eyes. “Not since before her Mum died, I’d say.”
We took a break from the lunch preparation, and Andy decided that we needed what he called a “cheeky drink”. For him, this was a very large whisky. I declined one, deciding to stick to beer to be on the safe side. Andy slid the patio doors open and stepped through them. I followed him, realising for the first time just how big the garden was. You could put a goal at either end of it and not be far off a football pitch.
“It’s getting warmer, isn’t it?” he said as we walked onto the patio. “I’ve heard we’re in for a scorcher this summer.” Andy sat in a chair facing the long lawn and took a deep breath. I joined him and we both regarded the garden in companionable silence, bathed in the weak sunshine.
“They’re very close, the two of them,” An
dy said. “Jen and Jacob, I mean.”
“Less than two minutes, I’d heard,” I replied, proud of myself for coming with that one on the fly. Andy laughed.
“Superb, Gareth,” he replied. “I can see why she likes you. Seriously though, they are. Well, they’re twins but even so. He’d do anything for her, but half the time she refuses any offers to make her life easier. Wants to make her own way, she says. I’m comfortable enough, and Jacob’s doing all right for himself. We’ve both tried to help her out here and there, but she won’t have it.” I wondered if Andy knew how Jennifer and I had met when she most needed some help. It wasn’t my place to tell him if he didn’t know.
“I take it that Jen’s told you about Jacob, has she?” he said a few moments later.
"Er,” I replied. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“That he’s a left-handed batsman?” he said. I thought for a second before replying.
“No, sorry. I’m not with you.” I had no idea where he was going.
“Sits on the top deck of the bus. You know? Plays for the other team.” Andy said. I looked at him, none the wiser. “That he’s gay?”
“Oh, yes. I see what you mean. No, she didn’t tell me he was gay.” Left-handed batsman? I had never heard that phrase before. We sat for a moment and I took a large sip of my beer to cover the silence.
“I’m quite keen on grandchildren, you see. I think I might have to call you ‘Obi-Wan’ if that’s okay?” Andy paused before continuing. “You’re my only hope.” I snorted, inhaling beer and coughing. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I was trying to laugh at the same time. He roared with laughter, slapping me on the back, just as the patio doors opened and Jennifer and Jacob looked out.
“So this is getting lunch ready, is it boys?” Jennifer stood with her hands on her hips. She had a stern expression on her face, but she couldn’t stop the corners of her mouth twitching. Jacob was just behind her, holding a roll of tin foil in the air as proof they’d accomplished something.
By the time Jennifer and I were driving back home that night, I was in a fantastic place. We’d eaten until we couldn’t eat anymore. Andy, Jacob, and I had got drunker throughout the day while Jennifer had switched to diet coke after her earlier glass of wine. I’d tried to persuade her we could get a cab back, come back and get the car tomorrow, but she wasn’t having it. Andy had even suggested that we both stay over, in separate bedrooms but that wasn’t on the cards either. The whole day had just been so comfortable, and I’d experienced something that I’d not experienced for years, if at all. At the risk of sounding dramatic, I felt as if I belonged.
We were lying in her bed, both exhausted but wide awake. Jennifer turned and propped herself up on her elbow.
“Thank you for today, Gareth,” she said.
“What? Thank you for bleeding to death doing the sprouts and laughing at your Dad’s awful jokes?”
“No, you know what I mean. I know you weren’t happy about the whole meet the family thing, but they liked you.” She looked at me in the semi-darkness. “I knew they would.” I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, so I chose the easy option and said nothing.
Jennifer snuggled against me and slid her arm across my chest. “So, thank you,” she murmured, closing her eyes.
The night I finally decided to go straight is another evening I’ve relived in my mind time and time again. It was April, but freezing cold outside. The early warm snap hadn’t turned into the expected scorcher just yet. I was huddled in the corner of The Heartsease with Tommy and David. The proceeds from the off-licence job had long since disappeared. Most of the stock was now behind the bar, sold to Big Joe so he could sell it on with a hefty markup.
Tommy was telling us about a grand idea he’d had to rip off a fish and chip shop, of all things. He was waiting for the bus one morning when he noticed a delivery driver pull up to one near his house. The delivery driver had dropped off several large sacks of potatoes in exchange for what was, as far as Tommy could see, a not insignificant amount of money.
