“All present and correct,” said Locksley, with heavy facetiousness.
Fish ignored the other. Locksley was brainless and gormless, interested only in women and motorbikes. “Have you got the log book, George?”
“All safe and sound,” answered Blether, patting his right-hand coat pocket. With a name like Blether, he might have been wide open to ribald leg-pulling especially as he sported a rather flamboyant moustache — but the pugnacious lines of his face and his air of self-confidence suggested a man one dare not press too hard.
“O.K., then, let’s get aboard.” Fish walked over to the off-side door of the truck, pulled it open, and climbed into the cab. Young joined him. Blether and Locksley got into the rear compartment. The small hatch between the cab and the compartment was open. Fish turned round and spoke through it to Blether. “Check the wireless, George.”
Blether switched on the set. By special permission of the county constabulary, they were allowed to tune into police wavelengths in an emergency and give the alarm, but under all normal circumstances they reported to their own branch. He picked up the transmitter and pressed down the switch. “Hullo, Moxon One. This is blue three testing. Over.”
The voice of Weaver, distorted and sounding far more querulous and feminine than it really did, came through in answer. “You’re not very loud.”
“Tell the old fool it never is in the courtyard,” snorted Fish, irritation making him break his rule about never criticising his seniors before his juniors.
Fish pressed down a switch on the dashboard and a light next to the switch came on — the roof alarm was in working order. Originally, they had carried out an actual test of the alarm, but the complaints had flowed in and Weaver had had to change the procedure. Fish pressed down another switch and checked that the doors and windows of the cab were electrically locked, then unlocked them and lowered his own window. Young did the same. The air in the cab was hot and stuffy and until they had a load of money aboard they could enjoy the fresh air — something that the forced draught beneath the dashboard never seemed to give them.
Fish started the engine, engaged first gear, turned, and drove up to the gates, which Young opened and then closed behind the truck. Young returned to the cab and offered cigarettes.
“Thanks,” answered Fish. There was a gap in the traffic and he drew out onto the road. Young put a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match for him.
Locksley spoke through the opened hatch. “It’s flaming hot and stuffy in here. Have you got the ventilator switched on?”
“Of course,” answered Fish shortly.
“Well, it doesn’t feel like it.”
Young spoke with the satisfaction of one who was not suffering the discomforts that others were. “It does get hot inside. The firm ought to be made to put in a bigger fan.”
“It wouldn’t matter what size the fan, someone’d moan,” answered Fish.
Young drew on his cigarette, then exhaled. “How many calls have we got?”
“Three.”
“One of ’em’s big, isn’t it?”
“Just over a hundred and eighteen thousand quid.” Fish had to brake sharply as the car in front made a right-hand turn without any warning.
There was an angry shout from inside. “Don’t forget we’re here, mate. You near had us out of our seats.”
Fish ignored Locksley, changed gear, and accelerated as he drove the truck round the back of the car.
Locksley continued to shout through the opened oblong, hatch. “Did I tell you about the bird I was out with last night?”
“Yes,” lied Fish.
“She was a right hot dish, she was. I’m telling you, without a word of a lie, Cleopatra wasn’t in it.”
Cleopatra!, thought Fish with angry derision. The only thing Locksley knew about her was that she’d made a film with some Welshman.
*
Glenton looked at his watch for the fourth time in as many minutes. Ten past twelve and Croft was ten minutes overdue. With a schedule that called for split second timing, ten minutes was a whole eternity. “Where the hell is he?” he demanded, his voice thick. Neither Riley nor Holdman spoke.
They stood in the front room of the house in Challon Place and waited. As the seconds ticked by, tension rose. Glenton was no raw amateur, scared sick by the worry of what all the cozzpots in town were doing, but this was still a moment when his guts began to churn.
Riley lit a cigarette. Apparently, he was least affected of them all, maintaining his usual calmness, but the way in which his beady brown eyes kept moving suggested that he, too, was suffering from the tension. He spoke suddenly. “I don’t like the shooting.”
