Robbery with Malice

by Barrie Roberts

  ‘Who knows why he wasn’t there — he could have been on leave or out mugging pensioners but they covered his interest anyway.’

  She raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘Saffary’s a dyed-in-the-wool bigot,’ I explained. ‘He hates foreigners of all kinds, Catholics, Jews, Labour Party members, blacks, Asians, moderate Tories and me. Grady was a shop steward with a reputation as a Communist. When Saffary knew that she had said that Grady had the contact that supplied the guns he would have thought he was on the track of the world-wide Communist conspiracy and that plane-loads of weapons were being flown into Belston every night. He’d have been less than pleased if it hadn’t been pushed.’

  Sheila nodded. ‘I take it’, she said, ‘that the black bits that have been blanked out are references to Freddy Hughes?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘So why have they been covered up?’

  ‘When someone started this game with Glenys, the idea seems to have been that she would play the conscience-stricken former wife thereby giving Hawkins’ gang an excuse to go for Billy and his pals. That’s why she put all their names in. Then, when they arrest Grady, Walton and Hughes, Freddy can’t be put in the frame for some reason. It’s too late to alter her evidence — a tape and a transcript exist — so they merely blank Hughes out of the version put forward at the trial. It’s quite usual to conceal names in witness statements at a trial. If Hughes’ name had been in front of the jury, defence counsel could have played hell with the coppers in the witness box — “Who is Freddy Hughes? Why isn’t he in the dock? Oh, you arrested him at the same time but you didn’t charge him? Why was that? What’s the difference between Mr Hughes and my client?” Enough of that kind of thing and even a jury might have smelt a rat.’

  ‘Then why didn’t the defence call him? Grady and Walton must have told their lawyers who the fourth man was.’

  ‘Of course they must, but they may not have been able to find him. We can’t find him at the moment. And anyway, they needed to be sure of his explanation as to why he walked out when his mates were charged. Added to which they needed to be damned sure that Hughes wasn’t in the Belstone Lane job. You don’t call a witness unless you are absolutely certain what he’s going to say — not only to you, but under cross-examination.’

  ‘There’s the other thing, too,’ she said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Why’d she do it? For years she knows, so she says, that her old man’s running a gang of armed robbers and she says nothing. Then she knows they’ve killed a bloke. Still she says nothing. Then they split up, then they divorce, then — a couple of years after — she finally decides to dob him in. It doesn’t make any kind of sense.’

  It was my turn to nod. ‘Right. It would have made more sense if all this had come out when they split up or in the course of the divorce. Then there’s the attitude of Hawkins’ merry men.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It’s not just that it reads like a prepared presentation. This is big stuff, right? This is a witness who is giving them the lowdown on a dozen armed robberies and a murder. Your average Crime Squad man would have been ramping at his lead like a Rottweiler, but what do this lot do? They sit around while she recites her list of jobs that Billy and the lads planned and executed and they barely ask a question.’

  I flipped the pages of the transcript bundle. ‘Look here! She’s telling them about a robbery in Erdington, one in Sutton Coldfield, one at North Bromwich, at Walsall, Wolverhampton — blags all over the area. And they’re not paying a blind bit of attention. Where’s Inspector Watters with his determination to get the details right? They took her right through Belstone Lane, from what she heard of the planning to the hiding of the loot to the police search, and even asked if there was anything else she remembered. But that’s the only one. All the others they ignored the details.’

  ‘Why do you think that was?’

  ‘Because Belstone Lane was an unsolved murder. All the others — I suspect — were put down to the Payday Gang and they were convicted. So, if they took notice of what she said about Erdington and Sutton and the rest, either they’d convicted a load of the wrong men as the Payday Gang or Billy Simpson and his mates were a part of the Payday Gang that was never convicted. Far easier to leave the others lie and concentrate on Belstone Lane. That was one where they still needed somebody to convict.’

  ‘It’s still odd, though,’ she mused. ‘If somebody — say Hawkins — set her up to act as the informer why is she giving them stories about crimes they don’t want to know about?’

