Signal Red (41 page)

I suddenly remembered I needed a lift back home and that the cops owed me one. I didn't want to walk out to an empty road. 'We should go, too.'

He looked at the joint, made to light it and thought better of it. He tucked it into an inside pocket. 'And then there are those twats who think I'm still loaded. That I live in Croydon because I'm an eccentric millionaire. They only got about three hundred grand back, so they reckon we still have the rest. They have no idea. There's some right fuckin' villains out there, including the lawyers. They should look at how much those cunts charged us all.'

'I can do you a good deal on a BMW.' I handed over a card. 'Give me a bell.'

He took it and examined it. 'My BMW days are over, but thanks. If I get a second wind, I'll come down for one of those nice old Sixes. You must be doing OK.' He ran a thumb over the printing. 'Embossed and everything.'

I explained to him that after my run-in with Len Haslam, I'd gone to Germany with the money he had intended to plant on me, where I had bought ex-Post Office yellow VW vans and shipped them back to England. They soon became the favoured transport of the hippie generation, and I made enough, eventually, to come back and open a BMW and NSU franchise, one of which, at least, came good.

'So you landed on your feet, after all? You know, the only one of the rest of us who really did all right was Gordy. Served his time, came out, got his money, a hundred and sixty grand, and buggered off. Hardly a sniff since, apart from the odd wish-you-were here card from Spain. He did OK, did Gordy.'

'Him and Tiny Dave.'

'Ah, yes. The one who really coshed the driver.'

Jack Mills was dead now, killed by leukemia, although there were those - his family amongst them - who still reckoned it was the robbery that really did for him.

'It was Dave who hit him?' I asked. 'I always wondered.'

A shrug. 'I wasn't on the train. Bloody chaos it was, by all accounts. But yeah, that's how it went. With a lot of encouragement from Buster, so I hear. And if Dave hadn't done it, Buster would have. Like a bloody little Jack Russell with that cosh, he was.'

'Whatever happened to Tiny Dave?' I asked.

'Ah. Talk about Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Tiny Dave was last seen walking off into the night with his whack, thirty years ago.'

'Never heard anything?'

'Of Dave? Not a dicky bird.'

I remembered him talking about going to Bangkok. I wondered if he'd made it. 'Which means he is either the legendary One Who Got Away. Or . ..'

'Someone killed him and took the money. Wouldn't surprise me. That cash never brought anything but bad luck.'

I recalled Billy Naughton had said much the same thing when we were out on the rowing lake. 'Toxic', he had called it.

Bruce mistook my silence for disbelief. 'Look at the facts. Charlie dead, Brian Field dead, Bill Boal dead. Buster and Roy bloody basket cases. Ralph was coming back to give

himself up a few years ago. Been lying low in Belgium. Got a ferry back. The Spirit of Free Enterprise.'' I shook my head at the bad luck. The boat had capsized, killing 193 people. Clearly, Ralph, the dwarf signal man, had been among them. 'And Tommy Wisbey's in a bad way. You hear that? Strokes. Never the same after his sixteen-year-old daughter died in a car accident. And Bobby Welch a cripple. And for what? It was an eye-opener when I realised the poor sod of a train driver ended up with more than me in the end, after the great British public had a whip-round for him.'

That wasn't strictly true; Mills hadn't received anything like a hundred and fifty grand. More like thirty, as I recalled. But it was a fact that he held on to more of it than Bruce. 'You know the young fireman died too?' I asked.

'Who?'

'The co-driver. David something.' Anything to do with the robbery had always caught my eye, often triggered a what-if moment, where I thought about how close I came to being in that dock. 'Heart-attack. Thirty-three or four, he was.'

'Shit. That's a tough break.' Then, with a twinkle in his eye, 'They blame that one on me as well?'

'Not that I heard.'

Bruce stood, pulled on his overcoat, picked up the glasses and cups from the table and took them to the sink. 'Ah, well,' he said with a rueful smile as he rinsed them. 'As the old Sinatra song has it, you might be on top of the world in April, but you'll crash and burn in May.'

We stood staring at each other, pondering this pearl of wisdom from Ol' Blue Eyes. 'Wasn't he back on top in June?' I asked.

Bruce put a quarter-inch of milk in a saucer and placed it outside the kitchen door, then locked and bolted it. Placing

a bony, veined hand on my shoulder, he steered me towards the front door, flicking off lights as he went. When he spoke, the jaunty sing-song tone had disappeared, replaced by a melancholy whisper.

'Ask Roy. He'll tell you. Sometimes June is a fuck of a long time coming.'

