Falling too, p.17
Falling Too, page 17
Another can is almost gone. I’m two inches in and this is not a conversation but a lecture. Jethro slams another mouthful and a half. ‘So, what’s the interest in something that is sixty years in the gone?’
‘I’ve no interest in the Great Train Robbery.’
‘Bollocks. And I mean fresh bollocks. No one comes wandering around here at this time of night without some connection.’
‘Okay, so what’s yours?’
Jethro sits back. He strokes at his beard while creaming the rest of the can, his eyes roaming up and down me. ‘Do you know much about the blag?’
‘Less than I should and more than I thought I ever would.’
‘A lot of smoke and mirrors. A lot of history lensing.’
‘History what?’
‘Lensing. You know. Happens all the time. Nothing is ever as simple as it looks, but no one has the time to map out the ins and outs of everyone’s world and make it interesting. You need to Twitterfy it or at least make it good for the front page of the Daily Mail. No one wants complexity. People want simplicity. Lensing. Why write a thousand words when you can have it all in a hundred? Shorter sentences. Shorter chapters. It’s the way things roll in the modern world. Make it all that little bit easier to turn the next page. And when it gets complicated—simplify. And that’s what we have here. Just another example of lensing.’
‘Seriously, the most written about robbery in British history, and you think that we’ve been short-changed?’
‘Oh, sure we have a million words on the event. We have two million. We may have a trillion. Look up Wiki. It all seems so obvious, so understandable, so explained. But think about it, we don’t want truth, we want facts. Facts that may or may not be true, but facts are king. Why did they do it? Who planned it all? Why did they get caught? Everyone thinks they know it all, yet the Ulsterman wasn’t revealed until 2014. How can that be? How can you keep something like that under wraps for six decades? Didn’t everyone involved know what was going on? Shouldn’t every ounce of the story be on the floor by now? Bollocks—life is way more complicated than a book or a film. It’s just too hard for us to live with, so we make it simpler.’
The box is hit by a deep rumble that reaches up from the ground. The vibration builds and the sound rises. I look at Jethro. His attention is focused on draining the next can of lager. The rumble grows. A ray of light is throwing small shadows across my feet. I realise that a train is coming. I go to rise and Jethro reaches out and touches me on the shoulder. ‘Northbound. Probably heading for Birmingham. Why, were you expecting something going south?’
His eyes are looking at mine, waiting on my reply. I pull the can to my lips and suck hard. ‘Just wondered what it was?’
‘Sure. Look, finish that one and have another. I need some drunk company and you are way too sober to be sitting here with me.’
The train rushes into our lives and dust tumbles from the roof. It falls on my can and, for a second, I wonder what the dust is made of. Human skin is the oft quoted ingredient, but I’m a big fan of New Scientist and they debunked this, saying that only a small percentage is skin. Even so, the thought of any skin in my lager makes me wince. I cover the opening to the can double quick. As the last of the train rolls by, the dust settles. Jethro is still attacking his lager with gusto and I’m more mindful than ever of being sober for what lies ahead.
‘I knew the real Buster.’ He burps as he speaks.
Why doesn’t this surprise me? It seems that everyone in my life has some attachment to the bloody robbery at the moment. ‘Don’t tell me; he’s your brother.’
‘No, but he knew my brother.’ He waits for me to ask a question and I don’t want to. I’m losing the will on this whole thing.
Jethro takes my silence as a cue to keep going. It’s the way with drunks. Finishing what you have to say is always more important than listening to what others have to contribute. He’s slurring now. ‘Met him in the late fifties. Never really ran with his gang, but bumped into them. I had a bit of a reputation back then. I was the wheelman on a few successful jobs.’
Another criminal. Maybe I’m some sort of criminal god, in the same way that Douglas Adams once wrote about a lorry driver that was really a rain god, but just didn’t know it. His world was one endless rain shower. In my world, it’s criminals. They seem to pop up on such a regular basis. Charlie Wiggs, you have chosen criminals of our times as your specialist subject. You have two minutes, starting now. Maybe Mastermind is the way to go.
