The Bedford Heist

by Frederick Linden-Wyatt

  To cause more confusion his gang should hit the two jewellers exactly at the same time as this could cause confusion at the police station as other alarms would also be ringing at 10.45. The police may well assume that it’s a fault on the system especially as all the CCTV cameras were also down. The prime targets would be Baker Brothers Diamonds and John Bull & Co jewellers both situated in St. Peters Street. They both stock some very expensive jewellery and watches and they should make a small fortune from 15 minutes work. He asked me what I wanted out of it and I told him that I would want 20% of the take once sold on, which would go towards the cost of setting up all the other diversionary precautions. He said that that answered the money side but what else was I getting out of the deal and why was I involving his team. I gave him a straight answer and said that the way the government had failed my wife and the way the new governor had tried to stich me up, I wanted revenge.

  I told him that I could set up two teams to hit the two jewellers, but the escape route would take his men away from the safe route he had planned for all my other teams. I also told him that I wanted his gang and any other team to hit the big stores in the town centre, but this couldn’t take place until after 11.45 am. I went on to state that the police commissioner had been moaning that he didn’t have enough officers to manage 999 calls and all I would be doing is proving his point.

  Mohammed still wasn’t sure I could be trusted but I said that trust was the same for both of us. He asked what would stop him becoming a grass in return of some years off his 22 year sentence and I mentioned the name of Shuheb Alweda to him and told him I knew the truth behind his death and where he had disposed of the body. I said that I knew it was his first kill to prove himself, but he had panicked and made some silly mistakes. I said that if he did the dirty on me, he would not only have an unhappy stay inside with a strip search every day, he would also be charged with murder.

  I told him he should have confessed to all his sins before he went to court and he would have only have been given around the same number of years for both offences but would have had a clean sheet when he was finally released. I had knocked the smile off his face, and he said that he was willing to help. What I forgot to mention to Mohammed was that his two targets would hit the panic button 15 minutes before our six teams hit their target banks and any spare police crew would be sent to deal with their robbery first and tie up any available foot soldiers maybe pounding the beat in the Bedford town centre. They would be sent on foot to St. Peters Street which was away from my men and that was fine by me.

  Chapter 53. Bedford gangs doing their bit

  As pre-arranged two sets of gang members entered the two jewellery shops. The first team of three gang members entered the Baker Brothers Diamonds store and there was only one young girl behind the counter. The young lady who looked up knew straight away that the men entering the store looked like trouble. Within seconds she had a gun pointing to her head and was told to move away from the counter and open the door to the rear of the store where they knew the higher price items would be secured in the safe. The second gang member turned the open sign on the door to closed, locked the door and pulled the blind down. The young store assistant keyed the code into the inner door lock but must have put the wrong number in and she was told to try again but this would be her last chance. What the gang member wasn’t aware of was that the code the young lady had entered first wasn’t a mistake but by entering the number it set off the silent alarm. Her second attempt let the robbers through to the back office and the safe.

  There were two other members of staff in the rear of the store, one was an old man in his sixties and a younger Asian woman. The old man was told to open the safe but he said he couldn’t as it had a time lock on it. The ploy failed and the second gang member hit him across his face with the back of his hand and told him he had heard that one before so he had to the count of three or he would see his young store assistant shot. He was still shaken by the force of the back hander he had taken but the gang member knew that it wouldn’t have been that hard as he didn’t want to knock him out. He pointed the gun to the head of the pretty young store assistant and started to count, one, two and it was then that the young store assistant wet her pants by the time the gang member said three the old man stuck his hands in the air as a sign of surrender and opened the safe.

  The third gang member took the Asian young lady to the front of the store and instructed her to unlock the display counter and remove the rings and other expensive jewellery. To save time he had been told to bring with him a long bar-b-que skewer and with the top of the suitcase now open he simply slid the skewer under the row of rings and lifted the complete row in one quick action and they dropped to the bottom of the suitcase. This took around 5 minutes and when he couldn’t get any more in the suitcase he went to the back of the shop to see how the others were doing. He was amazed to see that some of the top watches in the safe were from some of the world’s most renowned brands, which included designers such as Rolex, Gucci, TAG, Heuer, Raymond Weil and Longines. Some of these were valued at over £20 grand so there must be money in the town somewhere. There were rings from designers such as Christian Bauer and the Messika brand from Paris. There were also a range of gold jewellery from the likes of Clogau Gold, Marco Bicego’s, and from the Italian goldsmith Fope which offered a nice 18ct white gold bracelet priced at just over £14 grand.

