'How are you really, Bruce?' I asked, turning back to him.

A wave of weariness seemed to wash over him. For the first time, he looked his age. I probably did too. Staying up till first light was a young man's game. We needed our beauty sleep.

'Me?' he said. 'Since I got home, I'm an old crook living on handouts from other old crooks.' He began to build himself another joint. 'You know, when I got back from Mexico and put the word out, I thought there'd be dozens of young guns wanting to get involved with the famous Great Train Robber. Not a bit of it. They were like - "whoa, thirty years? I'm not having any of that". Still the same, even now. I guess that f.u.c.kin' judge knew what he was doing, after all.'

I suddenly remembered I needed a lift back home and that the cops owed me one. I didn't want to walk out to an empty road. 'We should go, too.'

He looked at the joint, made to light it and thought better of it. He tucked it into an inside pocket. 'And then there are those t.w.a.ts who think I'm still loaded. That I live in Croydon because I'm an eccentric millionaire. They only got about three hundred grand back, so they reckon we still have the rest. They have no idea. There's some right f.u.c.kin' villains out there, including the lawyers. They should look at how much those c.u.n.ts charged us all.'

'I can do you a good deal on a BMW.' I handed over a card. 'Give me a bell.'

He took it and examined it. 'My BMW days are over, but thanks. If I get a second wind, I'll come down for one of those nice old Sixes. You must be doing OK.' He ran a thumb over the printing. 'Embossed and everything.'

I explained to him that after my run-in with Len Haslam, I'd gone to Germany with the money he had intended to plant on me, where I had bought ex-Post Office yellow VW vans and shipped them back to England. They soon became the favoured transport of the hippie generation, and I made enough, eventually, to come back and open a BMW and NSU franchise, one of which, at least, came good.

'So you landed on your feet, after all? You know, the only one of the rest of us who really did all right was Gordy. Served his time, came out, got his money, a hundred and sixty grand, and b.u.g.g.e.red off. Hardly a sniff since, apart from the odd wish-you-were here card from Spain. He did OK, did Gordy.'

'Him and Tiny Dave.'

'Ah, yes. The one who really coshed the driver.'

Jack Mills was dead now, killed by leukemia, although there were those - his family amongst them - who still reckoned it was the robbery that really did for him.

'It was Dave who hit him?' I asked. 'I always wondered.'

A shrug. 'I wasn't on the train. b.l.o.o.d.y chaos it was, by all accounts. But yeah, that's how it went. With a lot of encouragement from Buster, so I hear. And if Dave hadn't done it, Buster would have. Like a b.l.o.o.d.y little Jack Russell with that cosh, he was.'

'Whatever happened to Tiny Dave?' I asked.

'Ah. Talk about Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Tiny Dave was last seen walking off into the night with his whack, thirty years ago.'

'Never heard anything?'

'Of Dave? Not a d.i.c.ky bird.'

I remembered him talking about going to Bangkok. I wondered if he'd made it. 'Which means he is either the legendary One Who Got Away. Or . ..'

'Someone killed him and took the money. Wouldn't surprise me. That cash never brought anything but bad luck.'

I recalled Billy Naughton had said much the same thing when we were out on the rowing lake. 'Toxic', he had called it.

Bruce mistook my silence for disbelief. 'Look at the facts. Charlie dead, Brian Field dead, Bill Boal dead. Buster and Roy b.l.o.o.d.y basket cases. Ralph was coming back to give himself up a few years ago. Been lying low in Belgium. Got a ferry back. The Spirit of Free Enterprise.'' I shook my head at the bad luck. The boat had capsized, killing 193 people. Clearly, Ralph, the dwarf signal man, had been among them. 'And Tommy Wisbey's in a bad way. You hear that? Strokes. Never the same after his sixteen-year-old daughter died in a car accident. And Bobby Welch a cripple. And for what? It was an eye-opener when I realised the poor sod of a train driver ended up with more than me in the end, after the great British public had a whip-round for him.'

That wasn't strictly true; Mills hadn't received anything like a hundred and fifty grand. More like thirty, as I recalled. But it was a fact that he held on to more of it than Bruce. 'You know the young fireman died too?' I asked.

'Who?'

'The co-driver. David something.' Anything to do with the robbery had always caught my eye, often triggered a what-if moment, where I thought about how close I came to being in that dock. 'Heart-attack. Thirty-three or four, he was.'

