by Lynne Truss
So, on Denise’s recommendation, they were in, and by the beginning of September they were working in hats (Dorothy) and fancy lingerie (Joan). Or perhaps it was the other way round.
Meanwhile other gang members were turning up at the store in finely calculated dribs and drabs. Ronnie the Nerk got a job as general handyman. Stanley-Knife Stanley, oddly, volunteered for window dressing, and against all expectations turned out to have quite an artistic flair, especially with unpromising display items, such as mousetraps and aluminium saucepans.
‘This is all very well,’ objected Barrow-Boy Cecil, quite early on. ‘But what about Sergeant Stupid? If he was to walk into that shop, he’d recognise everyone and smell a rat in a second. How are you going to keep him away?’
‘Don’t call him Sergeant Stupid, dear,’ Mrs Groynes had said reprovingly. (This was at one of the fortnightly meetings with Cecil and Denise.) ‘I mean, it’s true, Sergeant Brunswick is a bit stupid, but it’s not nice to say so. And it’s a fair point, I don’t deny it, but it’s just a risk we have to take. I mean, he never goes shopping, does he? And as long as there aren’t any bleeding murders committed in the shop between now and Christmas, I reckon we’ll be laughing!’
Last to join the job was Sid the Doorman, and it was Cecil who persuaded him. Sid was the flop artist – and a very good one he was. In the post-war years in London, once car owners could get hold of sufficient petrol, Sid had made quite a living on the streets of WC1, putting himself deliberately in the path of moving vehicles, being knocked down, and collecting on-the-spot compensation from horrified motorists.
Nowadays he performed the flop less often, but just as effectively. Drivers were mortified to find they’d knocked down an ex-soldier whose doorman’s uniform was festooned with purchased campaign medals. ‘My head!’ he moaned, as he sat up woozily and pointed at his chest. ‘And me a veteran of Monte Cassino!’
Up to this point, Sid had been working quietly at a hotel in Hove, but he had made no secret of being fed up with the hours. A shop job with a guaranteed gigantic Christmas bonus suited him perfectly. He fancied retiring as soon as practicable to the up-and-coming Balearic Islands. Just one thing bothered him.
‘What happened to Benny?’ he asked, frowning. He and Cecil were having this conversation in the newly opened House of Hanover Milk Bar near the West Pier, Cecil’s tray of bunnies on the table next to their frothy coffees.
‘Benny?’ echoed Cecil.
‘Benny, the usual doorman at Gosling’s. He’s been there since he was demobbed. He loves that job.’
‘Oh, he’s about to be knocked down by a car,’ said Cecil, glancing up at the cafe’s clock. ‘Ironic, eh?’
‘What? Did you say about to be?’
‘That’s right. Some time today. He’ll be all right, just on crutches for a while. I’ve got the application form here for you, but obviously, don’t submit it ’til he’s safely nobbled.’
‘Well, ta,’ said Sid, taking it. ‘You’re a pal. I’ve really had it with the late nights. Poor Benny, though. Hit by a car, you say?’
Cecil laughed. ‘Yeah, well. There’s been quite a spate of them in the last few months. Accidents. Just there, outside the shop. And somehow always involving staff from the shop, if you get my drift, who then have to be replaced.’
He left this thought hanging – but he didn’t have to leave it for long. Sid was no mug.
‘God, she’s devious,’ he said.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Cecil, winking. ‘So, are you in?’
In the old days before the Middle Street Massacre, of course, Mrs Groynes had not commanded a gang of such impressive capability and scope. When she first arrived in Brighton, in 1950, she brought down from the Smoke only Stanley-Knife Stanley and Diamond Tony: they arrived in a small brown van and settled into a set of dank furnished rooms in Little Preston Street above a jellied eel restaurant. And there they lay low for the next six months, until the hue-and-cry from the Aldersgate Stick-up had successfully blown over, and the smell from the restaurant downstairs became intolerable.