Aftermath

Bruce Reynolds: after moving around various safe houses in London, he fled abroad (France, Mexico) but, once the money ran low, he came back to the UK. He was caught by Tommy Butler in Torquay in 1968, given a twenty-five- year sentence but released in 1978. Reynolds and his wife divorced while he was inside, but were reconciled upon his release. He did time in the early 1980s for dealing in amphetamine sulphate, which he still contests. Reynolds is the author of a very successful, and readable autobiography (see Acknowledgements).

Ronald Biggs: the most famous/notorious of the robbers, but one who played only a small part in the robbery itself. After his escape from Wandsworth in 1965, he moved around the world before settling in Rio, where he fathered a child who saved him from extradition by Jack Slipper. In 2001, he returned to England, a very sick man, having been on the run for a total of thirty-eight years. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 so he could die a free man.

Ronald 'Buster' Edwards: on the run, he joined Bruce Reynolds in Mexico but, homesick, he eventually returned to the UK and gave himself up. He was sentenced to fifteen years in 1966 and was released in 1975. Despite being portrayed as a lovable cockney rogue by Phil Collins in the movie Buster, there are those who still believe he was the one who coshed driver Jack Mills. Found hanged in his garage in 1994, at the age of 62.

Charlie Wilson: sentenced to thirty years, he escaped from Winson Green Prison after four months. He was tracked down in 1968 by Tommy Buder in Canada, brought home, and served twelve years. Wilson was shot dead outside his Marbella home in April 1990.

Roy James: the talented racing driver was jailed for thirty years; he served twelve. An attempt to pick up his driving career failed and for a while he ran a gold VAT scam with Charlie Wilson, narrowly avoiding jail. In early 1993, he was sentenced to six years after shooting his father-in-law and hitting his wife with a pistol butt. He died of a heart-attack in 1997.

Brian Field: the solicitor was released in 1969. His wife Karin divorced him while he was in prison, and married a German journalist. He died in a motorway accident in 1979.

Thomas Wisbey: another thirty-year man, he was released in 1976. However, after a period as a car dealer, he fell back into crime and was jailed for ten years in 1989 for cocaine dealing. Now retired.

Robert Welch: sentenced to thirty years and released in 1976. Crippled by a bungled leg operation in prison, he ran clubs when released. Now retired.

Gordon Goody: sentenced to thirty years and released in 1975, he claimed in the Carlton TV programme I Was A Great Train Robber that he spent most of his share of the money on lawyers and was 'ripped off for much of the rest.

James Hussey: sentenced to thirty years, he was released in 1975. He became a car dealer (in Warren Street) but was jailed for seven years in 1989 for cocaine dealing. Retired.

Roger Cordrey: sentenced to twenty years for rigging railway signals but served fourteen after an appeal. Returned to being a florist in the West Country.

James White: was on the run for three years, but eventually gave himself up and was sentenced to eighteen years in 1966. Released in 1975 and opted for a quiet life in Sussex.

William Boal: died of a brain tumour in 1970 while serving his sentence. Bruce Reynolds always maintained he was never part of the gang.

Leonard Field: involved in the purchase of Leatherslade Farm. Sentenced to twenty-five years for conspiring to obstruct the course of justice, later reduced to five. Released in 1967.

John Wheater: a solicitor jailed for three years in 1964 for conspiring to pervert the course of justice. He was released in 1966.

There are persistent rumours that between one and three robbers were never arrested or prosecuted. The man identified as 'The Ulsterman' in several accounts ('Jock' here) has also never been traced, nor has the mysterious Mark who acted as go-between. Stan (sometimes called Peter), the retired train driver, also disappeared without trace.

This novel is a work of fiction. It uses real characters and situations, but I have treated them as a novelist, not a historian. Many characters are entirely fictitious, and any resemblance between them and persons living or dead is entirely fictitious. Nevertheless, the arc of the story, from airport job to train robbery and subsequent capture and prosecution, is an accurate representation of the gang's operations.

I would like to thank Mike Lawrence, motor-racing guru and author of many fine books on the sport, including The Glory of Goodwood (with Simon Taylor and Doug Nye), who was my very first port of call. I knew I wanted to avoid building the story around the two most well-known train robbers, Ronnie Biggs and Buster Edwards. Roy James (there is some confusion over whether he was ever consistently called 'the Weasel', or if the police got it wrong and the name stuck) seemed to me one of the most tragic of the thieves. Whether he was as outrageously talented as some suggest, I'm not convinced, but he was certainly a more than capable driver, on and off the track.

