Dying to Tell (7 page)

"That's not very nice, is it? I was only trying to do you a favour."

"Some favour."

We seemed to be moving in a circle, so I tried to square it. "Does this have something to do with aluminium?"

They both turned slowly to look at me. And it was immediately obvious that this had nothing to do with aluminium. "What are you on, man?" snorted Carl.

"The wrong track, obviously."

"Yeh, track," said Carl with a smile. "That's more like it. As in railway track."

"You may as well go ahead and fill him in, boy," growled Bill. "It's an itch you just can't stop scratching, ain't it?"

"Uncle Bill here is a big-time criminal, Lance." (Carl was all eager garrulousness now the tale-teller off the leash.) "He had a hand in the most famous heist of the century. Well, the last century. The Great Train Robbery; August 'sixty-three. You're looking at one of the blokes who laid his hands on the three million quid in used fivers, back when three million quid could buy an Arab oil state outright."

"It was nearer two and a half million," Bill grudgingly corrected him. "And there were a fair few of us to take our whack. I didn't come away with more than a hundred and fifty thou."

"Which would probably be worth three million today," Carl went on. "If you'd stuck it in the building society and led a sensible life."

"Yeh," said Bill. "That's right. Life's full of fucking ifs. And smart arses to tell you so."

The Great Train Robbery? I was struggling to catch up, rather like the police back in August 1963. Even those of us still in our mother's womb at the time knew that was when a gang of soon to be famous thieves stopped the Glasgow to London mail train one night in the middle of the Buckinghamshire countryside and robbed it of a medium-sized fortune in used banknotes that were on their way to the Royal Mint for incineration. Most of the gang had subsequently been caught and clobbered with thirty-year gaol sentences. Some of them had escaped and been caught again. There'd been books and films, rumours of proceeds never recovered and Moriarty types behind it all never identified. It had become part of the nation's folklore. But Bill Prettyman? I'd never heard that name mentioned. And he certainly didn't look like a Mr. Big to me. Nor was he living like one. But that, of course, was exactly what he was griping about.

"Bill had the good sense to keep his gloves on during the divvying up at Leatherslade Farm," said Carl. "The ones who were caught got careless with their fingerprints. But not our Bill. He got clean away with his share of the loot. Only to have it taken off him by smooth-talking con men over the next .. . well, how long did it take, Bill?" Bill's expression suggested he had no wish to go into details of his systematic fleecing. "Let's settle for all too soon," Carl went on with a weak smile. "Which is why he finds himself passing his declining years in this rat-hole, unable even to strike a lucrative publishing deal in case the police come knocking at his door. The ones who were caught have served their time. The ones who got away .. . can't afford to come clean."

"Maybe you should do a deal with a publisher," said Bill. "Gifted with the gab the way you are."

"And maybe I would. If I didn't think you'd stick a knife in my gut before I got to spend the money."

"You're wise to think that, son. Very wise."

"I don't like to interrupt," I interrupted, 'but what has this to do with Rupe?"

"Good question," said Carl. "See, the thing is Rupe got me talking about the Great Train Robbery one night at the Pole Star and I, well, gave him the idea that I might know someone who was in on it. Nothing specific, mind. Nothing that laid a trail to Uncle Bill's door. But ... the hint was there. And Rupe was interested. Very interested. He knew a bit himself, apparently. He gave me a name. Asked me to mention it to ... whoever it was I knew ... and see if he'd like to meet up and hear more about what had happened to this guy."

"Who did he name?"

"Fellow called Dalton." (Dalton? One of the suicidal Street farmers? I was way out of my depth now.) "Peter Dalton."

"Know of him, do you?" Bill looked sharply at me.

"No." (Well, it was almost the truth.) "Can't say I do."

"Seems he was a member of the gang as well," said Carl, at which Bill gave a nod of confirmation. "Also never caught. In fact, never heard of again. Dropped right out of sight after the robbery." (Out of this whole vale of tears, in fact, assuming he was the dead farmer.) "And not just your standard gang member. No, no. Dalton was there on behalf of the gang's prime informant the mystery man who told them about the train and how much dosh might be aboard. He took an extra cut for his boss. Isn't that right, Bill?" Another nod. Then vanished."

"What did Rupe know about him?"

