Price gave a faint whistle. ‘Jesus wept,’ he said. ‘You’ve no idea how much cash that van delivers. It goes round on a Wednesday so that people can be paid on a Thursday. But it doesn’t just come to the Globe. It does a circuit of half a dozen papers, maybe more. There’ll be hundreds of thousands of quid in that van when it starts off.’
‘Does it vary its route?’ Barnard asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Price said. ‘It certainly varies its time of arrival at our place so it probably does. But someone has to be told what time it’s going to drive in so that the payroll staff can meet it at the back entrance. That’s why Smith could have been schmoozing Mitch Graveney. He’s very often in charge of the presses. He would need to know. I should have worked that out. It’s not exactly the Great Train Robbery but it would be a substantial haul if anyone managed to hijack it at its first call.’
‘And if the presses were running no one would hear a thing,’ Kate said feelingly. ‘No wonder they wear earmuffs.’
‘Are you going to your boss to fill him in on all this?’ Kate asked as they walked back to the car.
‘Not yet,’ Barnard said. ‘I want to be one hundred per cent sure of the facts before I do that. I still don’t understand who got Georgie off the hook and why. I can’t see how even Reg Smith could swing that without some help from the law. Ruth Michelmore couldn’t understand it either. The case was watertight even without the old tramp Hamish’s evidence. I really don’t believe his mother could have shifted the legal system like that. If she was involved she must have had some pretty powerful help.’
He swung the car east on to Holborn and skirted St Paul’s.
‘We’ll go to see Ray again. He might have some idea who swung that for Georgie. And we need to tell him what his mother said. He won’t take Georgie’s threats seriously, of course. I reckon he still thinks of him as a nasty little brother whose ears he used to clip if he strayed too far out of line. He never did take on board just how vicious he was even when he was a kid.’
Kate shuddered. ‘I shouldn’t think he thinks that any more, after what he was charged with,’ she said. They travelled in uneasy silence until Barnard pulled up outside the Robertson’s gym. Barnard glanced around but could see no sign that they had been followed. Copeland seemed to have given up on his surveillance which only told Barnard that the sergeant believed he did not need any more evidence in the case and that his goose was well and truly cooked. Looking grim he led Kate inside where they found Ray Robertson ensconced in his office as usual in a thick cloud of cigar smoke. He looked up as they worked their way between the boxing ring and training equipment but this time there was no welcoming smile.
‘I tried to get you by phone,’ Barnard said. ‘Where were you?’
‘Oh, round and about,’ Robertson said airily. ‘Is there any word of where my blasted brother is? I’ll swing for that bastard yet.’
‘Or he’ll swing for you,’ Barnard said quietly. ‘We went to see your ma this morning. She reckons he thinks you were involved in his arrest, though how he works that out I’m not sure. Anyway, she says he’s out to get you. I thought you’d better know that.’
Ray said nothing as he lit a fresh cigar. ‘I’ve never been a grass in my life,’ he said. ‘You know I’d never have been involved in what Georgie was up to. Not in a million years. But I wouldn’t shop him.’
‘But now?’ Barnard whispered, watching the mixed emotions flit across Robertson’s heavy face. ‘Now it’s a question of survival?’
‘My own kid brother,’ Robertson whispered.
‘He was always a maniac,’ Barnard said. ‘I thought we’d stopped him for good and now we seem to have to do it all over again.’
Robertson blew a cloud of smoke in their direction and seemed to come to a conclusion. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I know, which isn’t everything, by a long chalk. But it should help. Reg Smith wanted me in on his latest scheme. I told you. I said no. That sort of heist isn’t my scene. Too violent. Too risky. I reckon he was thinking of getting Georgie involved as well and when I said I wasn’t interested he went for that big time.’
‘Do you know what Smith is planning? What sort of heist?’ Barnard asked, almost holding his breath as he waited for Robertson to break the habit of a lifetime and become a grass.
‘There’s a security van goes round all the newspapers around Fleet Street once a week delivering their wages. Its huge moolah, according to Reg, enough to set us all up for life. He knew I’d been spouting off about the train robbers. Thought I’d be interested. More fool me, I suppose. I should keep my big mouth shut.’
