With This RING

Was light-fingered Carly about to be caught red-handed?

-  Patsy Collins

This is good stuff, Carly, Spence the Fence said about her latest haul of loot.

‘No need to sound so surprised. Just because I’m female doesn’t mean I’m good for nothing but picking pockets.’

‘You got me wrong, lass. I was thinking this lot looks good enough to have come from somewhere like Grosvenor Gardens. You know not to have a go at the big white house there, right?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Carly agreed. All her burglar friends and associates had warned her off the place. Word was, there was plenty of stuff worth taking, the owner regularly went away and the alarm wasn’t very responsive, but it wasn’t worth breaking in. Some reckoned making an attempt would ‘ruin her life’! What it amounted to was they thought a pretty blonde woman was good as a decoy, but not up to doing a job herself.

‘You know who it belongs to, don’tcha?’ Spence asked.

‘Retired copper, innit?’

‘Lock-em-up Lawrence! One hundred per cent conviction rate, that guy had. It’s not natural. And getting locked up mightn’t be the worst of it. He has plenty of success without going to court, if you know what I mean.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Carly humoured the older man. She’d heard stories but didn’t actually know what Spence meant by Lock-em-up’s mysterious successes.

Guys who mentioned the copper gave fanciful warnings, but no details.

‘Burgling that bloke ruins your life.’

‘So I heard,’ Carly said.

‘I know people it’s happened to,’ Spence told her.

‘Yeah?’ That was new. Spence gave some names. The first three were people currently in prison.

‘Jezzer was an idiot and the other two had a great run before being collared,’ Carly said dismissively. A stretch inside was an occupational hazard, not the result of some strange powers of Lock-em-up.