They were not a jolly group. Diamond Tony mostly grumbled and tended to his knife collection; Stanley went for runs; Mrs Groynes started to cook up the audacious notion of getting a job at the police station as a charlady. In one important regard, she had chosen her two confederates well. Stanley would happily carve up anyone who threatened her; Tony would garotte them and drop them off a pier. So they were terrific as bodyguards. But as sparkling company for the long evenings indoors, they were a little bit brainless (Stanley) and extraordinarily creepy (Tony). No wonder that, as soon as she felt it was safe, she started to recruit locally.
In those far-off days, the two rival organisations battling for control of Brighton’s criminal activity barely noted her existence. As history proves, however, when the opportunity arose to ascend to dominance, she was more than ready to make her move. The 1951 shoot-out in Middle Street saw forty-five villains from those two entrenched underworld outfits mown down and killed: these included the entire Giovedi family, who had ruled Brighton for twenty years.
Cecil was her first recruit after the massacre. Having acted for years as the Giovedis’ look-out man, he fitted her requirements perfectly. In the first place, he demonstrably had quite a nerve, operating in plain sight with his preposterous tray of bunnies; a man like that would be able to handle the important new gang role of ‘police informant’. Secondly, she had an affection for street traders in general. Her own late father had been a proud East London barrow-boy, selling stolen bric-à-brac (or ‘pilfered toot’, as he always called it) at the famous open-air market in London’s Petticoat Lane.
So, the day after the Massacre, she invited Cecil to her house for Sunday lunch, to discuss his future.
‘Can I just say something, Mrs Groynes?’ he asked nervously. He was sitting awkwardly at the shiny antique dining table in her spacious home in Upper North Street, while she bustled between dining room and kitchen, carrying provisions on a tray. It was a tall terraced house, painted a dazzling white, and quite intimidating – a far cry from those old dismal rooms redolent of jellied eels. Most of the houses along here were divided up for multi-occupancy, but this unusual woman seemed to own the whole building.
‘What’s that, dear?’ she called, disappearing down the corridor.
‘I don’t bear a grudge or anything. About my friends.’
‘Sorry?’ she said, returning.
‘I was just saying, I don’t bear a grudge. That you killed my whole gang.’
‘Oh. Oh, good.’ It hadn’t occurred to her that anyone might be loyal to the Giovedis. Although tightly knit as a family, they were cavalier when it came to non-family-members. In a shoot-out at the Arrivederci Roma restaurant a few years ago, they had used one of their longest-serving henchmen as an effective (if initially quite reluctant) human shield.
‘Well, I’m glad to hear I’m not in your bad books. So you might like to join my little organisation, then?’
‘I might. And what I’m thinking is, I’m ready to go into something a bit more exciting.’
But Mrs Groynes wasn’t ready to talk about details yet. There were more hostess duties to perform. Cecil looked around. Was there a Mr Groynes in the picture? Judging by the evidence in this room (photographs of cats in frames), the answer was surely no.
He looked up. ‘What is it?’ he said. Mrs Groynes was looking at him with interest from the doorway.
‘Oh. Nothing,’ she said, smiling. Without his hat and raincoat (and pedlar’s tray), Cecil was a nice-looking man. He had thick dark hair and very attractive eyes. He wore a lovely garnet signet ring on his little finger. But he was here on business, she reminded herself, as she finally sat down and passed him a plate of chops and mashed potato. In these days of rationing, such a dinner was a rare treat.
‘But you were saying,’ she said. ‘You’re ready for something more exciting than what, dear?’
‘Than sellin
g bunnies from a tray!’
‘Oh, I see.’ She passed him salt, pepper and mustard. He used them all liberally, and looked about for brown sauce. She started sawing her own chop, and said nothing. She wanted him to expand, and he did.
‘Those bunnies are only one step up from selling Swan Vestas and razor blades,’ he explained, spearing a piece of meat with his fork. ‘I know it’s good cover when I’m on look-out duty, Mrs Groynes, but it’s hard for a man like me to keep doing it. People look at me as if I’m an indigent! You can’t understand what it does to a man’s self-respect, saying See the bunny run! all flipping day, and having people buy shoddy little toys out of pity. I want to hold my head up, that’s all I’m saying.’
