'The tickle. This train thing, whatever it is.'
Bruce had been very tight-lipped, insisting this was simply a reconnaissance mission, just to confirm certain facts. They were not to let their minds run away with them.
'I don't know if I'm in yet, do I? I mean, if they need a driver. And it's not really my thing.'
'What isn't?'
'Robbery with violence, I think they call it.'
Jimmy chortled. 'Nor me, son. This is not going to be just some smash and grab. I don't like the rough stuff either.'
Tony was surprised. Jimmy had a reputation. 'You were a Para.'
'We're not all Sergeant bloody Hurricane. We had a bit of finesse. So does Bruce. I wouldn't be here if I thought we was just the heavy mob. Hold up.'
They heard the whistle of an approaching train and squinted into darkness broken only by what appeared to be a random pattern of red and green lights. The powerful loco of the Night Mail appeared, its twin beams glaring like jaundiced eyes, and above them the duller glow of the tripartite screen. Tony knew people were sentimental about steam, but he had to admire the monstrous brutality of the diesel that shouldered its way under the station lamps and disappeared from view. It was all solid muscle and attitude, like a steel-clad bull terrier.
They wound the Vauxhall's windows down and listened. The TPO sat, obscured by the station buildings and roof, its engine thrumming at idle, for another ten minutes. Then came a coarse whistle, the low grunt of the engine taking the strain, and the money train pulled out. Next stop, Euston.
Jimmy White slapped Tony's thigh, making him jump. 'Best go out and buy that baby the biggest fuckin' cot you can find. If I know Bruce, and he's thinkin' what I think he's thinkin' – then we're in the money. Fortune by name…'
Tony smiled as if he hadn't heard that one.
Jimmy was still whistling the tune 'We're in the Money' when they pulled out of the car park and headed back to London on empty roads, each lost in their own thoughts of untold riches.
Thirty
South-east England, June 1963
It seemed appropriate for Bruce to catch the train down to Brighton, rather than take the Lotus. It meant breakfast in one of the Pullman carriages, after all, and they had the place nearly to themselves, as most morning traffic was 'up' to the city. He had taken Janie Riley along, now dressed as a prosperous middle-class housewife in twin-set and pillbox hat. He would park her at the Grand or let her do some shopping while he met the Flowerpot Man. Bruce didn't like to bring in outsiders, but the more he thought about it, the more he needed particular expertise. After all, this was a moving target. He had heard – from Buster – that the Flowerpot Man could take care of that. Buster had told him about the train jobs on the South Coast Line, engineered by a pretty solid team. Small beer, Buster had said, but the principle was sound.
'Looks like summer is finally here,' said Janie, making conversation with the white-jacketed steward as he fussed around them with the tea and toast.
'About time, miss.'
Bruce glanced out of the window. London had fallen away and Janie was right, the countryside was bathed in a diffuse pale yellow and the sheep were sunbathing rather than shivering. The winter and spluttering spring had played havoc with the country. The football league was still in disarray, with dozens of postponed matches yet to be played, and race cards had been scratched for weeks on end. It had been the coldest year since 1740, so the Express said. Bruce didn't know about that, but he remembered the one of 1947 – the bomb- sites, suddenly pretty under the thick crust of snow, but even more dangerous than before. His mate Jimmy Standing had jumped into what looked like a harmless snowdrift and fallen into one of the firefighters' emergency water tanks from the Blitz and broken his leg. Bruce still remembered the sight of the red-streaked bone poking through flesh and the sound of the poor sod's whimpering.
'Bruce.' Janie brought him back to the attentions of the steward. 'Full breakfast?'
Bruce could still feel an echo of the queasiness that the wound had brought on. 'Bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs,' he said. 'Hold the tomatoes and black pudding.'
'Very good, sir.'
Janie concentrated on lighting a cigarette and Bruce went back to thinking about trains. The team so far was himself, Charlie, Gordy, Buster and Roy. Good men all, but just not enough. He would add Jimmy White to that and, for sheer muscle, Tommy Wisbey. Old Tommy would make both Frank Nitti and Elliot Ness shit their pants. Bruce loved the TV series The Untouchables, and often wondered if he should give the gang a moniker like that. That, and a soundtrack by Nelson Riddle. Although he already had a tune for the job. Of late he had been playing Charles Mingus's Ah Um and the track
'Boogie Stop Shuffle'. Just the right tempo for a great heist sequence with sudden dramatic stabs from the horns and the wah-wah of plunged trumpets. He could see the tide sequence, designed by the guy who did Anatomy of a Murder or John Cassavetes's Johnny Staccato.
That train of thought took him from Waldo's, the Greenwich Village jazz club that featured in the Cassavetes TV series, to Bobby Welch. Bobby also ran a drinking club, but it was not as classy as Waldo's, being an after-hours dive popular with the better kind of toms and their punters – and Bobby himself was always short of cash, being the kind of gambler that bookies put out bunting for. Buster said he had done some very handy work with the Flowerpot Man on this very line. If Bruce brought in Bobby and Jim Hussey – a painter and decorator with a sideline in being very handy in a ruck – then he would have a formidable group of intimidators in Gordy, Bobby, Tommy and the two Jims. That was real muscle power. It was spreading the net wider than he liked by going beyond the Comet House team, but even Charles Atlas would think twice about kicking sand in those faces. The Intimidators. Was that a suitable name? It was for the heavy section of the firm, at least. Bruce chuckled to himself.
'Bruce?' Janie finished her cigarette with a deep inhalation and let the smoke stream from the side of her mouth. 'I have something to ask you.'
Bruce leaned back as the breakfast arrived and was placed before him. 'What's that, luv?'
Janie fixed him with a very direct stare, in case he should drift off again. She stubbed out the cigarette in the Brighton Belle ashtray and switched on a blinder of a smile. 'I wondered if you would talk to a friend of mine. As a favour.'
Bruce didn't like the sound of that. Favours could lead to all sorts of trouble. 'What kind of friend?'
The Queen and Artichoke was close to Victoria Park in Bethnal Green. A grubby little boozer, known to its regulars as the Q &A. it had an unusual mix of clientele, comprising East End locals and students from the hostels on Victoria Road which were part of the Sir John Cass Foundation. The two groups had co-existed well enough in a kind of uneasy truce until recently, when the students had become more selfconsciously bohemian, or 'beatnicky' as Frank, the Q &As guv'nor, preferred to call them.
Sunday lunchtime though was for the fellas only, with arty types told to drink elsewhere. There was sometimes a stripper, but always cockles and crisps on the bar and Marion, the guv'nor's missus, pulling pints. Marion Castle was a Diana Dors type, an ex-beauty queen (albeit from Butlin's in Clacton), who kept the boys' attention with her Jayne Mansfield-like stretch tops.
Charlie Wilson arrived a little after one, and the Q &A was already soupy with cigarette smoke. He pushed his way to the bar and helped himself to snacks. Marion fetched him a mild and bitter and as he paid her he said, 'Frank in?'
Marion took a long, hard look at him and he knew she was weighing up whether he was Old Bill. The turned-up corner of her scarlet lips suggested she was reaching that conclusion.
'Charlie Wilson,' he answered. 'Friend of Andy Turner.'