READ: Exerpt of Allan Heyl’s new book.

MBOMBELA -As a member of the notorious “Stander Gang”, which both appalled and enthralled South Africans in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Allan Heyl became a career criminal.

His book, Bank Robber: My time with André Stander, was recently published.

Heyl will visit Lowvelder‘s Pen in my Hand tonight at A Bica coffee shop. The event will start at 18:00 and tickets cost R50 per person, which includes a meal. For bookings phone 062-422-6842.

ALSO READ: Bank robber Heyl’s life in the Stander Gang

Read the excerpt below:

“One night not long after the Potshot robbery, André and I were at the bar of the Houghton house, eating pizza and drinking whisky.

More accurately, I was eating the pizza and André was drinking a lot of whisky.

‘You ever done this, Al?’ he said, producing his Ruger .357, opening the cylinder and removing five bullets. These he very deliberately placed on the counter in a row.

‘Russian roulette. You ever played Russian roulette?’

‘You’re mad,’ I said. ‘That’s crazy. Insane.’

‘So you’re saying I’m insane?’

‘Yes. If you’ve played Russian roulette, then you’re insane.’

‘Well then, if that’s what you think, let me treat you to a live demonstration of insanity.’ With that, he spun the cylinder, closed it, and cocked the hammer. All the time looking at me, dead serious.

Before I could say anything he put the barrel to his head and pulled the trigger. I leapt off my stool in horror. He just sat there, staring at me, the gun still at his head.

Slowly he lowered it.

‘Man, oh man!’ he breathed out. ‘That’s just the greatest thrill a man can have. It’s the ultimate form of letting it all hang out. It’s so personal and intimate that it brings a new and unique way of interacting with your own destiny and fate.’ He said all this quietly, slowly, intensely.

He was terrifying me.

‘You’ve just shown me the most extreme form of contempt imaginable,’ I said.

‘Besides feeling nothing for yourself, you were prepared to subject me to the horror of watching you blow your brains out. Right in front of me. Man, that’s just crazy.’

I stopped there, realising he was drunk and scarily unpredictable. I didn’t want to antagonise him.

‘You can say that, but you don’t know what a thrill it is.’

I wondered if he was challenging me. Again he went through the routine of opening the cylinder, spinning it and closing it.

‘Your turn!’ he shouted, aiming at me and pulling the trigger. There was a click.

‘Lucky bugger. How does it feel, hey?’

I was speechless, literally and figuratively.

Again he spun the cylinder and pointed the gun at me. This time I was away, running for my life into the garden with a drunk André in pursuit.

We ended up running round and round the swimming pool. Again the dry click of the hammer falling on an empty chamber.

He was close enough to inflict a deadly shot or, worse, a permanently disabling one. I raced towards the house to find my own revolver.

Then I stopped. He was in the process of repeating the operation but paused to look at me.

Suddenly I remembered an incident he’d told me about, where a colleague had suffered a gunshot wound by accident.

As a result, André had resolved always to have only five rounds in his revolver, so that the hammer rested on an empty cylinder.

This way he could avoid an accidental discharge. So the revolver had been empty all along.

‘You sick psycho!’ I yelled at him. ‘What a sick thing to do. Always only five rounds in your revolver, hey? And what about a chance mistake? Did you ever consider that?’

I was trembling with rage. And the louder I shouted, the more André laughed, until his laughter was hysterical.”

ALSO READ: Meet the last surviving member of the Stander Gang