Alec Sillifant

 

Crime: What I Would Do

 

Prison works for me. I should clarify that statement, the thought of prison works for me. Losing my freedom, forced to share confined space with others and never being able to bend down for the soap again in the shower without clenching and saying a little prayer is plenty enough to keep me on the straight and narrow. Having never done a stretch I have no idea what incarceration at Her Majesty’s string of high security B&Bs is like in reality and I may be totally deluded in my assumptions but even so they are assumptions that I do not want to check the validity of. That does not mean I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, become a criminal in the eyes of the establishment, rather I have a deeply seated fear of being caught and punished for any misdemeanour I may partake of.

I have been a law breaker in my time though, each and every one a motoring offence (and all the same one) but these are still criminal in nature in the eyes of the law and some do go on your record if they are severe enough. The crimes I was wrongly convicted of are exclusively for the offence of speeding. Not a real crime in my book, especially if done on a motorbike, as it should be seen as merely being a little over enthusiastic in the throttle department, punishable with some sarcastic comments from a Bobby at the side of the road and ending with a “Don’t let me catch you again, Sonny,” speech. If no one gets hurt or another’s property isn’t damaged what harm has been done? The 50mph speed limit on the East Lancs Road is surely a guide, only applicable to anyone who wears a trilby whilst driving and also in the same breath a suggested minimum for anyone on two wheels. And what happened to the days when you had a chance of outrunning the traffic cops; killing your lights and heading off down B-roads ‘til you lost them? Nowadays it’s all black-ops camera-vans hidden round blind bends or over the crest of a rise, followed by a letter in the post a week later. Where has the ‘Dukes of Hazard’ element gone from the grand game of motor vehicular tag? At the moment I possess a clean licence which is more a sad reflection of my age than anything else, that and the fact speeding now carries a one hundred quid fine and comes with points that can hike insurance premiums. It’s probably cheaper to become a mugger or arsonist than break the speed limit nowadays.

I digress, for although I am scared by the thought of prison the thought of committing a crime is not so bladder-loosening. I’m not talking the Premier League transgressions like murder* but the ones that could make me stinking rich with little effort and absolutely zero chance of being caught. That’s right I’m talking white-collar fraud…or possibly something like that, I’m not proficient in the ways, or terms, of illegality outside of what I have learned from Hollywood. (You can make your own jokes about criminal films you have seen.) I would have no problem whatsoever committing a jolly caper as long as, and I can’t stress this enough, I never get caught.

To make things crystal, your granny’s lifesavings are perfectly safe in the shoebox under her bed and I’m not going to kidnap the local primary school’s hamster for ransom. My idea is to fire up my computer, go on the Dark Web (that’s a thing, right?) and rob fat cat financial institutions blind…and possibly the charities, they’ll have to find another source to pay for ‘services rendered’ whilst short-changing the people they’re helping. I’m thinking Richard Prior in ‘Superman 3’, invisible hands skimming bulging coffers and digging into deep pockets without ever being noticed or clamped in manacles.

This would be the perfect Robin Hood crime, stealing from the rich (the institution) and giving to the poor (me). Logically it could reach a point when that justifiable, hypothetical moral see-saw would tip and it would be the rich (me) stealing from the still, but slightly less, rich (the institution) and that could bring unwanted attention my way if I were to concentrate my nefarious deeds on one target. To negate this problem I would keep the pilfering to a very small scale, spreading it out among the many cash heavy organisations that pepper the globe; a little from here, a little from there. There’s no way I would get caught because these behemoths are so large they have no accurate idea how much wealth they have at any one time, otherwise they would all pay the correct amount of tax due from them wouldn’t they? I would be flitting in and out of the shadow world lifting the odd pound, dollar, yen and euro like one of Fagin’s best, a footpad of the highest order, before melting back into the cyber mists.

It could be argued that all that my criminal genius will result in (aside from making me obscenely loaded) is the institutions passing on their liquid asset losses to customers in the form of higher prices and to that I say: “Screw you, suckers! I’m a criminal now, the more you pay the more I can liberate and my Ferrari will not fuel itself. As the G’uvnor is oft to suggest, you gotta pick a pocket or two, boys, you gotta pick a pocket or two.”

Of course if I was caught the book would be hurled at me with a great force, possibly from a canon and possibly a book as big as one of them flash Bibles with the gold-leaf pictures for letters at the start of the chapters, a tome so large that it takes three monks to carry it. I would be dragged across the crimson coals of the legal system butt naked and face down, made an example of good and proper make no mistake and maybe my head would be atop a spike on the gates of Westminster as a warning to all that you cannot take money away from those who can afford to lose it. All of which brings me back to my fear of being banged-up and why I am highly likely to spend my days dreaming of the great heist but in reality choosing to keep my nose clean and out of the grouting between the tiles in the prison shower block.

 

* I cannot totally discount murder if the right, or wrong, circumstances arise and I am forced into it. I am pretty sure we can all imagine circumstance when we would take another’s life and I’m also pretty sure some of your justifiable excuses for doing so would scare the living crap out of me.

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