  ‘Two agendas,’ I suggested. ‘Hawkins simply wants her to trot out chapter and verse about Belstone Lane, but she’s got a head of steam up about Billy. This is her big chance to nail him once and for all. Everybody in the Midlands could have recited that list of robberies. She’s simply over-egging the pudding and because of the tape and PC Stephenson, Hawkins can’t tell her to shut up and concentrate on Belstone Lane. After all, Stephenson isn’t one of the gang — he isn’t even a CID man, he’s a wally.’

  ‘A wally?’

  ‘A uniformed constable, not a detective constable. “Wally” is a term that the CID uses for its uniformed colleagues. They also call them “woolly-pullies” from the blue matchlock sweaters that the uniformed branch wear.’

  She shook her head slowly in wonderment at the niceties of English class attitudes. After a moment she said, ‘You’re going to need to track down Hughes, aren’t you? And you need to know about the Payday Gang’s trial.’

  ‘That’ll be in the newspaper files. John Parry says they were tried in Brum about 1981. It’ll be in the papers.’

  Sheila looked thoughtful. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘do you believe Walton’s innocent now?’

  ‘You keep asking me that. I’ve told you — I’m not even expected to consider his innocence. I have to act on his instructions unless I personally know they’re not true.’

  ‘Don’t come the raw prawn with me, Chris Tyroll! It matters to me — now, what do you think?’

  ‘If he isn’t innocent, why the fake evidence to convict him? Why the lies in the Court of Appeal? Why threats to me?’

  ‘Well, think about this,’ she said. ‘On the day after the robbery, the Crime Squad landed on Billy Simpson’s doorstep. Why?’

  ‘The police will never say. They’ll just say that they were “acting on information received”.’

  ‘So, in other words, it wasn’t just darling Glenys who thought Billy Simpson was an armed robber all the way back then? Was it?’

  18.

  We were both right. Sheila was right to question why the police thought Billy Simpson was an armed robber at the time of the Belstone Lane job and I was right that there was going to be no explanation in the papers I had. In fact there was no mention of the raid on the Simpsons’ house apart from the reference in Glenys Simpson’s statement.

  The official story carried on with the statements of officers who had arrested Grady and Walton, about four days after Glenys’s interview — time enough for the tape to be transcribed and decisions to be taken. Again — no reference to the arrest of Hughes let alone Billy Simpson.

  Alan Walton and Peter Grady had been interrogated for hours. Walton, whether he was guilty or innocent, had said nothing of any consequence. He had kept repeating that he knew nothing about the robbery and that he and Simpson were in a pub in Wednesbury at the time. It had been before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, when solicitors in interviews were a rarity and statements were handwritten, not tape-recorded. Not that it makes a lot of difference — nowadays they just soften a suspect up before he gets into the interview room and the tape goes on.

  Peter Grady’s alleged confession was among the exhibits:

  *

  I want to make a statement about my involvement in the Belstone Lane robbery. I have been told that I can write it myself but I want someone to write down what I say.

  It was Billy Simpson who got me inv
olved in the robbery. I met Billy when he came to work at Bowcotts. I was the Chairman of the Shop Stewards’ Committee and he was an active member of the union. Eventually he was elected on to the committee and we became friends.

  The union used to have some of its meetings at the Black Horse in Severn Street and Billy and I used to have a drink together after meetings.

  Often when the pub had shut we would go back to Billy’s place. At that time he was still living with his wife, Glenys, in a council house in Eastern Avenue.

  There was another man who used to go to Billy’s with us. His name was Alan Walton and he had some kind of haulage business. He was an old friend of Billy’s. I think they had been at school together.

  Billy had a sort of workshop in his house. It was in the back bedroom. He used to fix people’s tellies and that. When we went to his place we used to go into that room. At first when we went there we just used to sit around and talk. A lot of our talk was politics and union matters. Billy was more left than me. He used to say that we would never get a decent government by voting for it, that we’d have to have a revolution in England. Sometimes he would say that the working class would have to take away the money from the rich. He used to sing a bit of an American song about how ‘The banks are made of marble with a guard at every door, and their vaults are crammed with silver that the workers sweated for’.

