Robbery with Malice

by Barrie Roberts

  ‘We could get Claude to give us a lift.’

  ‘It’ll take him too far out of his way. We’ll just have to make the best of it and hope it doesn’t snow again.’

  We broke out the coffee flask, woke ourselves up as far as we could and headed south along streets as empty as when we came. Soon we were on the motorway, splashing through the brown slush that spread all over the middle lane. Earlier motorists seemed to have stuck to that lane keeping it partly clear, but either side of us were stretches of ice with fresh snow on top and edges of packed frozen slush that banged against our wheels when the slush caused slight skids. I trusted Sheila’s driving but I would be a lot happier when we were back in Belston.

  Several miles south of Stoke Sheila remarked on headlights behind us. ‘Must be Claude,’ I said. ‘He should overtake us. That thing of his is a lot heavier than us. He shouldn’t be sliding the way we are.’

  The lights drew closer but fell in behind some distance back. I assumed that someone was keeping a safe distance and got back to worrying about Claude’s arrest. We had known for some time that he was being watched, but this was different. It was unlikely that the Central message had gone only to Staffordshire. Maybe he was now at risk wherever he pursued enquiries, and perhaps that was the point of the exercise.

  I had given up and was fast succumbing to tiredness when Sheila spoke.

  ‘Here he comes,’ she remarked.

  The following car had speeded up and moved into the outside lane, apparently to overtake. As I turned to look, I realised that there was a passenger in it.

  ‘It’s not Claude,’ I said. Then some instinct flickered in my tired brain. ‘Be careful!’ I warned.

  They drew alongside and, instead of forging ahead, stayed beside us. Sheila gave them a quick glance — all she could afford on that road — and slowed slightly. They dropped back to match us and I saw their passenger window slide down.

  Sheila needed all her attention to keep us in lane, but I could not take my eyes off the passenger in the other car. I saw him bend his head and reach for something at his feet, then straighten up. I fully expected a gun and I was tensed to pull Sheila down in her seat.

  As the passenger raised something to the window I caught a glimpse of it and thought that I was hallucinating. For a split second it crossed my mind that I had dozed off and dreamt the whole episode. He was holding a large, brightly coloured, kids’ pump-gun.

  My mind couldn’t take in the combination of deadly threat and the ludicrous toy gun in the split second that followed — before he fired his bizarre weapon and a thick jet of brown, icy sludge poured out across our windscreen.

  Instinct tells you to brake when you can’t see, and Sheila started, but only for a second before sense told her not to brake hard on the sludge beneath us. We had begun to slide at the rear as she started to brake, but now she swung the wheel hard, aiming into the inner lane.

  There was a savage bang and the car lurched as the front wheels hit the barrier of frozen sludge between the lanes and crushed across it. For a brief moment we were under control and making into the inner track, then the bite of our wheels on the fresh snow slowed the front, allowing the rear, still in the slimy middle lane, to swing vigorously. We went into a series of circular skids, spinning helplessly down the road, battering back and forwards across the ice barriers and lurching up and down. From the side and rear windows we caught glimpses of the road going round and round us. We could not see our attackers.

  The blinded nightmare seemed to go on interminably while Sheila fought the wheel and cursed fluently, then we skated to a stop and hit something hard with our nose. Instantly we unbuckled our seat belts and piled out.

  We had come to rest on the hard shoulder, slewed in at an angle with the front end crushed against the base of a direction sign. I looked around. Fifty yards ahead of us, another car was parked on the shoulder and two dark figures were walking towards us. I grabbed Sheila and pulled her down behind the car.

  ‘What now?’ she said.

  ‘Now they finish us off,’ I said. ‘They won’t shoot. This has to be an explicable accident, hence the sludge trick.’

  I looked round again, desperately seeking cover or support. The road was empty in both directions and I recalled that our attackers were the only vehicle we had seen since setting out. Then a pair of lights topped a slight rise behind us. The men walking towards us stopped, conferred, and headed back to their car.

