The Crown & Thistle Hotel
Battersea, London
11:27 PM, 29th July 1966

The last flecks of burnt orange stubble drift slowly from “Red” Turner’s face into the sink beneath him. With a flick of the wrist, Turner washes the stubble down the sink and rinses his straight razor clean. He glances up at his face and stares morosely at the slash marks running across the lower half of his mouth and onto his right cheek. Sat beside it is a squat, broken nose that he hated with all of his being. He’d never forgotten how it had got that way – and who was responsible for it.

Albert Binney.

Binney was little more than an enforcer for the Donoghue Firm back then, and a far cry from the man he would go on to become. Turner liked to think he’d changed in the decade since too. He was faster and smarter than he’d been then – and he knew that he’d sooner catch malaria again than go back to prison.

It was that bastard Kinnear’s fault. The Irishman had sold him down the river in ‘56. He’d sold Hammond, Davies, Mallory, Smith, Shea and the Barries down the river too – and they’d paid with it for their lives. The Binney Twins had seen to that. Had it not been for Frank, the youngest, Turner would probably be at the bottom of that river with the rest of them. For all the good it had done him.

Since that day, Turner had spent every waking moment looking over his shoulder. He knew one day the Sweeney would break down his door – or some ape the Binney Twins or the Kane Firm had sent would do him in. And for all that stress, he still didn’t have a damn penny to his name.

“What’s wrong?”

In the mirror, Turner caught sight of Theo’s lithe, tanned body moving around in the bedroom.

“Never you mind what’s wrong.”

One of Red’s paws reached out for a towel beside him and he wiped what remained of the shaving cream away from his face. A dissatisfied Rodwell stood beside the bedroom window, cigarette dangling loosely from his full lips, watching the cars skitter along the streets below them. He was stark naked.

“Listen here, as of tomorrow things might get a little ... busy for me at work. I might not be able to stop by to see you for a while,” Red muttered, as he plucked the cigarette from Rodwell’s lips and placed it between his own. Or ever again for that matter, he thought.

Before Turner had taken his first pull, an accusatory frown appeared on the boy’s face. One day those plump cheeks would adorn every billboard in the West End. There was no doubt about that in Turner’s mind. He’d known that from the first moment he’d clapped eyes on him in A Long Day’s Journey Into Night eighteen months ago. Right now though the sadness daubed across the his cherubim features was almost revolting – like a bloody handprint smeared over Cupid’s face. Turner didn’t want to remember him like that.

“You’re going to get yourself killed one of these days,” Rodwell muttered defeatedly.

“And what of it if I do? Whose business is that exactly but my own?”

There was a heavy silence between the two men. Rodwell stared at the carpet beneath the two of them, evidently trying to piece together a response that he knew would fail before it had even left his mouth.

“You’re bright, Alfie. Brighter than whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself into. You don’t need me to tell you that and yet ... here I am telling you it. Just say the word and we can leave tonight. I’ll go with you. We can start over again somewhere els-”

Red had heard enough.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled. “You’re just a boy.”

A beautiful one at that. But the people around Turner had a nasty habit of turning up dead. He’d already risked enough carrying on with Theo for as long as he had done – humouring the boy’s fantasies about running away with him would only add more fuel to the fire. There are people relying on me, Turner reminded himself. Daisy for one, but Enfield, Lewandowski and Crowder too. Even if he had wanted to, he couldn’t leave until the job was done. There was too much riding on it.

Red stubbed out his cigarette, pulled Rodwell toward him and kissed him hard. He was resistant at first – still seething from their argument – but he relented soon enough. They made love there, on the floor of the hotel room, as if they both knew it would be their last time.

Turner made his way through three cigarettes as Rodwell drifted asleep beside him. He glanced nervously at the clock and then towards the telephone on the bedside table. As Turner had willed it into being, it began to ring. He let it ring three times before lifting the receiver against his face.

“You're late,” Red said, taking a long pull of his fourth cigarette in what felt like as many minutes. “How were your brothers? They didn’t forget your birthday, I hope?”

The presents had been received, Coach assured him from the other side of the phone. A wry smile appeared on Turner’s freshly-shaven face and he imparted his own birthday message to the family man before placing the receiver down gently.

That was that then – all the confirmation Turner needed.

While the whole world was watching what was happening on the football pitch, Red and his crew were going to rob Wembley Stadium blind.

Sticks & Stones Pub
Peckham
11:00 PM

Charlie Enfield finished off his pint of lager and wiped the foam off his upper lip. The pub was packed and everyone talked up tomorrow's game. English flags draped every square inch of the pub's walls, miniature versions of the flag on sticks protruded from odds and ends on the bar. A group of pissed lads sang the West Ham song to jeers and catcalls. Charlie laughed to himself and pushed his pint glass away. The barman raised his eyebrows at him, but Charlie shook him off and instead placed two quid under his empty glass for the pints.

"There's my favorite American!"

A weathered hand touched the back of Charlie's hand. He turned and saw Sid the Yid's thick glasses staring up at him. Sidney Greenstein, Sid the Yid to the street, operated the fourth largest shylock operation and sports book in South London. Charlie couldn't begin to calculate how much money he'd lost to Sid over the years. The older man pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and blinked as Charlie offered him a half-hearted greeting, doing his best to smile.

"I'm not putting no money on the game," Charlie said with the shake of his head. "The line ain't strong enough to put money down on England, and I sure as hell ain't putting as much as a single shilling on the Krauts."

"Bah," Sid spat. "You and half of fucking South London. Them's thats putting money on it are all betting England. All these wankers and bums suddenly become John Bull overnight. I need bets on West Germany to even the odds."

Charlie let him complain while he lit up a cigarette. He placed the pack back in his jacket pocket and pulled out a twenty pound note. Sid eyed it.

"I'll put this on an over-under."

"Over under is four goals," Sid said, never looking away from the note. "Twenty quid will pay out to eighty pounds."

"I'll take the under," said Charlie.

Sid snatched the cash from Charlie. The note disappeared from Sid's hands with the practiced speed that only a shylock had. They talked a few more minutes, mostly about underworld gossip that both of them had heard over the past few days. Who was fucking whose old lady, and who was planned to be fucked over for fucking someone's old lady. All crooks gossiped, but Sid was like an old woman getting her hair fixed. He seemed to trade in rumors almost as much as he traded in cash and coin. That came in handy most of the time. But not right now. Not when Charlie had to keep it quiet.

Ten minutes was all he could take before excusing himself and stepping outside. He finished a cigarette and stomped the butt out before checking his watch. Almost right on time was the taxi that pulled up to the curb. It's on-duty light was out. Charlie got in and looked at the heavyset man with thick eyebrows, a wool peaked cap hiding his balding head.

"Coach."

---

James "Coach" Crowder pulled away from the curb and back onto the road. Charlie lit up a fresh cigarette and offered him one, like he always did. Red sometimes joked that the cigarette company must give Charlie commission for every fag he pushed onto someone. Coach used to smoke, but he managed to kick the habit a long time ago. He still liked the smell. There wasn't in harm in that.

"You talk to Red?" Charlie asked.

"Yeah," said Coach. "This run here is the next to last piece. I've got to nick one more thing in the morning, but it'll be easy enough."

Charlie grunted and Coach glanced over in his direction.

"You okay to drive?"

"Just had two pints," Charlie said with a shrug. "I've been more pissed during jobs."

"Do us a favor and crack the window."

Charlie complied and let the wind take his excess smoke away. They remained silent on the drive south. The Yank had a certain charm to him, a charm that Coach was mostly immune to. They worked together fine and had no problems, but they never made small talk and would never be anything like being friends. That was okay with Coach. He wasn't here to make friends. His eyes glanced up at the photo of his three children tapped to the sun visor. They were the reason he was here, driving a hack and whatever he needed to do to make ends meet.

When they hit East Dulwich Charlie sat upright in his seat and gave directions. A few minutes later they came to a petrol station and garage nestled off the main road. All the lights were out, save for one dim bulb that burned inside. Coach parked and they headed towards the door. He could tell from the way Charlie walked that he was armed. He bit his tongue in order to keep silent about it. Stupid thing to do, carrying a gun. Coach knew they were a necessity for the line of work they were in, but right now there was no need for it. Just a needless risk.

"Open up," Charlie said loudly, rapping on the metal roll-up door of the garage. "Red sent us."

A few moments later the door started up. An old man in grease stained overalls greeted them before beckoning them inside.

"So who do you think's gonna win tomorrow?" The old man asked.

"England," was all Charlie said as they walked through the garage, past Vauxhall Victor on blocks, all its tires removed. "Watch the Wingless Wonders fly."

"Hoping they do," said the man. "My generation beat the Hun, generation after that took it to Jerry, so I have little doubt about the lads ability to contain Franz Beckenbauer."

They were led to the back of the garage and through a door. Parked amidst junkers was a black '56 Wolseley done up with official Metropolitan Police Force accoutrements. As close to the real thing as you could get. Coach smiled and looked it over. In the back he saw two piles of clothing folded neatly, bobby caps on top of each pile.

"Damn strange request," said the old man. "Damn strange. Never seen nothing like it before."

"It's why we pay you so much," said Coach. "You can handle strange, pops."

He looked from Coach to Charlie."Just... promise me it ain't gonna end roughly."

Charlie looked at the old man and shook his head.

"You know what we do, pops. Our mob ain't in the murder business."

"I know, but it's the copper outfits. I don't want you to go all St. Valentine's Day on some wankers, bringing trouble back to my door."

Charlie laughed. "This go sideways, The Sweeney are gonna have bigger fish to fry than some South London geezer."

Coach looked at Charlie, his eyebrows raised. "Good?"

"Yeah, I'll drive it over and sleep there for the night."

"Get some rest. Big day tomorrow."

Charlie nodded before climbing into the mock cop car. Coach passed the old man and shot him a mock salute, smiling to himself as he headed back to his taxi. He watched the Wolsely roar down the road past him, Charlie honking the horn playfully as he passed. Coach climbed into the car and shook his head.

"The fucking self-proclaimed criminal mastermind of the London Underworld, ladies and gents. Flying like a bat out of hell with an illegal weapon on his person."

Coach checked the clock on the dash and sighed. He'd find the nearest payphone and ring Red that they'd gotten the car and uniforms. He still had another hour before he needed to be home for the kids. Flicking the off-duty light to on-duty, he headed out into the night in search of a fare.

Polish Ex-Combatants Association
Hammersmith, London
6:15PM, 29th July, 1966

Bohdan “Bobby” Lewandowski had spent all morning and afternoon looking for work. In his most expensive suit, he had traipsed from one factory to another – hoping his clothes might keep certain doors open that his accent would not. He had, of course, been unsuccessful. According to the newspapers, unemployment was at its lowest rate in over ten years. Given the number of doors Lewandowski had slammed shut in his face over the past few weeks, it was hard to believe that.

There was one place where he knew would be given a warm welcome. Hammersmith was home to half a dozen Polish shops, twice as many Polish clubs and associations, and even a library owned by an elderly Polish couple. Here “Bobby” could become Bohdan again. He could speak in his mother tongue, eat meals that he had grown up eating, and hear slithers of news smuggled back from the Motherland.

There was no better a place for that than the Ex-Combatants Association on King Street. The receptionist smiled upon spotting Bobby entering it and clambered to let him in. She was pretty, older than him by a good six or seven years, and unmarried – which explained why she always left her stool with such speed when she spotted him. The pair spoke for a few moments before Lewandowski made his way through the common room to the office of the man he had come to see.

“<General Jarosiewicz.>”

In a green leather armchair in the corner of the spacious office sat an old man in military uniform. According to his friends, the old man had once been all of six foot, four inches tall. Some combination of the injuries he had sustained in the war and old age had left him just north of six foot now. He was as thin as a rake, and his craggy, greying skin was lighter even than his hair. On his brow sat one, continuous, black eyebrow – it rose as he rose from his seat to greet Bohdan.

“<Andrzej will suffice, young master Lewandowski.>”

They embraced and the general returned to his seat.

“<How are things?>”

The old man reached into the inside pocket of his jacket a produced a weathered notebook and a pencil. He flicked the notebook open, licked the tip of the tiny, grubby pencil and scribbled down a few words.

“<Things? Things are fine, Bohdan. Gomułka’s false promises have turned to ashes in our people’s mouths, as I warned them they would, and now our country stands on the cusp of something far worse.>”

“<I did not think things could get worse, General.>”

“Things can always get worse.”

There were some at the Ex-Combatants Association that questioned why the old man still wore his uniform, but it was clear enough to Lewandowski. His war never ended, he thought to himself as he watched the old man making notes. His heart is still there – still in Poland.

“<You know, when we first came to London during the war, your father was convinced the British would stand by us at Yalta. Maybe the Americans would renege on their promises, but the British? Winston Churchill? After all we had done for them, all the Polish lives lost, Churchill would be true to his word.>”

They had all thought it – even the good general himself, though he rarely recounted that part of the tale. “The betrayal,” as it had become known in the Motherland. The moment a grubby deal between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin sentenced hundreds of thousands of Polish scattered across Europe to a life in exile. It was in the moment that Andrzej Jarosiewicz and Bobby’s father, Bartek, knew their war would continue here in London. They had spent every penny they had helping the resistance in Poland – smuggling contraband home to those in need, even smuggling people out on occasion.

It was a risky business.

“What I would not give to be young and naive again, Bohdan.”

The younger man nodded knowingly and produced a flask from inside his coat. He unscrewed it and passed it to the general, who took a hearty swill of the vodka inside of it, before passing it back. They spoke among themselves for a time with Bohdan keeping Andrzej informed about his search for work. Finally, they reached the topic both men had been dancing around since Lewandowski’s arrival.

“<Tomorrow is an important day.>”

“<Do not talk to me about the football. Everywhere I go there is football. These people are obsessed with it. You know, poor Mieczysław was set upon in the street by some children. They thought he was German.>”

“<No,>” Bohdan replied. “<Tomorrow I take delivery of another shipment. A substantial one – perhaps the largest to date. I hope to buy myself a new pair of shoes, perhaps a new coat, but otherwise I hope that you will be gracious enough to accept a … donation from me. For those in need back in the Motherland.>

The old man’s eyes narrowed slightly – as if voicing his silent concern for the boy’s safety – but sure enough they softened and his rose once more from his seat. The greying flesh of his hands clasped Lewandowski’s shoulders tightly in a grateful embrace.

“You are a good boy, Bohdan. Your father would be proud of you.”