's.h.i.t. That's a tough break.' Then, with a twinkle in his eye, 'They blame that one on me as well?'

'Not that I heard.'

Bruce stood, pulled on his overcoat, picked up the gla.s.ses and cups from the table and took them to the sink. 'Ah, well,' he said with a rueful smile as he rinsed them. 'As the old Sinatra song has it, you might be on top of the world in April, but you'll crash and burn in May.'

We stood staring at each other, pondering this pearl of wisdom from Ol' Blue Eyes. 'Wasn't he back on top in June?' I asked.

Bruce put a quarter-inch of milk in a saucer and placed it outside the kitchen door, then locked and bolted it. Placing a bony, veined hand on my shoulder, he steered me towards the front door, flicking off lights as he went. When he spoke, the jaunty sing-song tone had disappeared, replaced by a melancholy whisper.

'Ask Roy. He'll tell you. Sometimes June is a f.u.c.k of a long time coming.'

Aftermath Bruce Reynolds: after moving around various safe houses in London, he fled abroad (France, Mexico) but, once the money ran low, he came back to the UK. He was caught by Tommy Butler in Torquay in 1968, given a twenty-five- year sentence but released in 1978. Reynolds and his wife divorced while he was inside, but were reconciled upon his release. He did time in the early 1980s for dealing in amphetamine sulphate, which he still contests. Reynolds is the author of a very successful, and readable autobiography (see Acknowledgements).

Ronald Biggs: the most famous/notorious of the robbers, but one who played only a small part in the robbery itself. After his escape from Wandsworth in 1965, he moved around the world before settling in Rio, where he fathered a child who saved him from extradition by Jack Slipper. In 2001, he returned to England, a very sick man, having been on the run for a total of thirty-eight years. He was released on compa.s.sionate grounds in 2009 so he could die a free man.

Ronald 'Buster' Edwards: on the run, he joined Bruce Reynolds in Mexico but, homesick, he eventually returned to the UK and gave himself up. He was sentenced to fifteen years in 1966 and was released in 1975. Despite being portrayed as a lovable c.o.c.kney rogue by Phil Collins in the movie Buster, there are those who still believe he was the one who coshed driver Jack Mills. Found hanged in his garage in 1994, at the age of 62.

Charlie Wilson: sentenced to thirty years, he escaped from Winson Green Prison after four months. He was tracked down in 1968 by Tommy Buder in Canada, brought home, and served twelve years. Wilson was shot dead outside his Marbella home in April 1990.

Roy James: the talented racing driver was jailed for thirty years; he served twelve. An attempt to pick up his driving career failed and for a while he ran a gold VAT scam with Charlie Wilson, narrowly avoiding jail. In early 1993, he was sentenced to six years after shooting his father-in-law and hitting his wife with a pistol b.u.t.t. He died of a heart-attack in 1997.

Brian Field: the solicitor was released in 1969. His wife Karin divorced him while he was in prison, and married a German journalist. He died in a motorway accident in 1979.

Thomas Wisbey: another thirty-year man, he was released in 1976. However, after a period as a car dealer, he fell back into crime and was jailed for ten years in 1989 for cocaine dealing. Now retired.

Robert Welch: sentenced to thirty years and released in 1976. Crippled by a bungled leg operation in prison, he ran clubs when released. Now retired.

Gordon Goody: sentenced to thirty years and released in 1975, he claimed in the Carlton TV programme I Was A Great Train Robber that he spent most of his share of the money on lawyers and was 'ripped off for much of the rest.

James Hussey: sentenced to thirty years, he was released in 1975. He became a car dealer (in Warren Street) but was jailed for seven years in 1989 for cocaine dealing. Retired.

Roger Cordrey: sentenced to twenty years for rigging railway signals but served fourteen after an appeal. Returned to being a florist in the West Country.

James White: was on the run for three years, but eventually gave himself up and was sentenced to eighteen years in 1966. Released in 1975 and opted for a quiet life in Suss.e.x.

William Boal: died of a brain tumour in 1970 while serving his sentence. Bruce Reynolds always maintained he was never part of the gang.

Leonard Field: involved in the purchase of Leatherslade Farm. Sentenced to twenty-five years for conspiring to obstruct the course of justice, later reduced to five. Released in 1967.

John Wheater: a solicitor jailed for three years in 1964 for conspiring to pervert the course of justice. He was released in 1966.