Mike not only knew the Roy James story intimately, he

knew Roy himself: he raced against him in his karting days, and thought highly of his skill. The early scenes on the air base came from Mike's memory, but, of course, filtered through my distorting lens.

Thank you to Holly Groom for additional research on the trial of the robbers and to Sinead Porter of the News International syndication department for allowing me to use part of Colin Maclnnes' article An Honest Citizen's Guide to the Criminal Classes and extracts from The Times newspaper. Thanks also to Duncan Campbell, ace crime reporter and author of the excellent novel If It Bleeds, which features a walk-on by Bruce Reynolds.

As initial source material I used the memoirs of Jack Slipper (Slipper of the Yard), George Hatherill (A Detective's Story, which contains the story of the headless corpse in Cornwall), and Ernest Millen (Specialist in Crime, wherein Millen claims the big tip-off came from an interview with a snitch in prison), as well as Bruce Reynolds's highly readable Autobiography of a Thief, Piers Paul Read's The Train Robbers, Wensley Clarkson's Killing Charlie, Ronnie Biggs's Odd Man Out and Keep on Running, and Peta Fordham's The Robbers' Tale.

But if you want a concise, authoritative overview of the truth - all the previous titles being unreliable in one aspect or another - I would point you to Peter Guttridge. His The Great Train Robbery for the Crime Archives series of the National Archives is a skilfully condensed version of the whole saga, including the unanswered questions. Chief among these is, was there a Mr Big? (We'll never know, but it's unlikely.) Where did the money dumped in Dorking woods and Black Horse Court come from? Again, we'll probably never know, but it was alleged in the Carlton TV programme I Was A Great Train Robber that Brian Field's parents got rid of the

Dorking cash when they realised it was ill-gotten gains. But that was never substantiated.

Also useful was Villains' Paradise by Donald Thomas, Gangland Soho by James Morton, The Flying Squad by Norman Lucas and Bernard Scarlett, and The Underworld by Duncan Campbell. For some of Bruce's answers to Colin Thirkell (a fictionalised version of Colin Maclnnes), I dipped into The Courage of His Convictions by Tony Parker and 'Robert Allerton', a series of interviews with a career criminal in the early 1960s. Plus the News International archives provided many contemporary accounts, as did the Colindale Newspaper Library.

For the scenes at Ronnie Scott's, I relied on Jazz Man: The Amazing Story of Ronnie Scott and His Club by the always-excellent John Fordham.

Part of Chapter 42, the police car chase, is inspired by the opening scenes of Robbery, Peter 'Bullitt' Yates's 1967 film that also fictionalises the events of August 1963. Star and producer Stanley Baker was a well-known face in the clubs and pubs frequented by the underworld, and Peta Fordham, who wrote The Robbers' Tale, was an adviser, so the core planning and robbery is very well portrayed - far better than in the later Buster.

Paul Wilson of the Kent & East Sussex Railway (
www.kesr.org.uk

) took me through how to start and drive diesels large and small, as well as the signal warnings that sound in the cab. Any errors in that department are mine alone.

The majority of events in this novel are true, although some of the dates have been shifted, but the details of the airport and train robberies and incidents such as Gordon Goody being arrested because he had managed to disguise

himself as Bruce Reynolds; the two Jags being stolen before the first train robbery; Charmian Biggs telephoning the police to help find Ronnie; the burglary of Bruce Reynolds's hideout; the capture of Roy James; the find of money in Dorking and the phone box - are genuine occurrences. Len Haslam, Billy Naughton, Tony Fortune and Tiny Dave Thompson, however, are totally fictitious characters (and any resemblance to real police and thieves is entirely coincidental), although they are often slotted into actual events. 'Ralph' is also a fiction. No train robber died on The Spirit of Free Enterprise.

I would like to thank Bruce Reynolds for reading a version of the book and treating it kindly. We had a very convivial lunch together, since we share an interest in cars, planes, guns, the war, film noir, tailors and jazz; however, those who want Bruce's viewpoint should consult his autobiography. This is a fictional account and he is in no way responsible for any of the content.

I am particularly and eternally grateful to Rowland Cordery, who broke a long stalemate by dreaming up the title Signal Red, which was just so perfect it made all the many suggested alternatives - most of them mine - look feeble in comparison.

Finally my gratitude goes, as always, to David Miller, Jo Stansall, Katie Haines, Sheila David, and, of course, my editor for eleven books now - does that make him eligible for the prefix 'longsuffering'? - Martin Fletcher.

Robert Ryan, London.
www.robert-ryan.net