Free Royal Heist by Lynda La Plante

always head and shoulders above him. My mother said it was from Florence’s side he got the height. She was a big woman. Always knitting. She got him elocution lessons so’s he wouldn’t feel out of place at Sandhurst. But when I saw him at Ronnie’s funeral limping on a crutch after he’d busted his knee, I said to myself, ‘He’s not gonna be able to deal with these villains coming into the shop, extortin’ cash, smashing the place up.’ I said to him that, as much as I respected his dad, I wasn’t gonna stay around to get my head kicked in. And do you know what he said?” Driscoll asked rhetorically. “‘They’ve offered to buy me out.’ I said to him, ‘Sell. If you don’t, they’ll go after your mother.’ You don’t want to get in the middle of bastards like the Krays and the Richardsons fighting it out. ‘Sell up and get out,’ but he said he was going to the police.”
    Wilcox was looking around the bar, bored. He’d heard the story a thousand times, albeit many years ago.
    “Offered him peanuts, the bastards did,” Driscoll continued, “and those two betting shops were gold mines. Cops were no help. I said to him, ‘Eddy, they’re probably getting back-handers,’ and I’ll never forget his face. When they came back, pushing and shoving him around, he just stood there like a wimp. They threw the money at him and made him pick it up off the floor.”
    “I was there, Tony.”
    “I mean, if you’d told me then what he’d go on to do, I’d have laughed in your face,” said Driscoll.
    Suddenly Wilcox got up.
    “Where you going?”
    “To take a leak, then I want out of this place. We can go back to my hotel, have a sandwich.”
    “Oh, okay, I’ll settle this.” Driscoll took the check.
    Wilcox gave a soft laugh. “That’s generous.”
    Wilcox’s hotel was evidently not a five-star establishment, and Driscoll balked. “Gawd almighty, Jimmy, why did you book into a place like this?”
    “Anonymity,” Wilcox snapped, and they went into the threadbare foyer, then up to his room, where Wilcox opened a miniature vodka from the minibar.
    “I was thinking about you moving in with Eddy after Sandhurst,” Driscoll remarked. “I bet his mother didn’t like it.”
    Wilcox flopped back onto the bed. “You sound like a record that’s got stuck. You don’t owe Eddy. If you hadn’t helped us out we’d never have got away with robbing the shops.”
    “I know,” said Driscoll.
    Wilcox recalled the way de Jersey had laid the plans after selling out to rob his father’s old betting shops. They wore balaclavas and carried shotguns as they systematically cleaned out the takings. De Jersey became the Colonel because of the way he barked out orders when they rehearsed their attacks on the shops. They hit them on every big race meeting, de Jersey working out the details like a military maneuver. As a result of their robberies, the two big rival East End gangs started a war that eventually saw the shops firebombed and burned to the ground. Each believed the other was the perpetrator.
    “How much do you reckon in today’s money we got away with?” Driscoll asked.
    Wilcox shrugged. “Maybe a quarter of a million, not a lot.”
    “To me it was. When he shared it out three ways I couldn’t believe it. I thought I’d get a cut but not that much. You see that’s another reason I owe him. I was able to set my mum up for the rest of her life, God rest her soul.”
    Driscoll called room service and ordered two hamburgers and french fries.
    “You ever think, Tony, that he owes us?” Wilcox asked quietly.
    “No way. He even split it three ways for the train robbery. He didn’t have to do that.”
    “He couldn’t have robbed his dad’s shops without our help, and on the train job, all he did was suss out how to stop the train.”
    “And I was the only one with a car. Remember that Morris Minor? You two were havin’ to schlep all over the place to check out the trains. You guys were