Petrol Station Tales 3: More True Crime Stories

There used to be a guy who always came into the petrol station early on in the morning, always before 7am. Very cool looking; smart suit, a trilby hat. Indeterminate age, he could have been any age between 20 and 40. He reminded me of an archetypal old blues musician, some ghost from a Missisipi 1930s summer... He would always buy about £50 worth of phone cards. One morning he came in with another guy, whom he introduced as one of his 'work associates'. Dressed in the same slightly old-fashioned way, he also displayed the original man's elegant air. Mike once asked him what his job was, and he said he was a professional gambler... After a few months of coming in, we got a phone call from the police, who told us that if he came in the shop, don't act suspiciously, don't say anything to him and inform them immediately, as it turned out he was raising funds for terrorist organisations... He came in once more, and then never again. i still sometimes wonder what happened to him.

We called them the Kray twins. They lived across the road, with a number of other brothers. They must have been only about 16 or so. Their father who lived with them was a well known local rascal who was always complaining about the noise at the petrol station, and was rumoured to be involved in the petty crime scene in Hove, whatever that might have consisted of. The Kray Twins were the worst though. Always coming into the garage and trying to steal things, anything really; bottles of coke, crisps, coffee... One night I had locked up the garage but had not locked up the temporary barbecues outside. A man from across the road came over and said he had called the police as he had seen the Kray twins stealing a number of them. God knows what they wanted with twenty disposable barbecues. The man who had called the police was a neighbour of the Krays had had a long running feud with them. The delight in his face was evident at the thought of them getting into trouble. As I was on a date that night, I just wanted to go, and hoped to leave before the police arrived. Just as I was locking the security gate over the door, three police cars turned up and a van. I saw the handcuffed Kray twins being bundled into the back of a van. I had to go down the police station and be interviewed. They were both charged with burglary though heard nothing after that. Maybe they both pleaded guilty.
Sometime after that, the car of the man who had called the police was set on fire. He used to park it around the back of the station, and sometime after that, the father of the Krays was found badly beaten in his house. Shortly afterwards the father was evicted. An odd series of events, and one that makes me think of a pattern...

The police were quite often at the garage, when people drove away without paying ('bilkers' they were called), when fights kicked off in the forecourt, when drunk people wondered about the shop threatening customers. One time, somebody I worked with locked a thief in the shop, but he tried to smash the glass by throwing a bin at it, so she had to let him go. We were often threatened. People (when not being able to pay for the petrol and discovering that we took this quite seriously) would always threaten to 'come back for you when the station is closed'. None of them ever did. After a while, the shouted threats as they left the station (always as they left) fell on deaf ears, and were usually greeted with laughter from us.

One time, the manager told us that there was a Pepperami thief. Empty Pepperami packets were always found in the aisles, almost every week. Mike and myself decided to catch this threatening miscreant. It was Mike who caught the culprit. he had been at the till one day, and saw the Pepperamis fluttering on the shelf, like 'trees in a breeze' he said. He went around the shelf and found a young boy, about ten years old, munching away on Pepperamis... He burst into tears, and Mike let him go, somewhat amused by this unexpected encounter with one of Hove's most feared criminals...

We would always be afraid of 'The Ginger Gang' so called because their leader was, well, ginger, and had the name of Sandy. A group of about four or five lads. They would appear seemingly out of nowhere, and in a chaos of activity would descend on the shop, stealing DVDs, videos, cheap computer games... This hurricane would last about five minutes or so and then they would leave as quickly as they had arrived. At some point one of them had bought a van, and now the van would appear out of nowhere, by the air and hoover machine that never seemed to work. Now they would come in and steal car care equipment and oil. Eventually they got banned from the shop. One time, after their banning they came into the station. I told them they were banned.' But I'm not doing anything' Sandy said, before proceeding to contradict himself with 'Right we're going to nick stuff!.' One of them threatened to cut my face. It was like being a teacher in a bad school in a dismal part of town. I picked up the phone to call the police which led to more frenzied activity by the Ginger Gang. One of them, menacingly, threw a packet of sponges at me.
They all then ran away, got into their van and vanished. I never saw them again, but heard they later ended up in prison on various petty charges.

Ah, the joy of meeting the British public while working in a petrol station...