That he was fucking dead," said Bill. "Dalton was found with his head blown off at some farm he owned, apparently. Near Street. Less than a fortnight after the robbery. Suicide, it was, according to the stuff from the paper Alder showed me. Suicide, my arse. Dead, and no trace of the money? Sounds more like he was rubbed out."

"Murdered?"

"So Rupe reckoned," said Carl. "And he reckoned he knew who'd done it."

"Who?"

The mystery man. The source of the info."

"Why would he kill Dalton?"

To cover his tracks," said Bill, with no hint of irony. "Part of the plan all along, maybe. The cops were on to us that fast, boy. Too fast for fingerprints to be all they had. Somebody grassed us up. And who could have done it better than the bloke who set us up in the first fucking place?"

"Whose identity you never knew?"

"Not me. Not no one. Except Dalton."

"And Rupe," put in Carl.

"Alder seemed to think he could flush him out," Bill continued. "He didn't say how. Nor how he knew who he was. He said the bloke was called Stephen Townley and that he had .. . ways and means ... of tracking him down. He reckoned he could force Townley to tell his story and make us all rich by selling it. He had a photo of Dalton, taken from the local rag down in Street. Once I said yeh, that was the same Dalton I'd last seen at Leatherslade back in August 'sixty-three, he seemed sure he could pull it off."

"He had a photograph of Townley as well, "said Carl.

"Said it was Townley," Bill corrected him.

"Was Townley standing on a railway station in the picture?" I asked.

"Yeh." Bill gave me another sharp look. "How'd you know that?"

"It's pinned up in Rupe's kitchen. The station's not far from

Street. Well, it wasn't far, when it existed." (My mind was racing through sand. Rupe had no business knowing about any of this stuff. But he did. "Sure he could pull it off." I wondered if he was so sure now.) "When did you meet Rupe, Bill?"

"It's got to be ... a couple of months." (That put it during Rupe's last 'flying visit' to London.) "Which is twice as long as he said he'd need to sort Townley."

"Maybe Townley proved more elusive than Rupe had anticipated."

"Or maybe he did a deal with Townley and froze me out. Maybe all he wanted me to do was ID Dalton and tie the fucking string on his blackmail package."

"You can see Bill's point," said Carl. "It does look like that."

"Rupe's no blackmailer." (But he was, if Bill was to be believed. That's exactly what he was. Or what he was going to be, if and when he tracked Townley down. Why? He couldn't be in this for the money. Not this and the aluminium too.) "There has to be some .. . misunderstanding."

There's no misunderstanding," said Bill, with heavy emphasis. "He promised me a cut of whatever he made out of Townley."

"Me too," said Carl, which drew a fleeting glare from Bill.

"And now he's done a runner," the old man resumed. (Bill's conclusion was much the same as Charlie Hoare's, it seemed.) "So, when you find your friend, tell him he owes me. And I want paying."

"Sure. I'll find him."

"Any leads?" Carl enquired.

"One or two. Not very promising, I'm afraid."

"You'll keep us posted, though, if they come to anything?"

"Certainly. I want to sort this out as much as you do."

That a fact?"

"Yeh."

"But is it a promise?" growled Bill.

"If you like."

"I do like."

Then it's a promise."

"Good. I'm partial to promises." He eyed me through a puff of panatella smoke. "I can hold people to them, see? And I do. Whether they want to be held to them ... or not."

"You know, Lance," Carl said some time later, as we started back towards Kennington in his car, 'for a guy who claims to be Rupe's best mate, you don't seem exactly .. . over-familiar with his character."

"You're a better judge of it, are you?" I countered, though Carl's point was a valid one, God knows. Good old law-abiding career-ladder Rupe seemed to have turned to skullduggery with all the enthusiasm of a late convert.

"I'm just telling it like it is. My guess is Rupe had a whole load of stuff on friend Townley. Bill didn't give him anything except confirmation of one suspicion."

"What did he tell you and Bill about Townley? Townley as he is today, I mean."

"Nothing. Not a fucking thing."

"Didn't you ask?"

"Bill did. But Rupe clammed up."

"And you didn't try to prise him open?"

"You've got me all wrong, Lance." He cast me a leery glance through a wash of amber streetlight. "I'm not the heavy type."

That's reassuring."