With that, Lewandoski took his leave. A tube and a train later and he was back on the street he called home in West Norwood. There were flags in the house of every window and the sound of children’s feet skittling after well-worn footballs carried through the night. Every now and then there would be a roar as a young boy would put the ball through a goal made of discarded jumpers or milk bottles. They would wheel away, arms lifted in celebration, as they celebrated what was surely the winning goal in the World Cup Final.

That England would be victorious tomorrow was a given to them. Whether Lewandowski would make it through the heist was anyone's guess.

Carshalton
8:43 AM, 30th July, 1966

“You sure about this one, Coach?”

“Sure as sure can be, lad.”

Coach rode in the passenger seat of his taxi while Yorkie Mathis drove. Yorkie usually worked dispatch for the cab company Coach drove hack for. He was on the young side, still on the underside of twenty. He was next in line for a hack when one came open, but he would probably have to wait at least another five years for that. Drivers didn’t give up their hacks unless they died or got too ill to work them.

“I just never done this before.”

Coach glanced over at the kid. It was cute how straight he sat in the seat, both hands on the wheel and always mindful of traffic. He’d learn the posture eventually.

“Pull over here.”

Mathis did as he was told. They looked at the hospital before Coach looked at the boy.

“You’ll do fine. The shift is gonna be busy, people going to the stadium. When the game starts, it’ll be dead for a few hours. After the game’s over it’ll be even busier. Bring the hack back ‘round mine by nine tonight and call it a day. You’ll make quite a lot in fares today. And it’s all yours.”

“Thank you, Coach,” said Mitchell. “Give my best to the missus, yeah?”

Coach nodded as he climbed out the car. He stood on the sidewalk and watched Yorkie drive off with his taxi. It was true that the kid would make a lot of money today, but it would be chump change compared to what he could earn with Red and the others.

St. Helier loomed large above him. Coach stuck both hands into his pocket and slouched slightly as he walked towards the emergency entrance of the hospital.

---

Fulham
9:05 AM

Charlie sat upright on the cot and reached for his cigarettes. Still early -- early for him, anyway -- but he wanted to be up and ready before the others got here. The meet for final preparations was at ten, but he knew Coach might be late thanks to his quest for an ambulance.

He lit his first cigarette of the day after his feet hit the floor. He was the only one who slept at the safehouse in Fulham. It was the closest thing he had to a home. Red was shacked up with whatever pretty boy had caught his eye, Coach had his family, and Bobby stayed… wherever the hell it was Bobby stayed. Red might stay here after the heist in an attempt to lay low, but he would be the only one. Coach and Bobby were so far off everyone’s radar that they were in no real danger unless they started throwing money around, and neither of them ever did that.

Voices and laughter came through the wall closest to him. Someone in the shop, he supposed. He ignored it and got to his feet, shuffling across the hardwood floor towards the sink. No bathroom to speak of in the little back room, but the sink was capable of providing a proper wash up. Charlie washed his face, combed his hair, and brushed his teeth. Finally, he took out a safety razor and got to work on his face. He and Red both had been growing stubble over the last week. It was easier for Red since his facial hair came in thicker. Ten minutes later, Charlie’s face was smooth and the only hair that remained on his face was a trim black mustache, like the kind the coppers wore.

With that done, Charlie walked back to his cot and made it up. Of all the things the US Army had tried to drill into Charlie, neatness had been the one that stuck. He could never leave a bed unmade. With all that done, he finally started to dress in the copper gear. The rest of them would be along shortly, and he didn’t want to give them any excuses to hold things up. He wore the white shirt tucked into the black trousers and stopped there, glancing at himself in the mirror.

Charlie wondered who his nose belonged to. The same for his blue eyes. None of his features matched his mother's. She'd told him plenty of stories about his father, the daring man in the flying machine. The terror of the Luftwaffe. The Yank who knew that Hitler deserved an arse whopping, American isolationism be damned. The boys in his neighborhood used to beat him and call him whorseson, dismissively call him a Yank. The word used to send him into a rage so powerful he'd be on the verge of tears.

The stories were bullshit. Even back then Charlie knew it, but he didn't want to accept it then. Now he knew who he was and was okay with it. He wore the nickname of Yank like a badge of honor. He wanted the nickname to be one everyone knew, a name that was whispered with reverence. Charlie started to slip on a tie and do it in a Windsor knot. Big dreams, maybe. But not unattainable. Thanks to Red, he was off to a bloody good start.

---

St. Heiler
9:07 AM

Coach worked the wire down through the gap in the door between glass and door metal. He could feel that he was almost there. Coach was fourteen the first time he’d stolen a car. Back then, they were so boxy and metallic a harsh word seemed to be all it took to get them to open and start. It was an odd thing, he reckoned, to be so in love with stealing just one thing in particular. He wasn’t one of them kleptos who stole everything in sight. He could walk past the crown jewels unguarded on the street and not think twice. But put him next to a sedan work five thousand quid and he just had to steal it. There had to be something psychological there, he figured. Something had to explain it.

A little pop came from the ambulance. He opened the door and slid inside. Hot-wiring was only just a little more difficult than popping a lock. With a pair of pliers he ripped open a side panel on the steering column and got to work, tearing wires and reconnecting. He futzed with two wires and got a spark. Suddenly, the car came to life and he smiled.

Carefully, Coach pulled out of the emergency section of the hospital where the other ambulances were parked. Acting like he belonged, he called it. As casual as could be, he turned on to the main road and joined the flow of traffic heading towards Fulham.

Lignum Vitae Ltd.
Fulham, London
9:35 AM, 30th July 1966

It took Red all over twenty minutes to make the journey from Battersea to Fulham. He’d took in all the smells and sounds that London had to offer on his way to the safehouse that morning.

He had chosen the place because it was suitably off the grid. It had raised a few eyebrows to begin with. It’s not every day that hardened criminals rock up to a florists. But the West Indian woman that owned the place, Ms. Ambrose, was polite enough. She didn’t ask for much from them in the way of cash – and she never enquired as to the nature of the meetings the men held.

Turner had fought alongside a dozen or so blacks in Korea. Half of them ended up dying fighting for a country they’d never so much as clapped eyes on. But he learned a thing or two from the ones that stuck it out – namely, that they’d sooner sit round the dinner table with Lucifer himself than talk to the Old Bill. Ambrose was no different.

After Kinnear, that mattered to him more than anything.

As he opened the door to the back room, Turner noticed Charlie stood in full policeman’s garb, thin black moustache resting on his top lip. His skin was taut, freshly-shaven, but the bloodshot eyes betrayed his tiredness. He was never one for early starts.

“The moustache suits you,” Red said, running a thumb and forefinger across his own top lip with a fraternal smile. “You look positively Hitlerian.”

“Yeah, and good morning to you, too” Charlie scoffed.

Enfield reached across to pile of policemen’s uniform and tossed a set to Red. Turner caught it and swaddled over to the mirror and began to change out of his suit and into the disguise. As he dressed, he had one eye trained on the clock and the other on Enfield. It was difficult to tell read the boy sometimes. He seemed to oscillate between being a ball of nerves and teeming with bravado depending on his mood. I was much the same at that age, thought Red as he finished buttoning up his shirt.

“Any news from Coach?” Turner muttered as he took a seat and reached for the day’s paper.

“Figure he’ll be on his way over from St. Helier by now.”

Within ten minutes, the sound of Coach’s voice carried through the room walls. He’d tried to warn Crowder off talking to the old woman too much when they’d first started working out of the place, but with time Red had mellowed on it. It created a semblance of normalcy in the event they ever passed through the front when customers were around. Plus he knew he could no sooner change Coach’s way than he could hold back the tide – he was a cabbie, it was in his nature.

When the door finally opened, Bobby unexpectedly stepped through it and a few moments afterwards Coach came bounding through, catching the door just before it closed behind Lewandowski.

“Hope you two didn’t come here in the same motor,” enquired Charlie.

“No, no, I was rabbiting with the old woman in the shop and young Bobby here slid in right behind me without so much as a hello.”

“I didn’t mean to cause offence,” Bobby demurred in his half-Cockney, half-Polish accent.

“None was taken, lad,” Coach responded, slapping the Pole on the back supportively.

“Enough,” Charlie muttered impatiently. “Hurry up and get dressed.”

“The bastard’s early one time,” Crowder whispered to Bobby as they took off their coats and began dressing for work.

Turner couldn’t help but crack a smile at the scene. There wasn't a nasty bone in Lewandowski's body. Red was sure the kid had sent half the money they’d made together back to some impoverished mother in Poland. What he did with his money was none of Red’s business, what mattered was that there was no finer an explosives man in all of London. You don’t acquire a nickname like “Bobby Bombs” for nothing.

That said, the outfit he’d be wearing for the job did him no favours. He looked like John Bull. Beneath Bobby’s blue suit jacket was a waistcoat emblazoned with the Union Flag. Coach had taken get pleasure in pinning several red, white and blue rosettes onto Lewandowski’s lapels.

“Please, not the hat.”

The final touch – the dreaded hat – was a sight to behold. It was a soft, plush top hat in the colours of the Union Flag with the word “England” printed across the white cross in the middle. For someone as introverted as Lewandowski, wearing that getup in public was like being trapped in a living nightmare. But it would get the job done.

“I’m sorry, Bob,” Red said as he stifled a laugh at the outfit over the paper. “Just think of all the nice clothes you’ll be able to buy yourself with your share of the take.”

“Plus, you’re the only one that’s going to be able to see the game and you’re not even bloody English. Try and spare a thought for the rest of us, St. George,” Coach added, itching at the pits of his snug ambulance driver's uniform.

Satisfied his associates were prepared for what lay ahead, Turner tossed the newspaper onto the table beside him and cleared his throat. He began to walk the crew through the plan. They had been through it a thousand times before and could all recite every second of it word-for-word at this stage. But Turner was a stickler for repetition. Every member of the crew had to know the others were going to be at every point, the to the nearest second if possible.

Finally, Red reached, for lack of a better phrase, the interesting part. Getting to and from the stadium would be easy enough – it was everything that happened between those two points that worried him. Usually they worked in pairs, but today Bobby and Charlie would be shouldering the load.

“Bob, at sixteen-zero-nine, that’s nine minutes into the second half, you do what you do best: make things go boom. Spray those bangers of yours in among the crowd and cause enough of a ruckus that the wardens step in. If Charlie’s going to get inside, we need security focused squarely on you – so don’t hold back.”

“Got it,” Bobby nodded.

“Our man Cecil is working on Gate L. Charlie, he’ll be expecting you at sixteen-ten. So the second you hear the banging, head to the gate and he’ll take you to the counting room. Once you’re there, put the fear of God into the staff – make them think you’re gonna blow a hole in poor Cecil’s back – but don’t get too rough with them. We need them to bag up the cash.”

Red watched as Enfield massaged his now gloved hands.

“Once they’ve done that, get the blindfolds and gags on them. At sixteen-thirty, I’ll move into position on the ground by the counting room – Coach, I’ll need you bring the ambulance round pronto. Bobby, once you’ve been turfed out by the wardens, you’ll meet me and Coach by the ambulance at sixteen-thirty-five. You start dropping the bags of cash down to us as soon as the coast is clear, Charlie, and Bobby and I’ll load them into the back.”

There were a lot of variables. Too many for Red’s liking. He’d lost count of the hours of sleep he’d missed out on wondering what would happen if England were down big and the stands emptied before the game was done.

Or worse, what happened if England lost? The thought of the four of them crammed into that ambulance with only an inch or two of steel between them and nearly a hundred thousand drunk England fans didn’t bear thinking about.

“Give or take a few minutes for extra time either way, the game ought to be coming to an end around sixteen-forty, Charlie. Use the crowd to slip out of the counting room and make your way out to the ambulance where we’ll be waiting for you.”

Coach lifted a hand into the air above his ambulance driver’s hat and Turner invited him to speak.

“Then we whack the old siren on and I get us home safely.”

“That’s the plan,” Red smiled.

“What are we waiting for then?” Coach said, glancing down at the watch on his wrist. “We’d better get this show on the road if we want to beat the worst of the traffic.”

Scotland Yard
11:01 AM

Detective Inspector Rory McEntyre checked his watch. The Super was late. It was only a minute, but even a minute’s tardiness was something the old man could not abide. The guv had served in the war and still acted like he was a Tommy, with his immaculate uniforms and punctuality.

“Inspector,” Detective Superintendent Thomas Brown said as he entered the squadroom.

The two men were the only ones in the room. It wasn’t an unusual sight to see a ghost town in the Flying Squad’s office, especially on a day like today. The Sweeney didn't do their work behind desks, their offices were out on the street. McEntyre stood and greeted Brown warmly.

“Guv.”

“Walk with me.”

McEntyre filed in behind Brown. Brown was maybe a half inch shorter, but he stood taller thanks to his ramrod straight posture and McEntyre’s habit of slouching. Brown led them through the desks and chairs towards the Super’s own closed off office. Like the man who inhabited it, the office was in pristine condition. His desk clear of any junk or files, save for the neat little pile resting in the outbox. On the far wall was a map of London, red push pins stuck in about a half dozen spots.

“We have a grass,” said Brown. “One that has a solid history. One that says a big robbery is going to go down today.”

“Makes sense,” McEntyre shrugged. He wanted a fag, but the Super did not tolerate any cigarette smoke in his office. “Half the bleeding country is gonna be watching the game, coppers among them. Perfect time to catch some blokes with their knickers down.”

“I think it’s more than that,” said Brown. ”I think it’s them.”

Brown’s eyes drifted towards the map of London and the red push pins. McEntyre had to keep his mouth shut and not say the first thing he thought of. The Boogies. It had been a source of debate among the Flying Squads of the Greater London area, the pet theory of the Super’s. Brown had become convinced that all the major robberies of the last five years were all the work of one mob, a group of independent operators who were clever, professional, and did not make mistakes. The guv even had a few names of probable suspects, a list he tightly guarded.

From what McEntyre had glossed, the evidence to tie all the robberies together was thin stuff. Most of it was based on shaky eyewitness testimony and underworld gossip. The theory, coupled with Brown’s paranoia about his list, had made some of the men in the Sweeneys dismissively deride it all together. There was a name for them that was whispered behind the Super’s back: Brown’s Boogies.

“What shall I do, guv?” McEntyre asked.

