Tom Mitchell - How to Rob a Bank

Dad did not remember.

‘Must have been another husband,’ he’d said from the sofa.

Stepping from the corner shop, my world focused on unwrapping the Lion Bar, I heard a voice.

‘Buy us a …’ it began.

It was a voice wavering from high to low, a voice unsure whether to commit to adulthood. It was Dave’s voice. Dave Royston. The biggest melt in the neighbourhood. He hung about on the corner, smoking cigarettes and thinking he was a gangster. His cronies, Adam and Ben, like gophers on alert, stood at either shoulder. I don’t think I’d ever heard Adam or Ben speak, only their high-pitched laughter like hyenas on helium.

I took a bite from the Lion Bar. If I should die, it wouldn’t be on an empty stomach.

It tasted of heaven and caramel.

‘Dylan!’ he said. ‘You muppet! What you doing? Buying poetry?’

I stepped to the side. He did the same to stop me passing.

‘No,’ I said quietly, chewing. ‘They don’t sell poetry here.’

‘Give us your Lion Bar. Nobody eats chocolate on this corner without my say.’

He snatched the Lion Bar from my hand. I couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it, only hoping there was a terrible disease in my saliva that would make his testicles fall off. He took a bite and chewed with his mouth open. His privates weren’t obviously affected.

‘Just saw your girlfriend. In the rec. High-rise Beth. Shame. I thought they were loaded.’

‘What?’

Dave laughed and it sounded like a theremin.

‘You don’t know? Her, her mum, her dad, all moving to a tiny flat in one of the high-rises. Serves her right. Llama’s a bitch.’

‘Karma,’ I said, dropping a shoulder left, then moving right. My winger’s feint deceived Dave and I pushed past Ben.

The high-rise? That couldn’t be right. Beth’s family had money. They had a cinema room, even though the screen had yet to be fitted and it had burnt down. The high-rises towered over the east of town like huge, broken teeth. She couldn’t be living there. No way. She looked like a movie star, I mean, and she’d said they’d moved somewhere with a nice view. She couldn’t have meant there.

If this had been a film, I might have fallen to my knees and lifted my fists to the sky and shouted ‘Noooo!’

What had I done?

Dad’s van, white and with Thomas and Son, Plumbers etc. on the side, was parked outside our house.

Dad was in the front room.

‘I came home early to spend time with my favourite son. Where’ve you been? What d’you want to do?’

I told Dad I didn’t want to do anything. I told him I’d bumped into Beth. I told him I had a headache. Dad’s tone changed gears, shifting down to compassion.

‘What was she up to?’

‘Walking. Probably to the high-rise. Because an idiot burnt down her house.’

Dad’s eyes grew warm. He stretched a hand to my shoulder. It didn’t reach.

‘That’s a lesson about insurance,’ he said. ‘You’ve heard they had no insurance, right? You’ve got to have insurance. We live in an insured world. Just goes to show, doesn’t it? Remember this, son. Insurance.’

How did everyone know everything but me? I should check Facebook more often.

I later found out, on Facebook, that Beth’s dad wasn’t a successful builder after all. He’d spent the family’s money, inherited, building the house I’d destroyed. He’d planned to sell it at a profit, but it turned out nobody wanted to live in a mini version of the White House, not in England anyway. So the family occupied the building as Beth’s dad continued to lower and lower the asking price, until –

‘Do we have insurance?’ I asked.

Dad smiled. ‘We do now.’

I felt the weight of the high-rise across my shoulders. I couldn’t forget Beth’s face as she trudged across the rec. Like your favourite teacher, not angry but disappointed. A deflated Emma Stone. And all because of me.

‘Shall we watch a film?’ I said.

At least I could make him happy.

Dad knew just the thing, he always does: something to take our minds off fires and insurance. He’d recorded it the night before and although it was full of swearwords and violence, it was a straight-up classic. Something I needed to watch for sure.

‘Your English teacher can bang on about Shakespeare and Wordsworth as much as she likes,’ he said. ‘But some films are as important a part of your education.’

‘What’s it called?’ I asked, settling into the sofa next to his warmth. He was still in the bleach-blanched tracksuit bottoms that he’d worn to work. At least he’d taken his boiler suit off. ‘ Dog Day Afternoon . It’s based on a true story. I know they all say that, but this one really is. You won’t believe it, but it’s true. And it has Al Pacino before he became a diva.’

We watched the film. And that afternoon, and for the first time ever, Dad changed my life.

Dog Day Afternoon : definitely in my top-ten bank robbery films, maybe even top five. And especially important for being the film that decided how I’d make everything better:

BANK ROBBERY.

I’d rob a bank and I’d make good. I wasn’t sure how much money nice houses cost or suburban banks held, but at the very least we could go shopping and replace all Beth’s stuff. And maybe even pay for her to live somewhere nicer than the high-rise. I’d probably still have enough left over to buy a sports car (and a chauffeur to drive it) and there’d be cash too for Dad to stop work for six months and write the screenplay he always said he had in him when he’d drunk too much. Mum could buy a share in a vineyard or something. I wouldn’t give any money to Rita because she didn’t deserve it.

So long, History coursework and your ‘Why did the USA become involved in Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s?’ (30 marks). Hello, master criminal and ‘What’s the most effective way of robbing a bank?’ (£1,000,000).

Best get Googling.

As with any skilled occupation, robbing a bank requires specialist equipment. The type of specialist equipment not easily obtained by fifteen-year-olds. Specialist equipment like guns, for example. In the night following Dog Day Afternoon , I lay in bed and my blind eyes stared through the darkness and I felt guilty and I thought about stuff.

I thought about using a stun gun. Obviously an actual gun was a non-starter. I mean, I’m an idiot but not that much of an idiot. Could you convince a bank worker to hand over cash in exchange for not being Tasered? And was I mean enough to do that?

I was pretty sure you could buy one online. Not Amazon (unless you lived in the States) but from a dodgier part of the internet: the place Palace buy their centre backs, the dark Web. It’s like Amazon but with illegal stuff and a slightly higher chance of getting arrested.

Getting a stun gun delivered to your own house would be a mistake of course, but as Dave Royston lived round the corner I’d just use his address. It would be amateur-level easy to intercept Brian the German postman or somehow get to the package before Dave, which is exactly what I did two years ago when buying bangers off eBay (fireworks, not sausages). And if it all went wrong? Well, Dave saw himself as a gangster. He’d get his mugshot on the news and everything. I could just imagine the scene …

The suburban road, all drawn curtains and tired trees, quiet except for the slam of car doors as commuters climbed into Ford Fiestas and Nissan Micras. Suddenly the roar of sirens would break that silence as police transit vans pulled up outside Dave’s house. People dressed like video-game police would pour out of the vans, their guns bouncing against their chests as they thrust forward, up the crazy paving of Dave’s front path. The SWAT team would rush Dave’s door and, the next thing you know, Dave is face down on the tarmac with the lead SWAT guy telling him, ‘No one moves around here without my say-so.’