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The Cracker |
| Written by Philip Neale | |
| Thursday, 31 July 2008 | |
 George Edward Marshall was a safe cracker, and a very proficient one at that. He prided himself on keeping abreast of the latest developments in security and was more than familiar with all the latest standards of locking mechanisms. He could take apart and reassemble any of the current models and no-one was safe from his activities. He liked to think of himself as a sub-contractor hired for his particular skills rather than an outright thief. Thief - the very word left an unpleasant taste in his mouth and he tried, at least mentally, to distance himself from that kind of criminal group. He was a craftsman and comparing him to some kind of bandit would be tantamount to saying that all joiners were really no more than DIY enthusiasts.
He had even gone so far as to have made all his own tools in order to avoid detection through some vendor who couldn't keep his mouth shut. It needed a couple of small lathes of course, but he had been able to pick these up for cash at a liquidation sale years ago. Installing them into a workshop at the back of his garage had been tricky though and had been carried out during darkness hours. Fortunately he had no nosey neighbours to contend with, and the whole process appeared to have gone unnoticed. The only piece of equipment he couldn't make was the stethoscope, and distasteful as it was, he lifted one from the local hospital when visiting a friend.
His was a profession which went undetected largely because the activity itself, if carried out properly, would leave very little trace that he had been around until it was too late and the commodity ‘removed' had long gone. The real skill lay in leaving things exactly as the victim would have expected to find them. He could neither understand nor abide the ‘amateurs' who would leave a trail of devastation in their wake. That level of burglary would be likely to create too much noise and this was the enemy of the safecracker. He also made it a policy to take nothing but cash. Anything else would have to involve a third party to fence it for him with the inevitable risk of traceability and also another individual who could give him away.
No, you needed to get in as quietly as possible, know exactly where in the property you were going and get there within the shortest possible time, touching nothing outside of your ultimate object. Get used to working in the dark unless you wanted the police feeling your collar before you'd even got started, keep your tools in one place and neatly laid out, and for goodness sake remember to take them all away with you. Finally, make sure that you wipe clean any surfaces you touched, whether you had gloves on or not. Lock up after yourself and always remember to go out the same way you came in.
He had decided long ago not to work as a part of any ‘gang' where possible, whether he was simply required to open up or take a larger role in the activities. Involvement with other members of the criminal fraternity would leave him exposed to any or all of their inefficiencies. The last thing he needed was an informant after all the years he had worked without a single conviction to his name. The trick was not to be greedy and never extend yourself beyond your known abilities. Keeping a low profile was what had kept him below the police radar for so long and he wasn't about to throw that away.
He always preferred to work alone, unaided and on targets which he had carefully selected for himself. He was an ordinary looking man getting towards late middle age and tended to blend into the background. He was never one for starting up a conversation, so you would neither notice him nor recognise him in a crowd and he liked it that way. Still, things were inevitably becoming more hazardous as age slipped its cold fingers around the cardio vascular system, and he wondered if it was time to quit while the going was good. He could do one last job and make it large enough to provide for him and Nancy, his wife, in their retirement. He had limited himself previously to small/medium sized jobs, and his current thinking would involve much greater risk and require considerably more care at the planning stage.
He knew where the best properties lay, and they weren't always those with the highest profiles. You could keep your footballers and TV celebrities - their perimeter security systems were far too complex to justify the effort. No, you needed somewhere much less ostentatious and yet far enough from any built up area so as not to attract attention of any passing constabulary. He'd had one particular location in mind for a while, but had always considered it too risky - maybe this was the right opportunity. Jim McKee had run the ‘Organisation' for around fifteen years since the death of his father, but he wasn't a patch on the old man. George had been asked a few times to name his price for a number of jobs, but had always politely declined, and it was good PR to be polite to this guy.
It had been a while since contact had been made but George knew that it would only be a question of time before his expert skills would be requested again, and on this occasion he would be ready. Sure enough McKee sent one of his messenger boys to the match one weekend where it was common knowledge that George spent every other Saturday, and after a brief exchange, details were given verbally - nothing was ever written down. George turned up for a meeting at Mckee's home a week later and details of the job were discussed. All eyes were on him as the expert cracker who would gain entry to the selected premises, but one look at the plans was enough to convince him that there would be no difficulty in opening up the site and cracking the strong room. His one condition, as always, was that there was no mess and he took all his tools away with him. Payment would be up front of course. He said ‘Yes'
The job went like a dream and they were in and out in just under an hour and George pocketed the pair of gloves carelessly discarded by one of the gang. There was no evidence left to tie anyone in the gang to the robbery and the only damage inflicted was to the dignity of the security guard who was tied up, gagged and left in his underwear in his office. All proceeds were taken back to McKee's premises for fencing at a later date. The group split up and everyone went home - apart from George that is.
He returned to the house two hours later, and concealing himself in the back garden switched on the miniature intercom set which he had planted in the property during the planning meeting. He smiled to himself as he realised that the family were to be away for the next forty-eight hours at McKee's wife's mothers and that all the robbery proceeds were stashed away in the safe. Of course, George had made himself quietly familiar with the location of the strong box and he knew that he would have no problem in opening it. His M.O. would be quite different this time though, and he packed up and made his way home for a good night's rest.
The following evening, two hours after dusk he made his way to the McKee house, parking a mile away from the premises and walking across open fields to the rear of the property. McKee's security system was very good, but nothing that George couldn't handle, and having watched whilst the passcode was entered on a previous visit, he knew that he could disarm it before it went off. It paid to have an eagle eye and a good memory in this game. He could, of course, have cut the wires to the box but that was crude and against all his professional ‘ethics'. McKee, like the rest of the residents, had also paid for a private security firm to keep an eye on the place, but George knew that they were lazy and had become careless with the timing of the patrols, so avoiding them would be easy and he had just missed the last one. He now had about three quarters of an hour to complete the job.
Putting on his gloves, he set to work. Getting past the external door locks was a piece of cake for a skilled cracksmith like him, and he was careful to relock after himself. He needed no time for darkness acclimatisation and went directly to the study where the safe was situated. Standing still for a moment he made sure that no-one was snooping around outside, and then went to work. In ten minutes he had the door open and all the contents in his holdall. He had to take everything to make the job look like the work of another one of the gang - everything but cash would be dumped on his way home. Now for the part of the job which would throw everyone completely off the scent. He locked the safe up again and planted the gelignite with its remote detonator around the lock. In the course of the next twenty minutes a trail of damage was very quietly laid through the house to the back door where George carefully smashed a pane of glass in one of its panels to simulate the break in. He even trod it through the house to create a more convincing impression before resetting the alarm system, leaving the premises and cutting the external wires.
The final coup de grace was the explosion set off remotely just after the next patrol had departed, giving him plenty of time to return to his vehicle and drive home even allowing for the return of the guards alerted by the blast. Passing over the river he made one stop - to drop the rest of the safe contents together with the remote device into the river inside a weighted bag. He knew that he was in possession of over £250,000 in used notes and as long as Nancy was ready with the bags packed and the passports and tickets ready when he got home, they would be away on the night flight to Barbados before anyone was any the wiser. Along with the half million he had accumulated over the years they wouldn't be short of a bob or two during their retirement, and he'd even been paid for the raid itself.
No-one would be looking for them after they found the gloves he ‘carelessly' dropped at the scene together with the wallet he had lifted from one of the gang during the operation. He had ‘trained' as a pickpocket but didn't fancy it as a career - too crude. Came in useful in the end though, and it was rather nice to know that he hadn't lost his touch. Copyright 2008 Philip Neale |
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