'Should've, could've. It's all the same. After the win at Aintree, I should have dropped all the grifting, forgot about the train. Just concentrated on the car.'

'Hindsight,' was all I could think to offer by way of consolation. 'Wonderful thing, Roy.'

'So's foresight, Tony.' Roy looked down at the pistol in his hands. I wondered whether to make a lunge for it, but not for long. It wasn't only in movies that guns went off in tussles.

'We should go outside, Roy.'

'Not yet.' He looked up at me, tears in his eyes. 'They'll take the kids now, won't they?'

I didn't know what to say. Of course they would. Shooting and pistol-whipping rarely went down well in court. 'For a while, I dare say. Best thing to do is plead a temporary moment of madness.'

'It's all been a bleedin' temporary moment of madness.' He sniffed loudly. 'You know I split my life into BT and AT. Before the Train and After the Train. Like BC and AD. And just like Jesus, we got f.u.c.kin' crucified.'

'What about another cup of tea?' I asked, trying to shift the mood. 'Then we'll go out together.'

'Fair enough.'

There was a banging on the door, fist on wood, and Roy raised the gun, hands shaking slightly.

'Steady on,' I said. 'The Gun Squad tend not to knock.'

I crossed the gloomy hall, undid the latch and opened the door a crack. What I saw caused my chest to constrict, more in shock than anything else. For a second I had trouble speaking.

'Put the kettle on. It's bleedin' freezing out here.'

I stepped back. It was getting on for thirty years since I had last seen him in the flesh. Back then, he was in his element, dressed in SAS uniform, a swagger in his step and victory in his eyes. Now, he was gaunter and greyer, a little stooped perhaps, but the coat was cashmere and the spectacles Chanel. 'h.e.l.lo, Bruce,' I managed to stammer.

'h.e.l.lo, Tony,' replied Bruce Reynolds as he hurried inside. 'Drop of scotch would be nice, too.'

'Kitchen,' I muttered, pointing down the hallway. 'Past the stairs.'

As we entered the room, Roy struggled to his feet, looking every bit as nonplussed as I felt. I could see the new arrival staring at the gun in Roy's hand. I wondered then if Bruce remembered that thirty years ago he had blamed me for the whole f.u.c.king fiasco.

Thirty-three.

Fulham, West London, June 1963 'Sir, sir, Mr Reynolds, sir. I have a question, sir.' Buster Edwards was bouncing up and down like Jimmy b.l.o.o.d.y c.l.i.theroe, the eternal schoolboy.

Bruce turned away from the blackboard that was the source of the ribbing, to face the group of men, their faces shrouded in smoke from half-a-dozen cigarettes. 'p.i.s.s off, Buster.'

Bruce was tired. He had been living this for two weeks now, and he had become short-tempered. The previous night he had consumed a whole bottle of Veuve Cliquot and a third of Glenfiddich, and ended up chasing Franny around the house threatening her with a toilet brush.

It had taken a lot of making up that morning.

He tapped the board to get their attention and then found himself smiling. 'Although you f.u.c.kers do look like the Bash Street Kids,' he said. He pointed his chalk at Buster. 'Which makes you Plug, you ugly b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

Buster pulled a hideous face.

'OK, just some quick formalities. This is Roger, the Flowerpot Man.' Roger Cordrey nodded, although most had been introduced to him informally as the party had gathered at Roy's flat. 'He's worked with Buster.' This was the equivalent of references; 'worked with' meant he was a stand-up bloke. In truth, Roger didn't look like one of them. Small, self-effacing but with sly, shifty eyes, he reminded Bruce of a vicar with a guilty secret - embezzlement, perhaps - in an Ealing comedy.

'Tommy Wisbey, I think most of you know.' Tommy was a bookmaker who hired himself out as a frightener. 'Bonehead', they sometimes called him, because he was as daunting as the bloke who played that character on kids' TV. He wasn't anything like as daft, though.

'Jimmy White, same, and next to him that's Tony Fortune. Let's hope that's a lucky name, eh? Roy says he's almost as good a driver as him. Which, as you know, is like a blessing from the Pope. By the way, Charlie, you quite finished?'

Charlie looked puzzled. As usual he had said very little, just gazed at the ceiling while he waited for the proceedings to begin. 'With what?'

'That new hobby you have.' Bruce allowed a theatrical pause to build. 'You know the one. Setting fire to cars in Bethnal Green.'

There were some sn.i.g.g.e.rs, just like naughty schoolkids. Bruce should have been annoyed, but he had to be careful. He was the man at the front with the chalk. There had to be a leader in these situations but he mustn't overstep the mark. A lot of these chaps were in the game because they despised any form of authority. Even from a fellow villain.