There are persistent rumours that between one and three robbers were never arrested or prosecuted. The man identified as 'The Ulsterman' in several accounts ('Jock' here) has also never been traced, nor has the mysterious Mark who acted as go-between. Stan (sometimes called Peter), the retired train driver, also disappeared without trace.

Acknowledgements This novel is a work of fiction. It uses real characters and situations, but I have treated them as a novelist, not a historian. Many characters are entirely fict.i.tious, and any resemblance between them and persons living or dead is entirely fict.i.tious. Nevertheless, the arc of the story, from airport job to train robbery and subsequent capture and prosecution, is an accurate representation of the gang's operations.

I would like to thank Mike Lawrence, motor-racing guru and author of many fine books on the sport, including The Glory of Goodwood (with Simon Taylor and Doug Nye), who was my very first port of call. I knew I wanted to avoid building the story around the two most well-known train robbers, Ronnie Biggs and Buster Edwards. Roy James (there is some confusion over whether he was ever consistently called 'the Weasel', or if the police got it wrong and the name stuck) seemed to me one of the most tragic of the thieves. Whether he was as outrageously talented as some suggest, I'm not convinced, but he was certainly a more than capable driver, on and off the track.

Mike not only knew the Roy James story intimately, he knew Roy himself: he raced against him in his karting days, and thought highly of his skill. The early scenes on the air base came from Mike's memory, but, of course, filtered through my distorting lens.

Thank you to Holly Groom for additional research on the trial of the robbers and to Sinead Porter of the News International syndication department for allowing me to use part of Colin Maclnnes' article An Honest Citizen's Guide to the Criminal Cla.s.ses and extracts from The Times newspaper. Thanks also to Duncan Campbell, ace crime reporter and author of the excellent novel If It Bleeds, which features a walk-on by Bruce Reynolds.

As initial source material I used the memoirs of Jack Slipper (Slipper of the Yard), George Hatherill (A Detective's Story, which contains the story of the headless corpse in Cornwall), and Ernest Millen (Specialist in Crime, wherein Millen claims the big tip-off came from an interview with a snitch in prison), as well as Bruce Reynolds's highly readable Autobiography of a Thief, Piers Paul Read's The Train Robbers, Wensley Clarkson's Killing Charlie, Ronnie Biggs's Odd Man Out and Keep on Running, and Peta Fordham's The Robbers' Tale.

But if you want a concise, authoritative overview of the truth - all the previous t.i.tles being unreliable in one aspect or another - I would point you to Peter Guttridge. His The Great Train Robbery for the Crime Archives series of the National Archives is a skilfully condensed version of the whole saga, including the unanswered questions. Chief among these is, was there a Mr Big? (We'll never know, but it's unlikely.) Where did the money dumped in Dorking woods and Black Horse Court come from? Again, we'll probably never know, but it was alleged in the Carlton TV programme I Was A Great Train Robber that Brian Field's parents got rid of the Dorking cash when they realised it was ill-gotten gains. But that was never substantiated.

Also useful was Villains' Paradise by Donald Thomas, Gangland Soho by James Morton, The Flying Squad by Norman Lucas and Bernard Scarlett, and The Underworld by Duncan Campbell. For some of Bruce's answers to Colin Thirkell (a fictionalised version of Colin Maclnnes), I dipped into The Courage of His Convictions by Tony Parker and 'Robert Allerton', a series of interviews with a career criminal in the early 1960s. Plus the News International archives provided many contemporary accounts, as did the Colindale Newspaper Library.

For the scenes at Ronnie Scott's, I relied on Jazz Man: The Amazing Story of Ronnie Scott and His Club by the always- excellent John Fordham.

Part of Chapter 42, the police car chase, is inspired by the opening scenes of Robbery, Peter 'Bullitt' Yates's 1967 film that also fictionalises the events of August 1963. Star and producer Stanley Baker was a well-known face in the clubs and pubs frequented by the underworld, and Peta Fordham, who wrote The Robbers' Tale, was an adviser, so the core planning and robbery is very well portrayed - far better than in the later Buster.

Paul Wilson of the Kent & East Suss.e.x Railway (www.kesr.org.uk

) took me through how to start and drive diesels large and small, as well as the signal warnings that sound in the cab. Any errors in that department are mine alone.

