Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 08:49:25 +0200 From: Amy Redek Subject: Once Upon a Crime. Chapter Four. Without them seeing, I later removed all the cash that I had got from a drawer in the shop and transferred it into one of my inside coat pockets. This was mine and we would share out whatever we got from the jewellery when I took it to my fence. I only took one bag with me to him the next morning and had him look and study and examine what was inside and I could see that it excited him when I said that there was another two bags filled in the same way. He took two hours studying each piece and knew that in his mind he had a calculator, clocking up each item as to how much he would get and how much to give to me. `Okay,' he said when he'd finished examining every piece and remove his eyeglass. `I'll give you sixty thousand for this bag.' `Eighty,' I replied. `Sixty five,' he countered with. `Seventy five,' was my response. `Okay, okay. Seventy and that's my last offer,' he said, sitting back. `Deal,' I said. `Well I don't have that much here in the shop,' he began and I picked up the bag. `Thanks very much,' I said as I began to turn away. `I'll go somewhere else.' `Now wait a minute, just wait a minute. Let me finish. I'll have the money here this time tomorrow,' he said. `Can you triple that and have all three bags at the same time?' `Yes,' he said slowly, `if they are the same as this bag.' `Well I think they are, but you can make sure tomorrow, till then, have a nice day,' I said, leaving the shop with the same bag. Mavis hadn't gone to work this day either, having taken the other day off sick she thought it best to have another one away from work to make it seem as though she actually had been ill. Pat was there too when I arrived at the flat, having caught the train from Brighton where he had dumped the car in a parking lot. So all four of us were together when I told them that I had been offered sixty thousand for the one bag and it was dependant on what the other two were worth before we could say at exactly how much we would all receive. Okay and wait a minute. It was not a spelling mistake when I told them that I'd been offered sixty thousand when it really was seventy. It had been my time and effort as well as the planning so I thought that I deserved the lion's share and I would be doing the same with the other two bags. As it was, I agreed with the fence that one of the other two bags would be for seventy thousand but the third, only fifty thousand. I didn't quibble for I accepted the one hundred and ninety thousand pounds and showed the others one hundred and forty thousand which we split four ways giving us each thirty five thousand pounds each which pleased them immensely. So I finished up with eighty five thousand pounds which I later, secreted in one of my hiding places at my own home that I had used when I was a child. With them three being happy with getting that much for such a short time of working, were very keen on me setting up another similar heist. They disregarded the fact that it had been broadcast on the television news that evening of the robbery and they also showed the CCTV of the three of us in the shop and of Mavis and Morris breaking the showcase counters. That had been in Watford and now I went and looked at St. Albans and found a shop very much the same as that of Watford. This we hit a month later and even though there was a slightly different set up, we successfully carried out the robbery which netted them each another thirty five thousand pounds, me taking another fifty for my effort. But the same as last time, it was a violent sexual coupling of Mavis and myself and then later, another session with Morris. I didn't go bare back this time but I still had to go down and suck on him, not feeling the same squeamishness that I had the last time, being prepared for his outburst of sperm and therefore able to cope with it. We did another two robberies in this fashion over the next six months but ran into trouble on our fifth one a few months later. The heist went off okay, it was during the getaway that we ran into trouble. That's trouble with a capital T. As usual, I'd been made up to change my facial features and when we had piled into the car and had driven off, Mavis used her wipes to remove my make-up and with me clean, took out the gun that I carried stuck in my belt, bent down and put inside the bag that I had carried out of the shop. Pat was driving as usual and Morris had got into the front seat next to him. Mavis was to my left in the back and as I had bent down to put the gun away, we went round a corner at quite a high speed. Now what happened then, I'm not quite sure but was told later, for as we went round with me bent over in the back, it was my being in that position that saved me, if it could be called that. Because, as we turned sharply and at a fair speed, we ran headlong into the front of a fire engine that had only just started to sound his alarm on approaching this road junction, but it was too late for we had already made the turn. The fire engine was answering a 999 call and was on its way when it met us, head on. With the fire engine being built quite solidly at the front while we were in a normal car, you can imagine what it was like for the two vehicles coming together at an overall combined speed of about ninety miles an hour. All I heard was this immediate crashing of us together before I was rendered unconscious. Pat and Morris had been killed outright with the whole front of the car coming inwards, crushing them to death while Mavis died too as the seat of Morris came back onto her as well as her forward movement at the time of impact broke both her neck and spine, killing her instantly too. With me bending down, I suffered a broken collarbone, two broken ribs and a fractured skull by having the seat of Pat, crushing me closer to the floor as the forward part of the car came inwards. I was recovered unconscious when the fireman, instead of carrying on to where they were headed, finished up in trying to extricate us four from the crushed car. Of course I had no recollection of this aftermath but was told that it took them two hours to get the four of us out the car, the other three being dead and me only just alive. By the time I was gotten out, an ambulance was there to rush me off to hospital where I was operated