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Robert Ryan: Signal Red

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Robert Ryan Signal Red

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Bestselling author Robert Ryan tells the story of the most ambitious robbery of the twentieth century, when seventeen men risked it all in their quest for adventure, success and fame. 1963: an unarmed gang led by the dapper Bruce Reynolds holds up a Royal Mail train at a remote bridge in Buckinghamshire, escaping with millions. The group lay low in a nearby farm but, panicked by the police closing in they clear out, leaving behind numerous fingerprints. Outraged by the gang's audacity and under political pressure for quick arrests, the police move into top gear. As huge quantities of money start to turn up in forests and phone boxes, dumped by nervous middlemen, Scotland Yard begin to track down the robbers, one by one…

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Paddy emerged with the Darjeeling, the 'poncy' tea that

Bruce liked. Bruce took the Castrol mug with a murmured thank you, sipped and smacked his lips appreciatively. 'The Champagne of Teas? You remembered.'

'You banged on about it so much inside, how could I forget?' Bruce stared at him, a slight smirk on his face, until Tony admitted the truth. 'All right, I have this guy who buys Mercs who likes it.'

'I thought it was a bit odd, keeping a caddy just on the off- chance I turn up.'

'Thanks, Paddy,' Tony said.

Paddy, a weather-beaten Dubliner of uncertain vintage, gave a smile that showed just how few teeth he had and retreated back to the workshop. 'Any more trouble from Mammie Jolson?' Bruce asked, the pleasantries over.

'No. I meant to say thanks.'

'You already did.' Tony had sent over a case of Chivas Regal. 'But it was Gordy really what put the word in. I mean, nobody's frightened of me, are they?' Hugh 'Mammie' Jolson had tried to collect pensions – protection money – from the dealers in the street. Most had paid up; Tony had called Bruce who had said he'd 'have a word', even though north of the river was no-man's land to him and 'having a word' wasn't his true calling.

Bruce was a thief, an opportunist, from smash and grab to safe-breaking, but he wasn't a strong-arm man. Not for him mixing it with the likes of the Krays, Richardsons, Frasers, Foremans or Hills. He enjoyed his elegant clothes and his good looks too much to get his hands dirty that way. Besides, as he said, nobody was ever scared of him; you wouldn't use Bruce to put the frighteners on anyone. But he knew men who were skilled at that kind of thing – men like Charlie Wilson or Gordon Goody.

Charlie was your down-the-line London chancer, not stupid by any means, but he conformed to type. As Bruce said of him, he was 'a hard worker, reliable and a very funny fucker when he wanted to be'. Gordy, though, struck Tony as a strange mix – a handsome face on a thug's body, a hairdresser with a taste for Jermyn Street finery and thick gold bracelets, who was also capable of sudden violence.

A Tony Curtis haircut and two broken arms, please, Gordon.

Anyway, however it had been achieved – and often Gordy's trademark growl and daunting physical presence were enough to generate results – Mammie Jolson was off his back.

'You need some better stock.' Bruce pointed at a split-rear- windowed left-hand-drive Beetle. 'Not bloody German bombers.'

'What can I do for you, Bruce?' There was a price to be paid for unleashing Gordy, they both knew that. Bruce didn't stray far from his normal South London patch of the Elephant and Casde, Wandsworth, Battersea, Camberwell and Peckham without good reason – unless it involved Bobby Tambling and Chelsea. He was here to collect.

'Jags,' he said, peering inside the Ace. 'This one straight?'

'Had a prang,' Tony admitted. 'Insurance write-off. Drives OK. Well, pulls to the left a little when you brake. Can't seem to sort that out.'

'Chassis?'

'Maybe. Have to put it back on the rig. Or sell it to some chinless wonder. I thought you used Yul for cars?'

John 'Yul' Jones was a slap-headed chiseller whose only resemblance to his namesake, Mr Brynner, was the absence of hair. 'That bald cunt is currently chatting to Tommy Butler about a little job he pulled in Penge that he neglected to mention to me. So we might not see him for a while.'

He said the policeman's name with a mix of disdain and admiration. The CID's Tommy Butler, who relished his nickname of 'the Grey Fox', had a way of getting confessions and convictions from even the tightest-lipped villains. And Yul's mouth was not that firmly zipped.

