Signal Red Part 14

And then those strange words when he had left. 'Make sure it's worth our while, Tony.'

He could see Jimmy up ahead, waiting for him, also smoking but leaning against a lamp-post, loose and relaxed. An old pro, Bruce had said. Best key-man in London. He raised a hand as he recognised Tony, who tossed his cigarette away. Before he reached him, Jimmy detached himself from his post and walked up the track that led to the lock-ups, where the Jags were stored.

Tony watched Jimmy's back as he strode down the lane between the houses and turned left towards the row of garages, disappearing from view. If Tony took one step onto the rough driveway, he was committed. He could just walk on now if he wanted. Say the Old Bill had spotted him and he'd become spooked. Say his bowels had turned to liquid. Say he had a feeling Marie needed him. Say anything.

Make sure it's worth our while.

She knew. Marie knew he was up to no good, as she used to say, and she didn't care. Just as long as the risk was worth the reward. Well, Bruce was talking fifteen, twenty each. They could live in Hampstead for that.

Jimmy's head reappeared, followed by an arm beckoning him on, a gesture ripe with impatience. They had two ringed Jags to deliver to Bruce & Co for their tickle. A train, so he had heard. But he was just a delivery boy, Tony told himself. Drop off the Jaguars and you're done. Take the fee and walk away. Tony realised he had stopped walking, his legs suddenly leaden. Jimmy waved at him again.

Tony sniffed nervously and took his first, heavy step on the road to robbery.

The observation van, a scruffy old Transit, stank of long- eaten Wimpys, greasy chips, sweat and ripe farts. It was a potent combination that always resisted even the steam hose deployed at the end of a particularly long stint.

The tatty Ford had been moved into position three days ago, when Roy James had been spotted at a disused bus garage in South London. Through the ventilation grills on the side, a policeman with binoculars could keep a log of the comings and goings at the depot.

That morning it was all comings. Bruce Reynolds - in some flash motor as always, this time one of the new Lotus Cortinas - Roy James, Buster Edwards and three men that Duke didn't recognise. No Goody or Wilson, which was disappointing. But something was definitely up. There was no way that lot was thinking of going into the public transport business. They had already brought in a Bedford van, sliding back the big main doors to allow it in, and then slamming them shut again. Duke could only imagine what was inside, but he'd wager his a.r.s.e- hole it involved pickaxe handles and masks or something similar.

A couple of streets away were two Flying Squad drivers with two detectives, ready to either move in or follow, depending on what Duke decided.

'I need a p.i.s.s,' said Billy Naughton.

'Go in that bucket.'

'I can get out quietly.'

'f.u.c.k off. You'll be spotted. Who's to say they're not clocking us from the top floor now.' He moved the binoculars up to the shattered panes of the metal Crittall windows and refocused them. There was no movement, but that didn't signify anything. 'You can go out when you need a s.h.i.t. Before that, use the bucket. Hold up.'

Billy moved close to Duke, but he couldn't see much through the grill. 'What is it?'

'Someone's coming out.'

The small access door cut within the larger gates opened and Bruce Reynolds stepped through into the feeble sunlight. Even so, Duke could see him squint at the unaccustomed glare. Must be dark within the old garage, Duke figured. Reynolds glanced at his watch - some f.u.c.k-off Swiss one, Duke didn't doubt - then looked right and left. He's waiting for someone, thought Duke. It's going down. He stared at the radio, the one he could use to call in reinforcements. Did they break it up now, or try and catch them red-handed?

He heard the sonorous ringing of the bucket as Billy relieved himself.

'Here, keep the b.l.o.o.d.y noise down, will you? It's like Big Ben going off.'

'Sorry. Christ, I needed that.'

Duke wrinkled his nose. 'Put the cover on it, will you?' There was another clang as Billy dropped the tea tray that acted as a lid onto the receptacle. 'Quietly!'

'Let's have a look.'