The majority of events in this novel are true, although some of the dates have been shifted, but the details of the airport and train robberies and incidents such as Gordon Goody being arrested because he had managed to disguise himself as Bruce Reynolds; the two Jags being stolen before the first train robbery; Charmian Biggs telephoning the police to help find Ronnie; the burglary of Bruce Reynolds's hideout; the capture of Roy James; the find of money in Dorking and the phone box - are genuine occurrences. Len Haslam, Billy Naughton, Tony Fortune and Tiny Dave Thompson, however, are totally fict.i.tious characters (and any resemblance to real police and thieves is entirely coincidental), although they are often slotted into actual events. 'Ralph' is also a fiction. No train robber died on The Spirit of Free Enterprise.

I would like to thank Bruce Reynolds for reading a version of the book and treating it kindly. We had a very convivial lunch together, since we share an interest in cars, planes, guns, the war, film noir, tailors and jazz; however, those who want Bruce's viewpoint should consult his autobiography. This is a fictional account and he is in no way responsible for any of the content.

I am particularly and eternally grateful to Rowland Cordery, who broke a long stalemate by dreaming up the t.i.tle Signal Red, which was just so perfect it made all the many suggested alternatives - most of them mine - look feeble in comparison.

Finally my grat.i.tude goes, as always, to David Miller, Jo Stansall, Katie Haines, Sheila David, and, of course, my editor for eleven books now - does that make him eligible for the prefix 'longsuffering'? - Martin Fletcher.

Robert Ryan, London. www.robert-ryan.net www.robert-ryan.net Afterword by Bruce Reynolds At 8 a.m. on 8 August, 1963, the BBC broadcast a news item that made the whole country sit up and take notice. The gist of it was that a Glasgow to London mail train had been stopped and robbed at Cheddington, near Tring, Buckinghamshire. Details were sketchy. It had happened at about 3 a.m. that morning; the driver and the fireman had been attacked and injured and the front two coaches of the train had been detached. Senior police officers were already at the scene. Although it was clear that a large number of men had taken part and that they had stolen a considerable amount of cash, n.o.body was certain of the amount involved. I, of course, knew by then how much it was, because wc had counted it. We had taken the Royal Mail for just over million in used notes (the best part of 40 million now). Staggering - the stuff of dreams.

The heist was known during those first few frenzied hours as The Cheddington Mail Train Robbery, but this was soon deemed not snappy enough. Instead, the media lifted the t.i.tle of The Great Train Robbery from an American film dating back to 1903. With ma.s.sive public interest in the event, the authorities became angry and agitated. There were questions in parliament, and reverberations spread through the country and across the globe like a distant but persistent drumbeat. The words echoed down the corridors of power: 'They must be caught and convicted'.

The police were given carte blanche, and the 'big boys' were called in, notably the Flying Squad, with Tommy Butler as Thieftaker General. It was a job he was admirably suited for, as he remarked with conviction to his colleague 'Nipper' Read: 'We'll get the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds'. The hunt was on.

Rumours were rife. Informed sources said the organiser of the robbery was an ex-commando; others claimed that Billy Hill, the self-proclaimed King of the Underworld, was involved. Both wrong, of course. Names were bandied about, reputations besmirched, with plenty of winners and losers in the media frenzy that surrounded the robbery. The biggest losers, of course, were the men who robbed the train.

None of the actual robbers appreciated the full consequences of their actions; it only became apparent at a later date just how determined the authorities were. The scale of the manhunt, the size of the rewards offered and, especially, the eventual sentences were all unprecedented. Thirty years was unheard of, even for terrorist bombers.

But 'stone walls don't a prison make, nor iron bars a cage'. And so it proved to be. Charlie Wilson and Ronnie Biggs refused to accept their dire situation and promptly escaped. The media revelled in this turn of events and the hunt stepped up a gear. As did the whole story of The Great Train Robbery, which went through peaks and troughs of public interest, subsiding when the chase went quiet, thrusting its way back into the limelight with Ronnie's rip-roaring adventures in Rio. The public applauded this cheeky chappy, their emotions switching from curiosity, through admiration to envy: who wouldn't want to live a free and easy life in Rio?

The story has been told many times now, but continues to fascinate the media and readers, perhaps because it all begins with intrigue and ends in mystery.

