The Great Train Robbery (20 page)

C Osmond
26

The police were particularly intrigued with this report, having recently interviewed a number of Brian Field’s neighbours. Kenneth Barnes, who lived close to Brian Field in Whitchurch Hill, mentioned in his statement that he saw a dark blue dormobile at Field’s house at 7 p.m. on 9 August 1963. The police report concludes that: ‘the point of interest is that Field was insistent that the van should be put in the garage whilst the Jaguar car was left outside in the open. Mr Barnes saw inside the back of the van. It was empty.’
27

Another Whitchurch Hill resident, Peter Rance, also mentions seeing ‘a Dormobile type of vehicle driven into Brian Field’s garage before 11 August 1963’.
28
Field’s next door neighbour, Miss Patricia Higley, also saw the Dormobile van being driven into the Field’s driveway at ‘8.30 pm on 9 August’.
29
While noting that Higley and Barnes gave different times for the arrival of the Dormobile, the police concluded that the accounts given by all three witnesses were essentially consistent. Miss Higley was clear that the driver of the Dormobile was not Brian Field, and described him as being ‘aged 30 years and dark haired’. She also saw the Dormobile depart from Field’s house on 11 August at 10.30 a.m. Again it was driven by the man she saw driving it on 9 August; this time, however, he was accompanied by a young blonde woman.
30

Although, as Clifford Osmond states, information received thus far was that the money remained at the farm until 9 August, the police did not rule out that some of it might have been moved beforehand, and belatedly conducted a search of 99 Pollards Hill South. However, unsurprisingly, given the three-week impasse, nothing was found at the address.

This development and Millbank’s association with previous mail offences further reinforced the postmaster general’s suspicion that the train robbery was indeed an ‘inside job’. Conscious of the grilling he would no doubt receive when the House of Commons resumed after the summer recess, and in particular MP’s questions on the possibility of an inside job, Bevins and his post office officials set about trying to tie up loose ends.

On 30 September, after several weeks of memos circulating around the Post Office, British Railways were, for the first time, formally pressed to respond to the sabotage issue:

Dear Mr Ibbotson

As you know, a good deal of play was in the press about the fact that on the night of the attack on the Up Special TPO all three of the specially fitted HVP coaches were out of service.

We have not previously asked the Board in correspondence to give reasons for this, but as the Postmaster General will possibly be questioned on these matters when the House resumes, I should be grateful if you would be good enough to let me have an explanation for all the coaches being out for the delay in having them repaired. It would be most helpful to us if you could let me have this soon.

Yours sincerely

D Wesil
31

British Railways were quick to respond, and did so the following day:

Dear Mr Wesil

It is the case that the three vehicles in question were out of traffic as a result of defects for varying periods prior to the incident on the morning of 8 August, viz:-

39. Stopped at Carlisle on 4 July due to hot axle box. Repaired and sent south but again stopped at Wigan for the same cause. Repaired and returned to Willesden. In service 9 August.

81. Stopped at Euston on 1 August with flat tyres. After examination was ordered to Swindon Works on 9 August and despatched on the 10 August.

1177. Stopped at Wigan on 23 June with hot axle box. Necessary materials ordered but later vehicle found to have bogie defects and required at Swindon. Some delay in arranging this, and vehicle stopped three times en route due to hot axle box.

As was pointed out in discussion at Willesden when the Postmaster General was present, the vehicles which had been taken out due to defects were replaced by others as agreed with Post Office representatives and our staff had no knowledge that they were specially fitted from a security point of view. The total number of vehicles available was never less than that required to cater for requirements, and there was no indication that any special urgency attached to the reinstatement of these particular coaches. The first intimation of this was a letter received on 6 August, but even this made no mention of security.