Jethro consigns another can to the growing pile under his bed. He pauses to open the next one before continuing. ‘I was a bit of a driver. Better than most. My old man was a mechanic and used to let me try out on the cars in his yard. I was six when I first got behind a wheel. If I’d ever made it big I’d have been on Top Gear as a guest of honour. Loved my cars, but never had the cash to buy a decent one. Driven a few, though. If you know what I mean. I was good. Better than good, and that got me on the radar with some folks. Back then, before mobiles, CCTV, number plate recognition and high-powered police cars you could get away with a lot if you had a fast set of wheels driven by someone who knew what they were doing.’
His lager drinking is accelerating and I would have been halfway to legless by now. He just seems to be warming up. He sips between sentences in a way that has no impact on the speed he speaks. He is well-practiced in this art. ‘I could have been a bit of a player, but never had the inclination. Loved the cars and would take on jobs for a fraction of what they were worth just to have the joy of ploughing through London in a high-powered machine with the police fading to the distance. I tried to give myself a nickname, Wheels Mull, but it never took. After all, it’s rubbish as nicknames go. I became known as J-Turn instead, which is miles better. Back then few people knew what a J-turn was, and fewer how to do one. Drove for a good few years, once with Buster. It’s how I met him. All in all, I was a boy on the rise back then. Until…’
‘What happened?’ The lager has loosened my tongue.
‘Got caught. And not a good caught, if you can have such a thing. 1957, and I was the recipient of a tap on the shoulder while downing a few in my local pub. A bank job was going down and they needed someone to do the driving. I had been recommended. Problem was that I didn’t know the crew from Adam. I should have said no. But the car was hot. Twin-carb Jag, fresh out of the wrapper. Lots of welly under my right foot. I was a fool back then. I said yes.
‘Things went okay at first. We had the usual set of meetings, planning, drinking, bragging. The bank was in Putney, and the gig was a hit and run on the cash van. For years such jobs had been easy pickings, but the banks were getting wise. My job was to sit at a set of lights, just up from where the security van would stop. The other three in my car would get out, mug the cash-carrying guard and be away. It sounded sweet, except the bank had put four men in the van instead of two. When my lot made their move, the back of the van opened and two helmeted guards, all tooled up with coshes, evened up the game. Two of my crew went down in the first few seconds and the third made a run for it. I was left sitting there. I wanted to—no, I should have—scarpered. But the guys on the ground were still moving and my job was to be there if they needed me. Young and stupid, I was still there when two beat cops rapped on my window. They had seen the whole thing and I was in for a stretch.’
‘How long?’
‘A fiver.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Chapter 24
Jethro goes hunting for another can. ‘Do you know that the Great Train Robbery was more than just the GPO cash?’
I think he wants me to go ta-da for him. Instead I shrug. ‘Go on.’
‘The train had something much more valuable on it.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘Like what?’
He looks around, as if we were sitting in a café in central London at rush hour. The drink is speaking loud—he seems fit to burst to tell the story.
Satisfied no one has sneaked in undetected he keeps going. ‘A single piece of paper.’
‘And?’
He fishes out another lager and hands it to me. ‘Hit this first.’
My current one is on the dregs and he’s got my interest. I take it, open it and sip a little.
He crashes the new can. ‘Ever heard of a man called Henry John Burnett?’
‘No.’
‘He was the last man hanged in Scotland. Fifteenth August, 1963. One week after the Great Train Robbery.’
‘There’s a connection?’