Now Robert Ryan has fictionalised the tale based on known facts but using imagined situations and dialogue, a technique he has employed before in his novel Death on the Ice, about Captain Scott, and with Lawrence of Arabia in Empire of Sand. They were both key characters from my boyhood days, which is what attracted me to his work. The story he tells in Signal Red is impeccably researched and the salient facts are all there. For his characterisation, however, he had to rely on contemporary accounts, memoirs, other writers' descriptions and conclusions (many of the major figures on both sides of the law being deceased) and his own interpretations, and that doesn't always fit with my own memories of some of the personalities involved.

That is not to say he is wrong. In fact, he could be correct. At the time I might well have been blinkered: the light that he shines illuminates some dark corners whilst throwing shadows on others. But while my memory and his version don't always see eye-to-eye, he captures the times perfectly and particularly the essence of camaraderie which existed and flourished under the banner of crime, specifically robbery. When a group of men embark on a nefarious series of enterprises that will, almost certainly, see some of them in prison, losing everything, then your relationships with your fellow robbers become the most important element of the undertaking. Being able to trust them is of paramount importance (and remember, none of the robbers turned Queen's Evidence or co-operated with the police in any way).

Ultimately, as a robber, you face losing your freedom, but I don't think you can fully appreciate what this means until it is taken away from you. That realisation comes too late, even though you are aware every time you go to 'work', it might be your last job. Your mind plays tricks on you about the consequences of your actions and the chances of being caught. Is it worth the risk? you might ask yourself. But if you're a grafter, you'll dismiss the risk factor and go for the adrenaline. That's the addiction.

True, old-fashioned greed is also a motivating factor, whether it is for money, power or reputation. I guess we all craved one or more of those things, and some of us embraced them all. Upon reflection, I realise that at the time of the robbery I never questioned people's motivation for being 'at it'. In fact, I hardly know them now.

Charlie Wilson lived in the next street to mine in Battersea and we went to school together. He was younger than me and we were pals without being bosom buddies; I only really got to know him in his twenties. In my eyes, he never changed: always cheerful, game for a lark and totally reliable. A very sound man.

I was shocked to hear of Charlie's death, shot by the side of his swimming pool at his home in Marbella, evoking the end of Fitzgerald's Gatsby. The theft of his life only led to retribution and further theft of lives. The moral there is, no matter how big you are, there is always someone bigger and with more power.

Charlie was buried in Earlsfield, local to us Battersea Boys. The service closed with a final flourish of bravado, as the coffin was accompanied by Sinatra doing his version of 'My Way'. That was Chas all right.

Roy James had one ambition when he received his thirty-year sentence: to get out of prison and pursue his motor- racing career and ultimately his dream of becoming World Champion. He embraced Seneca and the Stoics' principle, as defined by prison doggerel: 'If you can't do the time, don't do the crime', or my favourite, 'Eat your porridge every day and do your bird the easy way.' Nice constructive sentiments, but n.o.body serves a decade inside without physical and mental damage.

In spite of Roy's pursuit of physical fitness, something had gone when he finally got out. He transferred his ambitions in other directions, and was very successful financially, but perhaps less so emotionally. He had a long-term relationship that broke up and eventually ended up marrying a younger woman and fathered two daughters. It appeared he had made it: he had the country house, complete with ponies and stables, an attractive young wife and lovely daughters. But somehow, it was not enough. Nothing satisfied him. Probably because the grand ambition - to win the World Championship - was lost and gone for ever.

What caused his confrontation with his wife and father-in- law and the events that followed is a mystery, yet such events are all too common in the real world of domestic discord. Ignominiously Roy (forever saddled with the media-invented, or at least media-popularised, nickname of the Weasel, which he hated) went back to prison.

Inside, his physical condition declined. He had seen Bill Boal - innocent of the crime, yet convicted - die inside. He had seen Biggsy kidnapped from Rio and promptly stolen back by the Brazilian authorities. He had seen Buster's tragic suicide. He must have asked himself, as most of us of a certain age do - what is it all about?

He died in hospital of a heart-attack. He was 62.

Roy's mantra was best expressed as pitting yourself against the world, going to the extreme to see if you can hack it. Will you match up? It's a hard code to live by. There is a consolation: I now know you don't recognise success unless you have first experienced abject failure. Your ambition to drive to the edge of the abyss, to seek the impossible and make it possible, certainly invites failure. But if you do fail, it's an honourable failure.

Bruce Reynolds, author of Autobiography of a Thief