Robbery with Malice

by Barrie Roberts

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’ve tied it all up neatly between Billy Simpson and the Payday Gang and the Trumans. That leaves a lot out.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like who killed Billy Simpson?’

  ‘We can’t be sure he was killed.’

  ‘Lawyer’s bullshit, Chris Tyroll! And even if he wasn’t, who had Cook killed? And why are the police covering up? And who had you beaten up? And who tried to kill us on the road?’

  I raised my hands in surrender. ‘OK! OK! It was just a theory. Have you got a better one?’

  She shook her head again. ‘Only an outline,’ she said. ‘Saffary was happy to convict Walton because he’s got a down on him and anyway, they needed a conviction. They cut corners to do it, so the force is covering up. But somebody may have killed Billy Simpson and somebody did have Banjo Cook iced and somebody’s been after you twice and had Claude watched.’

  She stopped and I waited, but that seemed to be it.

  ‘Are you saying you know who’s behind all that?’

  ‘After Stoke on Trent we know damned well who had Claude watched.’

  ‘Are you saying the police did it — had Simpson and Cook killed?’

  ‘Who else? When you have exhausted the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable … ’

  ‘ … must be the truth. Stop quoting Sherlock Holmes at me. You really think the fuzz did it? You must have some awfully nasty coppers in Aussie!’

  ‘You’ve got some awfully nasty coppers in England and you’d do well to remember it!’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘That’, she said, ‘is the bit I can’t work out.’

  31.

  Miss Callington had put on her best bedjacket for us. Considering her disabilities and the passage of time, she looked remarkably like her photo in the papers at the time of the robbery. Her large nose was still surmounted by a pair of eyes sharper than many younger ones and, despite being bedridden, her head had an imperious lift.

  She welcomed us into a warm, spotless room with attractive and colourful prints on the walls. A window looked over a garden that must be very pretty when not blanketed in snow.

  She seized on Sheila’s accent as we introduced ourselves. ‘You’re a long way from home, my dear. What does a South Australian girl make of an English winter?’

  Sheila laughed. ‘Hard going,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in Britain several times, but never in winter before. You’ve been in South Australia?’

  ‘I was a mission teacher before the war, and before the Japanese did this to me,’ and she gestured towards her legs, ‘I worked among the aborigines. Have you ever heard of Daisy Bates?’

  Sheila nodded. ‘I’m a social historian by trade,’ she said. ‘I’ve read up a lot on Daisy Bates.’

  ‘Then you know about her camp at Ooldea. I used to go up there on the Transcontinental Railway. They used to call the train the Tea and Sugar because that’s what it brought them.’

  A tap at the door heralded a girl with a tea-tray. She placed the tray on a bed-table and pushed the table across Miss Callington’s bed.

  ‘You must let me be mother,’ the old lady said. ‘There are very few things left that I can do, but I can still pour an honest cup of tea,’ and she did so with as steady a hand as I have seen.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘what brings an Australian social historian to Britain? You’re not studying us, are you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes. I’m working on a study of the families from which the convicts came. Trying to track them down, particularly the descendants of the few who came back.’

  ‘How fascinating! You must let me read it, my dear. Don’t be too long about writing it, though!’ and she laughed heartily.

  ‘Now, Mr Tyroll,’ she went on. ‘Here we are chattering away and you’re on business. You told the Matron that you wanted to talk about the Belstone Lane murder and you asked her if I was still compos mentis, did you not?’

  I blushed. ‘I did, I’m ashamed to say, but I now see that the question was unnecessary.’

  ‘Well, I can certainly recall what happened in Belstone Lane,’ she said. ‘For months afterwards I had dreams about it. I saw a lot of dreadful things done by the Japanese, but what happened to those poor men from Mantons was different. One does not expect to be confronted by violence and bloodshed while one is budding one’s roses.’

  She fell silent and fingered the spectacles that hung from a chain round her neck.

  ‘And I thought, perhaps, that I had caused it, you know,’ she went on. ‘If I had not distracted the man with the shotgun the driver would not have been encouraged to try and get away.’