  The team quickly tidied up and was about to leave when the phone rang. Everyone stood still as if they had been frozen in ice but the phone kept ringing. The team leader pointed the gun to the old man’s head and told him to answer it without letting on that they were being robbed. He answered and the robbers could hear that it was the police. They heard the message from the policeman which said “Good morning Sir, it’s PC Gallagher here from Bedford police and I was just checking if there was a fault on your alarm system as the John Bull jewellers down the street had also gone off at the same time. With the gun pointed at his temples the old man said that everything was fine and it was always going off. He said to PC Gallagher I forgot to ask when I met you in the bank last week how your wife was doing with her pregnancy. The policeman stuttered a bit but came back that she was doing well and thanked him for asking. The owner ended the phone call and the robber asked for any mobile phones which he took control of and ripped the telephone line out of the wall. He told the three jewellers that they had done well but that he would leaving one of the gang across the street and if they saw that they had come out from the back of the store within the next half hour, they would pay the price.

  The gang’s robbery at John Bull jewellers just a few doors down St. Peters Street also ran like clockwork and the second gang bagged some nice rewards including several Breitling watches which sold at just over £6 grand a piece. John Bull stocked a good selection of valuable watches but lacked the quantity of gold jewellery that Baker Brothers Diamonds had. But even so it would make a good mornings work.

  I had already informed the gang’s leader where to tell his staff to deliver their haul so that it could be fenced. Most of the more expensive watches would be sent overseas as they would make more money from the likes of the rich Russians. I had already told Mohammed that he must make it clear to his gang members that they were not to keep anything as a memento as they didn’t want the police finding a stolen watch round one of his member’s wrist. The route I had given him was the safest way to turn the goodies in to cash and the process should take no more than three weeks. I knew that he would check out the name I had given him but he would find that I had given him an introduction to one of the best dealers in the country.

  Chapter 54. The Clarence Street Fire.

  At Clarence street at around 10.50 am the fire engines siren could be heard as it moved along the street but not too close to the fire. The fire chief asked the panicking policeman what the situation was and he was informed that there were two people were still in number 7 but the old lady was disabled and bed ridden and would ne
ed their special lifting gear to safely remove her. The fire officer soon got his crew to start putting water on the house and the one next to it. He told the police officer that he couldn’t risk sending men into the house as they would be in too much danger as the roof on number 7 looks ready to collapse. Within a matter of minutes, the roof of number 7 Clarence Street and the house next to it number 5 toppled over and collapsed on the top floor of the houses. It would be a matter of minutes until the roof and attic space on the remaining terraced houses would collapse like a set of dominoes falling one after the other.

  What made matters worse was that it looked as if the street had been used as a free car park by people working in the town centre and none of the cars could be moved. Some workers were going to have a long walk home at the end of their shift in the town. The fourth car was also well alight, and the petrol tank also exploded sending flames to the other side of the street and setting more homes on fire. Clarence Street looked like a scene out of Aleppo in Syria after the troops had flushed out ISIS but unlike Aleppo hopefully the residents of Clarence Street would be re-housed locally but using the Grenfell tower disaster in London as a guide they would stand more chance of being rehoused in Aleppo than in the fifth riches nation on earth.

  With explosion of the petrol tanks on the cars parked along the street the fire was spreading along both sides of Clarence Street. Most of the terraced houses had been converted to flats which had made the developer a nice little packet, but none had any form of fire protection as they didn’t need to have it. Many of the flats were then rented out by local agencies and with the influx of EU citizens many flats were overcrowded with sometime 3 or 4 families living in the one flat. It was impossible for the police or the fire service to find out who owned what and they had done what they could to clear everyone apart from the old lady in number 7, out of their homes. However, some of the flats were shared by none EU citizens and no one answered the front door just in case it was a person from immigration control on the other side.

  All the fire chief could do was to aim water at the roofs and the houses that were on fire but he had no chance to control the fire as he had to pull back to the Filler Hill Road end for their own safety. By 11.00 am the scene was ablaze and one old man who had been rescued from number 11 Clarence Street told a local reporter from Bedford Today that it reminded him of the bombing of Albert Street Bedford during the Second World War. He said that he was only 9 at the time and Bedford was bombed on a regular basis by German aircraft that had a few bombs left over from their main bombing run which would have been to one of the Norther cities in England. Thankfully, my parents owned a shop which had a large cellar and we all slept down there during the night.

  It wasn’t until around 11.15 am that the fire was brought under control with back up fire crews arriving from St. Neots, Sandy and Biggleswade. They tackled the fire from the Queen’s Street end but again they faced access problems caused by parked cars. It makes you think how many other streets in the UK had the same problem and no doubt that there would be an expensive and slow public enquiry which would hopefully bring new laws in to place so that every street in the land would be able to be accessed by a fire crew, should the need arise.

  It wasn’t until 11.25 that the rescuers managed to get in to number 7 and were expecting to find two dead bodies, which they did. It was impossible to check what was left of the bodies as they had been partly cremated by the intense heat of the fire and crushed by falling debris. No doubt the paramedic would be rewarded posthumously for his bravery and maybe as a result all paramedics would be paid better from the fabulous and dangerous job they do.