He paused. She hadn’t responded, but he was quite pleased with the case he’d made. ‘So? What do you think?’
‘Ha!’ Mrs Groynes dropped her knife and fork on her plate and sat back in her chair. ‘I do hope you’re bleeding joking, dear.’
‘No, I’m—’
‘Oh, come on, Cecil. This is me you’re talking to.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s me! Mrs Palmeira Groynes, who chooses to pose as a lowly charwoman! The self-bleeding-respect argument’s hardly going to wash with me, is it?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘I swab floors, dear. I dust picture frames. I make gallons of tea. I smell permanently of Brasso.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘No, the bunnies stay, Cecil. The bunnies are genius. Sergeant Brunswick knows you’re underworld already: that’s the whole beauty of it. He’ll look at you at the Clock Tower and think, Hang on. Barrow-Boy Cecil’s lost all his former criminal mates! Blimey, he might be willing at such a time to start acting as a grass for me! And if he doesn’t think all that of his own accord, of course, I’ll be more than happy to give him a nudge.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘On top of which, Cecil,’ she interrupted firmly, ‘I propose to bung you a score a week. Will that help you hold your head up?’
‘Well.’ He was taken aback. This was an astonishing offer. The Giovedis had paid him nothing like as much, and never on a regular basis. He finished his mashed potato (still slightly regretting the absence of sauce), and pushed his plate away. Self-respect truly did have its price. The dinner had been delicious. ‘That’s a very generous offer, Mrs G.’
So this was how the gang started to establish itself in the days after the Massacre in 1951. Once the way was clear for Mrs Groynes to expand her network, more members were brought in, many of them on stipends. But always there was a hierarchy, with her longest-serving associates at the top: Stanley, Tony, Vince (volatile Punch & Judy man), and Cecil. These were the four men she trusted, consulted, and listened to. After that first meeting, Cecil had gone home to his little house near the railway viaduct, and sat in silence for a while. He could hardly believe his luck. He had loathed and feared the Giovedis. This new woman was not only smart, she appeared to be fair; and it was possible she also fancied him. Twenty quid a week (plus all profits from the bunnies) was a very nice little income.
He shrugged at the irony of it, though. ‘Oh, those sodding bunnies,’ he sighed. But what could you do? Much as he hated them, on the day of the Massacre they had saved his life, with Papa Giovedi insisting he stay at his post. And now look. The little plastic bastards were providing him with a comfortable livelihood for the rest of his life!
Early in September (two weeks before the murder of Professor Milhouse in the record department) Mrs Groynes had called a Sunday night meeting of her four top Gosling’s Job operatives:
Denise – established in the tube room
Jimmy – soon to take up work in the lift
Ronnie the Nerk – handyman
Stanley – window-display artiste extraordinaire
It was exciting. She was ready to outline the plan, and expectations were high as they all arrived at Mrs Groynes’s house and trooped downstairs to the cellar. Denise prayed that the job would be somehow pinned on Mr Frost, the aloof chief cashier, because she had become weirdly attracted to him, which made her angry with herself. Meanwhile Ronnie the Nerk was hoping it would involve drilling into a vault, or at least through a very thick ceiling. Ever since Mrs Groynes organised a private screening in this very cellar of Rififi (sensationally tense French heist movie), Ronnie had been drilling-mad.
‘First things first,’ she said, unveiling a blackboard with a flourish. ‘We’re not drilling.’
‘Aww,’ said Ronnie, who had no talent at all for disguising disappointment.
‘The plan comes in three stages,’ she said, pointing with a stick at three lists. ‘On completion of each stage, our work will be undetectable. I intend for us to walk away with the money scot-free. Our twin aims are 1) to maximise the haul, and 2) to leave no trace of foul play. By the time the theft is discovered – which will be three days later, on December the twenty-seventh – the unsuspecting chief cashier will have disappeared, sent on a wild goose chase, ostensibly leaving a convincingly incriminating note, which of course will be written by me.’
‘You’re going to pin it all on Mr Frost, then?’ gasped Denise, with mixed feelings.