on and not given much of a chance to survive. Survive I did, but only to stay in a coma for nearly three weeks before I came to the surface. In the meantime, our car had been taken over by the police and they soon found three bags of jewellery which proved to have come from the shop we had just robbed. It wasn't a saving grace that I couldn't be definitely identified by the shop staff later, but it did help by having had my make-up cleaned off before the accident. What tied me most definitely with the robbery was the fact that I was found crushed down on top of one of the bags, a bag that carried a real live gun with bullets in the chamber. So with me in the getaway car, it was considered that I too had been involved in this robbery. It was three months before the doctors would allow me to be questioned and all I could say to them was that I had no recollection of being in the car or why I was there in the first place. All I could tell them was my name and that I didn't know any of the other occupants of the car. With my having had a fractured skull led the doctors to explain that the crash could have caused a case of amnesia following the traumatic experience that my head and brain had undergone. That's what they said and I went along with that line in all the questions that were thrown at me. Least said, least mended is what I had been taught by my father for many a person who had appeared before him in court had said too much and therefore convicted themselves out of their own mouths. So I kept my mouth shut as much as possible by saying I don't remember to nearly all their questions. Despite me pleading ignorance of what they were saying, I was still formally charge with the circumstantial evidence they produced at my trial ten months after the theft and accident. When I been pronounced fit enough to be questioned, it was only a short time after that that I was formally charged and transferred to a secure hospital unit, i.e., a locked ward that had bars at the windows and a twenty four hour guard stationed outside. So as I've said, ten months after the crash, I was in the dock and had to spend five agonising days listening to all the, what to me was circumstantial evidence, but in spite of my plea of being innocent and not having had any recollecting of the event nor of those preceding or of the aftermath. But in the juries eyes, it was enough for them to declare me guilty as charged, that being of robbery under arms and sentence was passed, giving me twenty years in jail. With sentence being passed in the morning, instead of being led back down to the cell I had been ensconced in during the trial, I was bundled into a closed van and driven straight off to prison. I'm not naming the place but I was in that van for nearly four hours, so you try and work out to where I was sent. On the journey I was given a couple of sandwiches and some water in a plastic bottle which had to suffice as lunch until I could get dinner in the prison. Where we eventually arrived and I was signed over to the prison warders who escorted me up to the Governor's office where I was told the rules of the prison before being taken down below and made to strip completely, handing over my proper clothes and being issued with the standard prison garb. I was then escorted to what would be my home for at the least, twenty years, God was I feeling sick and a short while later, felt even more sick. `You're going to have great fun with your cell mate,' he chuckled as we moved along and up a tier on the way to my allocated cell. `His name is Bruno Brown though we call him The Bear,' and he chuckled again as he finally stopped and pushed me into this cell. I wasn't quite sure of the bear part but the man standing in there had the size of one. He must have been at least six foot four for he towered well above me and what was more, his shoulders were almost the width of the cell door. `Here's your new playmate,' the warder said with a chuckle when I was pushed inside before leaving me alone with this big brute of a man. `My name's Bruno,' he said in a surprisingly soft voice which belied his size, offering me his hand which was twice the size of mine which disappeared as we shook hands. `My...my name is John. John Singleton,' I stammered feeling the power in that hand of his that was holding mine. `Welcome to paradise,' he said. `It's not heaven but it's a damn sight better than hell if you follow the rules. Let's have dinner for its time and we can talk about each other later, for all of us in here have got all the time in the world,' he said with a chuckling kind of sound that could really be thought of coming from a big brown bear as he appeared to be. I followed him out of the cell and joined more of the inmates on their way down to the mess hall to be given our dinner. When there, Bruno picked up two indented trays and then proceeded to push me ahead of him to the head of the queue, where we had some really revolting looking mess dumped onto our trays and then picked up some spoons on our way to one of the tables. As nobody had seemed to have any objection to Bruno pushing me up to the front made me think that he must have some kind of force within these walls as we sat down and ate what they called dinner. I must say that the mess I had on my tray was only just edible, but only just and I ate as much as I could before pushing the tray away, still leaving half of it which Bruno then went and finished it off. `You'll get used to the food,' he said as we dumped our dirty trays in a container to be washed and re-used before going back up to our cell. It wasn't long before a bell sounded and all the cells doors closed with a reverberating clang which really gave me the truth that I was here and being locked up. But that wasn't all. `In prison here, it's usual for the newcomer to have the lower bunk, but because of my height, I have the lower one because I bang my head when I'm up top. Now there's one other thing you've got to know and believe me, it's for your own good,' and he paused, and as it was for some length, I couldn't stop myself from asking the question. `Well? What is it that I've got to know?' I asked. `See those guys over there on the opposite side?' and I looked out of our cell bars and saw four different faces looking over at us. `Yes. I see them, well?' `Well they are waiting to see you suck on my cock before lights out.'