  Chapter 55. Party day 10.50 am Greyfriars Police Station

  At the Greyfriars Police Station the duty sergeant was made aware that the alarm system for both jewellery shops in St Peters Street had been activated and the control room manager wanted to know if he should ask a crew to attend. The duty sergeant said that it was strange that both alarms went off at the same time and it was probably due to the same fault they were facing with the CCTV system. He told the control manager to see if he could get one of the officers who were attending the Clarence Street explosion to investigate but not for it to take priority. He said that if there were any community police officers in the town centre then they should make their way to the jewellers to see if they had a fault on their alarm system.

  PC Gallagher informed the duty sergeant that he thought that something was wrong at the Baker Brothers Diamonds store as he had phoned the owner to check but he had sounded strange and had asked about his wife’s pregnancy, but everyone knew that he didn’t even have a partner let alone a pregnant wife. He told the PC to get hold of any available policemen and direct them to the jewellers in St. Peters Street as soon as possible but the duty sergeant knew that with the explosion in Cavendish Street all available staff would be tied up there.

  The police finally arrived at the jewellers at 11.06am but the robbers had long gone by then. The staff were obviously shaken up but the Asian woman from the Baker Brothers Diamonds store said that she thought that she recognised one of the robbers as she had seen him at a night club only a few weeks ago. She said that she quite liked him, but her friend told her to stay away as he was a member of a gang that dealt in drugs and other nasty things. The police rushed around to where they knew the gang would be hanging out but when they arrived all they found was a group of young men playing snooker and was informed that they had been there all morning. The officers searched everyone but could find no trace of expensive watches or jewellery on them. It’s a good job that the gang’s boss had made sure that no one had kept any item as if they had then they would be spending a long time behind bars. The haul was well on its way to north London and no trace of it would be ever seen in Bedford again.

  Chapter 56. NatWest, 81 High Street, Bedford

  There are six groups doing the hard work of robbing the main banks and the first teams target was the NatWest bank in the Bedford High Street. The team to hit the bank was made up of Douglas Boswell, Alan Frazer and Simon Westdale, all who had helped me get everything ready for the heist. The bank has an easy access via double large doors to a modern looking interior. When the team arrived, the bank was busy so they attached the Bank Closed until Noon Today notices and waited 15 minutes for the bank to clear. At exactly 10.59 am Alan and Simon enter the bank followed a minute later by Douglas who had just fixed the Police – Do Not Cross tape at chest level across the banks entrance. Alan went up to the first teller and instructed her to stand away from her side of the counter and to tell the next teller to make her way to the door which led to several large rooms at the rear with the safe being in the next room to the manager’s office.

  The teller who opened the door was told to return to her position behind the counter but to keep her hands out to her side. Alan knew that he was now in control of the front part of the bank and Doug and Simon would take control of the rear. Doug started to round up all the staff at the rear of the bank and got them to sit down on the floor in the room at the rear of the building. Once they were all gathered a bin was passed around collecting all their mobile phones. The manager and his assistant were told to disconnect any form of communication in the room which includes any computers, fax machines or phones. They were told that this was very important and would be told how important it was before they left. Doug then told the manager to follow him and once outside the room he was asked who had the keys to the two ATM’s which were filled from inside the bank. He said that he had the keys and he was told to hand it over to his assistant who would now proceed to the front of the bank where Alan would be waiting for him. The manager was then taken into the safe room and was told to open the safe. The manager said that he couldn’t do that as it had a time lock on it. Doug chuckled and told the manager to stop delaying the inevitable as he knew he was telling a porky pie. Once the safe was opened Doug instructed the manager to place all the notes in his suitcase except the old paper notes which w
ere no longer worth anything. He was also told to place all the foreign currency in the case.

  At the front of the bank Simon was systematically getting the tellers to remove all the notes for each till including the locked draw just below the till which held a backup supply of notes. Once the tellers had placed the bank notes in Simon’s suitcase, they were guided to join the other bank members at the rear. This left Alan at the front of the bank with the assistant manager who was told to open each ATM and remove that notes and place them into the suitcase. Before leaving all employees were now in the rear room and Doug produced the dummy timer bomb from his suitcase and placed it on top of a filing cabinet so everyone could see that the countdown clock had been started and was currently showing 60 minutes. Doug explained to the bank staff that they shouldn’t move until the countdown clock is showing 00:00. The device has three trigger settings, No.1 will detect any loud noise – so no shouting. No 2 it will detect any signal sent from any computer or phone and No. 3 checks the room pressure – so once we have left and started the countdown don’t open any windows or doors or you will kill everyone in this room. Before leaving I’ll ask again, are there any mobile phones that haven’t yet been handed in and one of the tellers held up her phone which was placed in the bin outside the room.