  As they drove off Sheila reached into our car. ‘Want a coffee?’ she asked, lifting the flask out of the interior.

  Moments later Claude the Phantom drew up alongside us. ‘Got another cup of that coffee?’ he said. ‘That police station stuff is vile.’

  29.

  You may walk away from an incident like that, but it frightens the hell out of you and stresses you like mad, so you can imagine that we took the next day pretty easy, rising late and staying at home. By the afternoon I had recovered from tiredness and fright sufficiently to get my mind back on the case.

  I rang the nursing home where Miss Callington lived, to make an appointment for the next day. I had some experience of the vulnerability of old people in nursing homes and I wanted to get to her before someone else did. Her family had told Claude that she was of sound mind, but I checked with the home’s Matron.

  She laughed. ‘Miss Callington’, she said, ‘is a good deal sounder of mind than most of us, Mr Tyroll, never fear!’

  Moments later Claude rang. ‘Struck lucky,’ he reported. ‘Hughes wasn’t on any licensing register in the conurbation but I’ve got him. He’s in Shropshire — still in the trade.’

  Sheila and I took a cab out early that evening. Hughes’ pub was in a back street of a small market town, well west of his former haunts, an old, unpretentious building that no brewer had thought worthwhile tarting up and renaming. Inside it was cosy, bright and warm, with open fires in its small rooms.

  Hughes, a thickset, balding man with a round, pink face, was serving at his own bar. When I introduced us he lifted the flap and led us through into a small private parlour.

  ‘I wondered when you’d get round to me,’ he said, as we sat and he brought us drinks.

  ‘You expected us?’ I said.

  He grinned. ‘I had that Saffary round here, just before the lads appealed.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  He swallowed a large gulp of mild. ‘Just to tell me to keep my mouth shut if anyone asked me about the case.’

  ‘To keep your mouth shut about what?’ I asked.

  He grinned again. ‘I don’t know. I never knew anything about the bloody case any road. He came back again after.’

  ‘What was that for?’

  ‘To say as you was looking into it — “muckraking” he said — and to remind me to say nowt.’

  ‘And is that what you’re going to do?’

  ‘I can’t tell you anything about the robbery and the shooting,’ he said, ‘for a very simple reason — because we warn’t involved. Not me, nor Alan nor Peter.’

  ‘What about Billy?’

  He looked at me silently for a moment. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘I always thought as he might have been.’

  The same thought had occurred to me more than once. ‘Why do you think that?’

  He drank again. ‘He was a funny bloke, Billy Simpson. A lot smarter than the average and he had some funny friends.’

  ‘Like Banjo Cook?’ I hazarded.

  He nodded. ‘You know about Cook?’ he said.

  ‘Only that he and Billy were pals.’

  ‘Oh, they was good mates,’ he said, ‘and they was alike in some ways. Both smart buggers, both with no money to speak of, but neither of them went short. Of course, all Billy’s cash went to that bloody Glenys but Banjo used to spend like there was no end.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Do? He played the banjo, that’s what, and he didn’t make the kind of money he had playing the bloody banjo.’

 
‘Where do you reckon it came from?’

  ‘He used to knock about with the Trumans and Whitey — they called him that ‘cause he was blacker than the rest of them. You know, the ones that got away with the robbery?’

  ‘Do you think they did it?’

  ‘Possibly. I heard as Banjo put them into it, then he took the lion’s share of the loot and when they started playing their faces about it he shopped them.’

  ‘Is that why he was killed?’

  He shook his head firmly. ‘No — if that story’s right he had the coppers on his side. The Trumans wouldn’t dare touch him.’

  ‘So who killed him?’

  He grinned again. ‘You know, don’t you? I heard tell as you was there.’

  ‘I know who did it, but I don’t know why.’

  ‘Might have been lots of folks — I told you, Banjo made his money some funny ways.’