‘Just for a while. Don’t worry, there won’t be enough evidence to put him away, but he’ll have a few awkward days in rural North Wales. During which time, we can all decide what we want to do. The money won’t be divided at once: I don’t want anyone taking off and drawing suspicion. And you can’t all leave your employment in the shop at the same time, for obvious reasons. Everyone has to seem innocent. But be in no doubt: you’ll all get your share by the end of January. And by March, I reckon, the coast will be clear.’
She turned to the board again, and began to outline the details of the ingenious heist, to the delight (and occasional applause) of her impressed confederates.
Later in life, they all remembered it glowingly as one of the great planning meetings of their lives.
‘You’re a genius, Mrs G!’ they said in wonder – both individually and together – as the scheme became clear.
‘Simple, but original!’
‘What a plan, Mrs G!’
‘No one else could have come up with this!’
And so on. By the end, Mrs Groynes had to beg them all to calm down, they were so energised by the brilliant, brilliant scheme, which – sadly – can never be fully revealed in print, for fear of inspiring copy-cat crimes. Suffice to say that split-second timing came into it, plus some expert whizzing and flopping, and some brilliant driving from Mrs Groynes herself. And then, in the end … ? Well, there is no harm, on reflection, in reporting the scheme’s crowning moment, since there is no danger of a modern criminal adopting it for himself.
‘So then … the loot all disappears!’ she said triumphantly. ‘Just temporarily, you understand. But when those precious sealed bank-boxes – containing only the sheets and pillow-cases Joan and Dorothy have just swapped in – are carted off in the armoured van, where’s the loot?’
She looked at her enraptured audience. Gratifyingly, they seemed to have no suggestions.
‘It’s not in the cashier’s room,’ she carried on. ‘It’s not in the tube room either. There is not a trace. There’s nothing to give away the fact that we’ve tampered with those boxes while Sid the Doorman was performing his spectacular flop outside. The cash, to all intents and purposes, has vanished.’
Four expectant faces looked up at her.
‘So where do you think it’s gone?’ she said, enjoying it.
‘Don’t know, Mrs G,’ confessed Denise. ‘Please tell us, for gawd’s sake. I’m bursting!’
She grinned at them. ‘It’s up the bleeding tubes!’
But that was two weeks ago. And now Mrs Groynes is looking at a far less rosy picture. Now she is rattled. Someone is trying to knock her off her perch, and it’s clear that they know a disturbing amount about her plans.
Not only has Barrow-Boy Cecil been kidnapped and possibly killed: D
enise and Shorty have been identified as gang members, and unwanted police attention has been drawn to Gosling’s by the gratuitous murder of an American academic. And on top of all this, apparently, a bleeding zebra crossing is going to be set up imminently outside the store, to prevent any future pedestrian casualties – although, secretly, Mrs Groynes has to admit that she might have brought this particular reversal on herself by engineering so many road accidents involving shop staff.
The only good news is that when Sergeant Brunswick entered the building to investigate the murder, he spotted none of her men – although they certainly saw him. Working on a new ‘Back to School’ window display of children’s footwear, Stanley-Knife Stanley had no sooner seen the sergeant walking past than he had dived behind a cardboard fixture.
‘What was that?’ asked Twitten, stopping.
‘What was what?’ said Brunswick.
‘In the window. Something moved.’
Meanwhile, Ronnie the Nerk, blithely hammering a new shelf in the bedding department, dropped his tools and fled to the Gents. Jimmy the Gimp was luckily not due to start lift-duty for another couple of days, but was nevertheless present in the building, dipping for purses and discreetly observing the incumbent (hopeless) lift-operator at work. At Brunswick’s approach, Jimmy scarpered to nearby Lingerie, where Joan (or was it Dorothy?) helped him hide inside a low cupboard with some brassieres and girdles.
As she applies herself to this unprecedented threat, Mrs Groynes looks occasionally at Cecil’s severed finger and remembers the first meeting with him at her house: the one with the chops and mash. She remembers this ring. She remembers how she stood in the doorway thinking she liked the look of Cecil, and she wonders why she never did anything about it. But now, presumably, it is too late.