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Under a gloomy Dublin sky, three Hard Lads loitered in an alleyway near the Northside Shopping Centre. Dark-clad and shifty-eyed, they stood close together and spoke in lowered voices.
Mischief would soon be afoot.
“This is an important heist” said Jonno to his scowling accomplices Barry and Graham. “Don’t get caught. Always do be lookin’ hard. And remember - the boss wants gin.”
“She also wants to be called Mrs. Geraghty, not ‘the boss’” interjected curly-haired Graham, the scowl dropping from his face.
“That’s beside the point!” hissed Jonno. “We have our orders for this mission, and we gotta follow them real carefully. A bottle of gin, she says, or she’ll kick us out and we won’t be her gang any more. Got it?”
“Why can’t we be our own gang, like before?” asked Barry, scratching his blond head.
Jonno’s face was grim. “You wanna go back to putting adverts in newspapers for jobs? Meeting in the drafty old warehouse? Or my Da’s front room? That’s if he’d have us back after the coffee incident….”
“Come on, Barry” added Graham encouragingly, “you know we got it pretty good now. We didn’t used to have tea and biscuits at our secret meetings.”
Barry remained silent for several long thoughtful seconds, during which time his scowl began to melt into a sad pout. Finally he responded “Right, yeah it's grand, Jonno. Better this way.”
“Well, don’t be gettin’ cold feet now, Barry. We can’t disappoint the boss.”
Graham opened his mouth. Jonno rolled his eyes and added “We can’t disappoint Mrs. Geraghty.” Graham nodded, and put a hard expression back on his face.
Jonno continued his instructions. “Right! Barry, you stand guard outside the shop like we agreed. Graham, you’re coming in with me. I’ll collect the goods. You make sure no-one sees me do it.”
He fixed each of them with a meaningful glare, and nodded. They glared and nodded back in turn. Without another word, the three of them sauntered casually down the alley as though nothing could be further from their minds than mischief.
When they reached the convenience store, Barry pretended to ignore the others as he stationed himself strategically outside the door and settled down to wait. He divided his attention between watching for approaching Gardaí and trying to maintain a menacing facial expression whilst chewing gum nonchalantly.
Jonno led Graham through the door, hard-faced but otherwise casual, as Graham glanced nervously to and fro.
The shopkeeper, a tall man wearing a striped shirt and a name tag that read “Greg,” glanced up briefly as they entered. Luckily for them, he was preoccupied with some other customers at that moment and his guileless blue eyes did not linger on the Hard Lads.
Jonno and Graham moved quietly through the shop until they came to a modest display of alcoholic beverages tucked away in a corner. They exchanged a silent, dramatic glance to acknowledge having made it this far without arousing suspicion. Then Jonno swiftly grabbed a bottle labeled “Gin” off the shelf and tucked it inside his jacket.
“Can I help you find anything?” inquired a calm clear voice from much too close behind them.
Jonno leaped sideways in a panic, lanky legs flailing, barely managing to keep the precious bottle clamped under one arm while the other arm windmilled madly. Graham jumped and flailed in equal panic, but being smaller and unburdened he regained his balance with relative ease. Jonno, on the other hand, brought down a whole shelf of coasters, corkscrews, bottle-openers, swizzle sticks, and novelty hats before lurching to his feet and racing out the door.
Amidst the debris Graham and Greg stood rooted to the spot with shock. They stared in disbelief – first at the mess, then at each other.
Before Greg could say anything, Graham stepped closer – looking up at the taller man with the hardest glare he could muster – and reached threateningly into his pocket.
“You seen nothin’, got it?”
“P-pardon?” Greg seemed more baffled than intimidated.
“You seen nothin.’ If anyone asks, we was never here” explained Graham gruffly. He withdrew a few crumpled banknotes from his pocket and slipped them into Greg’s hand as surreptitiously as he could. He scowled in Greg’s direction one last time and tiptoed swiftly away through the scattered merchandise. Greg sighed, rolled his eyes, and headed towards the till with his handful of money as Graham bolted out the door.
By the time Graham reached the alley where they had agreed to rendezvous, his pace had slowed to a nervous walk. The hard expression faded from his face as he glanced around and saw no sign of the others.
Suddenly, halfway down the alley, something moved behind a row of tall rubbish bins. Graham froze and slowly turned to face whatever it was. But before he could decide between fight or flight, he heard familiar voices bickering in loud whispers from the shadows.
“It’s Graham, you knob!”
“But what if it isn’t?!”
“Why don’t you put your head out and look?”
“Why don’t you put your head out?”
“We could shout ‘Who goes there?’ and see what he says.”
Graham glanced nervously around to make sure no-one was watching him. Then he stepped towards the smelly bins and quietly sang the Hard Lads password as best he could. The one he had first learned, about the great big shopping centre.
He had scarcely finished before Jonno and Barry popped up from behind the bins. Excitement and relief flashed briefly across their faces, swiftly replaced by the usual stony stares.
“You’re a little flat, but good enough,” said Jonno.
Barry grumbled sheepishly “Forgot about that password. Haven’t needed it since we got the new meeting spot.”
Jonno turned to him, suddenly thoughtful. “True, true. The b- Mrs. Geraghty always lets us in. And if ever somethin’ were to happen, ya know, there’s always that back way she told us.”
All three lads looked at each other and nodded seriously.
“Anyway,” said Jonno, “that’s why we’re there. But right now we’re not there. We’re here. So we’d best get there before anyone finds out we're here. Graham, were we followed?”
“Nah, no one’s followin’ us” said Graham confidently.
Jonno continued insistently: “Are you sure? We're like sitting ducks out here in the open. Let's get a move on!”
“Nah, we won’t be followed. I bribed yer man to look the other way” explained Graham.