Yours Sincerely

Ibbotson
32

British Railways were clearly on the back foot as they and the Post Office sought to shift the blame for this unfortunate chain of events. It is clear from IB records that while they were never able to establish anything more than a highly circumstantial case for sabotage, the belief remained that this was indeed the reason why on the night of the hold-up, an inferior HVP coach, lacking the updated security features, was used on the train. The police, too, seem to have taken a similar line. Commander Hatherill expressed this view in his contemporary reports and later stated publicly that:

Shortly before the robbery was due to take place, a preliminary operation was performed. Although it was later suspected that there might have been tampering with three vans specially built for carrying HVP, we could find no proof at the time.
33

After the re-arrest of Charlie Wilson in 1968, his wife Patricia was questioned by police, and later published her story in a newspaper serialisation. According to Hatherill, Mrs Wilson had ‘confirmed that our suspicions were correct’ with regards to sabotage; ‘the vans were put out of action so as to ensure that an older and less secure type of van without corridor access to the following coach would be in use for the Glasgow-Euston run on the night on 7-8 August’.
34

While the IB and the police had a growing stack of files containing unproven or uncorroborated suspicions, phone-tap transcripts and informants reports, they now had a dossier of forensic evidence that would enable them to arrest more of the names on Hatherill’s list of suspects during the months of September and October.

Notes

  
1
.  POST 120/146 (opened in 2011; some material still closed until 2017).

  
2
.  
Ibid
.

  3.  
Ibid
.

  
4
.  
Ibid
.

  
5
.  POST 120/146 (opened in 2011; some material still closed until 2017) – Millbank’s mother, Louisa Millbank, resided at 127 Arlington Road, London N1.

  
6
.  POST 120/146 (opened 2011; some material still closed until 2017).

  
7
.  Millbank and McGuinness were subsequently found not guilty in relation to the two charges; Millbank was released and McGuinness sent to Glasgow under the terms of the arrest warrant (CRO File 2019/39). See also
The Times
, 17 September 1955, p. 4 and
The Times
, 21 September 1955, p. 4.

  
8
.  See Reynolds’s accounts of 22 August 1963 and in his book
Crossing the Line
, p. 204
ff.

  
9
.  POST 120/146 (opened in 2011; some material still closed until 2017).

10
.  
Ibid
.

11
.  POST 120/95 (closed until 2001; opened 2002).

12
.  DPP 2/3717, Report 5 (originally closed until 2045; redacted version opened 25/6/10). See Chapter 4, note 11.

13
.  POST 120/131 (originally closed until 1994; opened 1995).

14
.  The shop at No 14 was ‘Vanity Fayre’ which held the lease for a five-year period, 1961−66.

15
.  POST 120/130 (originally opened in 2011; some material remains closed until 2014).

16
.  POST 120/449 (officially opened 2003; some material still closed until 2017).

17
.  
Ibid
.

18
.  POST 120/130 (officially opened in 2011; some material still closed until 2014).

19
.  POST 120/133 (officially opened 2011; some material still closed until 2014).

20
.  POST 120/130 (officially opened 2011; some material still closed until 2014).

21
.  
Ibid
.

22
.  
Ibid
.

23
.  
Ibid
.

24
.  Lola Willard was in fact the mother of Peter Collinson, who six years later directed the widely acclaimed film
The Italian Job
, starring Michael Caine. Collinson’s widow, Hazel, spoke at length to the author about Lola Willard. Willard was ‘a glamorous woman in her early 40s who worked in nightclubs in London’s West End such as the Pigalle Club. She had never been a prostitute’, said Collinson, ‘although she certainly had a host of male friends and acquaintances who supported her financially and were no doubt observed by Mr Billington coming and going from the house’.

25
.  Identified by tailers Gray and Fowler as Albert Millbank; POST 120/133 (officially opened in 2011; some material still closed until 2014).

26
.  POST 120/448 (officially opened in 2003, although the reports on 99 Pollards Hill South were only opened in November 2011; some material remains closed until 2017).

27
.  DPP 2/3717, Report 10 (originally closed until 2045; redacted version opened 25/6/10).

28
.  
Ibid
.

29
.  
Ibid
.

30
.  
Ibid.