'What kind of Jags?' Tony asked casually. 'And how many?'

'The usual kind.' Nicked, he meant, and untraceable. 'Two.'

Tony hesitated. He knew that to ask any more questions would pull him deeper into whatever scheme Bruce Reynolds had in mind – and not necessarily to his benefit. Like the futile escape Bruce had organised from the Gaynes Hall borstal, which had ended with them doing a jolt at the much harsher Wandsworth unit. This time around, he didn't want to end up having a 'chat' with Tommy Butler like Yul. But Bruce was right: he needed better stock. A bit of cash to inject into the cars would come in handy, plus there was that Jolson business to square. 'Anything special? The Jags, I mean.'

'Well, perhaps. I'd like you to talk to my man about it. He's particular, he is.'

Tony didn't like the sound of that. Some wheel-men were so superstitious they insisted on the same colour upholstery in their getaway vehicle each time, let alone whether the motor was booted with crossplys or radials. You could waste days trying to find or create exactly the right spec. 'Send him along.'

Reynolds grimaced. 'Let's not do it here. What you doin' Saturday?'

Tony shrugged. 'I was going to see Lawrence of Arabia.''

'He's busy.' Bruce took off his glasses and polished them with a spotless handkerchief before replacing them. 'We'll go up to the Midlands and watch my driver race.'

'Race? Who is it – Graham Hill?'

They both laughed but then Reynolds looked serious. 'One day, he could be. Mark my words. His name is Roy James. Pick you up here at about nine?'

As soon as he nodded, Tony Fortune knew that Bruce had snared him once again.

Franny Reynolds was behind the counter of the antique shop when he walked in. She was playing 'Let's Twist Again' on the HMV record player, her eyes closed, lost in the swinging motion of the dance.

Charlie Wilson stood and watched her for a while. It was a gaze of appreciation, rather than lust. She was married to one of his oldest friends; he had known Bruce since 1943, when they had shared an Anderson shelter. Bruce was the man who had once saved him from a chivving at the hands of a razor gang outside the Wimbledon Palais. Charlie had been all for taking them on, but Bruce reckoned that fourteen to one – he didn't count himself as a fighter – was not good odds, even for a little maniac like Charlie. Bruce, already tall for his age, had towered over Stevie Pyle, the leader, and talked them out of striping young Chas. Bruce had even ended up discussing Catcher in the Rye, The Naked Lunch and The Manchurian Candidate with one of the tearaways later, at the coffee stall on Battersea Bridge.

It was why Charlie trusted Bruce, though: he didn't think like the rest of them. Charlie, Buster Edwards, another South London thief, and to some extent Gordon Goody ran on tram- tracks. You knew where you got on and got off with them. Bruce had a series of branch lines, which meant his mind went in different directions.

Chubby Checker was nearing the end of his invitation to the dance when Charlie finally spoke, his voice an imitation of Bruce's lighter cockney accent. 'What do you think this is? The Scotch Club?'

Franny nearly leaped out of her skin. Charlie began to laugh at her flustered fumbling with the arm of the record player. It made a loud scratching noise as the needle ripped across the grooves. She turned and faced him. 'Chas! You bastard!'

Charlie smiled at her. She was lovely all right, even devoid of make-up as she was now. Bruce had once dated her older sister but it was Franny who had written to him while he was inside, sixteen-year-old Franny who was waiting, all grown up, when he got out. Today, in slacks and a stripy top, she could still pass for a schoolgirl.

'You ought to get a bell on that door,' he told her. 'Anyone could sneak up on you.'

'We don't get that many customers.'

Charlie looked around the store. It was called Milestones and it was meant to be an antique shop, although most of it was tat. There were bentwood chairs piled high, a pair of old joannas, a couple of oak tables, bed headboards, a wall of wardrobes, chrome fireside sets made redundant by High Speed Gas, and canteens of cutlery in velvet-lined boxes. But nothing you might call an heirloom. It was hard to imagine anything in the shop being a Milestone in anyone's life. That wasn't the point; its job was to give Bruce a respectable front, like Charlie's work at the fruit and veg market or Gordy's hairdressing. 'Anything new in?'

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