'But you didn't go only the once?'
'You get sucked into these things. Eventually I gave in my notice at work. That little crowd of thieves thought doing a regular job was pathetic, that slaving away day after day made you a loser. They were full of excuses for themselves. The truth was most of them didn't have the mentality to hold down a job. Looking back the thing that attracted me was not that they lived by thieving, but that they were fun to go out with. If I'd stuck to having a drink and a laugh with them, no harm would have come out of it.'
'Why didn't you?' I asked softly.
'If you've developed a knack of some kind you like to make use of it, especially if you get a thrill out of doing it. There was one day we went out looking for a particular motor, and we found one in this pub car park, no surveillance, no one about. My mate asked me to try to open it, first one I'd tried since I was a kid. I was into it and driving away in about two minutes. The alarm went off, but the music in the pub was so loud they wouldn't have heard it. The adrenaline was pumping, the old excitement was back. It was as though that motor wanted me to have it.'
A bragging edge had come into his voice, but hindsight reminded him of reality. 'After I was nicked, the police talked about reducing the charges against me to "being an accessory" if I told them who we'd been supplying the cars to, but I couldn't turn in people who'd trusted me. Anyway, my share from that first motor was more than I could earn in a month at work, even with maximum overtime. Things went on from there. What happens is once you start thieving you want to save all your energy and concentration for the next time you go out after a motor. A straight job gets in the way. How much more do you want to hear?'
'I'm not sure. Was there anything particularly important? Any highlights?'
'Highlights! Low lights and low life, more like. There was one that stood out, since you ask. Once we were looking for a Jaguar and spotted the right model being driven into a large car park near a shopping centre. Two attendants in a hut were collecting parking fees and raising and lowering the barriers as cars came in and out. I jumped out of the van, followed the driver of the Jaguar on foot into the shopping centre, and saw him join up with a group of people at a pub for lunch.