31
.  POST 122/15954 (officially opened in 2011).

32
.  
Ibid
.

33
.  George Hatherill,
A Detective’s Story
(Andre Deutsch, 1971), p. 210.

34
.  
Ibid
.

B
efore fingerprint evidence was available, Metropolitan and Surrey police officers conducted a huge trawl in August of all known associates of the men on Commander Hatherill's suspect list. Builder Ronald Biggs, whose name was not actually on the Hatherill list, was initially visited at his home on the basis that he was a former known associate of Bruce Reynolds. They had initially thought that Biggs might be handling some of the stolen money, but soon dismissed this suspicion, as DI Basil Morris of Surrey CID explains in his statement:

At 6.45 pm on Saturday, 24 August 1963, in company with Detective Sergeant Church, I saw Ronald Biggs at his home at 37 Alpine Road, Redhill. His wife was present at the time. I told him that we were police officers from Reigate and that we had heard that his wife had recently been spending quite a lot of money. He said, ‘Yes, I expect she has. I won £510 at the races and we decided to spend that and use the money I get from the business towards the houses'.

I told him that I understood that the bookmaker concerned was a man named Inkpen and he said, ‘Yes'. I told him that Inkpen had already been seen and that we had verified that he had, in fact, won £510, and that I understood that the winnings had been collected by a man named Stripp. He said, ‘Yes, he is my partner'. I then asked him why he had not collected the money himself, and he said, ‘I had to go down to Brighton that day so he collected it for me.' I asked him if he knew any of the men who were wanted in connection with the train robbery in Buckinghamshire, and he said, ‘I knew Reynolds some years ago. I met him when we were doing time together in Wandsworth. Then he used to come down to Mrs Atkins place at Malmstone Avenue when I used to go there, and I met him there once or twice afterwards, but I haven't seen him now for about three years'.
1

I then asked him if any cases or boxes had been brought to his house recently, and he said, ‘No. We had a party last night and we brought a crate of beer in, but that's all that's been brought in here'.
2

Once the fingerprint evidence garnered by DS Ray and his C3 fingerprint section at Leatherslade Farm was available, it was realised that Biggs was more than an associate and a warrant for his arrest was immediately issued. DI Frank Williams of the Flying Squad and a team of officers arrived at Biggs's home at 37 Alpine Road, Redhill at around 2.45 p.m. on 4 September, just as Charmian Biggs was about to leave with her two children for a doctor's appointment. Mrs Biggs was allowed to proceed to the doctors but was accompanied by three police officers. Williams and the other officers remained at the house. On her return from the doctors she found the police carrying out a full forensic search of the house.

DI Williams's statement gives his version of what took place when Biggs arrived home from work that evening:

At about 6.20 pm, Ronald Arthur Biggs arrived there and I said to him, ‘We are Police officers. We are here in connection with the train robbery in Buckinghamshire recently, and I am in the process of searching your house'. He said, ‘What again? The local law turned me over some time ago about that. You haven't found anything, have you?' I said, ‘No, nothing has been found'. He said, ‘That's all right then.'

The search was continued in his presence, and when this had been more or less completed, I said to Biggs, ‘It is proposed to take you to New Scotland Yard in order that further enquiry may be made'. He replied, ‘That don't sound too good. What are my chances of creeping out of this?' I left the address with him, and on the way to New Scotland Yard he said, ‘I don't know how you've tied me in with that lot in the papers'. I said, ‘Do you know any of them?' He said, ‘Well, I've read all about it, but I don't know any of them'. I said, ‘Are you sure?' and he said, ‘I know what you are getting at. Yes, I know Reynolds. He'll want some catching'.

At 7.30 pm the same day I introduced Biggs to Chief Superintendent Butler at New Scotland Yard. I was present when Biggs was asked a number of questions which were taken from a prepared questionnaire, and I saw the replies written down by Chief Superintendent Butler as Biggs uttered them. He refused to sign the document when he was asked to do so.