Snapshots

 

By Paul Diamond

 

 

 When you haven’t got a job you’re forced into a routine.  You can’t afford

 

anything else.  It was two years since I’d been let go.  Office manager at a small

 

branch of an insurance company isn’t the most exciting way to spend your life but I liked it.  I’d lived alone for fifteen years, ever since the divorce, so I enjoyed the company and the responsibility.  When the Dutch giant took us over and closed us down it hit me hard.  Now the brass handshake was running out and nobody wanted a fifty five year old who’d worked in the same office for thirty five years. I was forced into a routine. 

 

            I got up late and did whatever housework and shopping needed doing.  A quick in and out at the job centre to show willing; there was never anything for me.  Lunch was a sandwich or, if I was being self indulgent, a cheap burger .  Then I went to the Central Library to look through the papers.  Sometimes I found something in the Sits. Vac. that I could apply for but I rarely had a reply.  Even if I got an interview I was either too old or over qualified.  At about four o clock I went over to ‘The Oak Leaf’ and had a pint of bitter.  I could sit there for a couple of hours and read a book if I could ignore the landlord glaring at me. I went home, made some supper and watched the tele until it was time to go to bed.  The only change to my routine was that every other Monday I had to sign on.

 

            The reading room at the library had its regulars.  There were two or three dossers who slept the afternoon away in the warm.  Some old age pensioners, always men, spent hours reading the magazines.  And there were others like me,  desperate for work, not just for the money but because we felt we had no status if we weren’t working.  We were defined by a job and with no job we were nothing      One guy who was often in there used to join me sometimes in the pub.  Fred was a lot younger than me but couldn’t get work because he’d just got out after doing what he called a carpet in the Scrubs. Eventually he confessed he wasn’t looking for work.  He was a professional burglar who had been through it all, probation, twice, community service and a couple of prison sentences.  It was a family tradition.  His grandfather and his father had been in the same trade and his mother still ran a gang of shoplifters.  He thought of what he called bird as a reasonable price to pay for the life he enjoyed.  When I mumbled something about morality he pointed out that he only robbed the very rich and so the losers were the insurance companies.  “And you should know.”  He laughed.  “They’re the biggest gonnifs of the lot.”  I didn’t know the word but I got his drift.

 

            He was taking a rest from burglary and making a reasonable living as a finger man.  He came to the library for the upper class magazines, Country Life, The Tatler, Horse and Hound, Hello!, to look at the homes of the super rich and to find what he could of the layout and contents.  Very often the gossip columns would say when the owners were spending time at their villa in Tuscany or their penthouse in New York.  Sometimes he would even go to the property posing as a meter reader or a water board inspector.  He would pass the information on to a colleague and after the place had been robbed and the proceeds fenced he would get a ten per cent cut.  A few years ago I would have been horrified at the idea of socialising with Fred but after the way I’d been treated I thought ‘what the hell’.

 

            One day I’d only been sitting in the library for a few minutes when he put his hand on my shoulder and jerked his head for me to follow him.  We went over to the pub and he bought in a couple of pints.  He sat and stared at me so that I began to feel uncomfortable.  “What do you want, Fred?  I haven’t finished looking through the papers yet.”  He continued to stare.  “Didn’t you once say you did a lot of photography?”  I shrugged.  “Used to.  Can’t afford it now.  Anyway, I’ve had to sell my cameras.”  It was true.  I’d been a passionate photographer, had even won prizes for my stuff.  Fred went on.  “Can you do your own developing and that?”  “Well yes. I’ve got my second bedroom set up as a darkroom and I used to do my own processing.  It’s all still there but I haven’t used it for ages.”  “Have a look at this.”  Fred handed me a piece of paper torn from the small ads page of one of the broadsheets.  There was a boxed display ad.  ‘Amateur Photographers Wanted in All Areas.  Up to eighty pounds a day for photographing antiques.  Own car and camera.  Telephone............’

 

            I smiled.  “Lovely.  But I haven’t got a camera and I haven’t got a car.” “Never mind about that.  You ’phone them, I’ll sort out the rest.  I’ll see you here tomorrow.” and Fred rushed off.  I went straight home and ’phoned.

The one thing I’d kept was the telephone in case one of the jobs I applied for wanted to get in touch.  A man with a rather plummy upper class voice gave me an appointment for two day’s time.

