grimms42

At 11.45 am three masked men burst through the door of the Linen Bank on Dunbarton Road, stocking masks over their faces. ‘This is a stick up,’ shouts Dougie. The bank shuts at lunch for twelve and it’s a Friday, a busy day with customers paying money in and taking money out. It’s only later they remember his Irish accent marking him out as foreign because everything happens so quickly. The men carry pistols.

Jaz’s gun is a nine millimetre. He loves the feel of it in his hand. It makes him feel taller. But the matching black costumes and boots they wear already add the appearance of height. Not that Del needs any help. He’s first to vault the counter, cashiers cowering away from him as if a public monument has dropped from the strip lights. He’s quickly followed by Dougie. As instructed, Jaz keeps his back to the door and shoots two shots into the ceiling, plaster falls to the floor but the noise surprises him, leaving a ringing sound in his ears. ‘Face the wall and stay where you are,’ he bawls at the customers. ‘Or you’ll get this!’ He brandishes the pistol, pushing a middle-aged man in a blue boilersuit, spotted with oil, hard against the wall, daring him to look at him.  An elderly woman with a walking stick takes watery eyes takes the longest to comply. The rest of them jump to it, avoiding the slit in the mask he gazes out of, owning them. They’ve already cut the phone and alarm wires at the rear of the building. Child’s play. And for good measure cut the links to the chemist shop next door.

His two comrades quickly filled three hessian sacks with money. Dougie marches the manager to the door with them, a gun to his bald head. A set of keys dangles limp in his hand. Jaz holds the door open. Del is first out to the car, pulling the mask off before he hits the pavement outside and Jaz follows behind. He hears Dougie whispering, ‘which key? Don’t make me rearrange yer brains’.

Del sits in the Triumph car, window wound down his elbow perched, hessian sacks flung carelessly in the back seat with Jaz, who kicks them under the seat out of sight.  ‘Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep’ comes on the radio and Del looks in the rearview mirror and grins. It takes Dougie a minute to lock the front door. He hands Del the keys as the car takes off from the pavement. As they speed along Dumbarton Road, the car makes a quick left and right into Trafalgar Street and Del holds the set of keys out of the window and lets them drop. A woman pushing a pram watches them bouncing to the side of the road.  The back door to the bank is sealed shut and the customers and staff are locked safely inside. They’ve made good time. They take a sharp left through the tunnel and up the windy road and double back on themselves coming out onto Duntocher Road. Over the brow of the hill and another left and they are off all the main arteries of the street the police are likely to shoot down towards the bank. Del keeps his speed down to under thirty and they take the hill on Clarke Street like an old woman pushing a bogey. ‘I fuckin’ hate that bastardin’ song,’ Dougie says and they laugh. Del sparks a celebratory cigarette. By the time Middle of the Road on the radio has finished Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheeping the car is parked on the brow of the Dalmuir Municipial Golf Course and a steep grass embankment on Glenhead Road, sheltering them from casual onlookers.

The Morris car is parked thirty yards away at the dilapidated garages, overgrown with weeds and grit paths. So far it’s all went as planned. Jaz is flying. He has never felt so high without a drink in him. Not even the killing of two men compares to this.  They fling open the doors and get out of the car as a group in no particular hurry. Del turns his head, looks up at the road above them making sure no one can see them, before he goes to opens the boot. Jaz lifts two sacks out of his side of the door and slides them to his feet. Dougie leans in and pick up the other bag. He leaves it at the back of the car with Del and Jaz, already he’s peeling off his uniform, pulling the black jumper over his head, and flinging it in the back seat. Del hands them each a plastic bag with their everyday clothes from the boot.

 Jaz follows suit, peeling off, sitting in the back seat and wriggling out of his trousers and putting on his denims and wedging a pair of sannies on his feet. Del is the only one in black uniform. While they’ve been getting changed he’s tipped the money into a golf trolley, strapped the guns into the pouch at the front. He’s stuck a driver, a few irons and putter in for decoration.

‘Here,’ Del says, ‘in case you get cold,’ flinging Jaz an orange cagoule from the boot and a blue-and-white Ranger’s scarf when he joins him again at the rear of the Triumph. Three gallon canisters are lined up at Del’s feet and stink of petrol.

Dougie still has black boots on but he is wearing a denim shirt and trousers. He holds out and cups his hand and snatches the keys to the Morris from Del. Before he goes to start the engine he gives Jaz a friendly warning and his eyes narrow. ‘Don’t even  think about playin’ the fly guy and stealing any of that money. And don’t think we’ll not know, because we’ll know. You’ll get your cut. You’ll get your wages. It’s for the cause. Let that be enough.’

Jaz doesn’t flinch and meets his gaze. ‘I wouldnae dae that.’

‘Good man,’ Dougie slaps him on the shoulder, and about turns and marches up towards the Hillman. ‘We’ll see you the night then.’

As he wheels the trolley down the slope Jaz pulls the cagoule hood up and ties it tight under the chin. He doesn’t want any of his mates to see wheeling a golf trolley and thinking he’s one of those old buddies that plays golf. He keeps going screened from the greens and grass of the golf course by a steep shale path and twelve-foot briar hedging that bifurcates the course. Round he goes anticlockwise towards the start of the course. A wee boy leans over the bridge spitting into the fast flowing stream from Old Kilpatrick Hills. He spins round, mouth open squinting past Jaz and up the hill when they hear the muffled explosion. ‘Yeh, want to buy any golf balls, mister?’ he shouts at Jaz.

‘Nah,’ Jaz says, and keeps walking, head down.

A man in a tartan hat measuring his putt on the first green, pauses and stands up, gawping at the black smoke. ‘Wonder whit that is?’ he cries to his golf companion, a fuzzy head poking out of the bunker. ‘Somebody burning their golf clubs,’ the man with the fuzzy head quips.

Jaz joins the park and wheels his trolley, past the duck pond, towards the monument of Robert Currie, that saved the wee boy. He stops at the fountain and has a mouthful of fresh water, listens to the sounds of police sirens. Jaz plunges his arm into the trolley and fingers the notes and starts laughing. In the distance a woman walks up the hill towards the swings, a wee boy with a white woolly hat on his head reaches up and holds tight to her hand. They look happy, Jaz thinks, and now I’ve got money I could be happy too. I maybe even take Karen to Blackpool. He unzips the front of the golf bag and pulls out a pistol. It’s a .22 Star, he sticks it in his cagoule pocket. The weight feels right and gives him extra swagger as he comes out of the scary tunnel underneath the track. He’s a minute from home and dry and nobody can stop him without paying the price.