Len handed the bins over to Billy, and helped himself to some stewed tea from the Thermos, trying to ignore the smell of hot p.i.s.s still wafting from the bucket, despite its lid.

So, Duke continued to muse, do we go in whenever the consignment or vehicle Reynolds is waiting for arrives, or see what develops? Jam today or tomorrow? There were times when he wished they had a b.l.o.o.d.y Whirlybird, a helicopter to track the b.u.g.g.e.rs from the air.

'He's gone back in, Len,' said Billy.

'How did he look?'

'Very smart. Nice suit.'

Duke sighed. 'His face, you p.r.i.c.k. What was his expression?'

Billy smirked to let him know he'd been pulling his plonker. 'Didn't give much away. Concerned, maybe.'

'Like he was expecting something?'

'Yeah.'

Charlie Wilson and Gordon Goody, perhaps. That would be a result. Duke picked up the radio. It was time to wake up the others. However it went down, here or at some as- yet-unknown tickle, Bruce Reynolds and his mates were going to be spending some time at a not-so-friendly nick that day.

Opportunity f.u.c.kin' Knocks, he thought, and the clapometer swings to 100 per cent.

Jimmy White waited until Tony caught up with him. He put out his hand and they shook. 'All right?'

'Yeah,' replied Tony, with a confidence he didn't feel.

'Where you parked?'

'Effingham Road.'

'Good. OK, they are in the end ones,' he said, indicating along the row of multi-coloured, up-and-over metal doors. Jimmy gave Tony a sidelong glance, something in the new boy's demeanour unsettling him. 'You sure you are all right?'

Tony shrugged. 'You know . . .'

Jimmy put a hand on his shoulder. 'Yeah, I know. Be all right. You're with the big boys now.'

'Don't worry about me, I'll do my bit.'

'Sure. Here. Take the green one.'Jimmy handed over a set of keys with a Jaguar leather fob, the metal disc featuring a close-up of the snarling cat. Tony took them, hoping Jimmy wouldn't see how sweaty his palms were.

'And this is for the garage. Number thirty-one. The one on the right.' He produced a second set of keys and tossed them to Tony.

They lined up in front of their respective metal doors, bent down and turned the keys in the locks, then twisted the handles. 'One, two, three,' said Jimmy, as if they were waiters about to lift their cloches in unison.

There was a rattle and rumble as the concrete counterweights slid down their runners, and the doors yawned open, to reveal the s.p.a.ce within. And that was all there was. s.p.a.ce. No Jaguars. Just the empty, oil-stained cement floors where they had once stood.

Tony turned to Jimmy, open-mouthed, a baffled shock mixed with a cowardly streak of relief. White had already seen the hole in the roof where the robbers had gained initial access and discovered the cars. As a key-man, he knew how easy it was to start a Jag, almost as simple as picking and then resetting the locks in the garage doors' handles.

'They've gone,' said Tony.

Jimmy's face darkened, his lips twisting, but then, unexpectedly, he laughed. It was a coa.r.s.e, frightening sound, although there might have been a hint of admiration in there as he shook his head in amazement. 'The thievin' b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.'

Twenty-eight.

New Scotland Yard, May 1963 Frank Williams, Ernie Millen's deputy, barely glanced at the reports on his desk before he looked up at Duke and Billy. He ran a hand over his thinning hair, his expression like someone sucking on a lemon. 'f.u.c.kin' shambles,' he said quietly. 'A right f.u.c.kin' shambles.'

Len Haslam shifted his weight from leg to leg uncomfortably. 'We were sure they were at it. . .'

Williams's face closed like a fist. 'Of course they were b.l.o.o.d.y at it. But what were they at, Lennie boy?'

Duke shrugged. Williams reached over and took a sip of his tea. 'You are lucky Ernie or Hatherill haven't seen this, or they'd be having you back on the Big Hats. You know that, don't you?' No response was required.