‘You certainly frightened Fred Bettany,’ Barnard said.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Robertson said. ‘He chickened out. He wouldn’t believe I wouldn’t go for it. Tooled up as well.’
‘Guns?’
‘Oh yeah. You know how Georgie would love that.’ Kate saw Barnard’s face harden.
‘Do you know when?’ he asked.
But Robertson shrugged. ‘Reg didn’t tell me that. The van varies its time and route, apparently, but from what he said I think he’s got an inside man who’s going to give him the nod. He was making a big thing of being ready at a moment’s notice, like the bloody commandos he said. As if. He wouldn’t have made it in the bloody Home Guard.’
Barnard glanced at Kate and she nodded. ‘Mitch Graveney,’ she said. ‘At the Globe.’
Barnard leaned back in his rickety chair and looked at Robertson. ‘You’re in trouble, Ray,’ he said. ‘Reg will realize you know too much and Georgie hates your guts anyway. They’ll come after you. I should get out of London for a while if poss. I’ll set the wheels in motion if I can and try to stop this in its tracks, but even if I can – and I’m in the doghouse already remember – it will be much harder to keep Georgie off your back.’
‘That little bastard,’ Robertson snarled. ‘I knew he’d be trouble the first time I saw his evil, wrinkled little face. I should have strangled him then.’
DCI Jackson put the phone down irritably. The call had come from the City of London police and had, in effect, been a complaint about interference on their patch by DS Harry Barnard. He had turned up at Grays Inn Road station this morning, Jackson’s opposite number there had complained, with some cock and bull story about a planned heist of a wages van doing the rounds of the newspaper offices.
‘What the hell is going on?’ DCI O’Rorke had demanded. ‘We’ve not had a whisper. And your man didn’t seem to have any evidence that was remotely credible. Do you know anything about it?’
Jackson had had to confess that he didn’t, and admit that Barnard had been suspended.
‘What’s he trying to do?’ O’Rorke asked. ‘Gain some brownie points to get himself off the hook? If so I really don’t want him trampling around on my ground. If anything big was going down we’d have heard about it. We’re not complete fools, whatever the Met thinks.’
‘I’ll haul him in,’ Jackson had said, his voice tight with anger. ‘Find out what’s going on.’
‘Well, we’ll keep an eye on Fleet Street but I reckon it’ll be a waste of manpower I can do without. Reg Smith and Georgie Robertson are involved, he claims. As if. Georgie Robertson should still be banged up, by rights. How the hell did he get out? What is he, bloody Houdini?’
Jackson’s complexion, already flushed, turned a darker shade of puce. ‘You’ll have to ask the Yard about that. I’m as pissed off as you are about it.’
‘Right,’ O’Rorke said. ‘I’ll leave it with you then. Get this man Barnard back under control. He’s a loose cannon. I don’t care how you do it, I just don’t want him messing up on my patch.’
Jackson sat drumming his fingers on the desk for a moment and then picked up the phone again. Assistant Commissioner John Amis responded quickly and listened quietly while Jackson outlined the complaint from the City force. Not until Jackson had finished did he explode.
‘What’s he playing at?’ he a
sked. ‘We know Barnard’s in Ray Robertson’s pocket so this must be something he’s put him up to. It must be some ploy, a distraction maybe, while they fit Georgie into whatever scheme his brother’s set up for him. I’m quite sure Ray Robertson was involved in getting rid of the witnesses so the case collapsed. No doubt with Barnard’s help. He knew that case inside out.’
‘Barnard was heavily involved in that case,’ Jackson agreed, though not without a hint of uncertainty.
‘If the evidence – or in this case the witnesses – aren’t there, there is no case to answer,’ Amis snapped. ‘Pull Barnard in. It was a mistake not to charge him straight away and get him remanded. I want him banged up. And then get Copeland working on Ray Robertson. I want him banged up for a very long time too. Do it now.’ And he hung up.
Grim-faced, Jackson rang down to the CID room and asked DS Vic Copeland to come up. ‘Are you still tailing Harry Barnard?’ he asked as soon as the sergeant put his head round the door.
