HarryG

Another 'pants-down' confession from a writer, who writes what he knows, because that's all he knows.


Taaffe wiped his brow again. “Thank fuck we're not down there, Jock, they're going to kill people today.”


I silently agreed. We were sitting on a bench in front of a garden-shed on an allotment in Wood Green, north London, watching the wholesale dairy below us. Scotland Yard's entire Flying Squad had been assembled for this one, and we were waiting for six of the most vicious armed robbers in London to attack the Securicor van as it arrived at the wages office, and we were going to shoot them before they shot us.


My burning ambition to join the 100 top London detectives who formed the Squad had been fulfilled six months earlier, much to my wife's disgust because the Squad's brief to go after the top and most vicious criminals in the capital meant that I wasn't home a lot. She also knew that we were encouraged to bend the rules to convict those criminals and it worried her.


It didn't worry me, I was a young Detective Sergeant from the East End, and I had a couple of the best informants in the London underworld, I knew what one of the top London gangsters would have for his breakfast before he sat down to eat it, but the information for this job had come from Barry, and he was never wrong.


I thought briefly about bending the rules while I straightened out the seams of the immaculate mohair suit, tailored by the Kray Twin's Taylor after we found him with a van-load of hooky suit lengths. The expensive raincoat had come from that factory in Shoreditch, after we prevented a raid on their premises. The shiny Italian shoes had fallen off a lorry, but I had forgotten where. I lit a cigarette with the slim, gold Dunhill lighter, and consulted my slim, gold watch. I turned to Taaffe.


“Better load up pal, the Security van is due in a couple of minutes”


Every Flying Squad officer was fully trained in the use of firearms, but the 'training' merely consisted of bi-monthly, hour-long visit to the shooting range, and when we were firing away the firearms inspectors kept well out of the way. A lot of our colleagues were ex-marines, former paratroopers, even a mad ex-submariner, with a row of medals. and two secretive ex-SAS members whom you wouldn't want to meet in the dark.


Taaffe was also a detective Sergeant, but with much more experience than me. We had decided just to have one of those useless service revolvers between, they were simply too dangerous, and we were only guarding an escape route from the dairy, which was unlikely to be used with all that firepower below us.


I watched as he took the revolver from his raincoat pocket and started to load it. He stopped after five bullets, most of us did, leaving the last one off gave us precious thinking time, and there had been a few accidents.


But I shook my head. “Come on Taaffe, put them all in, if this one comes off . . .” The Securicor van drove into the dairy below us while I was speaking. It was closely followed by a large, white Transit van.


Six men armed with sawn-off shotguns jumped from the Transit, as two men walked from the Security vehicle in the direction of the wages office. All hell broke loose.


The impotent barks from the service revolvers started first, followed by the horrifying, hollow bangs from the shotguns. Tat, tat, tat . . .boom, boom boom. Men were falling to the ground but the firing continued.


I watched a giant of a man run from the scene and vault over a wire fence, cross over some waste ground, and suddenly he was on the small path leading across the allotments, coming in our direction. Taaffe had seen him too and was fumbling with the revolver. We both stood up and threw our cigarettes away.


When the man, who was wearing a stocking mask and was carrying a sawn-off shotgun over his head, was about 30 to 40 yards away, I turned to Taaffe.


“You'll have to shoot the cunt, Taaffe.”


He was already taking aim with shaking hands and his revolver bucked twice. The giant kept running and didn't appear to have seen us, he kept turning round to look back at the dairy.


When he was 20 yards away, I raised my voice and said to Taaffe, “Shoot the cunt.”


Two more shots rang out but the masked man kept coming.


When he was about five yards away, almost on top of us, I shouted a bit louder.


“Shoot the fucker, shoot him now.”


I heard the shots and then the giant stopped directly in front of us, towering over us, one of the biggest men I had ever seen.


His eyes were bulging under the stocking mask and he was breathing heavily. Suddenly he threw down the shotgun, and tore off his mask. He was staring at me with mad eyes. It was big Tommy, I had had a drink with him only a week previously in that smoky pub in Whitechapel.




“Hallo, Jock, thank fuck it's you. I'm giving myself up to you. Those mad bastards back there are trying to kill us.” Then he suddenly turned his attention to Taaffe and I could see that my colleague had returned the revolver to his raincoat pocket, which he was patting furiously to get rid of the smoke.


The giant growled, “You little fucker, you tried to shoot me just now, didn't you?” and bent down to retrieve his shotgun.


But I got there first, and picked up the sawn-off, just as Tommy made a grab for Taaffe.


I opened the shotgun, found a cartridge in each barrel, clicked it shut and shouted, “If you touch him, I'll blow your fucking head off.”


The giant stopped reluctantly and turned back to me. “You would, you fucking Jock, wouldn't you, take your fucking fingers away from the triggers, there's something wrong with them. OK. I'm giving myself up.”


Then he added, “If you let me walk away, there'll be ten grand behind the Pole's pub by this evening.”


Tommy got 25 years, Taaffe got promoted another four times, but I had some trouble afterwards and it took a few years longer before they made me an officer too.

SevenWritez

Well, I enjoyed the beginning bit, but then it continued onward in its long exposition, and I began to skim before I quit reading. (It reads like a fictional piece, so I'll comment as such).

Your writing muscle is evident, but you're not flaunting it the way you should.


"Taaffe wiped his brow again. “Thank fuck we're not down there, Jock, they're going to kill people today.”


I silently agreed. We were sitting on a bench in front of a garden-shed on an allotment in Wood Green, north London, watching the wholesale dairy below us. Scotland Yard's entire Flying Squad had been assembled for this one, and we were waiting for six of the most vicious armed robbers in London to attack the Securicor van as it arrived at the wages office, and we were going to shoot them before they shot us."

This is great, but then it drawls on from there.

lin

Sentences like these are rambling and undisciplined, leaving the reader somewhat adrift. It's better to use accepted models of sentence structure than to just strike of somewhere and drop a comma now and then to find your way back.

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JosephB

You obviously post your writing because you want people to react to it.

I'm not sure if you think you are above posting in the Workshop, but your writing is not so good that it's beyond critique.

Perhaps it's just safer to post it here, where it's less likely you'll get negative feedback.

You should consider posting elsewhere, in the appropriate forum sections. You just might learn something.

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"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-- Albert Einstein

"I am really only interested in a fiction of miracles."
-- Flannery O'Connor

HarryG

You've said it before, Joe, and it made me think before, why bother to post exceedingly short slices of your life on a writing forum? I've done it before, quite a few times, and if I were water-boarded somewhere, I would tell the truth and it would be that I simply don't know why – I'm a writer, I write and I love to read what others write, and on a writer's forum I expect to see writing.


I can't explain it any other way, it's the way I see it.


At the book signing yesterday, a florid-faced man read the blurb on the back of my book and looked around before asking me conspiratorially whether I knew Harry Challoner, whose obituary appeared in the Telegraph recently. I did, but was I going to explain it to this stranger in my allocated three minutes or so?


I may well be wrong in exposing myself in the way I have done, but I have exposed myself down to the bone in all of my books, how can you do otherwise? I can't.

The Backward OX

Harry, you astonish me. Flabbergast me even.

On the one hand you tell us of your success as a published author then on the other you put stuff like this up. It fails to create suspension of disbelief almost at the start, but strangely improves as it goes along. You need an editor.



*smacks self on forehead*

Or are we just seeing your rejects?

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lin

Oh, cool. Somebody else said it so I don't have to be the asshole for once.

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