Williams leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. His jacket flapped open to reveal a spreading gut - one of the hazards of the job at his level; there was deskwork and there was boozer time and little in between. Frank still believed the best way to catch villains was to mix it up with them, to spend time in the spielers and drinking clubs. He knew Ernie Millen distrusted this method of thief-taking, but he wasn't changing it now, not after all these years. He had too many valuable contacts.

'I'm not sure I shouldn't move young Billy here to the guidance of someone with more of a future in the Squad.'

Both junior officers remained mute. They jumped when Williams came forward with a crash. 'The thing is, it was Surrey.'

'What was?' asked Len.

'Whatever your lads were up to. Down Surrey way. No idea what. Not yet.'

Williams was enjoying this, thought Duke, the smug b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He still had a good network of snouts out there, and guarded them like an attack dog.

He let his revelation - that he was one step ahead of Duke - hang in the air while he fixed himself a cigarette. He didn't offer them around.

'But what we do know is that Charlie Wilson is running around like a bull with its b.o.l.l.o.c.ks in a vice.'

'Wilson?' asked Billy. 'We didn't see him.'

'No. As I said, down Surrey way, apparently,' Williams told them, with all the deliberation of a primary school teacher. 'He was at the business end - unlike you two. Now, Charlie is knocking heads together to try and find out who might have come into the possession of two nice three point four Jags, and when he finds them, he's going to f.u.c.k them in the ear then take them out on one of the Bovril boats and dump them in the North Sea.'

Bovril boats were the slurry ships that sailed from Beckton, full of London's human waste, reduced to a thick oil-like liquid. It was released somewhere away from the English coast, in designated dumping grounds. Rumour had it that, for a consideration, some of the crews wouldn't mind taking a little extra waste - suitably weighted - and disposing of it.

'I don't get it,' said Billy.

Now, for the first time Frank Williams smiled, creasing his face into deep furrows, and Len Haslam allowed himself a little smirk.

'It means,' Duke said to his young apprentice, 'that some cheeky f.u.c.kers went and half-inched the motors our lads had nicked to do their job in Surrey.' Now he began to laugh. 'Which is why Reynolds was standing there looking like someone who'd just put his finger through the lavatory paper.'

Williams chortled at that.

'f.u.c.k me,' said Len, 'what I wouldn't have given to see the faces on the boys who discovered someone had robbed the robbers.'

'Priceless,' Williams agreed. 'Absolutely priceless.' Then his face resumed its previous seriousness. 'But look, lads, it's Keystone Cops and Ealing b.l.o.o.d.y Comedies all round, isn't it? Meanwhile, N Division is wondering what happened to their support from the Yard. We are not the Don't Give A Flying f.u.c.k Squad. I know you were p.i.s.sed off about the airport fiasco. Who wasn't?' He picked up a pencil and pointed it at each in turn. 'Let it go. They'll pop up again. They're thieves. Stand on me, Len, we haven't heard the last of them. All right?'

'Yes, skipper,' said Duke.

'All right, then.' Williams seemed to relax a little. 'Then f.u.c.k off and catch me some real villains.'

Bruce Reynolds downed the last of his pint and said quietly, 'Leave it out, Charlie.'

Charlie Wilson ground his teeth at the thought of leaving anything out. 'We look like c.u.n.ts.'

'We'll live. Two more here, love.' They were in the Angelsey Arms in Chelsea, a nice boozer with a dartboard and well- kept beer. It was true there were some sn.i.g.g.e.rs when the story got out, but Bruce didn't mind. It was just one more tall story that would get taller over the years. Charlie, however, and to a lesser extent Buster and Gordy, had taken it as a personal affront. But Bruce knew the cars were fair game, as long as it was some firm he didn't know. Now if it had been mates, then he'd be angry. But he was pretty sure it wasn't. So, like a colonel after a skirmish that had gone badly, he was ready to regroup his men and plan the next part of the campaign.