  ‘It can’t have been your fault, Miss Callington,’ said Sheila.

  The old lady nodded slowly. ‘I realised that, in the end. I came to see that, if foolish and cowardly men go about their illegal business with guns, they will end up killing someone sooner or later.’

  ‘Miss Callington,’ I said, ‘I believe you made a witness statement at the time?’

  She nodded. ‘That’s right. The next day.’

  ‘Do you recall the officers who took it?’

  ‘There was a squat coarse-featured man with a Northern Irish accent and another man with greasy black hair and unpleasant hooded eyes.’

  ‘Saffary and Watters,’ I said for she had described them exactly.

  ‘That may have been their names,’ she said. ‘Do you have a copy of my statement?’

  ‘No, Miss Callington. It was not among the papers supplied to me. I have written to the Crown Prosecution Service, but they have not replied. I have read what you told the local papers but I shall be grateful if you can tell us what you remember about the incident and I shall be glad if you will let me record your remarks.’

  I took a cassette recorder from my case, switched it on and stood it on the table.

  In a clear, strong voice she recalled that evening, eighteen years before. She told us how she had made her way on two walking-sticks to her front gate to bud her best rose bush. Leaning on the gate she saw the Mantons van and watched it trapped between the car and the van that carried the four robbers. The robbers had all been armed, two shotguns and two pistols, but once the driver and his mate had been threatened out of the van, two of the attackers had busied themselves unloading cash bags into their van and car. The other two, one with a pistol and one with a shotgun, kept the van’s crew at gunpoint.

  There had been no one in the neighbouring gardens and she knew she could not get to her phone quickly, and so she decided to try and distract the robbers until a neighbour noticed what was happening and called the police. Her distraction was marvellous and typical of this spirited lady — she simply ordered the nearest villain to drop his gun. He had swung the gun upon her and she might have been the victim of his nervous fingers, but while she exchanged opinions with him the Mantons driver had started to edge towards the robber. Catching sight of the movement the robber swung, the shotgun exploded in his nervous fingers and his colleague, equally nervous, fired his pistol.

  The driver’s mate had died instantly from a single pistol shot. The driver received both barrels of the shotgun and lived to be legless. Miss Callington had clung to her gate, sickened, as the robbers, screaming blame at each other, bundled the last of the cash in their vehicles and took off in opposite directions. One of Miss Callington’s neighbours had seen the shootings from her upstairs window and became hysterical.

  She finished her recital, which had been cool and precise throughout, and looked at me.

  ‘Is that what you required, Mr Tyroll?’

  ‘Admirable,’ I said and I meant it. This was the witness the Crown did not call and she remembered it all still. She had never once stated a fact of which she was not sure and had been quite clear when she was offering an opinion and not a certainty. She would have been a dream witness and any barrister who tried to cross-examine her would have sunk without trace — but they had not called her.


  She had described the robbers as all dressed alike in dark jackets, ski masks and gloves, but her recall was so good I decided to try a long shot.

  ‘I know they were masked, Miss Callington, but might you be able to recognise any of them — the man with the shotgun, for instance?’

  ‘I very much doubt it,’ she said. ‘Even the man with the shotgun, who was only three yards from me, was only eyes and patches of skin behind that absurd mask.’

  I took out a photograph of Alan Walton at the time and passed it to her. She picked up her spectacles, put them on and laughed aloud.

  ‘Oh no, Mr Tyroll!’ she said. ‘I can’t have made myself clear. The man with the shotgun was a black man, and I am reasonably sure that the others were.’

  Now I knew why she hadn’t been called at the Payday Gang trial, because they were all white and the same applied to Walton and Grady. But why hadn’t they called her at the trial of the Trumans?

  ‘You’re sure?’ I pressed. ‘After all, you did see only patches of skin and eyes.’

  ‘It was the language, more than anything. He shouted at me — filth, obscenities. Then when the guns had gone off, they all shouted at each other.’

