Robert Ryan - Signal Red

It was at times like this Buster felt vulnerable to a strange melancholy. It blew through him like an east wind, cutting into his very heart, almost making him physically shiver. He wasn't sure what caused it, but for the time it had him in its grip, there were no jokes that could crack a smile, no drink that could cheer him. A half-bottle of Bell 's wouldn't even take the edge off it; if anything, it made it worse. So he had to keep active, prevent the black mood from forming.

The washing-up done, Buster turned on the radio section of the Pye and as he waited for the valves to warm, he took all the hat-sizes and placed them in an envelope to deliver to Frank Rossman at his breaker's yard in New Cross. He must remember to take a brolly along, just in case. Frank, who was half-gypsy and worked in a vest in all weathers, probably didn't have an umbrella anything like the ones the City gents favoured.

The radiogram burst into life. The Northern Dance Orchestra and Bernard Herrmann came on, so he switched to Whack-O! with Jimmy Edwards, hoping for a lift in his spirits.

'Sir, sir. I am being punished for something I didn't do.'

'That's outrageous, young Carter. What didn't you do?'

1My homework, sir.'

'You cheeky blighter. You know what you need, young man?'

What the young man needed, Buster knew, was six of the best and sure enough there soon came the sound of a cane swishing through the air and making contact with buttocks, followed by a yelp of pain. Buster wasn't sure why it was amusing. It wasn't when it had happened to him at school, which it did with tedious regularity.

The thought of the beatings reminded him of something. Buster went back to the kitchen and from under the sink fetched his new toy. It was a length of pipe-spring, used by plumbers to bend copper pipes without crimping them. He'd spotted it in a builders' merchants. He'd filled it with lead shot and then bound it with thick tape. In its new role, as a 'persuader', it would work a treat. He mimed beating it around one of the guards' heads. Charlie had a cosh he had bought from a Guardia Civil in Madrid, but Buster reckoned the flexiness of his pipe made it even more effective. Plus if the Old Bill found it on you, you could always claim you were doing City & Guilds plumbing at night school and had made a few modifications. Much harder to explain why you had a Spanish police baton down your trouser leg.

He gave it a few more strokes and then smiled when he heard the key in the door. June was back. He'd done it. He'd kept that angry black dog at bay. He'd be all right now.

The pub was on the South Circular Road, not far from St Dunstan's, the posh boys' school that seemed out of place in working-class Catford. 'A rose on a turd,' is how Len put it, then changed his mind as he looked around at streets still bomb-marked from the war. 'Or on a bloody great cowpat.'

Billy parked the Vauxhall outside while Len counted out fifty pounds in a mixture of one- and five-pound notes. Then he put an extra fiver on top. 'This is from the information fund. Use the five to pay for any drinks. Give him a score to keep him sweet near the start, then the thirty at the end. With the promise of more to come.'

'And the change from a fiver?'

'What change?'

Len raised an eyebrow towards his black widow's peak. 'There won't be any change. God's sake. Nobody ever bothers putting anything back into the information fund. It's one-way traffic. OK, off you go. He'll be by himself, reading the Sporting Life. Just ready for pluckin'.'

Billy hesitated. 'Aren't you coming?'

'The hell I am,' Duke drawled, before switching back to his normal, non-Wayne voice. 'You can't run a snitch mob- handed. It's a one-to-one relationship.'

'But-'

Len gripped his arm, tight. 'If you're going to mention the new bloody guidelines, I'll beat you to death with this gear- stick. Now get in there. Public Bar. Pick you up in an hour.'

'What will you do?'

Len growled. 'Pick you up in an hour.'

Billy opened the door and got out of the car. The DS winked at him, restarted the engine and left him standing on the South Circular. He looked over at the pub – or 'tavern' as it styled itself – and took a deep breath. Time to meet their new snout.

His legs wobbled slightly as he crossed the two lanes of sluggish traffic. Just like when he went up on stage on school prize day to collect his reward. Why was he so nervous? This was what he had wanted from day one at Hendon. And it was hardly his first snitch. But it was his first as a Squad man. So, bizarrely, he felt like that young man shaking hands with the headmaster as the man handed over the award for most original English essay. It had been The Boy's Book of Modern Marvels, full of cutaways like the ones that appeared in the Eagle comic. Billy still had it, was still fascinated by the detail exposed when you stripped the skin off a Lancaster Bomber or a Hawker Hunter or a nuclear power station.

Inside the pub, he clocked the nark immediately. Young, spotty, cocky from the way he flexed his shoulders, as if trying to get the chip on it to shift. He was indeed reading the Sporting Life, but then so were half the other customers. The walls of the tavern were covered in sporting pictures: a few boxers, the odd golfer, but the rest was heavy on the gee- gees, with portraits of Scobie Breasley and Lester Piggott dominating.

There was, he had noted, a Jack Swift bookmakers next door. A year ago, no doubt, bets would have been taken in this very bar. Now, with close to fifty new betting shops opening each week across the country, the tradition of the pub bookie and his runners would probably die out.

Billy bought himself a pint of Guinness, moved to the snout's table and sat down. He held out his hand. 'Billy Naughton.'

The young man didn't move to take it. 'Yeah?'

His sort hated the police even when they were going to deal with them. Billy was used to it. He had lost half of his schoolmates when he told them about Hendon. They all had older brothers or sisters who had had run-ins with the law, usually during the dance-hall fights that had flashed across Britain in an epidemic from the late 1940s onwards. None of them had any respect for coppers. Their heroes were Niven Craig – The Velvet Kid – and later his brother Christopher, who famously told Derek Bentley to 'Let him have it'. For months his former chums had hummed the theme from the radio series The Adventures of PC 49 at him. He was only grateful that he had left school before that irritating whistling from Dixon of Dock Green became popular. 'Mr Haslam sent me.'

'Did he now?' Several pair of eyes had glanced over, so the nark took Billy's hand and gave it a perfunctory shake.

Billy looked the youngster up and down. He had a scarf wrapped round his throat, but it couldn't quite hide the yellowing of old bruising. Duke had said that the lad had a grudge. He had turned him up after Yul had admitted that Charlie Wilson had expressed some interest in acquiring stolen Jags. 'Said you was interested in a bit of work. Digging.'

'Might be.'

'Can I get you a drink?'

The kid pointed at his glass, which was still a third full. 'Double Diamond.'

'Coming right up.'

'And a Teacher's,' the lad added quickly.

Another one with a sudden attack of nerves, Billy thought. No doubt his throat was drying and his palms sweating as he realised what he was about to do. The enormity of it. The finality. Billy didn't blame him. No matter what he had done to him, it took some balls to grass up Charlie Wilson.

'All right, Derek,' Billy said, as if granting a condemned man his last wishes. 'Whatever you want.'

Red Lion pub, Derby Gate, November 1962

'There's something going down at the airport!' Billy Naughton wanted to yell as he walked into the Red Lion. 'And we're fuckin' on to it!'