Bruce paid for the fresh pints and waited till the young girl in the scandalously short skirt moved away from their section of the bar. 'It's a shame,' he said. 'It was a nice one.' It had been a train from Bournemouth, fingered by a BR porter, with money unloaded at Weybridge. Roy had been looking forward to it because the getaway route took in part of the old Brooklands circuit, spiritual home of the monied toffs known as the Bentley Boys. The idea of taking a hot Jag stuffed with money round there had tickled him.

It had been a simple plan: wait till the cash bags were unloaded, then use numbers and brute force to overwhelm the police and security guards and have it away in the 3.4s.

'Do you believe in fate, Charlie?'

Charlie shrugged. 'I know what fate's got in store for those monkeys who nicked the cars if I ever find them.'

'I'm sure.' Bruce raised his gla.s.s to a DS at the far end of the bar and indicated to the barmaid that the tosspot's drink was on him. Neutral ground, after all. 'But I mean, you know, that some things are pre-ordained. Meant to be. We should have been able to live off Heathrow for years, shouldn't we?' Charlie nodded. 'And Weybridge looked like a steal.'

Charlie pursed his lips. 'It still could be.'

'Nah. It's gone.' Bruce knew there was too much speculation out there, too many whispers about what the Jags had been for. He doubted anyone could pinpoint the exact job, but he would steer clear of Surrey for the foreseeable future. And Jaguars. 'Fate, see? Wasn't written in the stars.'

Charlie spluttered into his pint. 'What are you now? Nostra- f.u.c.kin'-damus?'

Bruce was impressed that Charlie knew who Nostradamus was, but let it pa.s.s. 'It's almost like we were waiting for the real one, the genuine article.' He indicated the dartboard with his gla.s.s. 'Game of arrows?'

Charlie collected two pouches of darts from behind the bar and moved over to the corner. Bruce rubbed the board clean and chalked 301 at the top of two columns. 'Double to start.'

Charlie weighed the Unicorn darts in his hand and fussed with the flights, licking finger and thumb and smoothing them out. Then he stepped up and threw a double top.

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks,' said Bruce. But Charlie's next two throws only added forty-one. He wrote in the opening score and took his place at the line.

'Thing is, Gordy and Brian have come with something else. Something better.'

'What's that?' Charlie wasn't keen on Brian Field, the bent solicitor. Oh, he had his uses all right, but at the other end of the business, some way down the line, when it came to briefs and bail. He didn't like the idea of him becoming active in the actual thievery.

Bruce's first effort went home into the fibre of the board with a satisfying thunk. 'Double eighteen.'

'Yeah, yeah. What's better?'

The jukebox kicked into life and Bruce frowned over at the greaser type who had fed money into the machine. Leather jacket, enough oil on his hair to run a fair-sized chippy and stiletto-thin winkle pickers. It was a style rapidly going out of fashion, replaced by something neater, smarter, of which Bruce approved. He heard the whirr of the Wurlitzer's mechanism. What had the kid selected? Looking at him, he was likely to be a Gene Vincent or Johnny Kidd and the Pirates boy.

The Beatles came from the speakers - 'Ask Me Why', the B-side of 'Please Please Me'. Bruce relaxed; he quite liked the group. They might be gobby Scousers with long hair, but they were just a bunch of working-cla.s.s kids trying to make some money Mind you, they had started using Dougie Millings, his and Charlie's favourite tailor, and now you couldn't get into the shop for screaming kids or pop groups wanting to get the Beatles look. They would have to move on again.

He threw a triple twenty and stepped to one side to give himself a decent line of sight.

'So what is it?' asked Charlie once more. 'What's better?'

Bruce winked at him, and Charlie could sense his excitement. He had already left Weybridge behind. That's why he didn't give a toss about the Jags and who took them. They were history. Bruce felt it was no good letting a slight fester or harbouring a grudge if it got in the way of future business. Charlie, he knew, didn't let go of an insult quite so easily. Bruce had to refocus him.