It is surreal, to be sharing peanut butter cookies with one of the most memorable bank robbers in SA's history.
Allan Heyl, now a paunchy 67-year-old, is the last surviving member of the Stander gang. He takes cream in his coffee. "Life's simple pleasures," he says, with an appreciation that hasn't diminished more than a decade since he was released from jail.
"I spend my time indulging in the sheer, blissful beauty of freedom, the most gorgeous, unimaginable thing when you are in prison."
The trio of bank robbers were notorious in the late 1970s and 1980s for their brazen robberies using a blue Ford Cortina, often under the noses of police.
The name was coined by the media after André Stander, a former police captain, turned rogue. Handsome and daring, Stander's reputation reached mythical proportions, including that he once robbed a bank and returned hours later to investigate the crime.
The three met in prison, escaped and ran riot in the country's banks for years, living it up while on the run.
McCall was killed in a police raid on the gang's Houghton hideout in January 1984 and, a month later, Stander was accidentally shot dead in a scuffle with US police in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he had fled.
Heyl's memoir, Bank Robber: My Time with André Stander, reveals previously unknown details about the gang - such as Stander's uncanny appreciation for rose gardening .
But it also exposes Heyl's personal battle with a criminal mind from which he needed parole.
Heyl says that he wanted to rewrite a story that hasn't been accurately told decades later.
"The assumption that André was the boss," he snorts. "That was the work of a lazy journalist who had nothing else to write around Christmas time, when SA was under sanctions and shut out. Suddenly we were the Stander gang. André hated it."
But, he said, he wouldn't have wanted the gang named after himself either. "It probably helped to get me out of prison sooner, in hindsight."
IT WASN'T LIKE THE MOVIE
Heyl also has no appreciation for Hollywood's 2003 depiction of the gang, Stander.
"Why I had to write this book is to stop the lies. They were all lying, the film was lies, we didn't live like a Tarantino movie. They should have come to the source but instead, they have exaggerated and speculated."
The second fact he disputes is that they were a trio.
Heyl plays down McCall's role, saying he wanted little to do with him but that Stander insisted on including him because they were prison buddies.
It was he and Stander who teamed up. McCall exposed the safe house in Houghton, where they had successfully hidden in plain sight.
"André and I argued a lot, but we were close."
Despite the thrill of the chase and the robberies - up to four a day and once with a police officer stationed outside one Johannesburg bank - he said the book reflects his shame, battles with depression and remorse for the crimes that landed him in prison for 27 years.
"It was never about the money. We had money. It was about the thrills. We had it all, good food, fun and good sex."
Heyl said life is quieter these days, no eating at steakhouses every night, no fast cars (although he would love a V8 Jaguar).
He has fallen on hard times.
He wrote this book, which he hopes will change his fortunes, twice over: "Four or five years ago my home was hit by an unbelievably violent storm. I had to start all over again under harsh circumstances. I have been living in a three-by-four-foot cabin, with no running water and a single plug point. It was a most challenging emotional time. I had to pull myself away from the dark dog of depression that would put me on the other side of the moon for up to 12 days at a time."
When he says cabin, he explains it is an informal dwelling on a smallholding. "I fueled myself on eggs and bread. Quick and cheap."
He would also buy fruit and vegetables from the spaza shops at a nearby township.
"The human spirit adjusts to many things, I've learnt."
As a police van drives into the shopping complex where he chose to meet, Heyl said it only matters that he can sit in peace without having to look over his shoulder, or wear a disguise every day. He doesn't miss the days of living on the run, when Stander "overdid it" with women and booze.
"I don't care about my image and I've made a fool of myself often enough to last me a multitude of lifetimes. There goes a police car. I can sit here without concern at all. In the past I would have to ready myself for action."
It seems his circumstances are less than comfortable, though it does not perturb him.
"It depends what you would call a high life. Much of how we lived was a result of the fact that we were escaped prisoners. We indulged in what we missed.
LIVING FOR THE MOMENT
"We were just living each day for the moment. After spending time in prison, André and I were both very tactile people. He was seriously involved in his rose garden, which you couldn't have done as a police captain in those days."
He also wants to remove any romanticism that it was politics that got the gang together, as a stand against the apartheid government.
Some stories go that Stander started robbing banks to deal with the trauma of police involvement in massacres.
"We had a mutual hatred of the system, but this was not political. We were chasing highs."
He is scathing about the police of the time, who "only knew brute force" with zero detective skills. "We watched a senior detective on TV saying his 'underworld sources' informed him we were hidden in this underworld, whatever that was. We were holed up in Houghton, in a normal suburban house and we were just the average fairly well-behaved neighbour. Other than the fact that we are serial robbers, we were good neighbours."
Heyl said his time was spent honing his love of literature, interspersed by "motor cars, women and food".
It was Stander's weakness for women that might have got them found out.
"I found it anathema that André would bring women to our safe house. We could afford not to take such a risk. I said 'take them to a nice hotel'. He didn't think of himself getting caught," said Heyl.
TIME TO TRAVEL
For now, he wants the book to do well so he can hitch a caravan to a bakkie and see the country.
"I want to do as much travelling as possible, to be between somewhere and nowhere as often as I can.
"These are my memories shrouded in the mists of time. I think people will enjoy the harsh reality, that the truth is far simpler than the fiction that surrounded us."
It is still a crime thriller.
"We were challenging life and ourselves. I had to sit back and revisit some of those robberies. It evokes a sense of disbelief. Many people are going to write off those robberies as total fiction.
"The fact that I survived . I am grateful. André didn't have the opportunity to go through the hardships and work out why we went through all that. It sounds like a cliche, but he didn't get to the other side to become a better person. I am proud of the book, but not proud of the contents. It shocks me, especially that I survived the unsurvivable."..