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“Back-story” you might call this next bit.

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There'd been four of them still in on it. This is getting on for fifteen years ago now, when Tommy Hunter and the Wheen boys got back from the army - with empty pockets, time on their hands and carnage in their hearts.

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(There were supposed to have been five, but Gerry Docherty's bottle had crashed at the last minute to midnight, and he'd left town before Joe could stab him.)

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There remained the four of them, then, not quite kids by now, with two shooters between them, and, come to think, a local boy on the inside of the van as well - called Eric, I think , or Colin.  Some victim sort of a name like that.

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This Colin, (or Eric), he had been at school with them, now I remember - a speccy wee cunt that Joe and Gerry used to pin up on the blackboard to steal his lunch money – and he had done quite well for himself in his short, cunty life so far, recently being rewarded with a position of trust with a reputable security firm.

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(A firm that later on, it so happens, took over the running of one of the privatised prisons that both Tommy and Joe - and even old Jack Webster - severally themselves ended up in at one stage or another).

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Anyway, willingly or no, this boy was in on it too.  For despite his salaried presence on this weary, stony earth, and the solid further acquisition of a wife and wean, this Eric or Colin had retained an entirely reasonable wariness of his former school chums, who in some way or other had arrived at the determination of turning Colin's (or Eric’s) social success to their own advantage.

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In the manner of all criminals, they knew with moral certainty that their proposed redistribution was only right.  It was only right, they felt, that Eric (or Colin) should share his access to the world of banking, however tenuous and circumstantial it might be, with them, despite the fact that he was only on four fifty an hour or some such pish, and could not realistically be held to be a major shareholder in the institution whose old notes his firm were transporting for disposal.

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So, like I say. There were the four of them and Colin (or Eric) in on it, Tommy himself with Frank and Joseph Wheen being the core of the musketeers, with the now to be named fourth being Jack Webster, a gentle soul with a gift for the sourcing and exchange of dodgy articles - who had come up with the shooters and had scored the motor - as their helpmeet.

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A lovely man, incidentally, and not without aesthetic leanings, as a silver grey BMW did seem excessive for the job, but Jack had liked the colour and felt that a certain resonance of much beloved episodes of The Sweeney was called for. So he'd nicked it and turned up with it.

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Frank had rolled his eyes when he saw it.  Frank liked to think of himself as a practical fellow.

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Hunter had smiled, an enthusiast for other people's enthusiasms.

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Joe didn't say anything.

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Joe was more of an A-Team Ford Transit kind of a guy: all intention and no class. But no pragmatist either, as brother Frank could readily testify.  A bit obvious, if you catch my drift.

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Joe was the one who was obviously going to use the shooter once he had it in his paw. Practical Frank and the others should surely have anticipated that. Because once he had Eric (or Colin) and his fellow employee helpless in the woods with their van opened and the two of them forced inside to disembark the contents, there was no way that Joe wasn't going to succumb to the temptation of so readily available a cinematic reference.  Knowing Joe as they did, the rest of them should really have seen it coming.

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Joe had indeed, quite predictably, and without any provocation or even much malice aforethought, released himself to the trigger's explosive temptation,  splattering Colin 's (or Eric's) colleague all over the inside of the van - and making himself permanently deaf in one ear, incidentally.

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And they all had understood immediately that now, obviously, they had to do for Eric (or Colin) as well.