‘Not now,’ Copeland said. ‘You didn’t say you wanted me to carry on.’
‘Well I want him brought in,’ Jackson said. ‘It looks as if he’s running around for Ray Robertson, causing mayhem in the City. AC Amis wants him charged and remanded. He’s got to the end of his rope and now we haul him in for good.’
NINETEEN
‘We need to get out of London for a bit,’ Harry Barnard said flatly. They were drinking coffee again the following morning at the breakfast bar in Barnard’s flat. ‘This thing isn’t going to go off until there’s another wages delivery due. It’s not just his brother that Georgie Robertson and his mates will be looking for, it’s you. If something so big is going down they won’t want to leave any loose ends and you are very definitely a loose end after working with Carter Price. They’ve had one go at him and they won’t give up easily. I hope the City force is keeping an eye on Price while he’s in hospital. They’ll certainly know by now that they didn’t kill him, and even if they’ve got some of your prints they’ll know there are negatives somewhere.’
‘Where can we go?’ Kate asked uneasily.
‘How about the seaside?’ Barnard asked. ‘It’s the wrong time of year, of course. Might be a bit chilly. But at least there’ll be plenty of hotels with rooms.’
Kate sighed. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll need to go back to my place to pick up some clothes. And I’d really like to see Carter again before we go. Do you think that would be safe?’
Barnard frowned. ‘I’ll run you down to the hospital before you go to your place,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to go inside but you should be OK on your own. And there’s a call I want to make before we go. I contacted someone at the security company to find out how these wages drop-offs worked. Told him I worked for the City force and we wanted to increase security in the light of information received. Oddly enough he believed me. I’ll just check that the next one is happening next Thursday.’
But it wasn’t. When he’d finished his call Barnard looked slightly shell-shocked. ‘It’s Monday,’ he said. ‘When there’s a bank holiday coming up the unions make sure everyone is paid early – on Tuesday instead of Thursday. I said I wasn’t sure my boss knew that so could he make double sure that everyone was clued up. Jesus wept. Graveney must have spelt out to Smith just how ramshackle the arrangements are.’
‘And when the presses are running you could march an army in there and no one would hear a thing,’ Kate said. ‘And Graveney seems to be in charge of them.’
They looked at each other, horrified.
‘Come on,’ Barnard said. ‘I’ll drop you off at Bart’s, then at your place and we’ll head off. Where do you fancy? Brighton maybe? It’s the traditional place for a naughty weekend.
‘Just don’t tell my mother,’ Kate said with a grin.
But when Kate came out of Bart’s Hospital an hour later she was not smiling. She got into the Capri looking sombre. ‘You won’t believe this,’ she said.
‘Is Price OK?’ Barnard asked anxiously.
‘Oh yes, he’s OK. Seems much better. He actually had a phone call from a contact of his. He can’t chase it up, obviously. He wants us to do it.’
‘Oh yes?’ Barnard sounded sceptical.
‘He said he asked a contact to root around in Masonic records to see if there was a connection there between Reg Smith and Mitch Graveney. And there is. They’re in the same lodge in south London. But that wasn’t all. The worshipful master of the lodge is John Amis. Assistant Commissioner John Amis. Is that a big enough coincidence for you?’
Barnard looked at her in astonishment. ‘Jesus wept,’ he said. ‘I wonder just how close he is to Reg Smith.’
‘Price wanted me to ring the Yard and ask him,’ Kate said.
‘You must be joking,’ Barnard said. ‘That would really be putting your head into a lion’s mouth. Whether he’s involved with Smith or not he wouldn’t want the suggestion to get out. Come on. Let’s get out of here and see exactly what, if anything, happens on Monday.’
Kate and Harry Barnard were back in Fleet Street by eight on Monday morning. Barnard parked the Capri well away from the Globe building, close to Holborn Circus, and they walked south to Fleet Street in silence. The area at the back of the newspaper building was already a ferment of activity with the delivery vans already waiting for the bundles of the first edition of the Star.
‘I imagine the plan is to hijack the security van and drive it off. The other vans will let it through without any difficulty. They’ll all be used to seeing it come and go. And if they do it that way it means the gang can arrive quietly without anyone noticing. On foot possibly. They won’t try to bring a getaway car up into this narrow space. God knows what they’ve got in mind for the security guards though.’