  Billy’s wife was never with us when we talked in Billy’s workshop. Sometimes she wasn’t in the house if we went there in the day. When we went in the evenings she was usually there, but she never joined us.

  Billy had a thing fixed up in his workshop like a sort of intercom. I think it was a thing for listening to the baby that they used to have. It had a buzzer on it and a speaker and when Glenys was downstairs Billy used to buzz it and speak to her to bring us beer or tea and sandwiches. I don’t know if she could listen to us from downstairs on it. I suppose she must have been able to because it had been for listening to the baby when it was upstairs.

  At first when we went to Billy’s we talked about all sorts of things, fishing and football and the union. When the strike was on at Bowcotts we spent a lot of time talking about the strike. After the strike was over Bowcotts got rid of all the activists in the union as soon as they could. There was supposed to be no reprisals but they found ways of getting rid of us and both Billy and me were made redundant.

  I had a decent bit of redundancy money, but Billy hadn’t been at Bowcotts long and he didn’t get much. After he’d been on the dole for a while he really began to feel the pinch. He made a bit with fixing electrical things for people but he started to talk about ways of making money. Every time we were together he would start talking about doing a robbery. At first it was like he was joking but then he seemed to get serious.

  Somehow we went along with him. I suppose none of us were doing very well. Alan Walton had lost his licence on a breathalyser and my redundancy money was all gone. We all reckoned that some extra money would come in handy and somehow Billy seemed so convincing.

  One day he told us about the Mantons van that picked up the takings from all their shops. He said that they always sent three vans to Belston and they went round the shops in a different order but the last one to finish its round always went through Belstone Lane towards Bellsich to pick up in the High Street there. He said it would be a doddle to stop it in Belstone Lane.

  I remember I said that there’s houses all along Belstone Lane but Billy said that wouldn’t matter. He said we’d have to be armed to threaten the driver and guard on the van and that no one on Belstone Lane would tackle armed men.

  I wasn’t very happy about guns, but Billy said we’d got to have them to threaten the guards. He said he could get the guns but he never said where.

  The longer we talked about it the more it seemed like it would work and Billy kept saying that no one would get hurt, that the security men weren’t paid to be heroes and once they saw the guns they’d do what we said. When the really hot weather came we agreed we’d have a go.

  We knew pretty close what time the van was due along Belstone Lane and we met at the other end of Bellsich about an hour before. Billy was in a blue van and Alan was driving a red car. In the van Billy had dark jackets and ski masks and gloves for all of us and he had the guns in his car. There was two shotguns and two pistols. He never said where he got them. There was another bloke with Billy.

  I don’t know who he was. Billy just said to call him ‘Freddy’.

  We changed our clothes and Billy and Alan went in the blue van and me and Freddy went in the car. Billy had a shotgun, so did Freddy. Alan and I had the pistols. I have never fired any kind of gun and I wouldn’t have known how to use it but I never told them that.

  We waited in the car at the Belston end of the lane and Billy waited in the van on the lay-by near the Belsich roundabout. Alan stood at the corner of Belstone Lane and the main road. The plan was that we would follow the Mantons van when it came past us and stay behind it. When Alan saw it come along Belstone Lane he would signal Billy and Billy would bring the blue van into the lane and block the Mantons van. Freddy and I would pull up across the back of it to stop it backing up.

  Everything went OK at first. The Mantons van was on time and we followed it. As it got near the end of Belstone Lane the blue van came into the lane and blocked it. Freddy pulled our car across the road behind and we all got out with the guns.

  The driver and his mate got out of the Mantons van when they saw the guns. Billy and Alan was at the front telling the driver to open the back. He did that and we started putting cash bags in the car and in our van while Billy and Alan kept guns on the driver and his mate. Billy was standing out in the road with a pistol pointed at the driver’s mate and Alan was standing on the grass verge with a shotgun pointed at the driver.