  All of this might be good stuff or it might be totally misleading, but I was having trouble taking it all in and keeping abreast of our conversation. I thought for a moment.

  ‘You say that Billy might have been involved and that Banjo Cook might have got the Trumans and White involved. If they did it, what’s Billy Simpson’s connection?’

  ‘He was a planner, warn’t he? A scout and a planner.’

  ‘A planner? Who for?’

  ‘Mainly the Payday Gang, warn’t it? He was unemployed, he used to look out for jobs for them and set them up with a plan. He dain’t take part, but he got his cut.’

  ‘You’re sure of this?’

  ‘Billy and me went back a long time. He told me, didn’t he?’

  ‘But if he was a planner for the Payday Gang, how come the Trumans did Belstone Lane?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe the Payday lot didn’t want it or perhaps they didn’t reckon it. It was a bit small compared to some of their’n.’

  ‘And you were never involved in any of Billy’s plans?’

  ‘Mr Tyroll,’ he said, ‘I don’t mind talking about Billy’s business — he’s dead. I don’t mind talking about Alan and Peter’s business — they sent you. But I ain’t talking about my business, right?’

  It was said in a friendly enough tone. It not only laid down the boundaries — it added a considerable amount of credibility to his evidence.

  ‘But you weren’t in the Belstone Lane job.’

  ‘No. No way.’

  ‘And when you got arrested, what happened? After all, you say that Alan and Peter weren’t, but they stuck a fake confession on one and used it to convict both of them. How’d you walk out?’

  He laughed. ‘They went at us, all three of them, Hawkins, Watters and Saffary, and they’d keep going from one to another of us, trying to get one of us to grass up the others, but it dain’t work. Even when they showed me Peter’s so-called confession, I wouldn’t admit anything because there wasn’t nothing to admit.’

  ‘Peter Grady never implicated you in his statement.’

  ‘He did in the one they showed me,’ he said. ‘I still wouldn’t give them anything, so they wrote out one for me, just like they must have done with Peter.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Saffary stuck it on the table and said, “Sign that, or we’ll have you here for ever.”.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Well, I was pretty sick of being locked up and shouted at by them, so I thought I’d bring things to a head. I took the statement and you know the thing as you have to write at the bottom — the bit that says it’s all true?’

  ‘The caption? Yes.’

  ‘Well, I started to copy that off of the card they showed me, but I made it different. I wrote, “This statement is not true and I have not made it of my own free will, I have signed it because Hawkins and Watters and Saffary threatened me.”‘

  It was my turn and Sheila’s to laugh. ‘What the blazes happened?’

  ‘Well, they didn’t catch on at first. They thought as I was writing their words off of the card, but then Hawkins saw what it was and he clouted me, right in the face. Then he picked up the papers and he tore them in pieces. Then they all went out and left me.’

  He paused and drank, enjoying the recollection, as he had every right to do.

  ‘About half an hour after, Saffary came back. He unlocked the cell and just said, “Get out!” I said, “What’s this?” and he said, “You can go.” I said, “I thought you was going to keep me here till I confessed everything.” He said, “Another time’ll do for you. I want that bastard Walton.” And that was it. They let me go.’

  ‘Did anyone ever say why Saffary had a down on Walton?’

  ‘Not that I ever heard, but Saffary hated him.’

  He had made a lot of things clearer. I thanked him and we had a quick short with him before leaving. As he showed us out he said, ‘Get them out if you can, Mr Tyroll. They’re good lads and they dain’t do it.’

  It reminded me of Mrs Cassidy and Tracy.

  30.

  Miss Callington’s nursing home was in a village a few miles from Stoke. Sheila was all for hiring a car, but I was happier travelling by train. Nobody’s ambushed one of those in Britain since before I was born.

  Before we left it occurred to me that Desmond Murphy, the former Mantons security manager, might live somewhere in the area if he was still alive and it might be possible to kill two birds with one stone. Alasdair Thayne is our office computer nut, i.e. the only one around who both uses and understands them. I knew he had a program that would search for the phone number of anyone listed in the UK. I asked him to try ‘D. Murphy’ in the Stoke area and he had three in minutes.

