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throat and said again, ‘I’d like to open a safe deposit box. I have all of the relevant ID here.’
    â€˜Your moustache would appear to be a little…crooked, sir.’
    I looked at my reflection in the countertop and saw what looked like a great hairy caterpillar crawling up the side of my nose.
    â€˜Ah!’ I muttered. ‘Haven’t quite got used to it yet… I’m just trying it out. Have to wear it in a film next week. I’m an actor, you know.’
    Norman obviously didn’t know. Or care.
    â€˜Can I be of any assistance today, sir?’ he said in a voice which might as well of been supplied by a ventriloquist for all the expression that showed on his face. I know I wanted to shove my fist up his arse. And not in a good way.
    Sighing, I pulled off the moustache and slipped it into my pocket. Low profile, I reminded myself, stealthy as a ninja.
    â€˜I want to o-pen a safe-ty de-pos-it box, Norrrrrr-mannnn.’
    â€˜There’s no need to take that tone with me. I’m not an idiot, sir.’
    â€˜Well, the chap who was here a moment ago was. Best have a word with him when you see him next.’
    He handed me the forms and a tiny pen and sent me off to fill them in. After a few false starts (it’s difficult sometimes to resist going onto automatic pilot and filling in the truth on those forms. Banks are so intimidating, don’t you find? Or they are if you don’t have any cash. Or if you do have a big bag of cash which theoretically belongs to someone else. But finders keepers and all that…) I managed to complete the form and rejoin the queue.
    As luck would have it, I got Norman again – it was a fifty-fifty chance to be honest, why don’t they have more bloody staff in these places – and handed over the scrawled and scribbled forms silently.
    He looked at the forms and then at me like I’d just handed him a somewhat filthy love letter.
    â€˜I’ll, er, need to see some identification please. Sir.’
    This last sir was even more begrudged than the earlier ones. I thought about laying into his snotty attitude but for once I bit my tongue. I had to stop drawing attention to myself.
    Instead, I reached into my bag and grabbed the passport and the letter, which had somehow got stuck down the side. I gave them a tug.
    It went ever so quiet in the bank as the gun, dislodged from between the bundles of notes, fell with a clatter onto the countertop and lay pointing at Norman like the finger of God.
    Embarrassed, I snatched it up and said; ‘Look, I—let me explain—’
    But my vocabulary deserted me. I guess it’s just one of those situations you really don’t expect to encounter and therefore you’ve never planned out the correct conversational gambit for it in advance.
    Norman’s hands had shot up into the air and he said – very calmly, I thought, given the circumstances – ‘I understand, sir. Don’t worry, sir, we’ll take care of that for you now, sir.’
    The manager ( Kathleen, Bank Customer Services Manager Level III, Hapy to Serve You, according to her badge) noticing the sudden silence, had stepped up, holding her hands palm outward toward me, and said, ‘Good morning, sir. Don’t worry, sir, here at Nova Banks we’re fully trained to deal with situations like this and no one is going to resist in any way. In fact I was just on a course last week and you’ll be glad to know it’s all fresh in my mind.’ She continued as if she were reading from an autocue in front of her. ‘We all want to get out of here with the least possible fuss, and without anyone being harmed—’
    â€˜No!’ I shouted, amazed at how easily I could balls up a simple thing like opening an illegal bank account for some stolen money and a gun and a forged passport.
    â€˜Oh my God!’ I heard someone squeak excitedly. ‘He doesn’t want the money,