I just couldn't do it. I don't know what it is. It's not embarrassment. No, that's not it. You see, you are putting your head in a noose: that's what it seems to me.' Derek, an armed robber with a long record of bank jobs, was talking about hoisting (shop-lifting). 'No, I just couldn't do it. 1 mean just going in there.' He paused to try to find a more exact way of fixing his antipathy. 'I tell you what. It's too blatant* for my liking.'
It seemed a funny way to put it. Pushing a couple of ties in your pocket at a shop was hardly the last word in extroversion.
But my ideas of shop-lifting were still bound up with teenage memories of nicking packets of chewing gum from the local newsagents. A lot of guilt and not much loot. After a few conversations with professional hoisters, I realized that 'blatant' was just about right.
Nobody took a couple of ties: they took the whole rack. The first member of the gang would walk in nice and purposefully. Their job was to set up the goods: perhaps put an elastic band round the ends of a few dozen silk scarves; move the valuable pieces of jewellery nearer the edge of the counter; slide the ties on the rack into a compact bunch. Then, while somebody else diverts the assistant or provides some sort of masking, the third member lifts the lot.
If the walk to the door is a little long, then there may be someone else to take over for the last stretch. No one is in possession for more than a few seconds, and there's always a couple of spare bodies to obstruct anyone who seems to be getting too near the carrier. Store detectives who move forward with well-founded suspicions may still find themselves clutching empty air.
'There's one other little angle,' said one detective. 'I often pop round the back stairs; that's where you'll occasionally find one of them, trying to relax and get themselves in the right mood before starting the next job.'
(From: New Society. September 14, 1992)
*blatant ,
Vocabulary
embarrassment (n) ,
embarrass (v)
noose (n) ,
hoisting = shop-lifting (n)
hoister (n)
antipathy (n) ,
extroversion (n)
to be bound up -
loot (n) ; (the) gang (n)
the goods
valuable (adj) ,
divert (v)
obstruct (v) ,
suspicion (n)
suspect (v) somebody or something
relax (v) 1. ; 2. ,