“Look, Burner, I told you — ” began Glenton.
“I know what you told me, but that don’t mean I like it. There ain’t no toppin’ these days, but the coppers still work ’arder when someone’s shorted out.”
“They can work ’emselves silly and they won’t get nowhere.”
“I don’t like killing,” said Riley stubbornly. It was quite clear that it was the consequences of the act he disliked, not the act itself.
“You’re soft,” jeered Holdman.
Riley stared at Holdman and there was an expression of raw viciousness on his face.
A shout from Glenton distracted them. “There he is.”
They all stared through the window. A breakdown truck drove slowly along on the opposite side of the road.
*
The High Street had been changed to one-way traffic and the armoured truck had to complete three sides of a square before turning into the High Street and then drawing up before the Westminster Bank where it double parked. Fish and Young left the cab and walked round to the back. Locksley opened the offside rear door and jumped down on to the road. Blether passed out the three strong-boxes.
Fish led the way into the bank and along to the far window, which was free. He handed the requisition note across to the cashier whilst Locksley and Young took the strong-boxes along to the ‘Enquiries’ counter where there was no glass barrier.
The cashier called a companion across and they picked up the strong-boxes, threaded their way through the line of desks set behind the main counter and went through the doorway on the right of the manager’s office. They were gone just over five minutes.
Fish signed for the money, adding as always that it was unchecked. No one was going to get the chance to charge him up with any difference. He gave the order to lower goggles and then went ahead of the other two who carried the three strong-boxes between them. Once through the swing doors, Fish went down the steps to the pavement whilst Young and Locksley waited.
This was the most dangerous moment, the moment when a gang could be expected to strike. Fish looked right and left and saw no grouping of men, no waiting car at the strategic point behind the truck. He signalled with his head and Young and Locksley came down the steps and followed him across the pavement, between the parked cars, and to the armoured truck. Blether took the strong-boxes and dragged them inside, Locksley climbed in, swung the doors shut, dropped the locking bar and hammered on the door to show this was done.
Fish walked round the off-side of the truck and got into the cab. He wound up the window — swearing at himself for not having done that before entering the bank — and as Young was sitting down he switched on the automatic locking device. He started the engine and switched on the fan that fed fresh air into the cab. When the road was clear, he drew out. At the traffic lights, a hundred yards from the bank, he turned right.
*
Eastern Division H.Q. had been planned and built seemingly without any regard to the creature comforts of those who were going to work in it — one theory was that in those days no one believed policemen were entitled to be comfortable. Fusil’s room, upstairs at the end of the wing, seemed to him to be colder or hotter and stuffier than anywhere else.
He crossed to the single window and stared out at the uninviting view — a row of small Victorian h
ouses under sentence of demolition. How much longer, he wondered, should he wait before applying for a job in another and very much larger force? He needed enough experience as a D.I., yet not so much that he became too mentally restricted by having worked too long for a small borough force. Ambition, he thought ruefully, was a hell of a thing. It kept prodding where perhaps true happiness would best be attained by accepting what was — but if a man was ambitious, he was ambitious and nothing could alter the fact.
He looked at his watch. A quarter to three. With any luck he could be away soon and take Josephine out. However long was it since the two of them had been able to go out together during the week? When he thought of her, there was a softening of his otherwise hard expression. They’d had their rows — they both had strong characters — but there’d never been a single moment when either had wondered how he or she had been such a fool as to get married to the other.
There was a knock on the door and Kerr entered. Fusil studied the tall, well-built detective constable whose face expressed a devil-may-care attitude to life. Kerr, Fusil thought, might become a really good detective since he possessed all the necessary natural abilities, it just depended whether he learned at times to take life more seriously. Fusil returned to his desk. “I’ve had an anonymous letter.” He picked it up from his blotter. “A man called Farr is supposed to be running stag film shows.”
