"You'll be back."
I ignored the snide remark and waited while they checked my release papers, they took their time, they always did. There was very little for them to worry about in that particular prison, so they got bored and took it out on those being released.
"Your sort always come back," the other one smirked.
It was just five yards to the outer gate, the big one, freedom lay beyond it, freedom, a word that I didn't dare think about during the last five years, eight months and twenty-two days, but it was here within my grasp, all I had to do was to keep my mouth shut.
Four yards, three, two, I stood to attention, the way they like you to stand while the final two guards checked over my papers, these two guys were all right, they wouldn't give me any hassle.
"Good luck son."
I turned and looked at Mr. Jones.
"Thank you, sir," I said with what passed for a smile for me. "You won't see me again."
"I hope not son."
They stepped out of their little office in unison, pulled open the big, heavy old gates and I stared at freedom.
She was standing beside her car, smiling as I walked towards her.
"Hello, Michael."
She only called me that when she was mad at me, but it had been a long time, and you're not allowed visitors when you're as violent as I'd been in there.
"Hello, mum."
We stood and looked at each other for what seemed like an age, then she reached for me and took me into her arms, the tears came, wetting my shirt and I nearly cried with her.
"I can't believe you're here Micky."
"So you're not mad at me then?"
She shook her head and smiled through her tears. "No darling, I'm not mad at all, come on, get in the car, I'm taking you home."
Home! Home had been a cell for the past five years, a stinking little room that smelled permanently of piss and sweat, smelly feet and obnoxious body odours, that was home. "Can I have a bath please mum?" they'd told me inside that the first things newly released cons ask for is a bath, they'd been right.
"I'll run it for you as soon as we get home."
"You couldn't drive when I went in."
She smiled at me as we got in, she looked secretly pleased that I'd mentioned it.
"I had lessons three years ago and passed the first time."
I couldn't believe how heavy the traffic was, they called it the morning rush hour, God knows why, because nobody was rushing anywhere.
"There are some cigarettes in the dash."
Cigarettes, proper ones too, not the roll-ups I'd smoked and hoarded for five years, not the little packs that the tobacco barons charged the earth for. Proper, straight ones with filter tips, wrapped up in a packet with silver paper inside and to stop them drying out.
She pretended not to look as I opened the packet and looked at the one I took out, it was perfectly formed, as straight as a die and it tasted like nectar, drew the smoke into my lungs and released it slowly, paradise.
"Thanks, mum, this is brilliant."
She drove the car expertly through the heavy morning traffic, she was a good, competent driver and I told her so.
"I drive a delivery van for a living Micky."
We'd gone from Michael to Micky in just a few sentences, it looked promising.
I smoked half the cigarette and carefully nipped the burning end off, before putting it carefully back in the packet.
"Micky," she said softly. "You're out now darling, there's no need for that."
"Old habits mum," I laughed, "Just give me time."
I slept then, fitfully and restlessly, waking up as she pulled up outside our home, a little terraced house in Camden Town, a busy suburb of London. Curtains parted, doors opened, and people surrounded the car, all of them wanting a piece of me, to shake my hand, pat me on the back or just call my name. Little kids stood there wide-eyed unable to understand but still wanting to see me, the working class hero, the man who'd stolen half a million pounds.
It took half an hour to get from the car into the house, but it felt brilliant to be welcomed like that, these people were my friends, the salt of the earth and they'd looked out for mum too while I was inside. The guy next door had got her the job she had now, and they'd all helped her out with money until she got herself sorted.
I stood in the small living room just looking round, there were photographs of dad and me everywhere, clowning around in the back garden, or just smiling at mum as she took the picture.
"What do you want Micky? We've got tea, coffee, beer, lager or vodka?"
"I'd kill for a nice cold glass of lager mum." then I realized what I'd said. "Sorry."
"Micky, please make that the last time you ever apologize, you've done your time, you owe society nothing, got that?"
I nodded. "Got it, mum." But the remark had triggered the memories.
I lay back in the bath, a drink in my hand, three more cans in a bucket of ice beside me, cigarette in my other hand and an ashtray next to me and I remembered. The van had been exactly on time, we'd watched it for three weeks and never once did they deviate from the route.
"Go," dad said softly as the guard took the case from the hatch in the side of the van and I floored the accelerator. The stolen car surged forward, Dad and uncle Jim were out and running as the guard looked up in sheer panic, he threw the heavy box at Jim and cowered before dad's sawn off.
"On the floor," dad yelled. "On the fucking floor."
Jim threw the box into the back of the car and turned for dad just as it all went pear-shaped.
There were four police cars, all unmarked and all containing armed coppers. "WE'RE ARMED. POLICE! STAND STILL AND DROP YOUR WEAPONS."
I'll never forget the look on dad's face as he bought the shooter up, I couldn't believe it, he was actually going for a shootout.