Brown rubbed his hands together and sat down behind his desk. He favored McEntyre with a slight smile, about the closest the old man ever came to showing any genuine warmth. Brown reached into his jacket pocket and removed a slip of paper that he held between his slender fingers.

“We’re going to set a trap, Inspector. But we haven’t got long.”

McEntyre smiled. “I’ll rally the men.”

Wembley Stadium, London
2:35 PM

There was a carnival atmosphere on the streets of London. Nowhere was it greater than in the immediate proximity of England’s fabled Wembley Stadium – the home of world football. Its two white towers loomed over the streams of excited football fans making their way to the stadium to watch the game. Among them was Bobby Lewandowski.

The Pole had tried his best to keep a low profile on his way to the stadium. At least, as well as one could in the get-up that Bobby was wearing. There had been a few smiles and sniggers here and there but in the main Lewandowski had kept his head down and pushed through the embarrassment.

By the time he had arrived in Wembley itself his discomfort had all but disappeared. Even dressed as colourfully as he was, the streets were so awash with flags and football supporters kitted out in equally garish fashion that Bobby was one with the crowd.

He trudged towards the stadium behind a group of a dozen or so England supporters. They were all burley, heavy-set men in their forties and fifties. Unlike Bobby, they had come dressed in their Sunday best. He couldn’t help but smirk as he listened in to the bickering of the two walking nearest to him.

“Hurst has played well, I’ll give the boy that, but you cannot leave Greavsie out of the team. I know he picked up a knock against France, but this is the World Cup Final, for christ’s sake. You cannot leave a player of Greaves’ quality out. It makes no sense.”

“England wouldn’t even be in the final if it weren’t for Hurst. He scored against Argentina and he set up Charlton’s second against Portugal. And after all that you want to drop the poor sold? Come off it.”

The argument continued as the group filtered towards the turnstiles.

“That’s all well and good – but in a World Cup Final you need experience in the side, Tom. You know what th- ”

Finally one of the older men, who had stopped to pat down his pockets in search of his ticket, cast a scornful look in their direction.

“Give it a rest you two, would you? It’s been bad enough reading it in the papers all week.”

The two men sheepishly fell silent, produced their own tickets, and followed after the rest of their group into the stadium.

Bobby took a moment to take the scene in, glancing up at Wembley’s famous two towers one last time, before stepping towards the turnstiles with his ticket in hand. A mustachioed man in his late twenties took a quick glance at the ticket and then peered at Bobby’s outfit.

“Nice hat, mate.”

“Thank you,” Lewandowski replied, suddenly self-conscious again.

The man nodded and the turnstiles cranked as Bobby stepped through them. He slipped his ticket back into the inside pocket. As he did so, he made sure to feel around the extra lining that Red had asked the tailor to stick into the suit. Satisfied that the bangers had survived the journey in one piece, Lewandowski made his way to the stands.

2:42 PM

A bead of sweat trickled down James Crowder’s forehead. Within a half second, he had mopped it away with the sleeve of his ambulance driver’s uniform. The material was coarse – and it was warmer today than he’d anticipated it being. Coach’s ambulance had sat unmoving in traffic for the past ten minutes. With each minute, he’d grown more nervous. He couldn’t afford to be late. More importantly, the crew couldn’t afford for him to be late.

Luckily for Coach, no one knew the roads quite like he did. At the very sight of a traffic jam, he knew how to reroute himself to cut the worst of it out. It was a skill that had served him well over the years. Unluckily for him, there was no avoiding this one. He was on the long straight road to Wembley – its pristine white towers staring at him from the distance.

Red and Charlie had gone together in the Wolseley so Crowder only had the radio to keep his mind occupied. Truth be told, he was as nervous about the game as he was about the job. Some music to put his mind at ease would have been welcome – but given the occasion there was little on but wall-to-wall football coverage.

“England manager Alf Ramsey’s decision not to choose the prolific Tottenham forward has ruffled feathers in some corners, but the side look to be in good hands with young Hurst leading the front line.”

“That's enough of that,” Coach muttered as he flicked the radio off.

The car in front of Coach pulled forward a few inches and someone in the lane next to him him tried to pull in front of him.

“Cheeky bastard.”

Crowder pulled ahead and denied the car’s attempt to pull ahead of him. As he pulled forward he resisted the temptation to brandish his fingers in the driver’s direction. Slowly, but surely, Coach was making his way towards the stadium. He took solace in knowing he’d be able to use the siren on the way back – and that, with any luck, England would be World Cup champions.

2:50 PM

With ten minutes to spare, Turner and Enfield had arrived in Wembley. The traffic on the drive over had been much worse than even Crowder – with all his knowledge of London’s roads – had anticipated. Despite that, Turner had still been forced to remind Charlie to ease up on the accelerator on several occasions on the drive there. They hadn’t talked an awful lot outside of that. The nerves were setting in, as they always did. Red told himself that people that don’t understand what’s at risk get nervous. And people that don’t understand what’s at risk are dangerous, he mused.

The Wolseley pulled to a stop a short walk from the stadium and Turner prepared to exit the vehicle. As he did so, one last pang of doubt rang through him and he felt obliged to impart Charlie with some information about their inside man.

“A word of advice about Cecil,” Red said as he grasped the passenger-side handle. ”He’s a very sensitive soul. Not quite au fait with our way of doing things, if you know what I mean? So don’t be too handsy with him if you can help it.”

One of Enfield’s arched up suspiciously at the sensitive comment.

“How exactly do you know this boy again?”

Red shot Charlie a look that would turn most men’s blood cold. The implication to the question was clear – and it wasn’t one he appreciated. Enfield was the only member of the crew that knew about his private life. Back in 1961, a now-departed associate of Turner's had misunderstood the nature of his relationship with Charlie and shared a little too much with him.

They hadn’t once spoken about it in all the time that had passed since. Turner wasn’t about to change that in the middle of a job.

“Cecil’s uncle and I served together in Korea. Poor bastard didn’t make it back. Made me promise to check in on him from time to time. He’d murder me for getting the boy involved in all of this if he were still alive.”

“Good thing he’s not then,” Enfield said with a shrug.

Turner took a quick glance down at his watch. Kick-off was in seven minutes. He opened the door and stepped out of the car into the waiting street. Before he shut it, he peered back into the Wolseley at Charlie one last time.

“Watch yourself in there, Charles – and remember, I’ll be round the back waiting for the take by sixteen-thirty-five.”

Red caught the end of Enfield’s curt nod as he slammed the door shut and made his way into the crowd. He used his gloved hands to clear a path through it, snaking through the throngs of ticketless people that had gathered outside of the stadium. He envied them. In another life, he would have been out there with them. But he had a job to do – and nothing was going to get in the way of his seeing it through to the end.

2:58 PM

“God Save the Queen” rang out from the stands at Wembley Stadium in anticipation of Ramsey’s men taking to the field. Sat by the halfway line, Bobby spotted the red shirts making their way down the tunnel on the opposite side of the stadium. Bobby Moore led the Three Lions out onto the pitch and was met by a deafening roar from the English crowd. Lewandowski could feel the noise in his chest. For a moment, he was overtaken by the emotion. A broad smile appeared on his face and he began clapping enthusiastically in support of his adopted nation.

In two minutes, footballing history was going to be made. In seventy-two, Bobby, in his own way, was going to write his own chapter in it.

3:55 PM
Half-Time

Charlie walked through the crowds as everyone started back to their seat. There was a nervous energy among the people, many of them chattering and excited for the game to resume. With a score of 1-1 it looked like England had a damn good chance of winning this thing. Charlie didn't care right now. Like a lot of things, football was in the back of his mind at the moment. When he was on the job, it was the job he thought about and nothing else. You ran a risk when your mind started to drift.

Plus, he already wasn't the biggest fan of the sport. Lot of people chalked it up to his time in America, but he didn't care for the strange sport they called football, but he at least understood the appeal. Charlie was much more of a rugby man. It was a game that required toughness, a game in which you couldn't flop and get a bloody free kick. A game for men.

Most of the people gave him ample room to pass as he walked against the flow of movement. The uniform did all the heavy lifting for him. When most people saw a copper, their instinct was to create distance. It wasn't so much that they were guilty of anything, it was more that they just they associated a bobby with bad things. Nobody ever saw a cop when the going was good, so even at an event like the world cup they stayed clear. It was a subconscious thing none of them were aware that they were doing.

A whistle blew in the stadium and a roar went up as the second half of the game started. Charlie calmly walked towards the nondescript door situated near the snack bars and merchandise stands. A security guard stood by the door and kept stealing glances towards the field. Most people wouldn't notice it, but Charlie saw a member of the stadium security team go in and out of the door several times during the first half. The entrances had always been at the tail end of a run through all the vendors. Most big events like this had a policy that snack bars and other sales shops couldn't carry too much cash in their registers in the event of a robbery. That was fine with The Crew. It just meant more of a score when they took away the haul.

He gave the security man a slight nod of respect as he walked by him. He returned the gesture with a bit of a smile. Charlie noticed a lot of the guards seemed to stand taller and suck in their guts when he passed by. Several of them probably either wanted to be cops, were former Met officers working to supplement their pensions, or couldn't be cops so they settled for this. Either way, the guards granted Charlie more reverence than the spectators.

Charlie stopped fifty feet away from the door and leaned against the wall to check his wristwatch. Coming up on ten minutes into the second half. Time for Bobby to do his part. The idea had been Red's and he was the one most comfortable with it. Bobby was skittish because Bobby was always skittish. Coach was worried because Coach always worried about this or that or the other. Charlie was skeptical because Bobby had never done anything like this before. And, he could admit that simple prejudice was part of it. Their entire bloody plan hinged on a polack getting the job done.

---

4:12 PM
33 Minutes Left in Regulation

Bobby took a deep breath and threw the first banger. He saw it sail over the heads of people below before it landed in a mass somewhere, creating a pop loud enough for him to hear over the chants of the crowd. They weren't powerful enough to harm anyone, but they were loud enough to scare the hell out of someone. Like the old bang snaps but with some muscle behind it.

The group below parted suddenly at the noise. Bobby pulled off his ridiculous hat and let another banger fly across the crowd. This one landed to his right, exploding and sending everyone scattering. He was preparing for the third banger when he felt a rough hand grab his wrist.

"Oi!"

Another spectator scowled at him, his thick eyebrows knotted together to form a uni-brow. He had at least four inches and forty pounds of muscle on Bobby.

"What you think you're doing there?"

Bobby shook off the hold on his wrist and turned without speaking, rushing through the crowd towards the field. He tossed another banger somewhere over his shoulder and did not bother to look back as it popped. The bangers wouldn't be enough to stop the game, but they would be enough to call security away from their posts. That's what Red and Charlie was betting on. Bobby just hoped he could avoid both security and the crowd long enough for them to do the job.

4:15 PM
31 Minutes Left in Regulation

“A beautiful turn from Charlton sends Beckenbauer the wrong way and … Gosh! What a save from Tilkowski. The German goalkeeper acrobatically parried away the Manchester United man’s shot at the very last second. We’ve a corner incoming.”

Coach had near leapt from his seat as he listening along to the BBC radio broadcast of the final. It had been a nervy game all around. The kind that made Coach wish he’d never quit smoking. Instead he’d taken to gnawing on his worn-down fingernails to relieve himself of tension. It wasn’t working. The Germans striking first had all but shattered whatever confidence Coach might have had before the game.

He took a glance down at the clock. By now Bobby ought to have let those bangers of his off in the crowd. At least, Coach hoped he had. There’d be enough money sat in those counting rooms to change Coach’s life for good. He’d be able to take the kids on that holiday he’d been promising them – there’d be no more Bognor Regis or Devon, this time it would be sunny Spain.

With what was left over he’d pursue the dream he’d harboured in secret for the best part of two decades. He’d trade in the old cab for a whole fleet of cars – nice ones, too – and start his own private hire firm. There’d be no more driving. Hell, if he had it his way he’d never touch a steering wheel again. Coach would be the guv’nor for once. He’d be the one wearing the big, double-breasted suits with pinstripes on them.

He’d make more money legit than the crew had ever done robbing banks and jewellery stores. And he’d use it to give his children the chances he never had – see to it that they went to those public schools the toffs all sent their kids to.

“Another brilliant save from the German,” the BBC announcer bellowed. “What a performance we’re seeing from him this afternoon. If the Three Lions are going to get another past Tilkowski, it seems it’s going to take something special.”

This time Coach slammed his fist down in frustration on the steering wheel. It gave a sudden beep and a passing crowd of England fans leapt back in shock. Coach’s cheeks turned a blushed red and he removed his hat with an embarrassed smile by way of apology.

“Come on, boys,” he muttered in the direction of the stadium, clearly unsure as to whether it was directed at Lewandowski and Enfield or the men on the field.

4:28 PM
18 Minutes Left in Regulation

Cecil could feel his heart pounding in his throat. He was running late. Alf had told him that he needed to be at Gate L for ten past four and a good fifteen minutes or so had passed since then. The coast hadn’t been clear, Cecil told himself, though had he been honest with himself it was more that he’d been having second thoughts about the entire thing. He should never had said yes to Turner – he’d only agreed out a sense of gratitude for all of the help that Alf had given him over the years. Now Cecil was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

The two convenient obstructions were none other than George and Jonno Thursgood. They were older than Cecil by a good two years, but you would have been hard-pushed to believe it. Despite the fact he’d only started working the turnstiles since the quarter-finals, Cecil had been made the Thursgoods line manager of sorts. They hadn’t taken too kindly to that.

They were huddled between a crack in a wall, trying to get a glimpse of what was happening on the field. Cecil doubted they could see anything from where they were stood, but when a roar came from the Wembley crowd, George, the older of the two, let out a shout of his own.

“Bloomin’ heck, that was close.”

“What’s going on? Move out of the way, George, I can’t see,” Jonno muttered as he attempted to jostle for his position with his older brother.

“Never you mind what’s going on,” Cecil called over to them. “You two are meant to be working. There are still some late-comers arriving that need letting in.”

The Thursgoods stepped back from the crack nervously and looked to one another in search of an explanation. Once it became clear they didn’t have one, they chose a different tack instead. George shrugged his shoulders dismissively.

“Yeah, well if they can’t be bothered to show up on time for the World Cup Final, they can bloody well hang for all I care. What do you reckon, Jonno?”

“Yeah, they can bloody well hang."

“Alright,” Cecil sighed. “Well, I’ll let Gladys know that you won’t be wanting paying at the end of the day then, shall I?”