“The one Farr he can’t be is the pompous old councillor,” said Kerr cheerfully.
“He is the councillor,” snapped Fusil. He pushed the letter across his desk. “The notepaper’s obviously expensive and the watermark might just tell you something — try the main shops in town. That sleazy book shop on the corner of Wimpole Street used to sell blue films so chat them up.”
“What about seeing Farr, sir?”
“If anyone sees him, it’s not going to be you!”
Fusil said that that was all. He watched Kerr leave. It would all be a waste of time, he thought, because even if Kerr found out anything relevant — and what real chance was there of that? — it was a hundred pounds to a penny that nothing could be done as far as Farr was concerned. Anyway, what the hell? If adults found amusement in watching stag films, why not let them get on with it? But because he had received an anonymous letter he had to initiate some action so that if the matter ever blew up he could show he had done everything possible. A sensible D.I. soon learned how to protect himself.
He checked on the time again. Five past three. He was off.
*
The armoured truck came to a halt at the Brecon crossroad traffic lights. Three cars back was a 3.8 Jaguar, stolen the previous night in London. Glenton drove it.
Chapter 4
Fortrow, to the east, had no abrupt demarcation line between town and countryside, only an area, about a mile across, in which green fields first shyly appeared, then gradually became more frequent. Even when the countryside was reached, it was noticeable that the spread of houses was gaining ground so that inevitably here too would, in fifteen or twenty years, be yet one more suburb.
The main coastal road ran parallel with the sea and when it climbed up into the hills that ran directly from Fortrow to Appleby, the view was an extensive one, reaching from Appleby across a hundred degree arc of the sea to Fortrow, the mouth of the river Fort, and the buoyed channel.
The armoured truck ground its way laboriously up to the top of a hill and Fish flicked up the indicator stalk to show he was turning off to the left at the next side road. “There’s a big ship out there,” said Young, as he stared past Fish. “Looks like a super-tanker. Know something, Reg? I’ve always thought I’d’ve liked to go to sea.”
“It would have been too much like work for you,” muttered Fish, as he braked.
Young swore. He produced a pack of cigarettes.
“No smoking,” said Fish, in his best parade manner.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s stuffy enough in here without you filling it up with smoke.”
“But I’m dying for a drag — let’s have a window down for a bit?”
Fish didn’t bother to answer. Rules were rules and all the windows would stay shut. Young stared angrily through the windscreen as the truck turned into the road that narrowed until it was little more than a lane: it was no wonder the Empire had been lost with blokes like Fish around to lose it.
They rounded a corner and came up to a red breakdown truck, going so slowly that Fish had to brake.
“What’s the matter with him — gone to sleep?” said Young angrily. “Blow your horn and tell him to get a flaming move on.”
Fish had to brake harder.
*
Glenton gripped the wheel of the Jaguar a shade tighter as he saw, over the low hedge, the top of the crane of the breakdown truck. “Start up,” he ordered.
Weston, sitting in the front passenger seat, switched on a piece of radio equipment that was on his lap. The car had a fitted radio, already switched on, and this immediately emitted a warbling howl. His jammer was working perfectly.
Glenton accelerated hard, then had to brake even harder at the corner which turned out to be so much sharper than he remembered.
“Shall I get out and shove up the L-plates?” jeered Holdman, from the back seat.
Glenton swore crudely.
Once round the corner, they were a hundred yards behind the armoured truck and a further two hundred from the narrowest part of the road: seconds away from action. Glenton looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the road was clear. He closed up on the truck until there was only a five foot gap between them.
Ahead, in the breakdown truck, Riley pulled the nylon stocking more firmly down over his head. He gripped the canister in his right hand and checked yet again that the safety cap was off, exposing the release button. The label on the nine-inch long canister had ‘Danger’ written on it in thick red letters.
