The Thirteen Bikes by Adrian McKinty

by Adrian McKinty

When I published my last book, Fifty Grand, I was invited by a national newspaper to write a background piece about where I got the central idea from. Normally for me this is a dull answer which involves deals, deadlines, tears, empty computer screens, frantic emails from editors and agents and sometimes lawyers calling up unexpectedly, using jurisprudential terms of art like “breach of contract” and “return of your advance” and “you are going to get severely shafted, mate.”

But for Fifty Grand I actually had a good background story to tell. I was approached by an agent of the Cuban secret police and offered any book from Ernest Hemingway’s library at his house in Havana. This intrigued me and I got to thinking about Cuba and the house and what it was like to be policeman in that regime and thus the book was born.

For my new book Falling Glass the dilemma is of a different nature. Falling Glass is the story of an Irish Traveller called Killian who is a confidence man, a huckster, a finder of lost things and people. Killian is based on a real person, whom I shall call Jamie, who I knew back in the early 90′s when I lived in London. My dilemma is this: the TV programme My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding has generated so much bad press for Irish Travellers that I decided that I didn’t want to talk about Jamie and his exploits for fear that they would contribute to negative stereotyping. Yes I’ve written a novel about Travellers but fiction doesn’t offend so many people, because, well, it’s all made up, isn’t it?

But silence is not a good model when you’re a B list crime novelist that no one’s ever heard of. It then occurred to me that maybe I should ask Jamie what he thought I should do. I dug out an old email address and Jamie said he didn’t mind if I talked about him as long as I didn’t tell the story about the horse tranquillisers. Ok, I said, I’ll tell the Thirteen Bikes story instead, which does contain an unfortunate bit stereotyping but which, as a mitigating factor, might be educational.

It was the summer of 1991 and by an improbable piece of luck I had ended up in student nurses accommodation in Wren Street off the Gray’s Inn Road. Jamie lived opposite me in a squat. I was studying history at UCL and he made his living selling stimulants to people who wanted to dance longer than would have been possible without the use of these artificial aids. He was tall, ginger haired, pale and dangerously thin with a vague Irish accent that had hints of Cockney in it – rather like Russell Crowe doing Robin Hood.

One night after a few pints at the Calthorpe Arms we got back to Jamie’s squat to discover that he had been robbed. Six hundred quid had been stolen, in theory by an outside burglar but more likely by other residents of the squat.

Jamie’s face went ashen. (He denies this.)

“What’s the matter, mate?” I asked him.

“I owe a geezer five hundred quid.”

“When does he want it?”

“Needs it by the weekend, doesn’t he?” Jamie said.

We had no idea where Jamie could get five hundred quid. I had nothing in my bank account and neither of us had anything to sell. “There’s only one thing for it,” Jamie said. “I’ll go see Duffy.”

“Will he lend you the money?” I asked.

“Nah, he’ll lend me his liquid nitrogen and his hydraulic jack.”

Duffy lived in Camden Town and not only did he have liquid nitrogen and a hydraulic jack, but he also had a white Ford Transit.

Jamie carefully carried out the liquid nitrogen in a three litre Dewar flask while I got behind the Transit’s wheel. “Where to?” I asked.

“South Ken,” Jamie said.

When we got to the Gloucester Road I knew what was going to happen.

“Listen mate, I can’t do this. I’ve had my bike stolen before and it’s a horrible experience. It’s not cool to nick someone’s wheels,” I said.

“No worries, Adrian, I’m only after the top of the range bikes. A thousand quid or more and if you pay a bag of sand for a bike you probably can afford it.”

Even so I told that I wouldn’t help him. It was the difference between being a witness and being an accomplice.

“All right you can be a passenger. Watch and learn,” he said.

The first bike he spied was an all black racing bicycle chained to a railing with a U lock. The hydraulic jack had the U lock open in twenty seconds. Jamie threw the lock away and loaded the bike in the back of the Transit.

He ignored half a dozen cheapie bikes and then spied another racer. That was locked with another U device and the hydraulic jack made short work of it.

It was well after one in the morning and the streets were pretty quiet. Lifting the bikes was easy. In the space of about an hour and a half he stole 10 racing and 3 mountain bikes which he said would be enough to cover his debts. He was spotted three times by pedestrians, all of whom ignored him. A white Transit van has a quasi official aspect to it and they may have thought that he was removing bikes illegally locked to railings or they may just not have wanted to get involved with a tall, scary looking dude.

Jamie sold the bikes and paid his debts and as karmic punishment I had my own bike stolen about three months later.

So what is there to be learned from all this?

Not much actually but I’ll try and come up with something:

First: U locks are no obstacle to the professional bike thief. A very heavy chain, however, is a good deterrent. You’ll need power tools and time to get through that.

Second: The use of liquid nitrogen in bicycle thefts is probably a myth. Jamie never used it and I don’t see how it could be practically applied.

Third: Bicycle theft, apparently, is good training for a career in the city. Jamie now works for ING as an investment banker, although another slightly more criminally minded version of him has become the anti-hero of my new book Falling Glass.

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