He’d managed a half step before George bound over to him and place an apologetic hand on his sleeve.

“Steady on, Cecil.”

The Battleaxe claims another set of scalps, Cecil thought triumphantly. Gladys was sixty-eight and had a reputation for running the Wembley staff ragged before, during and after matches. She’d near deafened Cecil during his first shift at the stadium. And he was sure that she was onto him and Iris.

That didn’t matter now – all that mattered was getting the Thursgoods as far from here as possible and fulfilling his end of the bargain. Even if it had taken him slightly longer than it had meant to.

“The gates,” Cecil commanded.

With a wounded look they did so and Cecil took a few moments to make sure that there was no one else around. He reached for the ring of keys around his belt, thumbing his way through it in search of the right one, and upon finding it nervously slid it towards the keyhole. His hands were shaking. There was the faint taste of iron in his mouth. Once he opened that door, he was officially a criminal. But the way he saw it, he had no choice. He’d made assurances. Heck, maybe Iris would write to him in prison.

Finally he slid the key in and began to turn it. Before Cecil had realised it was even unlocked, two black gloved hands came barrelling through it and he found himself knocked to the ground. Looming over him was a heavy-set man in a policeman’s outfit. His dark features almost purple with rage. One of the man’s gloved hands wrapped itself tightly around Cecil’s collar and the other was cocked back into a fist.

In the distance the Wembley crowd let out a howl. A look of recognition flashed across Cecil's assailer and slowly the purple drained away from his face. With embarrassing ease, he dragged Cecil to his feet.

“Move,” the man barked. “Or I swear to God – I don't care who the hell your goddamn uncle was – I’ll do more than pretend to shoot you.”

Soho
4:34 PM
12 Minutes Left in Regulation

“It’s kicked up in the air and… it’s in! Peters scores! England now up over West Germany, 2-1 with a brilliant goal in the seventy-eighth minute!”

Chapman and Morgan pumped their fists in celebration. Even McEntyre let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. The three men sat in an unmarked police car, listening to the game on the radio. Chapman sat in the driver’s seat, McEntyre to his left, and Morgan in the back. Across the street from them was Carlisle's Cooperage, a front for a known betting parlor. The place had been a hive of activity in the run up to the game. Now it was quiet, but McEntyre knew enough about the betting world to know it would be busy again as soon as the game ended.

“You think the old man’s grass is right?” Morgan asked in his sing-song Welsh accent.

McEntyre shrugged and took a drag from his cigarette. “Who the hell knows? A bookie shop on the day of the game is a spot ripe for the pickin’. Just don’t know if I’d hit this one in particular.”

“I wouldn't want to nick so much as a pound from Carlisle,” Chapman said with a grunt.

“Why is that Mikey?” Morgan asked.

Chapman looked over his shoulder and gave Morgan a patient smile.

“You’re having a laugh, right? I know you’re new and all, Terry, but I thought every copper heard this story already.”

“They call him the Cooper for a reason,” answered McEntyre. “Not just because of the front. Last bloke who owed him money and wouldn’t pay, Carlisle tossed him into a cask filled with cow piss. Sealed him shut and tossed him into the Thames.”

Silence fell on the car. On the radio, the announcer described how England kept the West Germans as far away from the goal as possible.

“That don’t make for good business,” Morgan finally said. “Killing a man who owes you money.”

“Carlisle could ride it off,” said Chapman. “Because after that, everybody paid their debts.”

“And on time,” said McEntyre. “The man in the cask was the first and the last man to piss the Cooper off. Everyone learned real quickly that Welshers, sorry Terry, ended up in the barrel.”

Chapman sat forward, his big forehead knotting together as he scowled. He thrust out a beefy forefinger at something. McEntyre turned to look. Four men dressed in matching black double breasted suits were walking towards the cooperage. One of them carried a shopping bag low around his waist. The dimensions of the bag showed off that he was carrying something long and narrow.

“Looks like a shotgun,” said McEntyre. “Fucking hell. The Super was right, lads.”

He reached down, switching off the football and switching over to a police radio band. While he called in backup, both Chapman and Morgan pulled revolvers from his sports coats and began to get ready.

---

Wembley Stadium
4:28 PM
18 Minutes Left in Regulation

Charlie made himself scarce as the security officers all began to go through the tunnel towards the stands. Whatever the hell Bobby was doing, it was working. The one on the door stepped away with them and Charlie quickly walked towards the door. He pushed it open just as the boy was pulling it.

“Move,” Charlie barked after their initial run in. “Or I swear to God -- I don’t care who the hell your goddamn uncle was -- I’ll do more than pretend to shoot you.”

Now the fear was in Cecil’s eyes. Good. That would help him sell his part better if he looked actually afraid during the take. None of his co-workers would question things afterwards.

“You’re twenty fucking minutes late,” said Charlie. “We might not have enough time to pull the job now, you dumb sod.”

“I-- I--”

“Save it. We got no time for excuses.”

Charlie gave the boy a prodding and they started down the hall. He kept close to Cecil as they descended a flight of stairs. A small window down one corridor gave them a side glance at Wembley. The crowd below rocked in unison and chanted. Curiously enough, they waved Union Jacks instead of St. George's Cross. There were no sightings of any other security or stadium staff on the journey. This late in the game, most of them had pissed off to watch the finale. Charlie took stock of where they were and how to get out again after the cash was gone. He took out his pistol and held it stomach high as they approached a heavy plated door.

“Open it up,” he whispered to Cecil.

“I don’t have a key,” the boy whispered back.

“I didn’t ask if you had a key,” said Charlie. “I asked you to open it up.”

Cecil gulped and knocked on the door.

“It’s me.”

“What do you want?” an old woman’s voice asked from the other side. “You know you’re supposed to be doing final audits of the gates, Cecil.”

“There’s been an emergency,” said Cecil. “Umm… there’s a copper outside.”

“What?”

A few seconds later, the door latch mechanisms began to turn. After a slight groan, the heavy door began to be pulled back. Charlie shoved Cecil forward and rushed the door, using the smaller man’s body to swing it wide open. He heard the surprised yell of someone, followed by a thump. Cecil fell to the ground and Charlie kicked him hard in the stomach. Mostly for show, but also to vent for his tardiness.

Four faces stared at him, frozen and unsure. An old man sat on her arse on the floor. A young girl with her hands full of cash looked to be in shock. On the table in front of her were columns and columns of bills, neatly stacked by denomination. Two men -- one skinny and young and the other old and fat -- both with mustaches looked on. The young one was about to speak before Charlie leveled the gun at him.

“This is a robbery. Everyone acts calm, and nobody gets hurt. Understand?”

---

4:34 PM
12 Minutes Left in Regulation

“It’s kicked up in the air and… it’s in! Peters scores! England now up over West Germany, 2-1 with a brilliant goal in the seventy-eighth minute!”

“Yes!”

Coach would have clapped his hands and celebrated more, but at present both hands were on the wheel. He was running a little behind, but they were still well within the time frame for him to get the loot and get as far away as possible before time ended. Towards the end there he had ran the siren to get some room. It was still slow going, plenty of cars only grudgingly gave up space to the emergency vehicle, but he made good time through the streets and arrived just in time to see Officer Red, looking around too nervously for Coach’s liking.

“Sorry I’m late,” Coach said as he rolled down the window. “Even with an ambo, nobody wanted to give me space.”

“Back it up,” said Red. He pointed where he wanted the ambulance. “And you’re not late. Charlie’s the late one.”

“Fucking hell,” said Coach. He touched his cap and sighed. “I have do something I thought I’d never do.”

“What’s that?”

“Pray that West Germany scores and England doesn't win in regulation.”

---

4:36 PM
10 Minutes Left In Regulation

Charlie watched the two men loading cash into canvas bank bags. Cecil was on the ground, curled up and nursing his injury. The two women were also on the ground, sitting with their hands on their laps. The old woman stared straight ahead like she had been told, but younger of the two kept looking up at him. She would stare for long periods at a time before looking away. Charlie looked at her just as she turned to stare. Immediately, she looked away. He swore under his breath. The little bitch was trying to memorize his face.

“Oi,” he shouted. “I know what you’re trying to pull.”

He quickly crossed the room, flipping the pistol so that he held the barrel and the butt was out. With a quick, savage movement, he struck the girl across the temple with the pistol butt. She flipped to her side and the old woman gasped. Cecil let out a groan from his spot on the ground. He looked from the prone girl up at Charlie.

“Nobody fucking look at me,” said Charlie. “Just load up the bags and don’t make trouble. Next one of you I catch looking, you’ll catch a bullet.”

Charlie checked his watch. Eight minutes until regulation ended. He had no idea of the score, but it was still 1-1 then extra time might be a possibility. If not, he’d only have fifteen twenty minutes at most to get the cash out of the counting room and to get out of the stadium with Bobby in tow. He resisted the urge to walk over and brain Cecil with the gun like he had the girl. It was all his fucking fault.

Wembley Stadium
4:41 PM
4 Minutes Left in Regulation

Bobby had lead security on a merry chase around the stadium after letting off the bangers. But something was wrong. He’d seen that Cecil boy shooting the breeze with colleagues of his a good fifteen minutes after he was supposed to have let Charlie in. There wasn’t much that Bobby could do about it with security on his tail. He’d kept running past and hoped that the Sweeney hadn’t blown the entire plan. But there was only one way to be sure of that – and it involved making a change of his own to the plan. He had to let himself get caught.

The crew working the Final was made up of bunch of old men and boys that looked like they were barely old enough to take a drink. It wasn’t out of the ordinary. At events like this there were lots of Old Bill scattered around. The deterrent effect of all those uniforms was usually more than enough. All Lewandowski needed to do was let up a little and after a while one of the guards caught up with him.

He was trudged to a holding room where a few drunk England fans were being held in makeshift cells. Supervising them was an older man, who had the cut of a retired police officer about him, and scowled in Bobby’s direction as he was brought into the room. Lewandowski suspected it was as much at his ridiculous outfit as it was anything else.

“What’s it this time?”

“This plonker was letting off some kind of fireworks in the crowd.”

“Blimey,” the old man said with a disapproving shake of his head. “Given Her Majesty is in attendance, I suspect Old Bill will be wanting a word with you once the game is done. We’ve about filled up all the cells, so you’ll have to make do with a bench for the time being. I hope that’s not too disagreeable.”

Bobby stared impassively at the man. The guard that had brought him in gave Lewandowski a slight push down onto the bench. He perched down alongside him with a heavy sigh.

“What have I missed?”

The older man described Peters’ goal to his colleague – who kicked himself for having missed it. He’d given Lewandowski a hateful stare at that moment. He’d have been in the stands to watch it had Bobby not let off those bangers. For that the Pole felt more guilty than he ought to. But that was Bobby to a tee.

With another sigh, the Pole removed his ridiculous hat and flung it to the floor beside the bench. He slunk down in his seat as if he were planning to make the bench his home for the foreseeable future. Satisfied, the security guard beside him slipped a cigarette into his mouth and continued on listening to his colleague.

“The Krauts are knackered. England look closer to scoring another than the Germans do equalising. All they need to do is hold on for a few more minutes and we’ll be laug-”

The sound of a piercing whistle came through from the radio in the corner of the room. There was a roar of disapproval from the Wembley crowd that announced something not to the liking of English fans had happened. A half-second afterwards the radio announcer’s voice sounded.

“Jack Charlton clatters into Schnellinger and the referee has awarded West Germany a free kick deep in English territory.”

“For god’s sake, Charlton,” the old man muttered.

Beside Bobby, the security guard began to scoot forward on his seat. The two men were gripped by the football. He didn’t blame them. The entire country was gripped by it. Heck, Lewandowski had been when he was sat in the stands.

“Emmerich steps up to take it. The Wembley crowd has fallen silent. West Germany’s hopes rest on this kick. And … he fires it directly into the English wall.”

“Have it,” the security guard shouted, his cigarette dropping out of his mouth as he jumped forward out his seat. “Take that, you Bratwurst-eating bastards.”

Bobby stole a look towards the door but thought better of it. He needed to wait out whatever was happening with Charlie here – and hope that Charlie showed up before another member of Old Bill. The guard had all but sat down until the announcer’s voice sounded again over the radio. This time it was more desperate. The guards were glued once again on the radio.

“No! The English can’t seem to get it out of their own box. A German boot sends the ball flying into one English player and now it’s slid across the mouth of the goal to Weber. He scores! West Germany equalise with less than a minute left in the game. The West German fans are jubilant.”

There were screams from the Wembley crowd in the distance. The security guards shouted profanities in the direction of the radio. As they did so, Lewandowski simply leant back into his seat, a wry smile appearing on his face. Wherever the hell Charlie was, the West Germans had just given him a lifeline. Bobby just hoped he took it.

Carlisle's Cooperage, Soho
4:35 PM
11 Minutes Left in Regulation

Handkerchief Harry followed the rest of the crew into the Cooperage. Almost instantly the employees spotted the men in their double-breasted suits. Some turned to face them, others, perhaps in the know as to what the Cooperage’s real purpose was, kept stubbornly working on for a few seconds. The sound of Clubber’s shotgun cocking made even the most pig-headed stand to attention. Sensing his moment had arrived, Harry climbed atop one of the completed barrels, making sure to brush down his trousers once he he had done so, and cleared his voice.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please do not be alarmed. This is, of course, exactly what it looks like – a robbery. As you can see, my esteemed colleagues here are heavily armed and, I assure you, have no qualms about making use of said armaments, so your cooperation would be most appreciated.”

The Cooperage employees watched on in perfect stillness. Harry wasn’t sure whether they’d not heard him – or whether they’d simply not understood him. He was about to repeat himself in slightly more forceful terms when Clubber stepped forward. In two small steps, James “Clubber” Conroy’s body managed to communicate that it possessed all of the destructive capability of a Silverback Gorilla and more.

“What’s wrong with you people? Are you deaf or something? The man told you to hand over the money or you’re fucking dead.”

Suddenly they began to scatter towards the barrels packed filled with cash. World Cup Final day had been like Christmas come early for shylocks across London – and no shylock operating on this side of the capital could afford not to pay Carlisle for the pleasure of doing business on his patch. Harry was sure there was more money packed into this place today than in all of the Bank of England’s vaults. And he’d promised Clubber, Stockton and Walsh that they’d take as much of it as they could carry with them.

