There had been some traffic that morning. What George called ‘bucket-and-spade specials’. Over-excited children in the back seat, bleary-eyed parents in the front. But there were no children that afternoon. Just the three men with their backs to the plate-glass window.
Amy Ward was puzzled rather than alarmed. She had never seen random violence, at least not until the new TV had shown the Mods and Rockers fighting on the promenade the summer before at Clacton and Brighton. She lit a cigarette and put the Radio Times away under the counter.
She told the police the next few minutes were incoherent in her memory. Without word or apparent signal the three men moved at once: the man she would later describe as having blue-black hair, young and slim and dressed in the new-style US jeans, strode away to stand by the two petrol pumps. He carried a rag and a wrench but she never saw his face which was partly obscured by a US-style peaked cap.
The man she would later describe as the leader moved quickly to the shop door and, stepping through, pulled a knitted black balaclava over his head and a sawn-off shotgun from a large ironmonger’s holdall. The other followed less confidently, fumbling with a balaclava. Amy’s bloodstream flooded with adrenalin. She stood, knocking her stool to the ground, and took a breath to call George. But the first man moved with surprising speed to bring the shotgun up to her chest. His voice, muffled through the jagged slit of the wool, said: ‘No. Not a sound.’
The other man hesitated in the doorway.
The leader clicked his fingers and said:
‘Till.’
The week, with plenty of traffic running up to the coast, had been a good one and there was nearly £600 in notes – including two £20 bills which George had swapped for change with one of the delivery men.
There were also three wage packets: one for the mechanic, and two for the drivers who ran the Wards’ small road-haulage business. The wages in cash totalled a further £48. The second man counted the money while the leader watched Mrs Ward – so close his breath played on her skin. He traced a finger down her sweater, from neck to belt.
She remembered saying: ‘Please don’t.’ She told the police she was sure he meant to rape her.
He breathed into her mouth: ‘Silver?’
She fumbled at a key held by a clasp to her belt and nodded to a reinforced wooden door to her left: ‘Storeroom,’ she said, or possibly: ‘In there.’ Her statements differed on this small point. He brushed past her, produced two large burlap sacks, unlocked the door, and disappeared inside, switching on the light.
George Ward’s collection of silver football trophies, some his own, but many just in safe keeping, was kept in neat rows on green baize. George had been an outstanding local sportsman until a knee injury had shredded his cartilage four years earlier. He compensated now by helping run local leagues and had always offered his storeroom as a safe place for sporting silverware. The entire collection was uninsured but its value would later be assessed at around £800 – £1,000. The cups were put into the sack and passed to the second man who added the cash and wage packets from the till. The leader stood at the strongroom door and said, ‘Come and give me a hand clearing up, darling.’
They all heard the sound of talking at the same time. Out on the forecourt the one with the American-style cap was putting petrol into a caravanette and chatting with the driver. He was taking the customer’s money and searching in his pockets for change.
Amy flipped up the counter flap and took three steps towards the plate-glass window. She said later she hoped to make some sort of signal to catch the attention of the driver. She heard the shotgun being cocked and turned to find the leader standing behind her. He had the gun in the crook of his arm and she remembered that his eyes, which were very dark, reflected the sunshine pouring in through the window.
She heard the caravanette pulling off and said: ‘You can’t get away with this. I know you.’ She may have said something more, but her memory could never retrieve it.
The several statements she made to police never explained these words. She denied that she did know him, and was unable to say why she had said what she said, other than to guess that it was an attempt to buy time.
Then they heard the cheers. The tension of the first twenty minutes suddenly released. England had equalized. George was whooping. Another bottle smashed in the grate, then another. They sounded close, next door, not thirty yards away.
That was the moment that changed her life. The gang leader fired the gun at a range of between six and eight feet slightly to the left side of her skull. The blast tore away her right cheekbone and jaw and shattered into bonedust her left collarbone. She would taste the lead and cordite in her mouth for months. Metal shot and bone fragments were retrieved from the brick wall six feet behind her. She lost her right eye and the sight in both. Shreds of tobacco from the cigarette, which she had held in her mouth throughout the robbery, were embedded in her wounds and were a constant source of infection. At the time she recalled no pain but distinctly remembered a voice she had not yet heard saying: ‘Christ. Christ. You’ve killed her.’
Later she recalled, briefly, her husband whispering to her that the ambulance was coming. Then no more. She would not regain consciousness for nearly three weeks. The rest of her life was punctuated by severe bouts of depression and the recurring image of the jagged slit of a mouth in a black, woollen balaclava. The teeth she recalled were small, white, and perfect, like those of a child.
Saturday, November 3rd
8
At weekends Dryden abandoned time but embraced food. PK 122’s handsome ship’s clock had stopped at 9.19 a.m. – in 1948. He removed his wristwatch on Friday night, a tiny ceremony which gave him immense pleasure. During the week he grazed on a conveyor belt of pork pies, crisps, sweets, and anything else he could get in his pockets. At the weekend he ate Big Time: and first call was the Box Café, affectionately known to a small but undiscerning clientele as Salmonella Sid’s. He walked to town along the river bank in the hyper-clear air which follows a snowstorm. About six inches had fallen in the night and it was still held by frost to the pitched cathedral roof on the horizon. He stopped on the bank and studied the south-west transept through pocket binoculars. The scene-of-crime lamp was still in place – as was a single policeman, huddled in the high doorway through which he had climbed last night. He hoped it was the incompetent Sergeant Pate.
Salmonella Sid’s was a steam box. A wall of hot air and grease hit you when you came through the door. Dryden ordered the Full English and settled down with a discarded copy of the Mirror. The body on the roof of the cathedral had made a paragraph on page ten: HEAVENS ABOVE! Nice touch. He made a note to bill them – like most of Fleet Street they were lousy payers. He’d check the rest of the tabloids when he got to the office. He’d filed 350 words for the Telegraph, Times, and Independent as well; they’d ordered and would eventually have to pay up whether they ran the copy or not. The Guardian had just taken a paragraph and he guessed they might send a staffer out to do a colour piece. The News, his old employers, had taken 350 words. He doodled on the Mirror with a biro. If the tabloids used it as well as the serious papers he’d make about £700.