by Amy Myers
Len shot an agonized look at the Jowett. ‘Tried to tell you the other day that Vic Trent’s a mate of mine.’ That said it all, I thought. Take care. ‘There were four of them,’ Len continued, ‘and the missus. Vic did a shortish stretch inside, then opened a corner shop. The organizer, Brian Thompson, landed up dead, Tony went down for it, and Frank Watson did a runner.’
‘With the loot?’
‘That’s the story. And …’ Len paused and wiped his hands on the special rag from which he will never be parted and which must have more residual oil on it than a leaking sump. It’s his way of playing for time. ‘Took Wilson’s missus with him,’ he finished.
The missus had to wait. I’d just done a belated U-turn. ‘Frank Watson? Any relation to Neil?’ If ever a breath was bated, mine was.
‘His dad.’
I reeled at this connection, although I wasn’t sure why, save that it was a coincidence that might not be one. Did it get me anywhere? I’d no idea, but I’d run with it and see what happened. ‘Is he living round here now?’ Silly question, I suppose.
‘Ran as hard and far as he could get was the general opinion.’
Or not, I thought. With his son Neil here, Frank could have been a lot nearer – at least at the time of his son’s death. I tried not to put jump-leads on my theorizing. What, after all, did this tell me about Carlos’s death? Not much, unless of course Frank Watson was still around and blamed him for Neil’s death. Could Carlos have discovered his presence and decided to make hay with a touch of blackmail? Carlos did not strike me as the soul of bravery, however, and he would not have risked going within a thousand miles of Frank if Neil had killed himself because Carlos had dumped the Charros. Nevertheless, the story of Watson and Son must have some mileage. Like those carsickness prevention strips that cars used to trail from the chassis to the road, there were trailing ends around – and my job was to pick them up one by one. This one was still attached.
‘What about Wilson’s missus?’ I asked, grasping another one. ‘Did she really go off with Frank?’
Could Carlos have tracked her down? Had he met her alone, with a sob story about Frank having abandoned her? Sheer speculation, but there might be a glimmer of gold somewhere.
Len considered my question while the rag received the last vestiges of oil. ‘Joannie Wilson,’ he said at last, ‘made off with the haul from the raid during the hullabaloo over the shooting, so Vic says. When the cops arrived, she wasn’t there, and nor was Frank.’
‘Doesn’t necessarily mean they went together,’ I pointed out.
‘Vic said Joannie had the stuff in the boot of her car, and she was thick with Frank all along. Planned. They’d have gone anyway, and the shoot-out was a bonus.’
‘Did they go in the same car, or was his car left in the car park?’ I asked.
No reply. Len had finished communication for the day. No matter. I knew now that I wanted to make the early acquaintance of Mr and Mrs Tony Wilson. Especially Mrs, since she linked both eras, the shoot-out and the band. The theory about Carlos might have something to it, I thought hopefully, unless this was a red herring and the loot had in fact been snaffled by Betty to keep until Tony’s release, so that they could enjoy a happy old age together?
It was a week before I could get to see them, as they were away on holiday. I wasn’t going to risk a chat with them on the phone, because I like seeing the body language and the whites of people’s eyes. I realized, however, that they might well refuse to see me, as neither the May Tree nor Carlos could be subjects dear to their hearts. Josie and Belinda must have given me a clean bill of health, however, because when I did speak to them Betty was charm itself. Indeed, I thought uneasily, it was almost too easy to follow up the Charros and their connections – almost as though they were passing me round like an unwanted parcel.
I was told to ignore the satnav and follow the route that Betty gave me. I needed their instructions because their home was in the village of Boyfield, out in the wilds, with the nearest town being Sittingbourne. On the Downs the elements like to remind you that they are in charge. Winds blow, rain falls in torrents, the sun beams relentlessly on the sweating inhabitants below and the snow shows no mercy. All the same, I could appreciate why someone who had been behind bars for fifteen years might relish the isolation of a village such as this. Not that the house in which Tony and Betty Wilson lived was itself isolated, as it was in a small development. Number fourteen Jubilee Crescent had double electric gates with a lion at each end (stone), staring keenly down at all comers on behalf of the modest bungalow they guarded so zealously.