Harry climbed down. Opposite him stood a man in his fifties with thick-rimmed glasses. He slipped off his workman’s gloves and thrust them into the front pouch of his apron. For a second, Harry wondered whether the man was going to try to play hero – but his fears proved unfounded. The man pinched the bridge of his nose nervously, as if weighing up whether to speak or not, before eventually walking over to Harry with an apologetic smile.

“Bit of friendly advice, lads – I were you, I’d turn round and walk out the way you came in. The fella owns this place don’t look to kindly on people taking what’s his, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m touched by your concern,” Harry said as he went to lay a grateful hand on the man’s arm. “Truly.”

Before it had made contact with him, the butt of Clubber’s shotgun came crashing down against the back of the man’s head. He fell into a heap on the ground clutching at his head. There was blood pouring from it. Harry looked down at the man ruefully and then shook his head in Clubber’s direction.

“Now, now, was that really necessary?”

Clubber grinned.

“You lazy sods have exactly thirty seconds to round up the rest of the cash or the old boy is getting one in the skull,” he said, forcefully prodding the shotgun against the downed man’s head.

Harry made sure to watch the entrance of the Cooperage as Walsh and Stockton oversaw the employees loading bags filled with cash. Clubber swaggered around, shotgun in hand, brandishing it in the direction of anyone he felt like wasn’t pulling their weight. They crumbled under the weight of his gaze. As loathe as he was to admit it, Harry couldn’t help but admire the former boxer’s style. It was brutal, but it got the job done. Harry was the softly spoken word to Conroy’s big stick. He couldn’t help but wonder whether all that trouble with the Kanes might have been avoided if he’d had someone like Conroy in his corner back then.

“We need to move,” Walsh called out.

Clubber nodded. Each man threw a large bag filled with cash over their shoulders and made ready for their escape. Franklin was parked around the corner in the van. They’d be on the other side of London before Carlisle knew what had hit him.

Behind him, Harry heard the backdoor to the Cooperage fling open as Stockton, Walsh and Clubber disappeared through it. He look one last glance at the Cooperage employees and gave them a theatrical bow as if accepting an encore from an adoring crowd.

“As you were, ladies and gentlemen.”

As he was about to follow his crew through the door, he heard the sound of screeching tyres and pistols cocking. There was shouting from outside. Harry's face dropped in an instance. It was the Old Bill. It had to be the Old Bill because if it were Carlisle's men they would have started shooting first and asked questions afterwards.

Harry scanned around the Cooperage desperately for an exit. There was no way he was walking into the deathtrap that Clubber, Stockton and Walsh were caught in. He'd heard Clubber say enough times that he wasn't going back to prison to know that standoff wasn't going to end peaceably. When the shooting started, his suspicions were all but concerned.

"Fuck," Harry muttered under his breath. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

They would have both front and rear exit covers, that's for sure. His brain was flying at a hundred miles per hour, trying to remember the schematics of the place that Stockton had acquired for them before the heist. By the time the shooting had stopped, he remembered there was a side exit the workers used when they wanted to go out for a smoke. If he was going to get out in one piece, it would be through there.

The bag of money over his shoulder made him feel like he was running through treacle. Reluctantly he slung the bag to the ground and made for the side exit. As he reached it, he pulled out the pistol in his waistband and prepared to shoot his way out. With a kick, the door flung open and Harry broke through it.

The alley was empty all but for one figure. Harry trained his weapon on him before recognising the trademark navy peacoat. Without saying a word, DI Eddie Dunphy used the barrel of his own pistol to reveal the likeliest escape route to him and Harry followed it without a second's thought.

Clubber, Stockton and Walsh were probably dead. If Franklin was clever, he'd have high-tailed it out of there the second Old Bill showed up. Knowing the boy, he was probably sat in the back of a police van.

Harry had absolutely no intention of joining him.


Wembley Stadium
4:56 PM
24 Minutes Left in Extra Time

Red had almost kissed Coach on the mouth when West Germany scored their last-minute equaliser. He wasn’t sure exactly how Crowder had willed it into being, but he had seemingly managed it with that quip of his. The two of them stood, growing more and more nervous about the crowds surrounding the stadium, until a window opened high above them.

“Look sharp,” Red ordered.

Crowder quickly ran to the driver’s seat of the ambulance and turned on the vehicle’s engine. Lewandowski had no-showed. Turner was worried about that, too – but slightly less worried than he had been about Charlie’s lateness. Something had held him up. He hoped Cecil wasn’t in some kind of trouble.

The first bag of cash was flung down to Red. He readied himself to catch it but was still caught off-guard by just how heavy it was. The take was going to be bigger than they had thought. As of yet, Turner wasn’t entirely sure whether that was a good thing.

What seemed like a dozen more bags were thrown down and Turner loaded each onto the waiting ambulance. Finally Charlie’s head popped out of the window above them. Turner and he made eye contact. He wanted to shout out to Enfield and ask him whether Bobby was with him – but to do so would be to tip-off anyone listening in that their crew had a fourth. He couldn’t risk it.

Instead he made a flinging gesture with his hand. At the end of the gesture his fingers flicked out abruptly, striking against his thumb, in a makeshift exploding motion. Charlie watched him for a few seconds, as if trying to decipher the gesture's meaning, and then suddenly nodded back determinedly. The window shut and Enfield disappeared back inside the courting room.

“What’s going on?” Coach mumbled to Red as Turner made his way around to the passenger side. “Was the kid with Charlie?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Red sighed.

“Christ, as if the game wasn’t bloody dramatic enough on its own.”

The two elder statesmen of the crew sat in the front of the ambulance in silence. One of Turner’s hands reached for the dial on the radio. Coach glanced at his colleague despairingly, fearing he was about to turn the match off altogether, but was relieved to find Red turning the volume up slightly.

There was nothing they could do now, Red ruminated. Everything was resting on Charlie – and, perhaps not for the first time, that thought made him anxious.

24 Minutes Left in Extra Time

Charlie tossed the last of the bank bags out the window and closed the door. He let out a slight breath and turned around. All five people in the counting room were on their stomachs, staring down at the floor. Their wrists and ankles tied with the phone cord Charlie had yanked from the wall. They all seemed calm. Even the girl he’d caught eyeballing him was staying still. She hadn’t moved a whole lot and still seemed to be out of it. Maybe he’d hit her harder than he thought.

“Someone will come calling eventually,” he said. “I want you all to play nice and keep your mouths shut when the coppers come calling.”

He quickly went through the men’s pockets and the women’s purses. He came up with three driver’s licenses, a wallet with the old lady’s home address in it, and a personal checkbook the young, mustached man had in his jacket pocket that gave his name and home.

“I know where you all live now,” he announced. “So just remember that when Old Bill start asking questions.”

He opened the steel reinforced door and stepped out, shutting it behind him and quickly walking down the corridor. Charlie checked his watch. The game had probably just ended so he could slip into the crowds exiting out Wembley with no problem. Bobby would be waiting near gate G and they would leave together.

Charlie was surprised when he exited out the door Cecil had opened for him and saw no people in the corridors. He could still hear the roar of the crowd from his left. That meant the game was still going on. Extra time.

“Oi!”

A sharp voice made him turn. A security guard bounded towards him, the man’s big gut swinging with every step he took..

“We need you!”

“For what?”

“Incident report. We want to press charges against some cunt who thought it’d be a good idea to pop off crackers in the middle of the game.”

Charlie had to resist the urge to smile.

“Lead the way, guv.”

---

20 Minutes Left in Extra Time

Bobby had to resist the urge to laugh when the security guard led the copper into Wembley’s holding cells. Charlie Enfield looked down his nose at him with a disdain so convincing it had to be at least partially real. Bobby tried to apologize with his eyes. Him getting nicked hadn’t been part of the plan, but whatever the plan was it was now in flux thanks to delays and West Germany’s ability to score at the last minute.

“I’ll take it from here,” Charlie announced to the security staff. “Take him over to the station house for processing.”

“What?” The security guard looked puzzled. “Right now?”

“Yeah,” Charlie shrugged. “Game’s wrapping up. There are plenty of other Met officers around in case something happens.”

The guard was about to say something, but the rest of the men in the cells began to cheer wildly along with the other security guard on duty.

“England scores!” the radio announcer screamed. “Hurst to the bar… West Germany is now saying that it wasn’t a goal. And now the officials are trying to figure this one out.”

“One less rowdy to deal with,” Charlie said to the guard.

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” The guard nodded before turning his attention back to the radio. He kept his head cocked towards the radio as he opened the cell door.

“He’s all yours, mate.”

“And… he’s given it! He’s given it! The goal stands and England is now up 3-2!”

Everyone in the cells cheered, save for two people. While celebration continued all around them, Charlie pretended to restrain Bobby’s wrist and push him forward out of the cells and up the stairs.

“3-2,” said Charlie. “Shit. I bet the score wouldn't get over four.”

“So you lost?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah,” Charlie said with a laugh. “Looks like I’m out twenty quid…”

5:16 PM
4 Minutes Left in Extra-Time

With every passing minute, the crowds outside Wembley Stadium grew and grew with size. Drunken renditions of “God Save the Queen” were tossed back and forth between expectant England fans. The Three Lions were 3-2 up and on the cusp of securing their first World Cup win – on home soil at that. For Red and Coach, who were taking shelter in a stolen ambulance crammed full with stolen cash, that wasn’t much comfort to them. Charlie and Bobby’s lateness was playing on both of their minds.

“What do we do?”

“We’re not leaving them behind,” Red responded curtly.

“Blimey, Red,” Coach bristled in the seat next to him. “I wasn’t suggesting anything of the sort. I’d as soon chop my own bollocks off than leave them high and dry on a job. You know that.”

Turner had regretted saying it the second the words had left his mouth. His nerves had got the better of him. For not the first time that afternoon, Red silently damned himself for having got Cecil involved in the scheme at all. They could have found another way in. He should have found another way in for them.

Before he had a chance to apologise, he made out Charlie’s squat figure cutting its way through the crowds of people. In front of him was Bobby, ridiculous outfit and all. He was frog-marching towards the ambulance with a stern look on his face.

“That’s them,” Red said with a point in their direction. “Start the engine. I want us out of here in thirty seconds flat.”

Coach shot Turner a nod. Red climbed from the passenger seat into the back of the ambulance and opened up its double doors from the inside. Charlie gave Bobby one last shove, almost knocking him into Red’s arms, and shut the doors behind him.

“Better late than never, comrades,” Coach called out from the front as he stuck on the siren.

“I can take off these stupid clothes now?”

Red smiled at Bobby.

“Yes, Bobby, you can take off the clothes.”

Lewandowski pulled the Union Flag waistcoat off over his head and flung it onto the floor of the ambulance. He was half-rolling up his sleeves when Red motioned to him to join Coach in the front of the ambulance. Once he had sat down, Coach began to pull out of the parking lot. Turner took a seat opposite Charlie in the back. There were bags of money piled around their feet.

“What happened in there?”

“Your boy Cecil happened,” Charlie fumed. “He was twenty minutes late. I stood out there with my ass flapping in the wind for twenty goddamn minutes.”

“At least he came through in the end,” was all Red could muster by way of defence.

“Yeah, well, excuse me if I’m not as forgiving. The whole job could have gone south.”

The siren hadn’t quite had the desired effect. The crowds had parted some to make way for it – but not nearly at the speed you would expect. The ambulance was taking a slow and winding course through the crowds, with bags of money sliding to the left and right with Coach’s each turn of the wheel.

Turner was about to attempt to justify Cecil’s lateness for a second time when Crowder called out from the front of the ambulance.

“Pipe down back there, would you? England are about to win the World Cup.”

Coach reached for the dial and turned the volume up. Sensing the tension between himself and Charlie, Turner stepped up towards the front of the ambulance to listen in to the football with Coach and Bobby. Through the radio, the sound of Kenneth Wolstenhome’s voice came booming.

“The referee looks at his watch. Any second now, it will be all over. Thirty seconds … the Germans are going down and they can hardly get up. It’s all over, I think.”

Crowder prematurely pumped one of his fists, before quickly snapping it back into place and steering the ambulance away from the stadium car park and towards the exit in the distance. As they crossed the threshold, Wolstenhome sounded again, this time even more desperate and excitable than before.

“No, it’s – and here comes Hurst, he’s got – some people are on the pitch, they think it’s all over! It is now!”

There was a roar from the stadium behind them. The assembled crowds that were lining Wembley’s streets broke out in scenes of pure ecstasy. Coach shook his fists excitedly in the air and Red dug his hands into Crowder’s shoulders with a laugh. In the passenger’s seat, Bobby beamed that broad, wholesome smile that only Bobby could. Turner turned to Charlie sat in the back and smiled at him. Enfield smiled back faintly, but only for a second.

It was almost done, Red thought as the ambulance drew away from the stadium. They made one last stop so that Charlie could pick up the Wolseley the Binney’s old man had kindly supplied them with, but after that it was smooth sailing.

England had won the World Cup – and they had managed to rob the bastards blind under their noses without so much as a shot fired.

Something told Turner that he would remember this day for the rest of his life.

5:14 PM
2 Minutes Left in Regulation

There were only minutes left until the referee blew his whistle. George Thursgood had no intention of missing out on England’s victory lap once that whistled sounded. After a little coaxing from his brother Johnno, he’d agreed to broach the idea of the pair of them heading down to the field with Gladys. They arrived at the sorting room, where Gladys reigned supreme with the help of Cecil’s squeeze Iris, and George gave the door a quick rap with his knuckles.

Nothing. Usually Gladys’ hoarse, cigarette-shredded voice sounded through the door within seconds. Perhaps “The Battleaxe” had agreed to let the staff go down to the field already, George thought to himself for a second. He rapped his knuckles against the door one last time before, again at his brother’s coaxing, deciding to try the handle.

“Gladys,” George called out as the usually-locked counting room door swung open. “You don’t mind if Johnno and I head down to the st-”

The elder Thursgood stopped in his tracks as he spotted his colleagues tied up around the room. In the centre of the room, where the piles of notes were usually laid out to be counted, was only an empty table. He knew straight away what had happened. And it had left him with knots in the pit of his stomach.

“Oh, christ. We’ve been robbed, haven’t we? On Cup Final day of all days,” Johnno whimpered.

“Go and find a copper,” George implored his younger brother earnestnessly.

Johnno nodded and disappeared into the stadium’s corridors in search of a police officer. George knelt down beside Gladys. He pulled a pen-knife from his pocket and hacked through the cables that bound her feet and hands. He hadn’t even finished helping the old woman to her feet when she gestured to the rest of their colleagues.