Charlie's eyes narrowed. 'I think I might have got that out of my system, yes, Bruce.'

There was a steely undertow to the words, but Bruce ignored it. 'Good. Because from now on, we keep a low profile. Not get our names plastered over every pub and club. n.o.body should be at it. I mean all of you. Whatever you are working on, ditch it. It'll be peanuts compared to this. Understood?'

A few nods.

'Still, now Charlie has laid down a few ground rules for them, I don't think we need worry about any other firm treading on our toes, eh?'

That seemed to placate Charlie, who took it as a compliment. Bruce didn't really object to Charlie's refusal to let the p.r.i.c.ks who took the Jags go unpunished. After all, it was going to be hard to keep the train job quiet, but the thought of what Charlie might do to anyone who flapped his lips would help keep a lid on things.

'Now. Glasgow.' He tapped the top of the board, on which was a primitive outline of the British Isles with a few key places chalked in. Now he pointed further south. 'And Euston. Our Man in the North seems to have steered us straight on this. Every evening at five past six, give or take ten minutes, the up Travelling Post Office leaves Glasgow, stopping at Carstairs, Carlisle, Preston, Crewe, Tamworth and Rugby. By the time it leaves Rugby it is fully loaded - next stop Euston. The train consists of twelve or thirteen coaches. The second coach is always the High Value Packet carriage. It's that we want. It will contain between seventy and two hundred bags, depending on how fortunate we are. You've all heard the figures, but we take those with a pinch of salt. We've all been there, eh?'

There were grunts as several of them remembered the disappointing haul from the Heathrow job.

'What we have to do is stop the train somewhere between Rugby and North London. That's where Roger comes in.

The crucial thing is, where do we stop it? So this week's little task, gentlemen, is for some of us to scout the line from Watford northwards, looking for places where we have easy road access.'

'And a signal gantry,' said Roger.

'Roger will tell us what to look for in a moment. He and I will take one section, Gordy and Jimmy another, Roy and Tony a third. All right?' He pointed at Buster once more. 'The HVP and the rest of the Mail Train must be shunted somewhere during the day. I want to look inside it, see what we are up against. Buster, Jim Hussey, Tommy, I want you to look at all the shunting yards and sidings. Roger has a list. We also have to decide how big this firm will need to be. There are about eighty people on that train, but only five in the HVP. If we can isolate that HVP, we are quids in. On the other hand, moving a hundred mailbags at double- quick time is going to need a lot of hands. I am open to suggestions for extra bodies, but, you know, keep it in the family, eh lads? Roger and Jimmy have some ideas.'

'Tiny Dave Thompson,' said Jimmy White. 'Another ex- Para.'

There were a few murmurs of agreement. Tiny Dave had kept his head when the arrests were happening after the London Airport job. Harry and Ian, the other two musclemen, had lost their bottle and left town.

Bruce said: 'Good idea. But I'll make the approaches - agreed? This has to be tighter than a duck's a.r.s.ehole. That's me done for now. We meet again at the end of the week. Clapham Common, five-a-side. Bring your boots, your Dextrosol and your liniment. Any questions?'

Gordy asked: 'When are we aiming for, Bruce?'

'Our man tells us the most cash is carried after a Bank Holiday. The one that stands out is August the fifth. It's a Scottish one, before you ask. Now, we don't do it on August the fifth, 'cause the money is still in the banks. So we are looking at the night of Tuesday the sixth, morning of Wednesday, August the seventh. A little over two and a half months away.'

Someone whistled. All they had so far was a vague idea of what they were going to do and when. Not how. And when it came to robbing trains, the how was the big ask. Ten weeks was no time at all when it came to planning that kind of job.

'So we best get to it.' Bruce stepped aside. 'Roger will now read from the Big Chief I-Spy's Book of Train Signals'

Roger Cordrey, florist by profession, train robber by inclination, stood up. Next to some of the muscle gathered in the room, he looked just like a flower-seller. But he had specialist knowledge, which was always respected in the business, and most of the men carried on puffing their cigarettes and listening intently as he prepared to give them a chat about the difference between dwarf and home signals.

'Britain has seventy-three TPOs, Travelling Post Offices,' he began, just to show they weren't the first firm to have noticed all this money moving around the country on rails. 'They have been running since 1830 ...'

Buster Edwards, suddenly transported back to school, began to roll up pieces of Rizla cigarette paper to flick at Gordon Goody's ears. Whatever the division of labour, Buster was fairly sure he wouldn't be part of any technical team. Not while he still had his spring-loaded cosh.