The gates were the only sign of prosperity, however, and the chances of Tony and Betty Wilson living on the proceeds of the shoot-out looked slimmer. There was a sign by them suggesting we beware of the dog, but the gates were open so I drove in to where an old four by four was parked side by side with a newer Fiesta. The Wilsons came out to greet me with a bouncy spaniel called, Josie said, Don. Whereas Betty was, like her daughter, grey-haired and wary, Tony was the opposite, outgoing and genial – at least he appeared so to me.
‘Come in,’ he said cordially. ‘First prize for finding us.’
I calculated he must be about sixty-five now, and he showed few of the usual signs of the serious ex-con. No wariness here.
‘Tell us again why you’ve come,’ he suggested, after we were settled in a pristine living room. It overlooked a neat rear garden complete with patio and built-in barbecue, and together they sent out a message that their lives were in order, no matter what strife lay behind. ‘We’ve been out of touch with the latest news about the Mendez murder, just got back from our jamboree.’
‘Cruise round the world?’ I joked.
‘Week in Marbella. Can’t beat it.’
Again, hardly in line with their living off the fat of a missing fortune.
‘We know Eva’s been charged,’ Betty put in, ‘but what’s happening now?’
‘Waiting for a trial date. You knew Eva?’
‘Oh yes. No offence meant, but she thought she owned the place. You should have seen her swanning about, Tony.’
‘Otherwise engaged.’ Tony grinned. ‘I was inside – missed all that and Carlos too.’
‘He was a no-gooder,’ Betty said savagely. ‘He and your Eva made a good fit. Hope you don’t mind my saying that, Jack.’
‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘We were divorced twenty years ago, and there were no bruised hearts.’ Had there been? I suddenly wondered. Is that why I felt so obstinate about trying to clear her name? Was it just for Cara or for me too? Whether or not it was, any bruise I was currently nursing was due to Louise, not Eva. Louise had disappeared from my life with sadness on both sides, she to pursue her career on stage and screen and me to try to forget her. She was succeeding, I wasn’t.
Betty took up my invitation to go ahead with alacrity. ‘She was a first-class bitch – to women, anyway. Carlos chased anything in skirts if he thought there was money around. He had a thing about flamboyant women like Eva. He spent money like water so he was always looking for the next one.’
‘He must have met more than his match in Eva then,’ I pointed out. ‘They were still together after twenty years.’
‘Then she must have had money,’ Betty said flatly.
‘Possibly,’ I conceded. ‘Were you there when the band was set up?’
‘Of course. I knew them all. Matt and Carlos were familiar faces by then. I suggested Josie, and Carlos brought in the other three.’
Time to dig deeper. ‘One of whom was Neil Watson, son of Frank.’
Tony looked up and the geniality vanished. ‘You’ve been doing your homework, Jack. Yes, the son was called Neil. But it’s Mendez’s murder that your Eva’s up for. What’s that got to do with Frank Watson?’
Keep right on going, I told myself. ‘So far as I know, nothing. But Carlos came back to Maidstone, so Eva claims, on some business deal to raise cash. Eva’s motive for killing him, according to the police, and
indeed her own statements suggest it, was that another woman was involved. So I need to find out why Carlos came back and for what. No woman has yet been found and the business deal could be Eva’s fantasy, but I need to know.’
‘But what’s Frank got to do with it?’ Tony said belligerently. ‘He vanished off the face of the earth long before this band got going.’
‘Tony’s right.’ Betty shot him an anxious glance. ‘I can confirm he wasn’t around then, and I remember Frank Watson from the night of the shoot-out.’
I was under joint attack now.
‘Neil killed himself when Carlos left them in the lurch. It could be that his father still feels strongly, wherever he is.’
Tony snorted. ‘Frank? It was 1992 when his son died, wasn’t it, Bet? You told me about it when we met up again in ’ninety-three. Frank wasn’t even on the horizon then, and he isn’t now, more’s the pity. I’d like to have a few words with him.’
‘Neil is not forgotten,’ I persisted. ‘There’s an anniversary lunch each year to which you go, Mrs Wilson. Does Frank go too?’