Croft braked as the foot high bank on the left curved into the road, reducing the total width by a further foot. The ground beyond sloped away and this gave a view of the road for the next half mile. A small van had just come into sight but otherwise the road was clear, so luck was with them and they had something over thirty seconds clear.
Croft suddenly stopped the breakdown truck and there was a quick squeal of tyres from the armoured truck behind. Riley threw open the door, jumped on to the road, raced round the back of the breakdown truck to the bonnet grille of the armoured truck. The four inch ventilator hose to the cab ended on the near-side, a foot above the bumper. He aimed the jet of the canister between two of the grille slats and pressed the button. The riot gas hissed out fiercely. The fan in the ventilator picked up the gas and forced it back into the sealed cab. The warning on the canister said the gas was very dangerous in any concentration in an enclosed space: Riley kept the button pressed for fully twenty seconds. The guards choked, clawing at the windscreen and windows for air.
Croft could, in the rear-view mirror, just make out the struggles of the two guards. They looked like marionettes seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The driver collapsed first, sprawling across the wheel: the second man retained consciousness only a second longer. Croft blew the truck’s horn once, then jumped out of the cab, raced round to the rear, and lowered the hook of the crane until he could attach it to the front of the armoured truck. Riley climbed up on to the platform by the side of the crane. The auxiliary diesel engine had been running and he put the crane into gear and lifted the armoured truck until the front wheels were well clear of the ground. He locked the crane drum and ran back to his seat in the cab.
The Jaguar had drawn as near alongside the body of the armoured truck as possible. Holdman scrambled on to the roof of the Jaguar and from there was able to stick a fibreglass baffler over the grille of the roof alarm. He was only just in time. The alarm was switched on by those inside the compartment as they realised something was drastically wrong, but the baffler reduced the alarm to little more than a buzz.
The Jag
uar hooted once. In the breakdown truck, Croft engaged first gear, let out the clutch and the engine stalled. He cursed as he realised he had forgotten the need for extra revs because of the weight they were trying to tow. He restarted the engine, accelerated hard, and let out the clutch with such a bang that they jerked forward. Five seconds after moving off, the van coming in the opposite direction reached them and pulled right into its side to let them past.
As they reached twenty miles an hour, the tow began to swing and Croft had hurriedly to reduce to fifteen. At this snail’s pace it seemed as if they were sitting targets for every copper in the country. Croft couldn’t stop wondering about whether the bit of radio equipment that Weston had spent so long making was really working — if it wasn’t, the law would be on to them before they got much further. He’d knock some of the bastards before they landed him.
No police cars roared up. They reached the T-junction and turned left: right led to the Arcoll factory where the pay clerks would be waiting for the money. How soon before they got wise to trouble?
“Burner,” said Croft suddenly, “d’you get a look at them doors? ’Ow long will they take?”
Riley rubbed his right cheek. “I didn’t get a look at nothing.” That was the truth. He had so concentrated his mind on what he had to do that he couldn’t now even say what colour the truck was painted.
The road wound round to the right, between grass fields that were beginning to turn brown from lack of rain. They passed a mellow farmhouse, and then came level with the end of the woods which stretched for over a mile across the hills. Three hundred yards on was a track into the woods that led into a natural clearing. Croft stopped the breakdown truck in the centre and the Jaguar came alongside.
They worked quickly and silently. Riley put the can of gas against the grille of the armoured truck and gave a further twenty second squirt of gas, dropped the can, and went round to the rear. Croft and Glenton brought from the Jaguar oxy-acetylene equipment and two cylinders of gas and Riley connected them up. He lit the gas, put on dark goggles, and began to cut a circle of metal out of the right-hand door. Holdman stood watch at the entrance of the wood, Weston remained in the front seat of the Jaguar, checking that the radio jammer continued to fill the air with its warbling screech that would prevent any coherent message getting through to the police.
Murder Among Thieves (C.I.D Room Book 3) Page 3