IT'S EASY for me to pinpoint exactly when it was that I became obsessed with chasing huge piles of money. It was 1991, and if you wanted to book a holiday in 1991, you went to a travel agent, cash in hand, writes John Butler
The one we chose was situated on a side road just off St Stephen's Green, beside the joke shop where the punks and the mods used to congregate. In the window were a few rows of postcard-sized advertisements, selling package deals in a font which aped brush strokes. From a distance these resembled the job offers in the Fás window, but these placements were far more exotic. Cape Town, Athens, Orlando . . .
Maybe the offer that caught our eye was drawn with a Sharpie pen onto brightly coloured green or purple cardboard and had been cut into the shape of a huge star and pasted directly onto the glass with sellotape. Maybe we followed the cardboard star because it told of a deal that was 20 quid cheaper than the one stuck in the window of the travel agent at the other end of the street - who knows? By the time we pushed open the glass doors, we had been working all summer, saving up for our first ever non-accompanied package holiday. We had reached the magic figure, gone to our banks, filled out withdrawal dockets, queued up and taken receipt of a small bundle of used, beautiful notes. Never before had so much nestled in the pockets of such irresponsible people.
When we gathered outside the travel agents, a couple were peering at the offers in the window. We were high on legal tender as we walked past them and pushed open the door. The travel agent was alone in the office and didn't seem to feel the same frisson of delight when she took receipt of our mound of amalgamated notes. She stuck her finger in the sponge oasis, the better to gain traction on the corner of each note. She flicked through the pile, counting silently, at top speed. It was all there. She set the pile of bills under the counter and began to print our tickets. We were going to Gran Canaria.
She stood sentry over the dot matrix printer whirring away in the corner, picking at a hang-nail. The bell on the door sounded and the couple from outside came in. They stepped up to the counter and the woman asked the travel agent to bring her a brochure from the back wall behind her - the one advertising European skiing packages. I handed her the same brochure from a pile at my elbow, but she didn't take it. As the travel agent reached for it, my friend nudged me in the ribs. Beside us, the man was grabbing the stack of bills behind the counter.
When a crime is as clear and brazen as that, it's hard to believe your own eyes. Was he an employee of the shop? Was he a security guard? Was it somehow his money? The doorbell dinged as the couple left. Hearing this, the travel agent spun back with the skiing brochure in her hand, then dropped it as she saw the empty space beneath the counter where the notes had been. Now, the most pertinent question came into sharp focus. The printer whirred. She narrowed her eyes. Was that our money or hers? It felt so much like ours.
Outside, the female accomplice had vanished down a side street, but the man could be seen heading for the entrance to St Stephen's Green at a slow trot, with a fistful of punts in either hand. We ran out the door, my friend first and me hard on his heels. Hearing us shout after him, the robber began to jog then sprint into the road where the Luas terminal is now to be found, but which back then was four lanes of honking mid-day traffic. As we ran, we heard a security guard outside one of the shops bark into a walkie-talkie, mentioning the robber by name. This guy had form.
At that exact time, my sister looked up from her desk at the bank which has now become another building belonging to the Royal College of Surgeons. She heard cars honking, looked out the window and saw a man ducking through lanes of traffic, pursued by a stream of kids. I overtook my friend just as the robber ducked into the entrance to the men's toilets at the side of the park, and as I rounded the corner following him, two thoughts assailed me. First, what if he was waiting here to attack whoever was chasing him - and secondly, in the unlikely event that I caught up with him, what would I do?
After the chicane by the toilets, the path opened up into the main park thoroughfare. Couples were lounging on the grass and office workers ate sandwiches on benches (this was long before Ireland's torrid love affair with the panini had taken hold). The robber bolted through the middle of this scene, knocking people over, and I was 20 yards behind and gaining when he threw his left arm aloft and beautiful notes fluttered into the air above.
It was then that it happened. I watched the fruit of my labours falling to rest at the feet of total strangers, spellbound, and I fell in love with money. Two burly men materialised from nowhere and sprinted past. The Special Branch had been among the road traffic through which we had woven, moments before, and some hundred yards further down the road, they caught the robber and tackled him to the ground as we scrambled around the ground, kneeling at the altar. They brought him back and presented him to us asking for confirmation that it was in fact him. It was him, but who cared? Once again our precious cash was in our hands.