DC Billy Naughton arrived back at the section house tired and dishevelled. He had spent too many hours chasing after the man Duke was convinced was a criminal mastermind only to discover he was a b.l.o.o.d.y scribbler. Colin Thirkell. Waste of time.

Well, not entirely. On the bright side, he had been bunged a fiver by some guilty poof who had thought that he was going to run him in for gross indecency. The man had leaned over the porcelain dividing wall of the urinals to take a good look at his tackle. The Liberace had a neck like a b.l.o.o.d.y flamingo. Billy, outraged at this invasion of his privates, had slapped the man around a bit, then flashed his warrant card, and the terrified queer had reached for his wallet. Billy guessed it wasn't the first time he had bought his way out of scandal.

Maybe he shouldn't have settled for a fiver. The man was well-dressed - a City type or solicitor, perhaps. Probably married. Just like the plot of that Dirk Bogarde film, a man with VICTIM written right across his forehead. Billy had little against queers, other than the usual disgust at what they got up to, but the need to carry out their perversions in public toilets - what was that all about? Maybe if they had to hand enough fivers over to policemen they would start thinking twice. Which made 'fining' them a public service, didn't it?

In the tiny, overheated box room that he called home, Billy yanked off his tie and stripped off clothes that stank of booze and f.a.gs and threw them into the corner. Remembering what was in his pockets, he retrieved his trousers and fished out the fiver the pillow-chewer had bunged him. In only his underpants and socks now, he fetched the dented Oxo tin from the suitcase under the bed and opened it up, intending to simply stuff the fresh cash inside. Now, though, the a.s.sorted ten bob-, pound- and five-pound notes sprang out onto the swirly nylon carpet.

So much, he thought. How did it get to be so much in such a short time?

He stood up and turned on the Dynatron transistor radio that sat next to the bed. It was still tuned to Radio Luxembourg, trotting out the inevitable plug for Horace Batchelor's failsafe Infra-Draw Pools method. Once the drone was over ('That's Keynsham: kay, ee, why...') on came Rockin' To Dreamland with Keith Fordyce, who announced he was playing the best new music from Britain and America, starting with the surf sound of the Beach Boys.

Billy upended the Oxo tin on the bed and began to sort the notes into piles according to denomination. He nodded his head to 'Surfin' Safari' as he did so, the harmonies interrupted periodically by the atmospheric whistling that was one of Radio Luxembourg's specialities.

He didn't notice the song end, or the next irritating advertis.e.m.e.nt break for the stupid pools system. He was busy looking at three hundred and thirty-three pounds and ten shillings. And that was just crumbs, picked up here and there. He had more than three hundred pounds, yet he was still living in a station house, listening to music on a cheap transistor and eating meals in a police canteen.

Billy carefully repacked the cash, thinking about a better hiding-place, before deciding he should put it in the Post Office or a building society. It was, perhaps, time for Billy Naughton to move up in the world. And if the drinks, backhanders and tips weren't entirely legal, then so what? It wasn't as if he didn't put the hours in - and did anyone ever mention the word 'overtime'? Was there ever talk of time-and-a-half or double time? No. A fifteen-hour day got you twelve and sixpence subsistence pay. Subsistence if you ate at the Wimpy every day, that was.

The Dynatron's signal drifted to interference, white noise interspersed with the snap and crackle of ghostly voices captured from the radiosphere. It reminded Billy of an electronic seance when that happened, like he was eavesdropping on ancient wireless broadcasts. He half-expected an ethereal voice to emerge from the static: We are receiving reports that something has happened to the t.i.tanic. . .'

Billy reached up and switched the radio off, then placed the box back into the suitcase and pushed it deep under the bed. He resolved to ask Duke where the best place to keep his money was. It shouldn't be under the Dunlopillo mattress. Not in a room with no lock on the door, as was still the rule in London station houses. It should be somewhere secure and legit, somewhere it could grow. After all, it wasn't as if he had done anything wrong, was it?

'This is it, then?' Bruce asked Roger, as they sat on a locked toolbox in the shadow of the concrete hut and watched a pa.s.senger service rattle by on one of the four lines. It had been easy to hop over the fence and walk down the embankment to the little depot, with its hut and toolshed. Both men wore donkey jackets over blue boiler suits, and they looked like any team of gangers taking a break, watching trains go by in bright sunshine.

Roger Cordrey had the OS map spread out on his lap, while Bruce fussed with a flask of tea. They had been driving up and down their designated section of the line for several days now, but kept coming back to this spot. They had looked at the viaducts discovered by some of the other scouts, but one was far too high - a heavily laden bag tossed over could kill someone on the road below - and the other had no stop signals nearby.