  ‘You understand West Indian obscenities?’ I asked, astonished.

  She looked at me severely across the top of her spectacles. ‘Young man,’ she said, ‘I was a mission teacher. I have been roundly abused by every kind of Briton, by Australians, Dutch, Japanese, most varieties of Asians and Africans and by West Indians. I knew exactly what he said to me and what they said to each other.’

  I should have remembered my thoughts about anyone who tried to cross-examine her.

  I had only one more point. ‘Miss Callington,’ I said, ‘did anyone ever suggest that you might be called as a witness at the robbers’ trial?’

  She shook her head. ‘I recall that the police said that no one was arguing about what happened in Belstone Lane, so my evidence was superfluous and they didn’t wish to put me to the trouble. There were two trials, were there not — first the so-called Payday Gang then your client and another, years later?

  It was my turn to shake my head. ‘There were three trials,’ I said. ‘The Payday Gang, where the jury couldn’t find a verdict, and six years later my client and his friend, but in between three other men were tried for conspiracy to rob and acquitted. You knew nothing of that?’

  ‘You do surprise me, Mr Tyroll, but being out of the West Midlands we don’t see the news from there. Who were they?’

  ‘Their names wouldn’t mean anything,’ I said, ‘but they were all black.’

  I owed Miss Callington my thanks but still it was nice to see her startled expression.

  32.

  The ugly pre-war pub on the corner was empty, gutted by fire. Kids had torn off the protective boarding at the windows so as to use the shell for a fornicatorium or drug supermarket. The rest of the estate was little better, ravaged by six decades of municipal neglect and its occupants. None of it did anything for my mood.

  A cab dropped Sheila and me one street away from the ruined pub. We stood outside a four-square, semi-detached pair of 1930s council houses. Billy Simpson’s parents lived in the one on the right.

  Mrs Simpson answered the doorbell. She was a stocky old lady with a stoop and moved slowly along the hallway in front of us, guiding us to a big rectangular sitting-room where her husband sat in a corner armchair, staring at a television set. He was a plump, balding man with a pasty complexion which I guessed came from many days and nights of television. He rose stiffly and switched it off as we entered, a courtesy from another age.

  ‘Mr Tyroll?’ he said. ‘Sit you down. Mary’ll get some tea.’

  We sat, and I wondered how to begin. This interview was always going to be difficult — before I knew that Billy had planned the Belstone Lane job. I looked around me for inspiration, seeking neutral ground on which to open the conversation. The ashtray by Simpson’s chair was empty and clean, though he was finishing one cigarette and lighting another. The room had been prepared for visitors, made clean to propitiate strangers so that they would not bring bad news. On the tiled mantelpiece stood a colour photograph of a slim-faced young man giving the camera a wide smirk.

  ‘Billy?’ I asked, nodding towards it, though I well knew it was him.

  ‘Ah,’ said his father. He picked up the photograph and gazed at it before replacing it, then lowered himself back into his chair. ‘What was it you wanted to know about him? And why now, after all this time?’

  He wasn’t going to cut me any slack, so I took a breath and started. First I explained my position, as I had already explained it to his wife on the phone. He heard me out in silence, his eyes never showing any response, and remained silent for a moment after I’d finished.

  ‘You’re not for Grady, are you?’ he demanded at last.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I represent Alan Walton only.’

  ‘Alan’s a good lad. Him and Billy was mates from kids, at school and all, but Grady said as Billy done it, killed that poor bloody guard and crippled his mate,’ he said.

  ‘Peter Grady has always said that his statement was forged by the police,’ I said, ‘and I believe him.’

  His eyes narrowed, his chin came up and I knew he was going to ask the question I couldn’t answer truthfully.

  ‘Do you think he done it — our Billy?’ he asked.

  ‘Mr Simpson,’ I said picking my words carefully, ‘since Christmas I’ve read every word of the evidence that was put forward when Grady and my client were tried. I’ve been down Belstone Lane and talked to all the witnesses. I’ve spent hours with Alan Walton.’

