One Last Job by Tom Pettifor & Nick Sommerlad

Author:Tom Pettifor & Nick Sommerlad [Pettifor, Tom & Sommerlad, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Hatton Garden raid, jewellery heist, Brian Reader, Crime
Publisher: Mirror Books
Published: 2016-09-08T03:00:00+00:00

11

A New Team

Craning his neck up at the red-brick walls topped with gleaming barbed wire, Brian Reader knew there was no point fighting the system. By the time he arrived at Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight, Reader had become used to the oppressive hopelessness of life on the inside. The stench of stale tobacco and sweat, the permanent undercurrent of boredom mixed with seething anger that occasionally exploded into violence. Reader had never liked any sort of institution or authority and had spent his entire adult life up until this point existing outside of the “system”. After leaving the army he had relied on his wits and hard work to provide for his family. Never had he claimed a benefit or asked for help from the government. Never had he worked for another man or company. Reader had enjoyed more freedom than most people experience in a lifetime. But now, approaching 50, having travelled the world and become used to some of the finer things in life, he was locked up in a cell for most of the day in a high-security jail and forced to slop out.

It was Friday, July 25, 1986, when Reader arrived at the Victorian prison that would be his home for the coming few years. He had already spent 18 months on remand in London as he awaited the two trials. If he kept his head down he would be out in less than five years, having served two thirds of his sentence. Reader had experienced worse growing up during the war, when food was hard to come by and he would shiver through the winter nights. In prison you could read and you were fed. Reader would use his time to educate himself further and develop his circle of criminal contacts. Most of his gang had been arrested or fled the country in the wake of the Gervaise and Brink’s-Mat trials. Reader knew he would need a new team when he eventually went back to work. He still had big plans.

The first he met was Terry Perkins. Brought up in Edmonton, north London, Perkins was serving 22 years for a huge robbery. Born in 1948 to George and Lizzy, the powerfully built youngster had been a good amateur boxer and trained at the New Enterprise Gym in Tottenham, north London. Perkins’ family were carpet fitters and he would often spend childhood summers picking hops in the Kent countryside with his siblings and the mother he was very close to. When Reader met him, Perkins was 37 years old and had never done a burglary in his life, having spent his criminal career as an armed robber working with the likes of north London blagger Billy Hickson and notorious villain John Knight. He was allegedly a friend of legendary supergrass Roy Garner who, as outlined in Chapter Six, had been one of Britain’s most prolific police informers during the 1970s. Garner was finally jailed in 1989 for 22 years over a plot to smuggle 400 kilos of Colombian cocaine into the UK.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.