'I reckon it is,' said Roger. He indicated towards Linslade, on his right, beyond the small bridge that crossed the line, giving access to Rowden Farm. 'Dwarf single down there, which will be switched to amber.' Then to his left. 'Home signal there has to be on red.'

Bruce hesitated while a goods train groaned past them at not much more than walking speed, drowning out the conversation. When it was clear he asked: 'All of which you take care of?'

Roger grinned. He had done it on the Brighton line enough times, although they had never taken a decent haul, and some of the attempts had been fiascoes. But the false stop light part of the plan, that always worked a treat. 'Leave it to me. Never fails.' He took the tea. 'Cheers.'

'But how can you be in two places at once?'

'How do you mean?'

'Doing two signals? Shouldn't we have someone on the dwarf, another on the home gantry?'

Roger pursed his lips. Bruce knew what he was thinking. Tricks of the trade. Roger was valuable, would more than earn his whack, by interfering with the signals. If he spilled the beans on how to do that, if anyone with a couple of crocodile clips could switch the lights, then he became redundant.

'Look, I don't give a f.u.c.k how it's done, Roger. I'm not going to make a career out of n.o.bbling the Royal Mail. I just want to make sure you aren't stretched too thin. I could put a man up there with you.' He had someone in mind - Ralph. A distant relative, not a hardened crim, but a good worker and, most of all, dependable.

'We'll see,' said Roger. He changed the subject and pointed across the tracks to the low buildings that const.i.tuted the inhabited part of Rowden Farm. 'That's a bit close.'

'It'll be three in the morning. I know farmers are early risers, but that'd be ridiculous.'

'Still, should cut the phone line to it.'

That made sense. Even if they did spot something, the owners wouldn't be able to raise the alarm. 'Good idea. Drink up. Mustn't hang about too long.'

Bruce's new Lotus Cortina - its side flash as green as Roy's envy when the driver saw it - was parked off the main road next to a farm entrance on the B488, which cut through quiet pasture and rolling woodland. He had pulled off onto such turnings many times in recent days and inevitably had left tyre- marks. He would have to get the boots on the car changed. The police used tyre-tracks like fingerprints now - both as evidence and a convenient way to place you at the scene. In fact, it was best if he retired the Lotus, just in case anyone had clocked it over the past week or even taken the licence-plate. He had read there was a DB5 due in September. It might be nice to go back to an Aston. The last one had cost him a fortune in garage bills, but that might not be an issue this time around.

'Of course, you are still half a mile short,' said Roger. He gestured at the track behind them that led up to the elevated crossing. 'No way you can get the bags up this embankment and over to the main road. Not without giving everyone a hernia. It will have to be bridge 127.'

He pointed down the line to Bridego Bridge, which was, according to the plate on its side, BR's crossing number 127. It was a relatively low span over a narrow country lane, with easy access up the embankment at the side of the arch to the track itself. There was even a parking area for fishermen who visited the small pond next to it. But it was, as Roger had said, a good half-mile away. Trotting up the track like pack mules was also out of the question.

'So once the train is stopped, we have to move it up to the bridge?' asked Bruce.

'Well, you don't have to move the whole train, do you? Just the HVP.'

Bruce sipped his tea. 'So we uncouple the business end and shunt it the half-mile.'

'That's right.' At Crossing 127 they would be dropping the bags down a slope to the roadway, not carrying them uphill to one, the only option where they were now. 'To where we can unload the bags straight down into the vehicles.'

They sat and thought about this for a minute. 'Roger?'

'Yes?'

'Can you drive a train?'

'No. I can stop them, that's usually enough.'

'So we need a driver then. Although they do tend to come complete with one, don't they? Trains, I mean.'

Roger screwed his face up. 'In my experience they are stroppy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, these BR types. If the f.u.c.ker at the controls says you can go and f.u.c.k yourself - well, you're f.u.c.ked, aren't you?'

That was true. Drive the train or we'll beat your brains out. Go on, then. The whole thing could come down around their ears because of one bolshie driver. 'OK, best have a think.' Bruce stood up and threw the dregs of his tea towards the track. 'What's this place called again?'

'Sears Crossing.'

'Sears Crossing,' he repeated. 'Right. Sears Crossing is where we catch our train.'

Thirty-four.

New Scotland Yard, June 1963 Len Haslam took one glance at Billy Naughton, sitting rigid at his desk in the Squad room, and knew something was wrong. 'f.u.c.k me, lad, you look like someone who drank seven pints and three scotches last night.'