“Help me untie the rest of them.”

The two of them set about untying the other bound members of staff one-by-one. There were tears, even anger, all around as they all clambered to their feet. Only Cecil and Iris remained on the ground. Gladys had broke towards Cecil to help him so George knelt beside Iris to do the same.

It took less than a second for Thursgood to realise that the girl was eerily still.

"Something’s wrong with Iris.”

From outside of the counting room there came a roar that shook Wembley Stadium to its foundations. Just two minutes ago, George would have been the first to try and decipher what it meant. Now, staring down at the young blonde girl’s unmoving body, he couldn’t bring himself to think about football.

Gladys, who was about to remove Cecil’s gag, stopped dead in her tracks.

“What are you talking about?”

George instinctually placed his fingers against Iris’ neck in search of a pulse. After a second or two, his face awash with dread, Thursgood looked round at Gladys.

“She’s not breathing.”

Wembley Stadium
6:30 PM
Seventy Minutes After The Game

Detective Superintendent Thomas Brown didn't say much as he surveyed the stadium counting room. A police chemist snapped photographs while another dusted surfaces for fingerprints. Brown knew it was a fruitless gesture. There was no way they would be dumb enough to leave a fingerprint. He wasn't in charge of the investigation just yet, but he was here to observe. As a Super, he was low man on the totem pole among the Met brass. Commanders and Deputy Commissioners with enough medals and citations to make a Soviet general jealous were coming and going, getting the way more than they helped.

Brown had one of his Flying Squads down in the security section of the stadium, interviewing the staff. He'd make his way down there shortly and contribute. A homicide detective in a rumpled suit smoked a cigarette while sketched out the layout of the counting room. A yellow placard on the floor marked where the body had been. Someone said she was only nineteen. It had to be an accident. Their first mistake, but Jesus Christ was it a big one.

He had been on the way to Soho when he got the call on the radio to come to Wembley right away. Flying Squad 2, the one under McEntyre's command, foiled a big robbery of a bookie shop. Brown's grass said that was going go down and it did, but the grass was completely wrong about the people behind it. His gang of thieves, the ones Brown knew existed despite the doubts and derision of the Met, would be bold enough to pull a big job on the day of the World Cup final. On that much Brown and the grass agreed. What both men had sorely gotten wrong was the ambition of this crew. To rob Wembley Stadium of the World Cup Final gate during the World Cup final was bold on the point of being insane. Crazy like a fox, wasn't that the saying? Well, their craziness had paid off. It'd also gotten a girl killed.

"Superintend Brown."

He looked away at the mention of his name. Deputy Commissioner Robertson stood at the doorway of the counting room. He had been called in from home. The man wore slacks and a blue polo shirt. Brown he saw the Saint George's Cross pin on the lapel of his polo.

"Alright then, Joe?" Brown asked.

Robertson raised his eyebrows. "What are you thinking, Tommy? I know how your brain works. Theories on top of theories. We got reports from downstairs that the one who did it was dressed as us. Old Bill, I mean."

"Cheeky bastards," Brown said softly. "They would do something crazy like that."

"They?" asked Robertson.

"I've got a theory, Joe. Keep in mind, it's just a theory."

Robertson looked around the ransacked counting room and nodded.

"Let's hear it, then."

---

Fulham
6:34 PM
Seventy-Four Minutes After the Game

Coach whistled "God Save The Queen" as he and Charlie counted the take on a wobbly card table. They were the two quickest counters in the Crew. As a cabbie, Coach had to use quick maths to settle fares and give change. Red sat on the hideout's Murphy bed and watched them count while Bobby changed into his regular clothes in the apartment's tiny bathroom. Charlie had a cigarette stuck in his mouth as he counted, the ashes close to falling on the money. Coach would count up to a ten thousand pounds and then set it aside in a bundle on the table. So far, he had ten neat little bundles in front of him to go along with Charlie's eight.

"Done," Charlie announced a few minutes later. He flicked ashes from his cigarette and looked over at Coach. "What you got."

They compared notes and came up with an exact figure. Red rose off the Murphy bed and walked over to the table just as Bobby came out the loo in his street clothes.

Coach announced it. "Lads, we just walked away with two hundred and two thousand, five hundred and seven pounds."

It was so silent, the sound of the toilet running filled the small space. They all looked at each other before Bobby broke the silence with his laughter. Suddenly, they were all laughing and celebrating. Charlie reached out and wrapped Coach in a warm bear hug before pumping Red's hand enthusiastically.

"Fucking brilliant," he said with a laugh. "Absolutely fucking brilliant, mate."

"Shame it's not all ours," Red said with a laugh. "But I'll be happy with, what? Twenty-five grand a piece? Not nothing to turn the old nose up over, eh?"

"I could drive hack for six years and not make this kinda cash," said Coach. "Charlie is right. Fucking brilliant."

"Okay," said Red. "Someone needs to cut out forty percent of the take. The Binney brothers are gonna be expecting us to come calling tonight."

Scotland Yard, Westminster
7:42 PM

Detective Inspector Eddie Dunphy placed a cigarette between his lips. It lay there helplessly for the duration of Dunphy’s journey from Scotland Yard to a nearby phonebox. It wasn’t until the police officer had stepped inside of it that he bothered to light it up. It was a peculiar habit Dunphy had. That and wearing the peacoat his uncle had bought him for his eighteenth birthday all year round. Both had earned him his fair share of stick from his colleagues. But it was nothing he couldn’t handle.

He filled his lungs with smoke as he pulled up the sleeve of the coat. There daubed on the fat of the inside of his hand was a phone number that Dunphy was supposed to have memorised. In all of the day’s excitement, the task had proved beyond him.

He slid a few coins into the phone and tapped the phone number in. After three rings, he heard the receiver being picked up on the other end.

“It’s me,” Eddie announced.

“Ah,” Harry Handkerchief’s faux-surprise was tangible from the other side. “I had been wondering when you would call.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. It’s been a bit of a busy day at the office. Our little misadventure down at Carlisle’s place wasn’t even the evening’s main attraction.”

“What?”

“Some bastards with bollocks the size of Big Ben robbed Wembley Stadium blind while the final was going on, if you can believe that. Half of Scotland Yard are down there trying to figure out what happened. The other half are out on the piss, as you’d expect given the football and all.”

Dunphy had been hoping the World Cup Final would help draw the Met’s attention away from the Cooperage raid. And he thought it had done. But someone had gone crying to Brown and his boys at the last minute and blown Dunphy’s plan to pieces. It was only a stroke of luck that Eddie himself had been called out there. If it had been someone else, Harry would likely have been blown away there in that alleyway.

“What of my colleagues?”

“Stockton and Walsh were dead the second they reached for their guns,” Dunphy sighed. “Your wheelman rear-ended a rubbish van trying to get away from the scene. Wasn’t a pretty sight. Coroner reckons he died on impact, though.”

“Christ,” Harry muttered down the phone. “And Clubber?”

“Conroy is alive,” Dunphy responded. “The bugger took six bullets at close range and it still wasn’t enough to put him down.”

“Well, I suppose that’s good news.”

“Is it?”

The sound of honking horns and cheering from passersby filled the silence between the two men.

“What are you suggesting, Edmund?”

Eddie could feel the indignation in Harry’s voice. Their settlement, as they had come to refer to it as, had worked well for both men up to this point – Dunphy came up with the plans, Harry saw them through. Because of his day job, that was about as involved as Eddie could afford to be. That meant that Harry had to put together his own crews. Dunphy didn’t always agree with his choices. Clubber being one of them.

“He went away for a long time last time around,” Eddie ventured with some trepidation in his voice. “And he’s only been on the outside for, what, nine months? What if he starts getting ideas when he comes to? I’ve seen Brown crack bigger and tougher bastards than him.”

Harry’s tart, posh laughter sounded from the other side of the phone.

“They don’t make bastards bigger and tougher than James Conroy.”

“Are you willing to bet your life on that?”

“I am,” Harry nodded. “Not that it will matter once Carlisle gets wind of my involvement in this bloody mess.”

“Don’t you worry about that old todger,” Eddie said knowingly. “I spoke with my family friends this morning. Rumour has it Carlisle will have a little more than a botched robbery to deal with in the next couple of days.”

Carlisle’s days were numbered. The Binneys were going to see to that. The old man must have known that. With the Binneys territory creeping more westwards every week and the Kanes looking to make moves across the river, Carlisle was surrounded. Nearly a decade ago, a similar fate had befallen Eddie’s great uncle – Jack Donoghue. That had been when the Binneys were small-time. Now they ruled the roost. Carlisle would be lucky to still be around in six months time.

“You’ll see to it that no harm comes to Clubber on the inside? He’s a good man, Edmund. A simple one, perhaps, but he understands the value of loyalty,” Harry implored.

The copper thought on it for a few moments. It would be a ball ache convincing Albie and Alan not to have Conroy seen to once he was on the inside, but he felt like he owed Harry that much, given what had happened to the rest of them. He’d go to Frank first. Frank had always been the key to getting the brothers onside.

“I’ll do my best, Harry,” Eddie agreed finally.

Harry intimated he’d be dropping off the map for the foreseeable and the two men said their goodbyes. Eddie put the receiver down and tossed his now dead fag onto the floor and ground it into mulch with one of his feet.

He made the slow trudge back to the Yard as he mulled over when was the best time to contact the Binneys. Once he was in the Yard’s myriad identical halls, his thoughts returned to his day job. He caught a glimpse of Superintendent Thomas Brown. For years, Dunphy had been leaking and framing under Brown’s nose without him being any the wiser – but with two busts in one day, it felt like the net had begun to tighten somewhat.

“Evening, guv,” Dunphy murmured to Brown as the two passed by one another.

The Superintendent nodded his head dismissively in response. If Dunphy didn’t know Brown better, he’d have thought he might have harboured some suspicions about him. The truth of the matter was that the old man was about as crotcetchy as they came – and was probably just running late for once in his life. Eddie smiled to himself knowingly and returned to his desk.

There was work still to be done.

8:04 PM

“Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed at such short notice.”

“Am I in some kind of trouble?” Cecil asked.

“No, no, of course not. Your colleagues will all be brought in over the next couple of days for similar interviews but given your rather prolonged exposure to one of the suspects, we thought it best to strike while the iron was hot.”

Cecil nodded in agreement and Superintendent Thomas Brown quickly offered Cecil an explanation of what his rights were and explained how the state-of-the-art recording device on the table was going to be used. Finally, the officer laid out a few folders in front of him. He cleared his throat, pressed a button down on the recorder, and began his questions. They seemed routine enough to Cecil as he recounted the events of that morning.

When he reached the evening, Brown’s attention seemed to spike.

“You told an officer at the scene that the gentleman who robbed the counting room had a firearm, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Cecil nodded. “That’s right. He had a gun of some sort. I couldn’t tell you much more than that. I don’t know much about them, see.”

“It was a pistol?”

Cecil nodded again. Gladys and the rest of the staff in the courting room had seen as much. There was no harm in telling them that. Alf had walked him through what to say and what not to say in the interview room. One of the big no-nos was to be seen as non-compliant – it would make them suspicious, Alf had said. So far Cecil had been a picture of compliance.

Opposite him, Brown jotted down a few notes. He opened his mouth to ask another question but was cut off by the door to the interview room opening. A uniformed police officer stuck his head around the corner.

“A moment, guv?”

“Can it wait?” asked without looking up from his folders.

The officer shook his head and Brown sighed. He set down his pen and followed the officer out of the room. Cecil watched as the door shut behind the two of them quietly and he was left alone. He repeated Turner’s advice over and over in his head.

A minute passed, then two, then five, and as the time kept melting away, Cecil grew more anxious. Finally the door opened and Brown reentered the interview room. This time the schoolmasterly calm that he usually exuded had been left at the door. Cecil could tell that something he’d learned had worried him.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Cecil, but your colleague … the girl.” Brown mused as he began to thumb his way through the folders in front of him, desperately avoiding making eye contact with him. “What was her name? Do forgive me.”

“Iris,” Cecil shouted as he stood bolt upright. His seat fell to the ground with a bang. “What’s wrong with her? Tell me what’s happened.”

“I’m afraid she didn’t make it. Bleeding on the brain. The doctors say the knock she took during the robbery was the cause of it. This is now a murder investigation.”

The words nearly floored him. They had not known each other for long, but he and Iris had grown close over the past two months. A joke here and there over a fag had turned into something more – maybe even something lasting. Cecil had already been planning how he would use his share of the take to maybe take Iris away for a while, once the dust had settled, of course. But that was all a pipe dream now. She was dead.

“I am very sorry,” Brown said from across the table.

Cecil’s hands gripped the edge of the table tightly to steel himself. His grief turned to rage as he pictured the face of Turner’s hired muscle. The squat figure that had flung him to the ground after letting him through the door – and the absurd moustache that sat atop his lip. His face was imprinted on Cecil’s mind. He wanted to kill him. He wanted to get out of that interview room, find a weapon, and take from that man what he had taken from Iris.

“They’ll be sorry,” Cecil muttered under his breath.

Across from him, Brown stirred inquisitively and Cecil spotted the officer make a note in the folder in front of him. His anger subsided slightly as he realised anything he said to incriminate that mustachioed bastard would only incriminate himself too – even if it were done to avenge Iris.

“They?” Brown asked innocently. “I thought there was only one man in the counting room, Cecil.”

It was a trap. Even poor, naive Cecil could sense that much – but Turner’s words rang in his ears one final time as his senses returned to him and his temper cooled. Non-compliance was suspicious. Cecil propped his seat back up and returned to it with an unconvincingly heaviness.

“Well, he couldn’t have been dropping the money to himself, could he?”

Brown smiled solemnly at the deduction.

“I suppose not.”

There was a slither of suspicion there. Cecil could feel it. He leant forward, crossed his arms, and prepared to navigate his way through the copper’s questioning without dropping himself in it.

As Brown asked the next question, Cecil glanced up at the clock. If all had gone right, he’d have been out on the town with Iris and the rest of the staff by now – heck, maybe they’d have even invited the Thursgoods. Instead, Iris was dead and he was one more wrong word away from being sent down as an accessory to murder.

Turner had a lot to answer for.

The Oyster Gentleman’s Club
Bow, London

Charlie pulled the car to the side of the street and turned it off. He and Red climbed out and walked to the car's boot. Fireworks were going off from somewhere close by. Two men rushed down the sidewalk, each one waving English flags as they drunkenly sang "God Save The Queen." Charlie and Red were used to seeing the sight by now. The drive over from Peckham took twice as long thanks to the celebration in the streets. Red opened the boot and took the bag out, slinging it over his shoulder.