  ‘And … ?’ he interrupted, sensing that I was hedging.

  ‘There’s nothing, nothing at all, in anything I’ve read that makes any kind of case against Billy. If they’d charged him he should have been acquitted.’

  ‘And what about Alan and Grady?’ he demanded. ‘How was they convicted, then? What good evidence was there against them?’

  ‘The forged confession by Grady and, of course, Glenys’s evidence.’

  ‘And she’d have done for him the same way she done for them,’ he shot back. ‘That’s what she wanted — they didn’t matter to her, it was our Billy she wanted and he knew it. That’s why he did what he did, ‘cause he wouldn’t have stood going inside the way Alan and Grady have.’

  He paused and narrowed his gaze again. ‘So it was her and the police that sent Grady and Alan down, was it? There warn’t no other evidence?’

  ‘No,’ I said, truthfully.

  He nodded slowly and looked up at his son’s picture. ‘I knew there couldn’t be,’ he said. ‘Now, what was it you wanted to know, Mr Tyroll?’

  ‘About Glenys, mainly,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand why she went to the police. However much she hated your son, it was all over, they were divorced.’

  He shook his head. ‘It warn’t all over for her,’ he said.

  ‘She chased after our Billy in the first place and then she didn’t like what she got. She took up with other chaps —’

  I interrupted. ‘Do you remember who any of those chaps were?’

  He laughed, humourlessly. ‘Now you’re asking,’ he said. ‘She had lots of them, Mr Tyroll. Long before they ever broke up she was at it every night nearly. There wasn’t so many night-clubs then, but she found places to go. She’d be up at the Kernel at Newtown, in the Spider’s Web at Walsall, over in Brum, night after night. I don’t know who she’d have been with,’ and he shook his head.

  ‘Do you know where she is now?’ I asked.

  ‘You won’t find her,’ said Mrs Simpson’s voice behind me. ‘She’s gone.’

  She had brought a tea-tray in and now set about serving us from the coffee table. ‘She’s long gone,’ she repeated as she passed the cups.

  ‘Gone?’ I said. ‘You mean left Belston, not — ‘

  ‘Oh no! Not her!’ she interrupted. ‘Her sort take a while to go to the devil.
She went down south, years ago.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Do you know where she went?’

  ‘I’m sure she went,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know where. She might have said, but if she did it didn’t sink in.’

  ‘You talked to her?’

  ‘Oh, yes. After the divorce and that we had no more to do with her. I’d always warned Billy against her, anyway. Then she went to the police and told her lies and after Billy was gone I could have killed her with my own hands. But I never saw her, until one day in the post office. I was just coming out as she was going in and she said, “Hello, Mary,” bold as brass. Well, I wouldn’t have said a word, but when she said that I said, “Who do you think you are, to call me by name?” ’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said, “Look, Mrs Simpson, just because Billy and I were divorced doesn’t mean we have to be unpleasant to each other.” I said, “Divorced? The best day’s work Billy ever done was getting divorced, like the worst was getting wed to you. But that’s not it,” I said. “You murdered my Billy, as sure as if you’d shot him dead. You and your lies!” ’

  The stocky little woman had straightened unconsciously as she recited her tale and I could imagine her planted foursquare on the pavement in front of Glenys, determined to say her piece.

  ‘She stopped being smarmy then, and she turned nasty. “Well,” she said, “if that’s the way of it, I shan’t be bothering you again,” and that’s when she said she was going away, down south somewhere. I said, “And which of your fancy chaps is paying for that or are they all chipping in?” ’

  We couldn’t help it. We chuckled, and Mrs Simpson smiled at the memory of her thrust. ‘She didn’t like that. She said, “It might interest you to know that I got half the insurance reward for telling the truth about Billy and his mates.” And with that she turned her back and went off and I ay seen her since.’

  ‘The insurance reward?’ I said. ‘But the money from Belstone Lane was never recovered. There wouldn’t have been a reward.’