‘Talk sense,’ Betty said with a snort. ‘I just said he’s vanished. Is it likely he’d be around these parts? And if he was at the lunch, believe me, I’d know. What’s more, there’s a price on his head.’
‘So the police know he went off with the spoils of the raid after the shoot-out?’ I asked, as innocently as I could.
I thought I heard a pin drop – but it was only their heavy breathing in the silence that followed.
‘Not just the cash,’ Betty said at last. ‘He took Joannie with him, Tony’s first wife.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, seeing his face react. I meant it. He was obviously happily married again, and I had miscalculated as to how strongly he might still feel about his first wife.
‘Water under the bridge.’ Tony shrugged. ‘Except that Bets and me could be living the life o’ Reilly if we had the cash now. He can keep Joannie.’
Bravado, I wondered. ‘Cash?’ I queried. ‘I thought it was a collection that you hijacked?’
‘Right,’ Tony said. ‘The Crowshaw Collection. We had it all worked out how to get it turned into cash soonest, though. Some of it was gold coins, some goblets and stuff. Been in the family for centuries. Not all gold but enough of it was to make the headlines. The arrangement Brian made, him being the organizer, was that Frank was to get the coins melted down, Joannie was going to get over the Channel soonest with the other stuff and we’d all meet up in Calais. Didn’t work out like that.’
The Crowshaw Collection – I’d done my homework so I knew the story by now. The Martinford family at Crowshaw Manor had kept the collection for so long that the question of treasure trove didn’t seem to arise, probably because whichever ancestor had dug it up, he’d kept mum and gloated over it in secret. In more needy times the family had to sell it to keep the manor going and decided to raise money on the open market on the continent, rather than going to the British Museum – which is why there wasn’t much public sympathy for them when the raiders hijacked the lot.
‘Is it possible that Carlos discovered Frank and Joannie are back in this country and thought he’d like some of the cash?’ I asked.
‘Every now and then a rumour goes round but nothing firm,’ Tony replied, ‘and I make sure there’s nothing to it.’
‘Has any of the haul come on the market in these years?’
‘I’d know if it had.’ Tony grinned. ‘Always been interested in gold and stuff. I reckon we all are, eh?’
‘We usually admire it in museums,’ I said somewhat drily, reminding myself he’d done fifteen years for murder over this haul.
‘Take your point,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But this trove of treasure wasn’t in a museum. It was up for grabs. The family was short of filthy lucre and so were we. We found out by bribing the security firm what day it was leaving and that was that. Brian was a good planner, I’ll say that for him. Only the four of us, but it went like clockwork. You know Crowshaw Manor? It’s at Cranes Bottom, right in the middle of nowhere and between the A2 and the M20 so whichever way the security van took to Dover it had to go through a tangle of more or less single track lanes to reach a major highway.
‘From the manor there were three choices: easiest turn right and up to the A2, next easiest turn left and work a way round to either the M20 or to another road to Dover, and thirdly straight up and round a very wiggly narrow route indeed to the A2. Four of us, four cars – all of which we nicked for the purpose. All three roads blocked by one of the cars sideways across it, fourway hazard blinkers going like the clappers, drivers mysteriously absent. First two of the roads, those to the right and left, were blocked only ten yards or so from the manor, so the security van with the goods had to turn back and take the third, which was blocked a quarter of a mile or so up, near enough to a turn-off so that cars coming in the opposite direction could find another way round. Not that there was much other traffic around. My car blocked the third road at the top near the turn-off and I was hidden safely in the bushes. Meanwhile car four, Brian’s, followed the security van after it set off up road three to hem it in when it reached the blocked car. It was a doddle.’
Tony looked rather pleased with himself. ‘Brian and I strolled up to the van,’ he continued, ‘and since we had the sense to dress like policemen, albeit masked ones, the guards kindly rolled the windows down so we could spray them with tear gas. Must have wondered what was going on up to that point. Then we helped ourselves to the stuff, the other two having joined us, and we put it into my car, and off we went back to the four separate places we’d left our own cars, peeling off one by one, so we could all drive separately back to the May Tree to sort ourselves out.’
‘And what happened there?’ I asked, bearing in mind one of the four had died as a result.