Tommy had since worked out that there was a potato delivery every week, and that the fish and chip shop near his house was just one in a large round that the delivery driver made. Every transaction was in cash, and Tommy estimated that by the end of his round the delivery driver would have had at least a few thousand pounds. All in cash. His plan was to relieve the delivery driver of that cash at the end of his round. David was sitting on the fence, no doubt waiting to see which way the decision went between the two of us.
I wasn’t convinced in the slightest. It was one thing doing over a business like an off-licence or office at night, with no one around. Even stuff like that I was becoming uncomfortable with as I knew every time we did a job there was a risk involved. If that risk was realised, and we were nicked, then all three of us would go to prison. It wasn’t something I’d been bothered with before I had met Jennifer, as it was an occupational hazard for people like us, but it was weighing on my mind now that things seemed to be getting more serious between us.
“He won’t care,” Tommy said. “He’s only the delivery driver.” Tommy had been following the delivery driver, as discreetly as he could, for the last couple of weeks and had identified an ideal spot to pull the van over just outside the city centre. “It’s not as if he’s going to put up a fight or anything, is it?”
“So how are we going to get the van to stop then, Tommy?” David asked. I’d been wondering the same thing myself.
“Well, I guess there are a couple of options,” Tommy replied. “We could, I don’t know, stage a car accident or something. Get him to follow us, slam the brakes on at a roundabout so he goes into the back of the car. Then pull into the lay-by to sort out the insurance details and relieve him of the cash.”
“But that still doesn’t answer the question of how we get the cash from him, Tommy, does it?” I said. Tommy’s plan so far was rubbish.
“We’ll just threaten him a bit,” Tommy replied. That’s what I’d thought he would say. “I mean, come on, you and me? We’re both big guys. He’s not. He’s a streak of piss, smaller than David, and got to be in his fifties at least.”
“I don’t like it, Tommy,” I said, crossing my arms and leaning back in the chair. “We’ve never done that before. It’s always just been buildings, never people.”
“I’m not convinced either,” David said. “I mean, what if he has a heart attack or something?” Nine times out of ten, David would follow my line of reasoning, and tonight he was true to form.
“Oh for God’s sake, the pair of you are just not listening,” Tommy replied. “We’re talking thousands here. This could set all three of us up for months.”
“So how do you propose that we threaten him then, Tommy?” I asked, leaning forward and tapping my finger on the table just hard enough to make the beer glasses wobble. “Just stand there looking bigger than he is until he hands over the money?”
“Well, we could take a bat or something?” Tommy replied. “Wave it about until he gets the message?”
“Wave it about?” I asked, louder than I’d intended. I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Wave it about? Really? Tommy, I’ve known you for a long time, but you’ve lost the plot on this one.”
“Why?” Tommy replied, whining. “This is a big job. You’ve got to take a bit of risk for a lot of reward.” I looked across at David and saw his eyes flick between me and Tommy.
“Mate,” I said, putting both hands flat on the table in front of me and staring at Tommy. “You’re talking armed robbery. Do you know what you get for that?”
“That’s not armed robbery,” Tommy said. “Not with a baseball bat it’s not.”
“I think it is, Tommy,” David said, looking across at me for approval. “Isn’t it, Gareth?”
“Yeah, as far as I know, it is. A baseball bat is a weapon unless you’re on your way to play baseball somewhere,” I said. “I think it would be difficult to persuade the Old Bill that we were on our way for a
game of baseball in the park when we happened to have an accident with a van driven by a man with a lot of money in his pocket. Which we then decided to take for ourselves,” I said. Tommy sat back in his chair and sighed, deflated.
“I didn’t realise I was having a beer with a couple of lawyers,” he said.
“Tommy,” I said. “Don’t be daft, mate. You know what the maximum sentence for armed robbery is, don’t you?”
“No, sorry Your Honour. I don’t,” he said. “Perhaps my learned friend could enlighten me?” David smiled at his response, but my reply soon wiped the smile off his face.
“It’s life, Tommy.”
I didn’t tell Tommy or David how I knew that the maximum prison sentence for armed robbery was life. Nor did I tell them how I knew even with a baseball bat, it would still be armed robbery. Over the last couple of days, weeks really, I’d spent hours on the Internet looking at various legal websites to find out how long you could get put away for. Going to prison had always been at the back of my mind, an occupational hazard. But while I didn’t think that a couple of months inside for theft would be too hard to deal with, one thing that I drew the line at was life in prison. Ironic really, considering where I am now.
Blind Justice Page 4