“Don’t lose your head in there," he said. "You know what the Twins are like, Albie especially. They’ll take any opportunity to fill some poor sap with holes – even if England have just won the World Cup and that sap comes bearing gifts.”

Charlie stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth and scowled. “Alright. You don’t need to tell me twice. Let's go.”

They walked up to the entrance of the club. A gorilla in a tux stopped and frisked them. After making sure they were free of weapons, another man in a tux led them inside. Though not a gorilla, he was distinctly Cro-Magnon in his features. He popped a pair of hairy knuckles as Red and Charlie followed him across plush red carpet.

To their left, a half filled room of men sat at ornate tables and watched a woman dance on stage to "Paint it Black." She was curvy and topless, a pair of star-shaped pasties covering her nipples as she swayed to the song. Charlie chalked up the low attendance to the game.

They followed the caveman to the backroom. It was set up like a miniature version of the main room. A mini stage with a pole sat on the far end of the room. On the other end was a large table. Sitting at the table were the underworld kings of South London. Alan and Albie Binney, twin reflections of each other. Only Albie's glasses helped tell the two men apart. Their older brother Frank sat at his own table by himself, watching but not speaking. Albie smiled brightly at the sight of Red and Charlie. Alan, for his part, was engrossed in a plate of steak and vegetables.

“Well, well, well," said Albie. "If it isn’t the infamous Red Turner and his hired gun. Come to share in the revelries, have you boys?”

“We’ve come to pay our respects, Mr. Binney,” said Charlie.

“Shame. It’s always all business, all the time with your lot, Turner. That’s your problem. A man needs friends in this world, y’know? What’s the saying, Alan?”

“No man is an island,” Alan grunted, his mouth full of meat.

“That’s right. No man is an island. I thought you of all people would understand that.”

“Here,” said Red, passing the bag to the caveman who tilted it on the Binney Twins' table, stacks of cash spilling out.

Alan paused from his food to admire the money. “This is quite the haul.”

“It’s all there,” said Red.

Albie motioned towards his older brother. “Frank, come make sure our associates here aren’t trying to pull a fast one on us, would you?”

Frank stayed where he was. He made eye contact with Red and nodded. “He’s telling the truth, Alan.”

Alan pushed his plate away and looked up at Red and Charlie. “Congratulations on a job well done, gentlemen. See to it that motor you borrowed doesn’t end up out on the road again. Take it back to the geezer. He’ll know what to do with it.”

Albie broke in with a complete non-sequitur as he looked at Charlie, a soft smile on his lips.

“Turner ever tell you how he got his nickname, boy?”

“I suppose it’s on account of his hair,” said Charlie.

Albie laughed and turned his gaze to Red. “That’s cute. No, no, old Turner being a ginger has nothing to do with it, hard as that is to believe. There’s more to it than that.”

Frank stood up and started towards his brothers. “Let’s get some more girls over here and leave the past in the past, shal-”

“You shut that mouth of yours, Frank," said Albie, murderous anger in his eyes. "Or so help me God, I’ll shut it for you.”

“You heard my brother,” Alan sighed, rubbing his now full stomach. “Don’t leave the boy in suspense, Albie.”

Albie nodded his thanks to Alan. His anger had left as quickly as it had come. And why wouldn't it? He was back holding court, every eye int he room on his as he told the tale.

“Before my brother and I became the all-singing, all-dancing kings of East London that you see before you, we used to work for a fella named Donoghue. I’ll forgive you if you’ve never heard of the cunt, because he didn’t go about his business with quite the same panache as my brother and I. This must have been about a decade or so back – things were done a lot quieter back then, y’see.”

“A lot quieter,” Alan said as he picked his teeth.

Albie's face flashed annoyance at the interruption. He glanced over at his brother to make sure he was done before he pressed on. “Anyway, whatever old Donoghue asked of us, we did. Some wog is pushing drugs near a school, we make it so that wog never uses his hands again. Some unlucky bastard happens to shag one of Donoghue’s birds, we make it so that he never shags anyone again. You get the deal. Well, back then your mate here worked under a different name. What was it, Alan? Frank Turner or something like that?”

“Near enough,” Alan called back. “I think it was Fred.”

“That’s the one!" Albie slammed his open palm on the table so hard that Charlie nearly flinched at it. "Old Freddy boy ran with a different crew back then – a slightly bigger one if memory serves. They pulled jobs all across London. They were professionals, too, never a single body on them. For his faults, I’ve always said that Red was a clever bastard. But see, kid, back then your mate was a little too clever for his own good. He was like that fella that flew too close to the Sun. He had’ta come crashing down to Earth at some point.

“Turner here made the mistake of trying to take a slice of old man Donoghue’s pie. Four robberies all at the same time at four different locations across East London – all done between nine of them. It was impressive, wasn’t it, Alan?”

“Real impressive.”

A playful grin slipped on to Albie's face as he spoke. “What he didn’t realise, of course, was that he had a grass in his team. Irish kid named Kinnear that was two hundred grand in the hole to Donoghue and didn’t like the sound of splitting the take nineways. Who could blame the poor sod? If I was two hundred grand in the hole to someone, I’d of done the same. Then again, I’d never end up two hundred grand in the hole to someone to begin with.”

Everyone in the room chuckled in agreement. Everyone that was, Charlie noticed, but Red. Red hadn't spoken, his jaw clenched and his eyes fixated on Albie Binney.

“Where was I?" Albie asked, before he nodded. "Yeah, Kinnear puts Donoghue on to Turner’s plan in the hopes the old man will write off his debt. Instead of going after the bastards before the deed is done, Donoghue lets it go ahead. He let’s Turner and his boys think they’ve struck gold for twenty-four hours before unleashing the forces of hell on the fuckers. Alan and I got four of the bastards personally. Who got the other three?”

Alan looked up and tried to remember. “I think Sparkie got the two Barrie boys. Not sure who got the other one.”

Albie shrugged, the murders too inconsequential for him to even remember. “Who the fuck cares? Anyway, that stupid mick Kinnear goes running to the Sweeney with his tail tucked between his legs. Must of figured Donoghue would go after him next. Silly move, that. The old man was many things, but he weren’t spiteful. Old Bill put Kinnear under police protection – reckon he thought he’d be given a new name and packaged off somewhere – but things were different then. Lots of unpaid overtime slips around, if you know what I mean?”

Alan looked at Charlie. “We caught up with your fearless leader in a safehouse in Rotherhithe. Guess he thought he’d be safe across the river in Richardson territory.”

Albie let out a soft chuckle. “Put the beating of a lifetime on him, too. Don’t get me wrong, kid, Red’s not a bad looking fellow, I’ll give him that much, but if you’d have seen him back then you’d of sworn he was an actor or something. Not sure you could say the same after we were done with him. I’ve never seen a nose look so broken before. Even slashed that pretty mouth of his up like it was a piece of pork. It was downright disgusting, wasn’t it, Alan?”

Alan belched and said, “Absolutely disgusting.”

"We really should be going," Red said through clenched teeth. "Still work to do. C'mon."

Red motioned for them to leave. But Charlie stayed right where he was, transfixed on the Binney Twins. They were everything Charlie wanted to be. More than just big shots, they were kingpins. If the Binneys snapped their fingers, both Red and Charlie would be dead and nobody would do a damn thing about it. Not since the kings of old had an individual held so much power. And Charlie wanted it.

“Why didn’t you kill him?” asked Charlie.

Albie furrowed his brow. “What?”

“Why’d you go to all that trouble if you weren’t going to kill him?” Charlie asked.

The twins traded looks, both of them smiling at each other before Albie looked back at Charlie. “Let’s just say he was more useful to Donoghue alive than he was dead,” Albie grinned. “A walking reminder as to what happens to you if you try to steal from the man in charge. That’s where the nickname comes from, y’see.”

“Caught red-handed,” said Alan.

Albie slipped his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Christ, that feels like a long time ago. When was that, Alan? ‘58? ‘59? It must have been around then because we did the old man not long afterwards.”

“‘56,” Red said coolly. “It was 1956.”

“He speaks,” Albie said with a laugh. “Have a drink with us,” Albie poured a glass of Scotch into a glass and offering it to Red with a cutting smile. “I insist.”

“Until next time, gentlemen.”

Red took Charlie's arm in his hand and led him out of there. He almost had to drag Charlie away. Finally, he followed behind Red and looked back just once at the Binneys, holding court and enveloped in power, before the door closed behind them.

Lignum Vitae Ltd.
Fulham, London
10:28 PM

Red and Charlie made the drive back from the Oyster Club in silence. The scenes of jubilation along the streets made the complete stillness in the car all the more uncomfortable. There was nothing Turner could add to the Binneys’ tale. Loathe as he was to admit it, the bulk of it was true. He’d gone through hell and back in Korea, but it was the Binneys that had beaten young “Fred” Turner into the man he was today, and for that he was almost thankful, because one of these days the Binneys were going to get theirs – and Red was going to be there to see it happen.

He’d offered little more than a murmur by way of parting when Charlie had pulled up to the florists in Fulham. Bobby had trudged home to West Norwood earlier and Turner suspected Coach was by now playing the part of the West German keeper Tilkowski in his back garden for his children. All that was left to do before turning in was to check on Cecil.

Red sat nervously as the phone rang out several times. He took a glance at the clock on the wall of the backroom and let out a troubled sigh. Old Bill had likely taken the boy in for questioning. He’d done his best to prepare him for it and, despite his many sensitivities, Turner didn’t think that Cecil was the cracking type. But he wasn’t going to bet his life on that.

Seven attempts later, Red’d had enough and set out for Cecil’s place in Acton. The lights were out. He turned the handle to the flat a few times and then, with a derisive snort, pushed aside the little rabbit statue by the entrance. Beneath it was a spare key. He flicked on the lights and headed straight for the cupboard beneath the sink, where Turner remembered Cecil kept a cheap bottle of Scotch.

After two and a half glasses, Cecil’s thin frame slunk through the front door. The seated Turner poured out a glass for the boy and lifted it in his direction.

“What time do you call this?”

“You’ve got some cheek coming here tonight,” Cecil glowered at him with fists balled tight.

The tone of Cecil’s voice caught Red off-guard. “Pardon?”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Don’t know what?” Turner said as he set down the glass on the table in front of him and climbed to his feet. “What’s the matter, Cecil?”

Cecil’s fists unclenched as Turner reached out towards him and placed his hands on his shoulders. The boy went to speak but the words couldn’t leave his mouth. His shoulders began to shake gently and when he looked up tears were streaming down his face. Turner shushed him, perplexed, and tried to coax Cecil to speak. When he did, the words cut through Red like a scythe.

“She’s dead.”

Turner could feel his blood running cold in his veins. “What are you talking about? Who’s dead?”

“Iris,” Cecil sobbed. “The one with the moustache, he bashed her over the head with the butt of his gun just for looking at him. One bash and now she’s dead. Old Bill said she had bleeding on the brain.”

Red’s hands slipped from Cecil’s shoulders. They were dead weights at his sides. His mind was racing trying to figure out his next move and how much the Old Bill had to work with. He damned Charlie’s temper under his breath, before shaking the thought free from his mind. It could have happened to anyone – and it was Red that had sent him in there, after all. It was every bit his fault as it was anyone else’s.

The feeling returned to his hands slowly and he lifted one to his face to pinch at the bridge of his nose. It was cold to the touch.

“What did you tell the police?”

Cecil’s red, swollen eyes unscrunched themselves. “You don’t even care, do you? Iris is dead and you couldn’t care less.”

Turner shot Cecil a look of pure venom. For a half-second, all of the sympathy he had carried for the boy had been replaced by resentment. Red was a criminal – he had never sought to hide that fact – but he was still a human being. The Binneys and the Kanes of the world might consider human life disposable, but Turner never had. The accusation had struck a nerve with him.

“Nothing,” Cecil mumbled guiltily. “I didn’t tell them a bloody thing, alright? But I wanted to. I wanted to drop you and the bastard that did Iris in right in it. I was just too much of a coward to go through with it.”

Red let out a sigh.

“I’m sorry, Cecil,” Turner said, reaching one of his hands out and placing it against the back of the boy’s head. He brought their temples together for a moment. “I’m so very sorry.”

They sat down on the grotty couch in the corner of the room and Turner topped up the glass of Scotch he had poured for Cecil. They sat there unspeaking for a few minutes, each sipping on their glasses every few seconds, until Turner was confident that the boy was ready to hear what came next.

“I know you might not be minded to listen to me, but it’s of the utmost importance that you do. The Old Bill are going to coming after us five, ten times harder than we planned. Like it or not, this is going to be big news – front page of The Mirror big news. We’ll need to go to ground.”

Cecil didn’t offer much in the way of a response. His glassy eyes made Red doubt he’d understood quite what he meant. “We’ll all need to go to ground, Cecil.”

“What?”

“Take my share of the take as well and get as far away from London as you can. You’ll have enough to start again somewhere. You can buy a house or start yourself a business. Christ, you could even go abroad. There’ll be enough to live on for a decade if you’re smart about it.”

Cecil’s teeth rested against the brim of the glass. Turner could see in the boy’s eyes that he was trying to process it all still, maybe he was picturing life on some sunny beach in Spain. Whatever thought Cecil was entertaining, it came to an abrupt end. He shook his head, clawed his teeth back from the glass and set the glass down on the table in front of him.

“I don’t know if I can, Alf.”

Turner placed a hand on the boy’s back gently and rose to his feet. “Get some sleep. God knows this whole ordeal has been stressful enough without compounding it all with tiredness. Look, if you really don’t want to go away, we can try to figure out some other way out of this mess, alright? But that conversation can wait until the morning.”

He regretted making that assurance the moment it left his mouth, but he didn’t know how else to calm the Cecil’s nerves. Things were about to get noisy for Turner and his crew, but he knew they’d be able to handle that – they had disappeared countless times before. Christ, no one knew where Bobby went half of the time even when they were planning a job. Cecil wasn’t one of them, though. He wasn’t cut out for this life and Red had known that when he brought him in. It was on him to try and make this all right.

“I’ll ring you first thing tomorrow,” Turner muttered by way of goodbye as he walked towards the exit. “We’ll sort breakfast out or something. How does that sound?”

