Robert Ryan: Signal Red

banditry, that there was no room for Robin Hoods. But it had the opposite effect to the one intended: it created a wave of sympathy for the robbers that a ten- or fifteen-year term would not have generated. The thirty years made them martyrs.

The Establishment, of course, must have felt besieged from all sides at that point in history, and the hefty sentences were part of it blindly lashing out at changes it couldn't understand. The ancien regime didn't know it, but the full force of the 1960s was about to burst over them. The robbery must have seemed just yet another worrying signifier – along with Peter Cook and the contraceptive Pill, Mick Jagger and miniskirts, Marlon Brando and Lenny Bruce – of a descent into anarchy. Baffled, out-of-touch authorities would make similar mistakes a few years later and over-react by busting the Rolling Stones and prosecuting gormless hippy magazines.

'Of course,' Bill continued, 'those with wives or girlfriends who stood by them managed the best. Roy never had that.'

'You ever get married, Mr Naughton?' I asked as we walked nearer the entrance.

'Yes. To a WPC. Patti. She passed away last year.'

'Sorry to hear that.'

'Yeah. Good while it lasted, though. Very good. What about you? Your missus ever come back?'

We reached the front door of Roy 's house, which I had left open. 'Only us. Don't shoot!' I shouted, only half-joking, then turned back to the copper who had once saved my bacon. 'No. She was disgusted that I couldn't even manage thieving properly. Divorced me. I've got a son out there somewhere who I last saw when he was just a couple of months old. Alfie.'

'Must hurt.'

It was a lot worse than that, but the pain had numbed over

the years. It was a wicked thing to do though, to keep me away from my boy. I sometimes felt I'd been punished worse than the train robbers for not doing the crime. I had heard that Marie had recently moved to Dubai or some other Godforsaken sandbox.

'Yeah, but I remarried,' I sighed. 'Did a Bruce and Roy. Chose a younger woman.'

Naughton dropped his voice as we neared the kitchen. 'Bruce struck lucky with Franny, but I hope you made a better job of it than Roy.'

I thought of Jane, still in bed at that hour, curled up, the echo of her perfume still on my skin. 'I did, I think.'

Bill walked ahead of me into the kitchen and sniffed the air. 'Ah, still a menace to society I see, gentlemen. Should I call the Drugs Squad?'

'Not unless we need fresh supplies. Those bastards are the biggest dealers in London. You want some first?' Bruce asked, holding out the joint. He had moved to sit next to Roy, at the opposite side of the table from where I was standing with Bill Naughton.

Bill shook his head. 'No, not for me. I'll have a drop of whisky, though.'

I poured him one and handed it over. His eyes went to the gun on the table, still lying in front of Roy. 'Cheers.'

'Bruce here wanted the griff on who grassed them up, Bill,' I said.

'Well, as you know, lads, I never did get to see it through to the end. I was taken off the Flying Squad well before the trial and moved to CID Uxbridge. Didn't get back on the Sweeney for another – oh, twelve years.'

'They shift you because you was too clean?' Bruce asked. 'Because you wouldn't bundle us up like the others?'

Bill sighed. 'Not that old tune, Bruce. You were done fair and square.'

'I was.' Bruce had been caught in Torquay, down on his luck and with the remaining money dwindling fast, after five years on the run following spells in the South of France and Mexico. Rumour had it he simply shrugged when "tommy Butler had turned up at the door, as if he had been expecting him, almost relieved it was over. He had just three grand to give back. He received twenty-five years.

'But Bill Boal was just a mug who helped Roger out after the event and he died in prison, the poor sod. And Charlie never said anything about "poppy" when arrested. Buder made that up.'

'I can't say,' said Bill, as if reluctant to speak ill of the Squad that had disowned him. I wondered if they had done so because he would have no part in fitting me up. 'It's Butler 's word against Wilson 's.'

Charlie Wilson always maintained that the line he was meant to have spoken to Butler, 'I don't see how you can make it stick without the poppy and you won't find that' – the 'poppy red' (bread) being a convoluted rhyming slang for money – was a total fabrication. Maybe. I, for one, had never heard any of them use that particular phrase. But Butler didn't need to make anything up; he had prints at the farm.

'OK.' Bruce wagged a finger at the policeman. 'And you lot fitted up Gordy, good and proper.'

'He was there, Bruce,' Bill said. 'Gordy was at it, you all were. It was all part of the game back then.'

'Not for you,' I reminded him.

His face drooped a little. Did he regret once being quite so right and proper? 'I was out of step.'

'What happened to your mate? Haslam, was it?' I asked, knowing full well it was.

'Len? Went in one of the anti-corruption purges in the early seventies. Jumped before he was pushed. Frank Williams was head of security for Qantas by then. Gave him a job, I believe.'

'All right for some,' muttered Bruce.

The robbers had not fared well. Most were broke or dead, like Charlie, who escaped, was recaptured by Buder, served his time, then ended up in the drugs trade that killed him. Ronnie escaped from Wandsworth and was still at large in Rio, despite Jack Slipper's various attempts over the years to get him back. But everyone knew that what Ronnie craved most of all was a pint in Redhill, not cocktails on the Copacabana. He was not so much a fugitive as an exile, banished from his beloved homeland.

Roy spoke up for the first time. 'So – was there a grass?'

My heart began to beat a little faster. Geoff's role in this – and Marie's – had never come to light. It wasn't my fault, not really, although I had stupidly broken the rule about keeping the wives in the dark. Between them, Geoff and my missus had helped put Butler onto Bruce.

'Ah, that'd be telling. Was there a Mr Big?' Bill asked mockingly.

Bruce laughed. 'Now who is playing an old tune?' Bruce maintained he had never denied the Mr Big concept simply because it helpfully diminished his own role in things. He had hoped for a lighter sentence or earlier release if they thought he was a mere lieutenant. It might have helped, too; he only served nine of his twenty-five. Or perhaps attitudes had changed by the time he came to do his time. 'You can tell me now, Bill. If there was a snitch, it's not like I am in a position to do anything about it.'

Laughton sighed. 'You know we had anonymous calls. About you.'

Bruce's head snapped round and he glared at him. 'Who from?'

'Anonymous people. By definition we don't know who they are. One of them mentioned you, Bruce. And you, Tony. That's why we were so sure you'd had something to do with setting it up.'

Me? This was the first I had heard about that. Who could or would finger me?

But really, I knew immediately. Janie Riley. Beautiful, sexy, unstable Janie Riley.

Bill saw certainty forming on my face and moved quickly on. 'But we were already onto both of you. There was no big grass in the firm, Bruce, there didn't need to be. Just a lot of little mistakes on your part. I don't believe there was a Mr Big, either. Only some bloke on the inside we never caught. Eh, Bruce?'

Bruce remained impassive, brooding on it all. I hoped he didn't come up with Janie as the snitch. Not after all this time.

Then he surprised us all by saying, apparently a propos of nothing: 'You know Janie Riley topped herself? Pills. Well, pills and a bottle of vodka. It happened while Jack and I were in Mexico. Buster, I mean. He was Jack in Mexico. Shame.'