 

Next day Fred met me at the library and we went straight to the pub.  I told him about my interview.  “I’ve got a couple of cameras here.” he said  “Will they do you?”  He pulled a Hasselblad and a Leica M6 out of a canvas bag.  There were lenses, a tripod and flash.  My jaw must have dropped.  Talk about top of the range.  Fred was testy.  “Will they do you?” he asked again.  “Yes, great, couldn’t be better.” I stammered. “Right.  Take just one with you tomorrow to show you’re serious.  I’ll have a car for you by Friday.”  I was beginning to suspect his motives.  He was a friendly guy but not a philanthropist.  “What’s this all about Fred.  Why are you giving me three or four grands worth of camera and a car.”  “Look” he said.  “My guess is that you’re going to take pictures for the insurance.  They won’t let you make prints, not if their security have got any sense.  You’ll take the snaps and hand in the film for them to deal with.  All I want is for you to take a second lot and to develop them at home and pass the prints on to me.  I’ll give them to my contacts and we’ll split the commish.  OK?”

 

                “You mean that I’ll be doing an inventory for your burglar friends.”  Fred was surprised.  “Of course.  What do you think we’re doing it for?”  He could see I was hesitant.  I’ve always prided myself on being honest.  The last time I wasn’t was when I was eight and pinched sixpence from my mother’s purse.  He became persuasive.  “Who are they robbing?” he asked.  “The bleedin’ insurance.  You of all people don’t owe those bastards.  And some of the marks are only too happy to get the money for family heirlooms they’re not allowed to sell. Trust me.  Nobody can connect you with my contacts.  You don’t know them and they don’t know you,”

 

“But if the places I go to all get burgled they’re bound to suspect me.”  Fred laughed.  “Give us some credit.  We’re looking for a really big tickle.  Antique silver, jewellery, portable stuff.  We’ll only move for a good score.  It’s not worth setting this up for less than a hundred grand which means five grand each for of us.  I’m talking one, perhaps two worthwhile jobs.  They’ll never suspect you.”  He was right.  Why should I care about the insurers, or for that matter the fat cats who lived like kings and did sod all while I’d worked hard all my life and finished up signing for a giro.  I went to the interview next day without a qualm.

 

The office in Old Compton Street was new and smart, it still smelled of fresh paint.  I was greeted by a pleasant looking fortyish woman, who gave me an application form to fill in and when it was done I was let into the inner office where the man with the upper class plummy voice was on the ’phone.  He waved me to a chair, finished his conversation, put the ’phone down and glanced through the paper I’d completed. 

 

There was no problem.  I’d brought a portfolio of my stuff to show I was a competent operator and he was impressed by my Hasselblad.  The eighty pounds a day was very much an ‘up to’.  London jobs were paid at thirty pounds for half a day.  You might have to travel anywhere in the London area and if you could do the job in a morning or an afternoon you got thirty cash in hand.  Outside the M25 you got thirty five and more than fifty miles forty.  You used your own car and paid for your own petrol.  They provided the film which they put in your camera and sealed it so that you had to bring the camera to the office to return the cassette.  Fred had been right.  The photos were for insurance purposes.  If anything went missing it could be put straight onto the Art and Antiques Squad computer.  I went home with the promise that they would ’phone when they had a job for me.

 

On the Friday Fred gave me the keys to a Ford Escort, L Reg.  It was taxed and insured in my name.  Insured would you believe with the Dutch company.  It wasn’t exactly smart but, as he said, the less flash I showed the better.  I got the ’phone call on Monday and did my first job on Tuesday morning.  It was a collection of what I was told were Pratt ware pot lids.  Apparently these Victorian coloured pictures on pottery are collected like stamps, some of them worth hundreds of pounds.  I used the Hasselblad for the company’s pictures and had no trouble making a second set with the Leica.  I processed the duplicates and gave them to Fred but he wasn’t impressed.  “What a load of old tut.  If that’s all we’re going to get it’s not going to be worth the bother.”

 

I went on working.  I got about three assignments a week, mostly thirty pound jobs and I still had the giro.  I could go to the movies or see a play occasionally.  Once a week I could treat myself to a decent meal in a restaurant.  I even got interested in the things I was photographing and went and looked them up in the reference library after a job.