Cecil nodded weakly and lifted his feet onto the space of the sofa that Turner had created. Turner watched as the boy reached for the glass of Scotch on the table and knocked back the dregs left at the bottom. His hand reached for the bottle and placed it on his chest pathetically as he stretched out on the sofa. It was a sorry sight.

Red gritted his teeth slightly, bid the boy a final goodbye, and shut the front door behind him. He slid the spare key under the rabbit where he’d found it earlier and set out into the darkness, his guilt echoing through the streets with every footstep.

Scotland Yard
11:05 PM

DI Rory McEntyre sat at his desk and rubbed his calloused hands over his face. It had only been twelve hours ago that he was here, but it felt like twelve lifetimes had passed since. The robbery at the cooperage ended up all bollocksed. One was arrested, one escaped with the loot, and the rest were dead. The one they had wasn’t talking and wouldn’t talk. He’d take the prison time and tell the coppers to jog on. He was what the criminal underworld called a stand-up guy.

McEntyre searched his pockets for his pack of cigarettes. He found them and his lighter in a jacket pocket. After lighting up, he looked over at the super’s office. The door was closed, but he could see the lights were on from the crack beneath the door. The old man would probably be here all night, reviewing cases and files and intelligence reports. As big as the robbery at the cooperage was, it was a simple sideshow compared to Wembley. The old man missed big time on that regard. Although, the grass was to blame and not Brown. The intelligence had been sound. Just the scope of it was off.

He stood up and walked towards the guv’s office, gently rapping on the frame.

“Enter.”

Brown was behind his desk, a pair of thick reading glasses squarely on his. Open folders were stretched out on the surface. On the guv’s chalkboard was a map of Wembley tapped to it with notes in the margin. McEntyre caught a quick glance of a timeline scribbled down the side of the board.

“I think our young friend Cecil is in on it.”

“You reckon?” asked McEntyre.

“He said something to me earlier today. Talked about how the robber was tossing bags out the window. He couldn’t give us a good description of our man. Even though he was with him the longest of anyone. But he talked about the cash going out the window. That implies he was watching our man mighty hard.”

“So he’s lying. Maybe he’s afraid to cooperate for fear of the robber coming back. That wouldn’t shock me. The thing that I wonder is if he was watching, then why he didn’t get the bash in the skull like the girl got?”

Brown nodded in agreement and stood. He walked towards the board, grabbing a chunk of chalk as he did so. He drew an X on the map with chalk.

“Our fake bobbie knew exactly where to go to meet Cecil. A door that is normally guarded,” Brown. gesturing.

“The security guard said that he was called to the stands. Something about a nutter throwing around poppers.”

Brown tapped the chalk at his timeline, near the end of the match.
“Exactly. The moment the security guard walks away, Cecil comes out that door. An employee with the right keys to get to the count room, an employee that even knows where that room is. The management said that of the some hundred odd people who work at Wembley, most of them have no idea where the money is kept. So what are the odds that one of the few employees they need just so happens to walk out that door?”

“Too high for me to take,” said McEntyre. “Did anybody follow up on the nutter?”

“According to the security at their little makeshift jail, our nutter was conveniently taken into police custody. Nobody at any of the stations around Wembley reported a man being booked on charges of mischief and disturbance at the stadium.”

It dawned on McEntyre.

“It was him.Our robber. He plucked his distraction out of jail and they escaped.”

Brown pointed back at the timeline and started his summation.

“My working theory is this: Distraction pulls stadium security to the stands. Our robber goes into the count room with Cecil’s help, be it willing or unwilling that’s yet to be determined. He loads up and tosses it out the window to an awaiting party. If he’s dressed up like a copper, then whoever is on the ground is probably dressed either the same or similar. Nobody in England questions a man in a uniform who looks like he belongs. The robber slips out, after braining the girl, The distraction gets nicked and goes in to stadium jail or whatever it’s called. The faux bobby shows up and gets his friend out of jail while the other half of the group, the one with the score, drive off.”

“Jesus,” said McEntyre. “It’s cheeky as hell, guv.”

“It’s them,” said Brown. “The robbery crew nobody believes exists. It’s bold, brilliant. And if not for the dead girl, it’d be flawless. They’ve finally stepped in the shit.”

McEntyre looked at the old man. There was conviction in those eyes. People in the Met used the Boogie’s as proof that Brown was slipping. But, the previous conversation showed the inspector that the guv wasn’t slipping at all. He was as sharp as ever. And… he was right.

“Next step, sir?” McEntyre asked. The day had been long, but he was suddenly not so tired.

“Where’s your squad?”

“Out trying to get in touch with their grasses,” he said with a grin. “Case like this, it’s round up the usual suspects time.”

“Let’s go bring Cecil in,” Brown removed his reading glasses. “We’ll say he’s going into protective custody, which isn’t a complete lie. We’ll protect him and interrogate him.”

The old man’s cheeky smile was like a shot in the arm. It was theory and conjecture, but damn if it wasn’t a solid one. The Boogies, which had only been a fantasy in McEntyre’s mind a few minutes ago, was now realer than ever. And well within the Met’s grasp.

“I’ll drive,” said Brown.

--

Lignum Vitae Ltd.
Fulham, London
11:06 PM

Charlie felt the smooth skin above his lip once more to make sure he hadn’t missed any spots. Satisfied, he placed his razor and shaving cream back inside the shaving kit and stepped out of the small water closet. Coach and Bobbie were long gone. Charlie and Red would both settle into the small studio flat was just a step above a bedsit. One of them would sleep on the Murphy bed hidden in the closet while the other on the lumpy sofa. Coach once made a joke about them getting bunk beds and Charlie conceded it wasn't a terrible idea.

He was sitting on the sofa reading when Red came in. Charlie knew right away something was wrong. Red was usually loose and jovial after a successful job. Now, he was tense and he had a sour look on his face. Charlie looked up from his book and raised an eyebrow.

"You look like you smelled shit."

"I have," said Red. "It's the big pile of it you stepped in."

Charlie tossed his book onto the sofa and stood.

"What are you on about?"

"There was a girl in the counting room," said Red. "You hit her upside the head."

"Yeah," said Charlie. "She was eyeballing me. The rest of them were keeping their eyes on the ground like I said. But she was watching and remembering so I had to get her to stop. I hit her across the noggin with my gun and--"

"Killed her."

"What?" Charlie asked with a scowl.

"You fucking killed her. She bled out internally from the knock."

"FUCK!"

Charlie ran his hands through his head and started to pace the floors of the flat. He knew that a civilian getting killed elevated things. The heat was already going to be massive thanks to the scope of the robbery, but the girl changed things. The coppers would be after them even more now that someone was dead.

"Why didn't she fucking listen to me?" Charlie asked aloud. "It's her own goddamn fault she died. If the bitch had stopped looking at me--"

"Steady on," said Red. "You fucked up. Make that, we fucked up. Not just you. The heat is gonna take awhile. But if we lay low and don't make noise, it'll pass. It always does."

"What about your man?" Charlie asked. "Cecil. You said he'd stand tall when Old Bill came 'round. What about now?"

Red shrugged and groped for something in his pants. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and started to slide on into his mouth.

"He's pissed. He fancied the girl. He blames you for it. I don't think he's in any state to be questioned again. Coppers get near him, they're gonna smell blood in the water."

"Little wanker."

Red exhaled smoke from his nose and kept a passive look on his face.

"I'm getting him out of the country tomorrow." He raised his hands when he saw the questioning look on Charlie's face. "The money I need will be out of my share."

Charlie nodded and bummed a smoke off Red. Suddenly, these walls felt very tight and small. Even tighter and smaller than usual. He could hear a ticking clock from somewhere close. Cecil out of the country wasn't a sure thing. He could be eventually picked up and brought back. Murder charges never went away.

"I'm going out," said Charlie.

"We're laying low."

"Just to the pub up the road," Charlie flashed a reassuring smile. "I need a drink after this shit. Wanna come with?"

"No," said Red. "Think I'll stay in."

Charlie was relieved. The offer had been a bluff and Red hadn't called it. He finished up his cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray.

"I'll lay low, mind my P's and Q's, and be back before close."

Red grunted, already lost in thought. Charlie went to the coat rack where he kept his jacket and shoulder holster. He quietly slipped the gun out the holster before he put on the jacket. He slipped the gun into his jacket pocket and walked out into the night.

Acton, London
11:25 PM


A chorus of drunken revellers had made a home of the small patch of grass opposite Cecil’s building. Over and over again they sang of England’s victory against the West Germans, unperturbed by the fact their nose was keeping people up. Cecil was one of them. He had made his way through three-quarters of a bottle of Scotch but was no closer to sleeping than he had been before it. Red’s visit had lifted his spirits somewhat but soon after he’d left they’d plummeted once again. Thoughts of taking the money and starting over again in Spain or Australia receded, to be replaced only by the sickening crunch of the butt of a gun against Iris’ skull.

“It’s your fault,” Cecil mumbled to himself as he took a swig from the bottle. “If it wasn’t for you, Iris would still be alive. She’s dead because you were greedy. No, worse than that, she’s dead because you were too weak to tell Alf where to go.”

Across the room a small mirror hung from a nail on a wall. Cecil could see his reflection in it. He looked in a sorry state. Who wouldn’t be in a sorry state given the circumstances? Who wouldn’t be drowning their sorrows? He felt like he was in a bad dream. Perhaps if he drank enough he would wake up tomorrow morning and this would all be over – Iris would still be alive and his life would go back to normal. He grinned weakly at the thought. It lasted for a second at most before giving out

His lips trembled gently to begin with, then more forcefully, before he finally surrendered to the sadness. The tears came fast and thick. “She’s really dead,” he cried, staring at his pathetic, swollen eyes in the mirror as he did so.


There it was. The joy again. Today would go down in history as one of England’s proudest sporting moments – the footage of Geoff Hurst knocking that late goal past the German keeper would no doubt be played over and over again in the years to come. Lost in it all would be an innocent girl’s life snatched away from her over absolutely nothing. The thug that caved in her brains would walk free. The thought made Cecil’s blood boil. How he wished he’d have the chance to face the bastard down, the wrap his hands around his neck, and make him feel the terror that Iris must have felt in her final moments.

As Cecil raised the bottle of Scotch to his lips for another mouthful, a heavy knock on his front door made him stop short. His brow furrowed and he took a glance at the clock. It had only been an hour since Turner had left.

“What do you want, Alf?” Cecil groaned as he climbed to his feet. “This had better be good.”

He staggered across the room with the bottle still in his hand. He made it halfway towards the door before his balance gave out and he crashed into the coffee table, knocking a glass onto the floor with a sudden smash. Cecil cursed under his breath as he felt the tiny pieces of glass lodged in the meat of his hand. Sober Cecil could deal with that in the morning. He climbed up from his feet, made it to the door and grabbed at the handle. Before he opened it, he felt a wave of nausea flood over him. A sickly burp rose up through his throat. He fought it back and did his best to ignore the horrible taste in his mouth before turning the handle.

There in front of him stood not Turner, but the man that Cecil had let into the stadium – the man that had killed Iris. Moments earlier a vengeful Cecil had hoped to see him again. As if by providence, the man had been delivered to him. But now that he was stood there, Cecil’s righteous fury, his rage, gave out – to be replaced only by dread.

From his jacket pocket the man produced a pistol, pointing it in Cecil’s direction with a callous smile. “I think you and I should have a little chat, don’t you?”

12:08 AM

Brown brought the car to a stop outside of the Acton address that Cecil had supplied them with earlier that afternoon. Half a dozen or so young men loitering around scattered upon catching sight of Brown and his young colleague. They had come in an unmarked car – but it only took one look at them to make out they were Old Bill. It was in the way they carried themselves, Brown most of all. As they stepped towards the block of flats that Cecil called home, Brown spotted a concerning sight.

“Rory,” he muttered to the Detective Inspector stood beside him. “Prepare for trouble.”

“Guv?” McEntyre asked inquiringly as they continued their approach.

Brown gestured up to the figure stood in front of Cecil’s door. He couldn’t quite deduce what the man was shouting over the sound of his fists banging against the door noisily. McEntyre reached towards his holster and Brown shook his head solemnly to him. Whoever it was, it wouldn’t be one of them. It wasn’t their style.

“What seems to be the trouble, sir?”

The man spun towards Brown and McEntyre with a scowl. His face was covered in burnt orange stubble and his eyes were bleary and bloodshot. There was a distinct whiff of alcohol to him. Whiskey, to be exact.

“The problem,” he slurred in a heavy Scottish accent. “Is that I’ve bloody water coming through in to my kitchen in the dead of the night.”

“Water?” Brown mused.

“Aye. We’ve just got the wiring redone and this idiot must have fallen asleep with the taps on. It’ll cost me an arm and a leg to get the bloody lot fixed. I’ve no the funds to be d-”

One of Brown’s hands thrust the man to the side. It only took a glance to Rory to signal what needed to be done. The young detective leant against a ledge for leverage and smashed the heel of his boot into the front door. A crack appeared by the locked area but it did not give out until the second kick.

A flood of water came streaming out from inside the flat. Brown could feel his heart pounding in his throat as the pair of them made their way into Cecil’s small apartment. Rory had his pistol in his hand now, but Brown already knew it was too late. They were too late. In the bathroom, a grey, lifeless Cecil was all but submerged in a bath full of bloodied water.

“Christ,” McEntyre muttered as he thrust his pistol into its holster in disbelief.

“Don’t just stand there,” Brown shouted to him. “Get him out.”

McEntyre’s arms thrust through the water and lodged themselves beneath Cecil’s armpits. Brown yanked the plug from the bath. Glistening in the bath water he spotted a razor blade. They laid Cecil’s body on the bathroom floor gently and McEntyre instinctively reached to feel for a pulse.

“It’s no good,” McEntyre muttered. “There’s no pulse, sir.”

Brown’s teeth gritted together as he watched Cecil’s pallid arms slip from McEntyre’s grasp onto the bathroom floor with a thud. The two men sat there in silence, kneeling in bloody bath water, as they thought through their next move.

“Call an ambulance,” Brown commanded with a gesture to the Scotsman lingering in the doorway.

“What now, guv?”

Brown reached for the edge of the bath and climbed to his feet. There was strain there, little signs of age that he had sought to keep hidden away through a strict diet and exercise regime, but in moments like these it was hardest to hide them. This was no accident. Someone had leant on Cecil, Brown was sure of it. Though he could not figure out to what end – but he would.

“Now we rally the troops.”