"DAD, NO," I shouted but my voice was drowned out by the fusillade of rounds that slammed into him, he was dead before he hit the concrete. In his panic, Jim forgot what he was doing and made for the car without dropping his sawn off, the rounds got him as he slammed the door and he bled quickly to death on the back seat as I used the big Zodiac like a battering ram to batter my way through the police vehicles.
The front bumper had been especially strengthened for just such an emergency, and it demolished two of their vehicles before I sped clear of the ambush and aimed for the second car we'd left earlier.
Big Tommy played his part to perfection and reversed the heavy waste disposal lorry out onto the road the very second I flashed past, it gave me about thirty seconds that were vital for me to get away, I skidded into the old lockup, locked the doors and took a quick look at Jim, he was dead. But my adrenaline was pumping, I grabbed the box, heaved it into the second car, opened the doors at the other end of the garage, and I was away.
I buried the box in a place we'd scouted out weeks before, miles from anywhere so that there'd be no chance of any building being done on the site if it had to be there for any length of time and then I went home.
They were waiting for me of course, eight of them, all heavily armed and wearing flak jackets, I'd dumped the car about half a mile away and chose to walk the rest of the way. They jumped me as I turned the corner into our street, I already had quite a reputation for violence, so they took no chances. Four in front, on their knees in the classic shooting stance and four behind me, I was eighteen years old and looking at a very long holiday courtesy of Her Majesty's prison service.
Eight years they gave me, eight fucking years, I could hardly believe it, we didn't hurt anyone, and they'd killed my father and my uncle.
"Take him away." the judge had said, and I managed to catch mum's eye as they did the judge's bidding, she blew me a kiss, so I knew she was still okay.
The first few weeks had been the worse, I was eighteen and reasonably good-looking, so the screws decided to put me in with a well known queer. It took him less than an hour to decide that he fancied my arse and it took me less than ten seconds to beat him to a bloody pulp, just to let him know that he wasn't going to get it.
That little episode put another six months on my sentence, but at least all the poofters left me alone, the next prick was the tobacco king of the nick who gave me an ounce of shag and some papers.
"To be repaid after visiting day," he'd said and I nodded, he didn't tell me though that he wanted two ounces back, my cousin Jenny had only bought me an ounce and a half, so he wasn't happy and sent one of his minions round to my cell the next afternoon. He came at me with a blade hidden in his sleeve and opened up my cheek, so two days later in the dinner queue, I repaid the favour and stabbed him with my fork.
"You're fucking next you fucking moron," I yelled to the baron as they dragged me away to solitary. "You'll eat your own fucking bollocks."
I was doing really well, my sentence increased by another six months, I'd gone in looking at eight years and in less than a month, it had gone up to nine, great, just fucking great.
The bloke who taught me to take it all on the chin and keep quiet was an old lag called Charlie, he was doing life for killing his missus after catching her in bed with two blokes. He'd been a big man in his time, and he'd battered both of the blokes to death with a chair and then calmly slit her throat before walking down to the local nick to give himself up.
"Hard little bugger aren't you?" he said one night just after lights out.
"I can look after myself, why?" I was mistrustful of him.
"Calm down a bit lad," he said and gave me a roll up. "You'll fucking die in here if you don't."
After a month of sharing a cell with him, I began to relax a bit, he was resigned to finishing his days in the nick, and he really didn't want me to go the same way.
"You can get anybody you want in here Micky." he said, "But the secret is to take your time, do it when nobody's looking, don't go in like a fucking bull at a gate, discretion mate, that's the secret."
Gradually word got round about who I was, dad had been pretty well known in the criminal fraternity, and he was respected as was my uncle Jim. They'd always carried shooters out on jobs, but they'd never hurt an innocent bystander, and in those days that earned them quite a lot of respect, that respect gradually came my way especially when they all learned that I'd still got the cash.
As I lay in the luxury of a hot, foamy bath, I promised myself that I was never going back again and I meant it.
Mum had done a big old English breakfast, bacon, eggs, fried bread all swimming in tomatoes and mushrooms. It was beautiful, and I told her so, she beamed with pleasure, mum had always been good in the kitchen, and she loved to be complimented on her cooking.
"Have you been out there lately mum?"
She knew I was talking about where I'd buried the money, and she smiled at me.
"It's not there any more Micky."
I looked up in alarm and she giggled.
"You'd forgotten that they're always changing the size and the style of notes in this country Micky, but don't worry, every penny is there or can be accounted for."
She told me how she'd been followed every time she left the house, they even tapped the phones, but mum was no stranger to our world, and she knew who to trust and who to avoid. Deliberately she'd gone out every night visiting every one of her relatives and given one of them, just one, the location of the money.
Jim's wife, my aunt Dolly, had gone out one night with her son Billy and two shovels and they'd returned three hours later with half a million pounds in cash in the boot of their car. It had been a nerve-wracking night because they'd left the cash in the car which was parked in the street, Billy had sat at the window all night watching and the following morning they'd both gone down to each of their banks and deposited ten thousand pounds.
