Robert Ryan - Signal Red

'But what we do know is that Charlie Wilson is running around like a bull with its bollocks in a vice.'

' Wilson?' asked Billy. 'We didn't see him.'

'No. As I said, down Surrey way, apparently,' Williams told them, with all the deliberation of a primary school teacher. 'He was at the business end – unlike you two. Now, Charlie is knocking heads together to try and find out who might have come into the possession of two nice three point four Jags, and when he finds them, he's going to fuck them in the ear then take them out on one of the Bovril boats and dump them in the North Sea.'

Bovril boats were the slurry ships that sailed from Beckton, full of London 's human waste, reduced to a thick oil-like liquid. It was released somewhere away from the English coast, in designated dumping grounds. Rumour had it that, for a consideration, some of the crews wouldn't mind taking a little extra waste – suitably weighted – and disposing of it.

'I don't get it,' said Billy.

Now, for the first time Frank Williams smiled, creasing his face into deep furrows, and Len Haslam allowed himself a little smirk.

'It means,' Duke said to his young apprentice, 'that some cheeky fuckers went and half-inched the motors our lads had nicked to do their job in Surrey.' Now he began to laugh. 'Which is why Reynolds was standing there looking like someone who'd just put his finger through the lavatory paper.'

Williams chortled at that.

'Fuck me,' said Len, 'what I wouldn't have given to see the faces on the boys who discovered someone had robbed the robbers.'

'Priceless,' Williams agreed. 'Absolutely priceless.' Then his face resumed its previous seriousness. 'But look, lads, it's Keystone Cops and Ealing bloody Comedies all round, isn't it? Meanwhile, N Division is wondering what happened to their support from the Yard. We are not the Don't Give A Flying Fuck Squad. I know you were pissed off about the airport fiasco. Who wasn't?' He picked up a pencil and pointed it at each in turn. 'Let it go. They'll pop up again. They're thieves. Stand on me, Len, we haven't heard the last of them. All right?'

'Yes, skipper,' said Duke.

'All right, then.' Williams seemed to relax a little. 'Then fuck off and catch me some real villains.'

Bruce Reynolds downed the last of his pint and said quietly, 'Leave it out, Charlie.'

Charlie Wilson ground his teeth at the thought of leaving anything out. 'We look like cunts.'

'We'll live. Two more here, love.' They were in the Angelsey Arms in Chelsea, a nice boozer with a dartboard and well- kept beer. It was true there were some sniggers when the story got out, but Bruce didn't mind. It was just one more tall story that would get taller over the years. Charlie, however, and to a lesser extent Buster and Gordy, had taken it as a personal affront. But Bruce knew the cars were fair game, as long as it was some firm he didn't know. Now if it had been mates, then he'd be angry. But he was pretty sure it wasn't. So, like a colonel after a skirmish that had gone badly, he was ready to regroup his men and plan the next part of the campaign.

Bruce paid for the fresh pints and waited till the young girl in the scandalously short skirt moved away from their section of the bar. 'It's a shame,' he said. 'It was a nice one.' It had been a train from Bournemouth, fingered by a BR porter, with money unloaded at Weybridge. Roy had been looking forward to it because the getaway route took in part of the old Brooklands circuit, spiritual home of the monied toffs known as the Bentley Boys. The idea of taking a hot Jag stuffed with money round there had tickled him.

It had been a simple plan: wait till the cash bags were unloaded, then use numbers and brute force to overwhelm the police and security guards and have it away in the 3.4s.

'Do you believe in fate, Charlie?'

Charlie shrugged. 'I know what fate's got in store for those monkeys who nicked the cars if I ever find them.'

'I'm sure.' Bruce raised his glass to a DS at the far end of the bar and indicated to the barmaid that the tosspot's drink was on him. Neutral ground, after all. 'But I mean, you know, that some things are pre-ordained. Meant to be. We should have been able to live off Heathrow for years, shouldn't we?' Charlie nodded. 'And Weybridge looked like a steal.'

Charlie pursed his lips. 'It still could be.'

'Nah. It's gone.' Bruce knew there was too much speculation out there, too many whispers about what the Jags had been for. He doubted anyone could pinpoint the exact job, but he would steer clear of Surrey for the foreseeable future. And Jaguars. 'Fate, see? Wasn't written in the stars.'

Charlie spluttered into his pint. 'What are you now? Nostra- fuckin'-damus?'

Bruce was impressed that Charlie knew who Nostradamus was, but let it pass. 'It's almost like we were waiting for the real one, the genuine article.' He indicated the dartboard with his glass. 'Game of arrows?'

Charlie collected two pouches of darts from behind the bar and moved over to the corner. Bruce rubbed the board clean and chalked 301 at the top of two columns. 'Double to start.'

Charlie weighed the Unicorn darts in his hand and fussed with the flights, licking finger and thumb and smoothing them out. Then he stepped up and threw a double top.

'Bollocks,' said Bruce. But Charlie's next two throws only added forty-one. He wrote in the opening score and took his place at the line.

'Thing is, Gordy and Brian have come with something else. Something better.'

'What's that?' Charlie wasn't keen on Brian Field, the bent solicitor. Oh, he had his uses all right, but at the other end of the business, some way down the line, when it came to briefs and bail. He didn't like the idea of him becoming active in the actual thievery.

Bruce's first effort went home into the fibre of the board with a satisfying thunk. 'Double eighteen.'

'Yeah, yeah. What's better?'

The jukebox kicked into life and Bruce frowned over at the greaser type who had fed money into the machine. Leather jacket, enough oil on his hair to run a fair-sized chippy and stiletto-thin winkle pickers. It was a style rapidly going out of fashion, replaced by something neater, smarter, of which Bruce approved. He heard the whirr of the Wurlitzer's mechanism. What had the kid selected? Looking at him, he was likely to be a Gene Vincent or Johnny Kidd and the Pirates boy.

The Beatles came from the speakers – 'Ask Me Why', the B-side of 'Please Please Me'. Bruce relaxed; he quite liked the group. They might be gobby Scousers with long hair, but they were just a bunch of working-class kids trying to make some money Mind you, they had started using Dougie Millings, his and Charlie's favourite tailor, and now you couldn't get into the shop for screaming kids or pop groups wanting to get the Beatles look. They would have to move on again.

He threw a triple twenty and stepped to one side to give himself a decent line of sight.

'So what is it?' asked Charlie once more. 'What's better?'

Bruce winked at him, and Charlie could sense his excitement. He had already left Weybridge behind. That's why he didn't give a toss about the Jags and who took them. They were history. Bruce felt it was no good letting a slight fester or harbouring a grudge if it got in the way of future business. Charlie, he knew, didn't let go of an insult quite so easily. Bruce had to refocus him.

'I don't know what, exactly.' Bruce hesitated with his last dart poised in mid-air. 'But Gordy said how much.' He let fly. 'There you go. One hundred and eighty.'

'Bruce,' snapped Charlie. 'What's the griff? How fucking much?'

The Colonel dangled the same bait that had been used to snare his interest. He was guessing until he met the inside man up at Finsbury Park with Gordy and Brian Field, but it was a nice, round juicy plum to dangle in front of Charlie. 'Big money.'