‘Henry worked at a place called John R. Stephen Fish Curers in Aberdeen. A local lady called Margaret Guyan started work there in December 1962. She was married with two kids. The second kid wasn’t the husband’s and this caused hell. She left him and moved in with Henry. But Henry became convinced that Margaret would leave him given half a chance. He used to lock her in when he went out. Later that year she met her husband and agreed to go back with him. When she returned to Henry’s to collect her son, Henry went nuts. He put a knife to her throat. She got away with the help of a friend, but Henry stole a shotgun from his brother’s house and stormed round to Margaret’s husband’s flat. A shot was fired and the husband died. Henry dragged Margaret out and tried to escape in a car. He was caught and sentenced to death. It was a big case back then.’
‘And this is relevant to the Great Train Robbery, how?’
‘Well, before Henry was sentenced, they built a new set of gallows.’ He stops. I think I’m expected to faint in astonishment.
‘And what’s so special about that?’
‘The timing. The timing, man. Why build gallows then, before the sentencing? Why build new ones when all the talk was about doing away with the death sentence? Why not wait?’
‘It’s how governments work.’
‘Maybe. But I know different.’
‘How, different?’
‘The gallows weren’t for Henry. They were for another inmate. One that’s very much alive today.’
‘Who?’
‘Have you ever heard of gangster called Philip James Tuff?’
To stop breathing is often an involuntary action. At this moment in time I was unaware that my brain had signalled that my lungs did not need to inflate. I try to look like the name means nothing. I fail.
‘Do you know him?’ Jethro is studying my face.
‘Not really.’
‘He’s from your neck of the woods.’
‘Scotland’s a big place.’
‘Just sayin’.’
‘What’s he got to do with this?’
‘He’s one of the unnamed behind the Great Train Robbery. And the story goes, he’s the guy that came up with the original idea. Are you sure you haven’t heard of him?’
‘Not as such.’ My head is scrambling for a way to connect a guy living in a box, my recent life and what’s about to go down. ‘And you say he’s Scottish?’
‘So you do know him?’
‘Of course; I know everyone in Scotland—because it’s a small village just north of England.’
‘Not what I meant. A criminal in Scotland called Phil Tuff. He’s big time. Are you saying there’s more than one?’
I shake my head. ‘I’ve heard of him, but let me get this straight. Your saying that Phil Tuff was due to be hung in 1963 and a set of gallows was constructed just for him?’
‘Spot on. You see, Phil’s a bit more of a celebrity than he appears. I know some shit.’
I hate that phrase. It’s usually reserved for people who know fuck all but the drink is driving his mouth. I wait on the revelation.
‘You’ve heard the term supergrass?’
‘Yes.’
‘Phil wasn’t one of those—he was worse.’
‘Phil Tuff was a grass?’
‘Best ever.’
‘A grass? Phil?’
‘Are you surprised? I thought you didn’t know him?’
‘I don’t. I’m just surprised that he’s still alive if what you say is true. Who did he grass on?’
‘Story goes, it’s easier to say who he didn’t grass on.’
‘And he’s still walking?’
‘Who would know to tell?’
‘Well, you, for a start.’
‘And who would listen to me? Do you also know that I was involved in the robbery?’
Now we are in wonderland.
Chapter 25
I try to clear the fog that’s threatening to mist up my reality. ‘Run this past me again. And try to assume that you have the thickest person on the planet listening. You are saying that Phil Tuff was the guy who came up with the idea of the Great Train Robbery. That he was in prison for something that meant he was due to be hung. Somehow this didn’t happen and you were also involved in the robbery. And to add spice to it all, Phil is a grass.’
‘Sure.’
Given the amount of Carling now swishing around Jethro’s belly this is far from an affirmative that gives me confidence.
He half stands up. ‘I need a piss.’
I’m left to stew on the juice of a story that is both synchronistic and implausible at the same time. Or maybe it’s neither. Maybe this is fate or I’m on a twenty-first century version of Candid Camera. Any way up, I’m not in the place that I thought I was when I said yes to a can of lager half an hour ago. I can’t fathom the level of complexity this places on what’s going on. Not without an Excel spreadsheet and a degree in pure maths. I have no idea where this is going, but it’s not going to finish anywhere near the endgame that the constituent parts of this drama expect—if Jethro is talking anything but crap.
