Signal Red

'Two minutes late,' he said, once silence had descended, broken only by the groan and click of the steel tracks.

'Terrible,' said Charlie, looking down the line at the intense green lights and, beyond them, the fuzzy glow of Cheddington station. 'What's the average?'

Bruce had sent someone up to Sears Crossing every night for the nine previous nights, making him sit in the bushes, waiting for the Up train to roar by. 'Never more than fifteen minutes either side of three-ten.'

'It's high, isn't it? Off the ground.'

'We'll need ladders, short ones. I'll get some measurements.'

Charlie pointed to the spidery gantry that straddled the tracks. 'And that's the light Roger will fix?'

'Yes.'

There was a beat. The overhead lines hummed with unheard conversations. 'You happy with the crew we have?'

'The new faces? Well, Bobby's all right.' They knew Bobby Welch as a man who dabbled in crime, although not usually anything on this scale. He was, as Bruce liked to say, small beer, but he wouldn't have anything too challenging to accomplish. 'Tiny Dave did well enough at the airport. Jim Hussey is solid enough. What about you?'

'Beggars can't be choosers.'

'Yeah, well,' said Bruce, zipping up his jacket and turning away from the tracks. 'Maybe we won't be beggars after this.'

Charlie gave a low, rueful laugh. 'I think we said that before Heathrow.'

'Yeah. Well, maybe this is our second bite at the cherry, eh?' But his words were drowned out by another fast-moving train, punching through the night.

'What?'

'Nothing. We move it along to the next stage.'

'What's that?' asked Charlie.

'Getting the grub in.'

Thirty-eight

Battersea, South-west London, June 1963

'I do not know why I am doing this, Tony. I pay people to do this for me.'

Janie Riley sat in the passenger seat of the Hillman Husky, arms folded, her lower lip jutting out in a display of serious petulance. She had her hair backcombed and it had been dyed blonde. She looked like the singer out of the Springfields. Yet the voice coming out of her mouth was one he hadn't heard before. It was posh, refined, with all the vowels and consonants present and correct.

Tony turned off the engine. 'I don't know why I'm doing it either. As Bruce said, horses for courses.'

'Well, why can't he use that cheap whore Mary Manson?'

Mary Manson was not a cheap whore. She had, however, begun to nudge out Janie as Bruce's 'companion', turning up in the pubs and clubs where Janie once held sway. Janie wasn't sure what she had done to rock the boat. Was it her fault that Colin had rubbed Bruce up the wrong way with some hare-brained scheme about old Greek marble?

'Janie, I don't like shopping any more than you do. But everyone has a job to do. Today, yours is to help us out here.'

'Like some fishwife.'

'Don't you mean housewife?'

She glared at him. 'Fuck off.' It was, he thought, strangely attractive to be sworn at in a cut-glass accent.

She climbed out of the car, slamming the door with hinge- threatening violence, and clattered off towards the cash and carry in high heels.

Tony pulled out the handwritten shopping list and the wad of cash Bruce had given him. He guessed it was best if he didn't mention that Mary Manson had drawn up the items to be bought. Fifteen or sixteen men staying for a week in a farmhouse were going to need food and essential supplies. He locked the Husky and scanned the list as he went. Twenty- four tins of luncheon meat, four packets of Oxo, four bottles of Bovril, Campbell's soups, various flavours, corned beef, Shippam's paste, ketchup – lots of ketchup – Fairy washing- up liquid – he could imagine the fuss over who would do the bloody dishes – Maxwell House coffee, catering size, Kellogg's cornflakes, Weetabix, Ready Brek, Typhoo tea, lots of sugar, crackers (Ritz and Jacobs both specified), baked beans, tinned peas and potatoes, jam, sardines, Lifebuoy soap. The list went on, covering, it seemed, everything except booze, which Bobby Welch, the club owner, was taking care of. It looked as if Bruce was planning to feed and clean an army. Well, in a way, that was what it was. An army of villains.

Who would have thought that robbery, with or without violence, would be fuelled by two dozen cans of Spam?

He finished reading and looked back at the squat little van. It was the first time he had found a use for the Husky – none of his customers had expressed any interest in such a humdrum machine, and he was thinking of offloading it – but already he wondered if it was going to be big enough for the supplies.

Tony reached the entrance where Janie was leaning on a shopping trolley. The cash and carry was like a vast cathedral of consumerism. Instead of pews, there were rows of goods on pallets, piled high, most of them Brobdingnagian- sized 'extra-value' packets or smaller items in multiples of a dozen or a gross. You could shop for surviving a nuclear strike here, Tony thought. Maybe people did just that. Those bloody Civil Defence ads on TV would make anyone panic.

Janie snapped her fingers. 'Let me see that, will you?'

'Do you speak to all your staff like that?'

'Just the handsome, insolent ones.'

He passed it over. She glanced down it as she wheeled the trolley, stopping in the first section. Then she gave a little whoop of satisfaction. She had noticed an omission. When she spoke, the Janie of the Soho bars, voice rasped by cigarette smoke, had returned.

'And what are you going to do? Wipe your arses with the Sporting Life? Here, give us a hand.' She reached up to pull down one of the twelve-packs of Bronco lavatory paper. 'You'll need a lot of this, all the shit you blokes talk.'

'Hold on,' Tony said, remembering something.

'What is it now?' Janie had reverted to the posh bitch.

'Gloves.' He held out a pair.

'Gloves? Oh, lord. Why on earth?'

'Bruce's orders.'

'Did he say they had to be brown gloves? Did he supply any black ones?'

He was losing patience now. 'Janie, it's not fuckin' Hardy Amies. It's a cash and carry. I don't know what it is with you and Bruce and Mary and, frankly, I don't care. Just put the fucking things on.'

She smiled. 'My, you really are quite attractive when you flush like that. Do you go that colour when you fuck?'

He put his hands up. 'Married. Baby on the way. Wife has carving knife and knows how to use it. What's more, I might be stupid, but I'm not stupid enough to get between you and Bruce. Clear?'

'You flatter yourself, mister.' Then she smiled. 'Is your wife all belly and big blue-veined tits?' She squeaked in a pantomime imitation of a woman's voice. "'Oh Tony, don't spunk on the baby's head. Let's wait till the christening'.'

'Put the gloves on, Janie.'

With a display of huffing, puffing and tutting, she thrust her hands into the oversized gloves. They loaded a couple of packs of the toilet paper into the trolley. Then she consulted the list again.

'No salt? Tony, be a dear and get that drum of Saxo over there. And you could do with some fruit. A nice tinned fruit salad. Del Monte, perhaps.' She was being sarcastic now, he could tell, ridiculing them. 'And condensed milk. Carnation. Bruce has a sweet tooth, you know. And candles. In case the power goes. Who in blazes wrote this?' Tony kept mum, allowing himself a tiny shrug. 'I'm going to have to go through this carefully. You push, darling, I'll follow. Then maybe we can have a little celebration later, when we're done? Just the two of us.'

'No.' Tony had no desire for any part of his body to be used;is an instrument of revenge against Bruce. 'Isn't going to happen.'

Janie scowled and muttered something obscene. Tony grabbed the handle of the trolley. It was going to be a long, long day.