 

It was three months before I found anything that would satisfy Fred.  I had to go to a big detached house in Hampstead.  The people were away but there was a butler looking after the place.  He opened a safe hidden behind a picture on the wall and pulled out a strongbox.  Inside the strongbox there were about a dozen gold snuffboxes all wrapped in silk.  Some of them had enamel pictures of classical landscapes on top but inside the lids were more enamel pictures of naked men and women doing what naked men and women do together.  There were a couple of large gold watches which were made rather like those old Noddy alarm clocks we had as kids with a moving figure of Noddy on the front his head waggling backwards and forwards with the tick of the clock, but one showed a woman on her back and a man rogering her enthusiastically, moving in and out as the watch ticked.  The settings and the few clothes they were wearing were from two hundred years ago. The other was similar but the man was on his back and the woman was astride him bouncing up and down.  They were beautifully made and very detailed anatomically.

 

The butler explained that they were all eighteenth century so it wasn’t pornography, it was erotica.  The walls of the room were covered in what even I could see were classic oil paintings.  I was only supposed to photograph the snuff boxes but I did some of the pictures and the front of the safe on Fred’s film.

 

 

He was delighted.  “That’s more like it.  There’s blokes pay a bundle for that stuff.  I think we’ve got our tickle.”  He was especially pleased that I’d got a picture that identified the safe.  “Harry used to work for them.  He’ll open it like a can of beans.”  I’d even snapped the burglar alarm outside.  I was developing a criminal mind.

 

I’d done all that was required, taken the pictures and given the prints to

Fred.  I just went on photographing the places I was sent to.  It all  came to a stop one day when Fred ’phoned me and asked me to meet him, not at the library but at the MacDonalds in the High Street.  He looked terrible and had a suitcase on wheels which he set by the table.  “What’s the trouble?”  I asked.  I could see there was trouble.  He groaned.  “Remember that place you gave me, the place with the gold and enamel boxes and the watches and the pictures?”  “Of course.  You said it would be the big tickle and we’d make a bomb.”  “Well Harry and Charlie went to do it last night.  The trouble was that two other mobs had the same idea.  They’d all chosen the same night because there was no moon.  That butler had arranged to let Arnie and Stevie Bates in.  They were going to tie him up and do a three way split. 

 

 

 Your photography boss was waiting with a Transit outside.  He’d set it up with the Caporro boys when he was in Pentonville for running a long firm and they were in for the usual.  Anyway there was a ruck.  Tony Caporro always had more muscle than sense.  It spilled out into the front garden and somebody called the filth.  Harry got away and came to give me the office.  The others have all been nicked so I’m going to stay  with my auntie in Bristol until it blows over.”

 

This was terrible.  “What about me?”  I asked.  “You’re all right.  None of them know your name and your boss burnt all his records before he went on the caper.  He was going to close down and scarper when it was finished.”

 

 

“What about the cameras and the car?” I asked.  “Keep them.  They’re

not strictly kosher.  Don’t try to flog them.  Nobody’ll do anything about them as

long as you keep quiet.  Shame it didn’t work out.”  He got up, smiled briefly,

and was gone.

 

 

I sat and thought about what I could do.  I’d gained two good cameras and a reliable old banger from this experience and I had a few hundred pounds in cash in the cutlery drawer at home.  I went to plummy voice’s office.  The secretary was there looking worried.  She obviously knew nothing about our boss’s activities.  I told her what had happened and she was even more worried.  Then I put my proposition to her.  She still had some bookings which she hadn’t passed on to Plummy.  I said that I would do them and I would try to keep the firm going if she would help.  We could be partners and split any profits.  She agreed to give it a try. 

 

That was six months ago.  I’ve been so busy I’ve had to take on two assistants, OAPs, old friends from the camera club.  I pay them eighty for each job however long it takes and I make sure they only carry one camera.  I spotted Fred the other day in the High Street.  A uniformed policeman was helping him get into a marked car.  We didn’t speak.

 

 I get on very well with my partner.  We don’t split the profits any

more; we share them. Which is nice.  So if your insurance company wants your

antiques photographed give us a bell.  We charge two hundred and fifty a day and security’s guaranteed.               

            

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