Jethro is not pee shy. The stream he’s emitting seems to be running down the outside of the box. He returns to slump on the floor and drops quiet.
What are the odds? The odds. The bloody odds. Come on, we are in a million-to-one bet territory here. That Jethro would have some inside knowledge of the robbery. Nonsense. But maybe that’s why he lives here. Close to the site. A bit deranged. Then something occurs to me. ‘Jethro, were you here last night?’
‘Right here.’ The words are slurred.
‘And did you see me standing next to a tank of a car?’
‘Yes, sir.’
I’ve been made ‘And who was I with?’
‘Malcolm Roughead.’
‘You know him?’
He smiles. ‘You think I’m some pissed-up alcoholic talking through my arse? And you’re an innocent lost in the woods. Well, I’m not and you’re not. Malcolm Roughead is an evil wanker. He claims he came up with the idea for the robbery.’
I ignore the revelation. ‘What’s with the grass thing and Phil?’
‘It’s what got him out of jail. The man knew stuff and back then the police were getting shat on from a great height by local gangs—all across the UK. The pressure was on to find a way to fight back. Phil was due to swing for killing his dad with a revolver, a capital offence back then. His dad was a bastard of a new order. Kind of explains why Phil is such a hard man. His dad took to beating Phil’s mother and did it once too often. Phil flipped, took his dad’s gun from the bedroom and blew his head in two. Phil was caught in the front room of the house, still holding he gun. But he got lucky. You see, his old man was right in the mix with a lot of the guys the police wanted to get a hold of. With Phil’s dad gone, Phil was in line for a bunk up the criminal ladder.’
‘Except he was going to hang for his dad’s murder.’
‘Yes. But he didn’t. You’d be too young to remember, but his case got flung out. Someone swiped all the evidence and the only witness, Phil’s mum, was a practicing amnesiac. They had a body and they had Phil—but the gun, bullet, blood-soaked clothes and a few other things left police custody never to be seen again. Caused a real stink. Phil claimed all along his dad had committed suicide. The angle of the shot said it was possible, but unlikely. Even the two policemen that were first on the scene lost their notes and became vague on the details.’
‘Are you saying he was deliberately set free?’
‘Give that man a coconut. Of course.’
‘And the gallows?’
‘Built to encourage our Phil to turn to the dark side. Hard to say no when you hear the guys hammering nails into your death machine.’
It’s all a bit of stretch, this. The man has more lager in him than I can drink over a long weekend. His slurring comes and goes. I express disbelief. ‘Really.’
‘What would you do if, outside your window, they’re knocking up a brand-new set of gallows with a rope shaped for your neck?’
Fair call. ‘Then what?’
‘Phil had drawn up a list. A simple list. One that would put a lot of people away for a long time—and I mean a lot of people—Phil really knew shit. Phil pulled it together to get himself off the hook. A list of everyone he knew, what they were up to, where there might be evidence and what stones to turn over. It was his Get Out of Jail Free card.’
‘And?’
‘That piece of paper found its way on to the mail train that night.’
‘And how did this bit of paper get on the same train that was to be the target for the Great Train Robbery?’
‘I was the guy that arranged it.’
‘And you put it on the train?’
‘Not directly.’
I need a moment to take this all in. I draw in a few ounces of lager and let my head ingest. ‘I have a hundred questions and no idea what order to put them in.’
‘I’ll make it easy for you. I was one of the gang on the robbery, a backup driver. Look up the story. Three men were never identified.’
‘And you were one of them?’
‘Yes. So I arranged for the list to be stuffed in a mailbag. I was to lift it when we did the job.’
‘Why? Why would you want the list?’
‘Because I was in the crap. I was in trouble with the police. The robbery was my way out. My cut would have seen me off to Spain, but I needed backup. A London cop called Tussel had it in for me. I’d been on the run for a month and he was closing in.’