‘If they shot them you wouldn’t hear anything if the presses are running,’ Kate said.
Barnard nodded grimly. ‘If they really have Georgie Robertson with them I wouldn’t be surprised at anything.’
They stood watching the activity inside the print room from a doorway on the opposite side of the road for a few minutes.
‘If we’re going to call the cavalry we need a phone box,’ Barnard said glancing around the street which was now lined on one side with delivery vans, most of the drivers relaxing with their Globes and Mirrors as they waited for the presses to start rolling. A hundred yards down the narrow side street he spotted the familiar red box.
‘Go down to that call box,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay here and watch. When the bad guys arrive, I’ll give you a thumb’s up and I want you to call DCI Jackson and ask him to get the City police down here at the double. It shouldn’t take them more than five minutes – Snow Hill nick is just round the corner. They’re doing this right under the bloody noses of the City police. They must be very confident. Put your call through as soon as you see me signal. Once the van’s here the rest won’t be far behind. They won’t have much time to hijack the van before it’s unloaded. Tell the DCI the robbery’s in progress. Here’s the number. OK?’
‘Be careful. They might see you.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ he said. ‘Now go. We can’t do this on our own. We’re going to need help fast.’ He kissed her quickly on the cheek and then pushed her away towards the phone box. She walked slowly down the pavement towards Fleet Street and the call box which she could see was empty, went inside and tried to see what was going on back at the Globe. Almost as soon as she had closed the door she saw the heavy security van inching past the newspaper delivery vans towards the bay where it would unload. And close behind two men strolled nonchalantly along the pavement within inches of her beyond the thick glass and she immediately recognized Georgie Robertson and Reg Smith wearing blue printers overalls as if they were innocently on their way to work. Without waiting for Barnard’s signal she dialled the number he had given her and asked to be put through to DCI Jackson.
When Kate explained where she was and what she was witnessing there was a sharp intake of breath.
<
br /> ‘Are you sure?’ he asked sharply.
‘One hundred per cent sure,’ she said angrily. ‘I know Georgie Robertson and he’s within yards of a security van fully loaded with cash. You need to get someone down here before Harry Barnard tries to stop him all on his own and gets killed.’
‘Right,’ Jackson said crisply. ‘We’re on our way.’
As Robertson and Smith approached, Barnard turned away, making as if to light a cigarette in a doorway out of the wind. When they had crossed the road he glanced back and saw Kate already coming out of the call box and heading towards him. Behind him he could hear the roar of the presses starting up.
‘Are the cavalry coming?’ he asked Kate as they met.
‘So your DCI says.’
‘Good,’ Barnard said. ‘Well done. You can get out of the way now. Go down to Fleet Street and pick up a bus. I’ll call you at the agency later when this is all over.’
‘And what are you going to do?’ Kate asked.
‘I want to keep an eye on what’s going on,’ he said.
Kate put a hand on his arm. ‘You mean try to stop it if the cavalry don’t turn up on cue?’
‘They’ll need witnesses to pin these bastards down,’ he said.
‘Then they can have me too,’ Kate said, her expression adamant. ‘I owe that to Carter Price.’
Barnard sighed. ‘We keep our distance? Right?’
Kate nodded and they both walked slowly back towards the Globe where the thundering sound of the presses seemed to be shaking the very structure of the building and the vibration could be felt on the pavement through the soles of their shoes. The back of the security van could be glimpsed through the open end of its bay but it was impossible to see more until two things happened almost simultaneously. The van began to reverse slowly out of its parking place and a police squad car screamed round the corner from the direction of Holborn and slammed to a standstill across the narrow entrance, blocking the van in place. Except that whoever was driving the van now was having none of that. Instead of stopping he put his foot down and reversed hard into the side of the patrol car, pushing it across the narrow street and into the wall on the opposite side making it impossible for the officers inside to get out. The hijackers must have thought they could get away until they realized that the squad car was only the first of several and that there were more sirens blaring from the direction of Fleet Street, blocking their escape in that direction.
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