“Wouldn’t yiz rather be having tea and biscuits on the sofa instead of standing around some bins in an alleyway?” hissed Jonno.
Graham and Barry perked up at this suggestion and nodded cheerfully in agreement. Just as Jonno was about to turn his back and lead them down the alley, Graham opened his mouth again.
“Crisps.”
“Fine, we’ll have tea and biscuits, you can have crisps” replied Jonno impatiently.
“No, we should get crisps to go with the gin. On our way back.”
Jonno’s expression shifted as understanding of Graham’s words sank in. He patted the pocket of his jacket where the gin bottle was safely stowed, and nodded. “She does be liking the Taytos with her gin.”
“My turn to collect the goods” Barry volunteered boldly. “Next shop that has crisps, I’ll go in, you stand guard.”
Jonno and Graham offered no opposition to this suggestion, and soon the Hard Lads strolled out of the alley and began to make their way through the city.
Before long they found themselves outside a bustling SuperDuperMarket. Customers came and went, all intent upon their own shopping. There were no employees in sight. Barry left Jonno and Graham loitering casually in the parking area and plunged into the crowd heading towards the supermarket doors.
Hard-faced Barry made his way towards the snack food aisle, trying to look subtly intimidating without attracting attention. He came to a stop at the sight of an employee stocking shelves – with bags of crisps, as luck would have it – and waited impatiently for the man to leave. Barry pretended to be comparing two different packages of Jaffa Cakes while surreptitiously keeping the employee’s dark uniform in view from the corner of his eye.
A sudden scream from a few aisles away broke Barry’s concentration. He looked around in a panic and saw employees hurrying towards the sound and customers hurrying in the opposite direction. There was a clatter of footsteps and a hubbub of raised voices (in which Barry heard the name “Eric” repeated), but before he could seize the opportunity of being alone in the aisle to nick a bag of crisps, the flow of supermarket activity had returned to normal as if this disruption were an everyday occurrence.
The employee had not returned to stock the shelves, so Barry sidled up to the half-full pallet of crisps that still stood in the middle of the floor.
Without warning, two customers rounded the corner and stormed down the aisle in his direction – a harried-looking middle-aged woman with an overflowing basket on her arm and a slouching blond boy still in his school uniform. They were arguing loudly with each other and did not even seem to notice Barry.
“But Mum, I already paid for them! With my own allowance money!”
“I don’t care whose money it is, Oisín; there’s to be no junk food until your grades have improved! We’re putting them back, and that’s final!”
The woman plucked an unopened package of Taytos out of her son’s hand, unmoved by his outraged gasps and frustrated flailing, and looked around for a suitable place to deposit the offending snack. With her glasses slipping ever further down her nose and both hands too occupied to adjust them, she thrust the bag of crisps in Barry’s direction and said “Excuse me, could you put these back on the shelf for me please? My son picked them up by mistake and I’m not sure where they go.”
Bewildered Barry reached for the bag and stood holding it while the woman tossed a relieved “Thank you” in his direction and hastily turned to steer her son away.
“Why’d you have to do that?” the boy spluttered indignantly at his mother. “I wasn’t even gonna eat them all myself! I was gonna share them with Barry!”
Barry?!
The Hard Lad of that name did not waste any time deciding whether this was an innocent coincidence or deeply suspicious. By the time mother and son had reached the end of the aisle he was nowhere to be seen.
When Jonno and Graham observed Barry’s flying exit from the supermarket, they followed - at a similarly panicked pace - for several blocks. When at last he ducked out of sight behind a convenient hedge, they hurtled after him, not realising that he had stopped running. The three of them collided and fell to the ground in a heap.
“You stopped! Why’d you stop?” complained Jonno.
“You ran so fast! Why’d you run?” asked Graham.
Barry, who had stopped because he was out of breath, panted wordlessly for an uncomfortable length of time before answering.
“I got the crisps.”
The three lads awkwardly struggled to their feet, now grimacing at their new bruises rather than for the sake of looking tough. Jonno felt in his pocket for the bottle of gin and found it was still there and unharmed. The bag of crisps had flown out of Barry’s hand when Jonno and Graham crashed into him, but its bright colours were easy to spot and they soon retrieved it from the hedge.
“Well, what happened back there, Barry? Were you followed?” Jonno seemed determined to get an answer before going any further.
“Don’t think so. I – I thought I might have been recognised, so I legged it.”
“Bollocks!” said Jonno with a scowl. “We can’t go there again.”
“Was a strange place anyway,” said Barry. “I heard people scream like some evil thing was at ‘em, but I never saw what it was. Some of the staff were right dodgy lookin’ types too.”
Jonno looked concerned at this new detail. “We can’t be gettin’ mixed up in that now.”
Graham’s face was deadly serious as he asked “But you got the crisps?”
Barry nodded and held up the bag. By now his face, too, was deadly serious. “And Jonno has the gin.”
“Yes, I do” affirmed Jonno, regaining control of his face and the situation. “So let’s be heading back to… you know where.”
Barry and Graham nodded silently in agreement. The three of them sauntered casually past the end of the hedge, strolled innocently down the block, then slunk, crept, dashed, and zigzagged through the city until they arrived outside the door of an old house on a quiet street.
Jonno rang the doorbell, and before long a light went on behind a curtained window near the door. The latch clicked, the knob turned, and the door opened a crack. From behind it a familiar reedy voice demanded “State your business!”
“We brought you something,” blurted Graham.
“To show our loyalty” Jonno explained to the gap in the door.
“Gin” said Barry, pointing at the bottle which Jonno was struggling to extract from his pocket. “And crisps.” He held up the crumpled bag.
“Oh, why didn’t you say so?!”
The door opened wide, and a grey-haired, bespectacled woman in a long green dress stood beckoning them inside with a smile.