  Freddy and me was busy shifting the cash bags and I heard an old woman yelling something and Alan yelling back. The next I knew was Alan’s shotgun going off and then Billy firing his pistol. I saw the driver go down and there was blood everywhere all up the side of the Mantons van. I didn’t know if he was dead. Billy was yelling at us to get a move on so we piled everything in the car and the van and we took off.

  *

  They had gone in different directions, the car heading back along the lane into Belston and the van leaving through Bellsich. They used roundabout routes to reach their rendezvous point on Cannock Chase, where they changed out of their clothing, put all the cash bags in the van and abandoned the red car. Then they made for Billy Simpson’s place. After that his statement agreed with Glenys Simpson’s as to the sorting of the money. Grady claimed to know nothing about where the money was hidden. He had received his share months later, from Simpson. He had never been questioned by the police about the matter before. The document ended with what they call the ‘caption’ — a paragraph in the suspect’s own handwriting:

  *

  The above statement, consisting of eleven pages each signed by me, is true and I make it of my own free will. I have read it over and I have been told that I can add, alter or correct anything which I wish.

  *

  Before they started tape-recording statements they used to make the suspect add that paragraph and sign it. They would give them a printed card to copy it out. I’ve seen guys who could barely write their own name painstakingly copying the card, letter by letter, as though it was Egyptian hieroglyphics, and cheerfully signing to say that they’d read their statements when they couldn’t read anything more complicated than a Sun headline.

  I passed Grady’s statement to Sheila without comment and picked up the last few prosecution papers.

  The rest of the file was routine stuff, tying up loose ends. A cashier from Mantons produced a schedule showing how much had been collected from each shop on Van 3’s run and stated that the money had never been recovered and Mantons had been reimbursed by their insurers. There was a statement by the bloke who took over the Simpsons’ old council house. He confirmed
that, when he moved in, there was a baby alarm wired from the downstairs front room to the back bedroom upstairs. He had taken it out, but there were photographs exhibited, showing the marks where it had been screwed to the woodwork. He also said that, when he moved the old shed in the garden, he had found an old Tizer enamelled advertising sign in the dirt floor and that there was a big hole underneath it. It wasn’t the only big hole around — no mention of Hughes’ arrest, no mention of any attempt to arrest Simpson, no mention of his death, no mention of three other blokes who’d been charged with conspiring to rob the Mantons van. The police had carefully tied up the little loose ends, but the big ones were still flapping about.

  I brewed the coffee while Sheila read Grady’s statement. When I brought the glasses back to her she was frowning at the papers.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve read Grady’s so-called confession. Why didn’t they charge Alan with shotgunning the Mantons guard? Grady says he did.’

  ‘Grady’s statement says so, but that’s part of the police come-on, isn’t it? Can’t you imagine it? “Just make a statement and we’ll see that it lets you out of the murder and the shotgunning.” ’

  She nodded. ‘Yeah, I suppose so, but it lets Alan Walton in for it. Why didn’t they charge him?’

  ‘Because you can’t be convicted on the unsupported evidence of an accomplice, and there wasn’t any evidence to back up Grady’s statement.’

  ‘So Walton’s lucky? Yes? What would attempted murder or whatever it was get him?’

  ‘Anything up to life.’

  She grinned sardonically. ‘I wonder if he realises how lucky he is,’ she said, then she swept a hand over the bundles of paper. ‘Is this absolutely all the evidence that the police had pulled together in six years?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘From the witness statements taken at the time, the evidence arising from Glenys’s sudden attack of conscience and the statements of Walton and Grady, they have selected what they think will impress a jury. They’ve also added a few explanatory bits, like the plan-drawer and the cashier and so on. All the prosecution has to do is present to the jury sufficient evidence to convict — and they did, didn’t they? It doesn’t have to be all the evidence and it doesn’t have to be good evidence. It’s up to the defence to test it and see if it’s good.’