"It's not meant to be. The way I figure it, this Townley has to be a real hard case to have pulled off that stuff in 'sixty-three. Too hard for Rupe to tackle any way he chose to go about it. I don't want to dash Bill's hopes he's got fuck all else to keep him going but Rupe isn't coming back with a fat pay-off to share out."

"What do you reckon's happened to him, then?"

Carl gave the question a moment's thought, then said, "Not sure, but .. . nothing good."

CHAPTER FIVE

Going to bed in the small hours with a lot to think about isn't anyone's recipe for a sound dose of slumber. Was Rupe really up to defrauding Far Eastern banks and blackmailing veteran arch-criminals? I doubted it. In fact, I doubted just about everything I'd learned so far. More worryingly, I doubted it was wise to get mixed up in any of it. Cue a hasty retreat to Glastonbury? That at least made sense. And it was a comforting thought that finally lulled me into sleep.

Only to be jolted awake by a noise from the kitchen. Someone was moving about. I checked my watch. It was just gone four. Had the person who'd so carefully searched Rupe's belongings come back for a second look? My heart began to pound.

Then the toaster popped and I remembered: postal workers keep early hours.

"Bloody hell," said Echo as I staggered into the kitchen to find her munching and slurping. "Do you normally look this bad in the mornings?"

"This isn't the morning. It's still last night."

"When did you get back?"

"Too late. Far too late."

"Did tea with the suit stretch to supper?"

"No, no. I was kept up by someone else. A bloke Rupe knows who works at the Pole Star."

"Not Carl Madron?"

"You know him too?"

"Difficult for a girl to go into the Pole Star without knowing Carl. He always tries it on. Just as well he's the other side of the bar. Wouldn't have thought he and Rupe had a lot in common."

"Neither would I." I looked at the photo-montage and tried to focus on the picture of Stephen Townley. A name and a face and Bill Prettyman's criminal past. What did they really amount to? "But there are a lot of things I wouldn't have thought about Rupe that it seems I may have to."

"Such as?"

"I'll tell you later. When I've scraped the fur off my tongue."

"All right. I've got to dash, anyway. How about you treat me to dinner at a Portuguese place I know?" She grinned, something I felt I'd be unable to manage for quite a while. "In lieu of rent."

"It's a deal." I found myself a mug and poured some tea from the pot Echo had brewed. "What's the best way to get to Canary Wharf from here, do you think?"

"Tube, via London Bridge."

"Other than the Tube." Her eyebrows shot up. "That's something else I'll explain later."

The answer involved a trudge to Elephant and Castle, a bus to Shadwell and another from there to Docklands' nerve centre. I set off in the drizzle-smeared dregs of the rush hour and arrived just as the early starters were taking their mid-morning fag break. The Isle of Dogs had been transformed from a building site into a city unto itself while my back had been turned. A mall about a mile long led me to a phalanx of reception desks at the foot of the Canada Square Tower. A message was phoned up to Eurybia's perch on the umpteenth floor and ten minutes later Charlie Hoare emerged from the lift to greet me.

"Glad you could make it, Lance. I think you'll find the trip worthwhile. Shall we go? Came on the Jubilee Line, did you? Impressive, isn't it?"

Hoare's questions didn't require many answers from me, which suited my less than razor-sharp state of mind. He piloted me to the underground car park, loaded me into his Lexus, weaved his way out onto the A13 and pointed the bonnet towards Essex. He seemed to feel I was in need of a potted biography of Charlie Hoare, man of the shipping world, and that took us well past Dagenham before I needed to do more than nod periodically and throw in the occasional 'uh-huh'.

"I go back to BC in shipping, Lance. Before containerization Well before, as a matter of fact. Thirty-seven years is a long time. And it amounts to a lot of experience."

"Must do," I mumbled. That means you started work the year I was born." "Sixty-three, yes. The twenty-second of July. I started the same day as the trial of Stephen Ward, you know. But I've gone on a hell of a sight longer." He laughed at that and I made an effort to join in. "I was still living with my folks in Beckenham then. The train used to run into Holborn Viaduct, as was, and I'd walk to work from there. Holborn Viaduct was right next to the Old Bailey, of course. The scrum outside that first morning was unbelievable. The trial of the century, they called it. If I hadn't been so keen to create a good impression in the office, I might have bunked off and tried to get a ticket for the public gallery. As it was, they had to cope without me." Another laugh.