  I switched on a tape to save taking notes, and started dialling. My luck was in. On the first call a testy, flat Potteries voice snapped, ‘Murphy! Who is this?’

  I introduced myself and asked if he was the former Mantons man. ‘I was, yes,’ he said, ‘but I don’t see how I can help you. Anything I knew I told to the police at the time. You must have a copy of the statement I made to Gerry Hawkins’ lads.’

  ‘I believe you’re a former police officer yourself?’ I said.

  ‘I am,’ he said. ‘Staffordshire, then Central Midlands, so I knew what they wanted and I gave it to them. That was years ago, I can’t tell you any more now.’

  ‘There was really only one thing,’ I said. ‘It was in your statement, but I didn’t really understand it.’

  ‘What was that?’ he said.

  ‘You were out that evening making procedure checks on your van crews in the Belston area.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And, according to pattern, the third van would come through Belstone Lane to Bellsich High Street?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You said that you waited, was it half an hour, at Bellsich but they didn’t show up?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did it occur to you to drive down Belstone Lane and see what had kept them?’

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I never got paid for those evening checks. I just did them because I thought they needed doing and I wasn’t there to wetnurse them if they’d had a flat or something. When they didn’t show up I marked them down for a talking to on Monday and I went home. That’s all.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That’s all I needed to know.’

  He put the phone down without a word. I stopped the tape, dropped the cassette into my briefcase and Sheila and I headed for the train.

  On the way north we discussed the previous night’s interview with Hughes.

  ‘Is he telling the truth?’ she asked.

  ‘What’s he got to lie about?’

  ‘To get his cobbers out of jail?’

  I shook my head. ‘If he was trying to do that, he’d have been more directly helpful.’

  ‘Was he helpful?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I believe I’ve got a better idea of what may have happened.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Suppose Billy Simpson put the Mantons jo
b up to the Payday Gang and they turned it down. So, he offered it elsewhere — like to Banjo Cook?’

  ‘That’s what your antiques dealer meant, isn’t it? The Payday Gang had more than one planner and Billy Simpson scouted for more than one gang.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ I said. ‘That’s got to be right. So he gives it to Banjo Cook who gets the Trumans and White involved.’

  ‘You think they did it?’

  ‘Hughes thinks so and he seems to know. Just go with my theory a moment. They do the job but after the killing they’re scared. Cook holds on to the loot. They turn nasty on him … ’

  ‘ … and he dobs them in,’ she finished. ‘But why don’t they get convicted?’

  ‘If Alasdair’s right, because somebody doesn’t want them to be.’

  She frowned. ‘But who? Banjo Cook doesn’t mind them going down — he’s got the loot and they obviously couldn’t tie him to the robbery. So who else didn’t want them convicted?’

  ‘Maybe John Parry’s right. Perhaps we’re thinking conspiracy when it was just cock-up but the effect is the same. The police still have an unsolved murder, so when Glenys comes along they’re delighted. They can convict someone who Saffary has some kind of grudge against and claim the credit. And they didn’t pull Simpson in because he just might have told the truth. How’s that?’

  ‘Why’d they let Hughes go so easy?’

  ‘They only needed him to convict Walton. Once Grady signed a statement they knew they’d got Grady and Walton. They didn’t need Hughes.’

  ‘There were four robbers. Why would they settle for two?’

  ‘They weren’t settling for two. Everyone on that jury knew that Simpson had committed suicide. They settled for three out of four and used Grady’s statement to make it look as if they’d nailed the important ones.’

  ‘That’s another thing,’ she said. ‘Why were there two versions of Grady’s statement?’

  ‘One without Hughes if he co-operated — one with him if he didn’t.’

  She nodded slowly but the nod turned to a shake. ‘It won’t work,’ she said.