Borstal Girl by MacKenney Eileen

Author:MacKenney, Eileen [MacKenney, Eileen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849834766
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2011-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

10

HIJACKINGS, HOLD-UPS AND SMASH-AND-GRAB

Harry gave up the long-distance driving after his near-fatal accident, which pleased me no end, because I didn’t have to worry about him getting chatted up by sorts and tarts. Instead of the odd little caper, he got me involved in hijacking lorries, or ‘jump-ups’, as we called them, to make up for his loss of driving wages. Harry and his mate Sixer would do the job and I’d follow them in a motor, in case anything went wrong. If it did, Harry and Sixer would abandon the hijacked lorry and jump in the car with me and we’d be off.

Harry and Sixer were partners in crime and they used me as back-up whenever they could. My connections could suss out if the loads were expensive enough to be worth the risk and if the gear would be easy to get rid of or not. We were soon hijacking lorries all over London. Harry was meticulous; he planned everything down to the last detail. He’d never just jump-up any old lorry, he always had to know what it was carrying and he had the stuff sold before it was even nicked – stolen to order, you might say.

Before each job, he used to investigate what lorry was going where. He knew all the stops and when the drivers would take a break to rest and eat. Sometimes they would be inside jobs, Harry would meet the drivers beforehand and pay them off. They’d arrange a place to stop, where the keys would be handed over. The drivers would tell their guv’nors that the robbers were armed, so what could they do? Sometimes they’d take a clout on the head to make it look authentic – nothing serious, more visible than vindictive like.

Once, when Harry did a jump-up with my brothers, the lorry ended up in the fucking Thames. It slid backwards down a slope near Woolwich and the load ended up floating down the river towards Barking Reach. I don’t know how the fuck Harry got out, but he said he’d never do a caper with my brothers again – they weren’t professional enough for him. But, no matter how good he thought he was, the coppers were always close behind. They blamed him for every fucking hijacking and they were always at my door – no evidence, no proof, just because it was Harry Mackenney.

I remember one night we planned to knock off this load of expensive gear that was strapped to the back of a lorry up north of the river near Stoke Newington. It was late when Harry and Sixer got into the truck and my job was to tail behind them in a souped-up Austin Princess. That way, if the coppers got wind of the hijack and came onto them, they could abandon the lorry and jump in with me and we could make our getaway. But it was very foggy on this particular night and I lost sight of the lorry when it went over London Bridge.

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