Tony sighed. ‘You’re worse than the flaming cops. Brian threw his weight around. That was the cause of it. He was already getting a bigger percentage of the final takings than the rest of us, but he announced he was taking more. I objected, so did the other two. Things turned nasty as we all pitched in. Brian produced his shooter, the other tried to stop him and I grabbed my piece that I’d kept handy at the hijack just in case. Only grabbed it to warn him off, not to use. But a right old kerfuffle took place, when Brian decided to shoot me. Vic got in the way and caught one in his leg, and somehow Brian got shot with my gun. Accidental, like. There was a lot of noise in the pub that night, so with the racket going on outside the shots didn’t attract instant attention, us being at the back of the pub, but then folks started coming. We’d transferred the stuff earlier to Joannie’s car as being the least likely to get attention as she drove through Dover. So there I was all alone with no sign of Joannie, no sign of Frank, Brian lying dead, Vic wounded – and no sign of the goods. I spent so much time hunting for Joannie that I was still there when the cops came.’
I was beginning to feel decidedly chilly at a story that had more holes in it than Emmental cheese, but luckily Tony didn’t seem to need any comment from me as he continued: ‘Someone must have called them, even though everyone was running around like headless chickens.’
‘Even me,’ Betty said ruefully.
‘I thought as I was the pub manager I might escape notice in the crowd,’ Tony added. ‘Fat chance. But it was an accident. Self defence, anyway. But the jury didn’t see it that way.’
‘Vic got off lightly,’ Betty said disapprovingly. ‘Tony cleared him, didn’t you, love?’
Tony shrugged. ‘He got a year or two for the robbery, but he didn’t have nothing to do with Brian’s death. Now Frank …’
‘He was a nasty piece of work,’ Betty said. ‘True, it was the only time I ever met him, but I didn’t take to him.’
‘What was he like to look at?’ I asked.
‘Nothing remarkable that I could see,’ Tony said. ‘Only remarkable thing was how unremarkable he was. Joannie must have thought differently.’
‘Weren�
�t you surprised not to hear from him again, Tony?’ I asked.
‘I wasn’t expecting a letter of apology sent to Maidstone prison. Not after he hopped it with Joannie and the loot.’
‘And you’re certain that’s what happened?’
‘Rock sure. Frank’s first wife divorced him a couple of years earlier and he was missing it, so he decided to skedaddle with Joannie. I’d seen them together – just never put two and two together about what they was planning.’
I turned to Betty. ‘Yet his son Neil, who must have been pretty young, then turns up at the May Tree in 1987. Didn’t you think it was a coincidence? Did you wonder if Frank would appear?’
‘He wouldn’t dare show his face there, even though Tony was still in jail. Anyway, as far as I remember, Neil was at uni in Kent and sharing a flat with Jon Lamb.’
‘I’d like to lay my eyes on Frank again,’ Tony said. ‘I really would. Just a couple of questions for him: where’s Joannie, and where’s my share of the booty? Still, we do all right, don’t we, Betty?’
She patted his hand. ‘Should do. We’ve been together long enough.’
Touching this might have been, but the burning issue for me was still outstanding. ‘Could there be any link between Carlos and Frank and Joannie? If he’d met them somewhere – South America, for example.’ I was getting desperate now as once again I seemed to be heading nowhere. ‘Does that ring any bells with you, Betty? I’m sure you would have remembered it.’
‘I’m sure I would too,’ she flashed back wryly. ‘No bells rung though. Carlos was more likely to have told Neil if he’d met his dad,’ she pointed out, ‘not me. He knew Tony was in prison and how he felt about Frank.’
I grasped this straw. ‘Or he might have told other gang members. I’m trying to get hold of Matt Wright, but I’ve had no luck with the phone.’
‘Matt’s not good with phones. Best place to find him is at Wychwood House. He does a lot of odd jobs there.’
So where had all that taken me, save round in a circle back to Wychwood? It was just possible that Carlos had got a line on where Frank Watson was, with or without Joannie or the proceeds of the Crowshaw Collection. Blackmail was the sort of crime I envisaged Carlos having been very good at, but in Maidstone? Neither Frank nor Joannie were likely to have returned here – not if they valued their lives.