THE LONG CLOSE CALL

J WALLIS MARTIN

PROLOGUE

(January 1968)

You ran along a railway embankment, long disused and overgrown, a ditch at either side. The track was gone, but you followed the line. It led you to the road. Once on the road, you sat with your feet in the gutter, and you cried.

A woman pulled up in a car. She thought you were hurt and asked if she could help. She gave you a lift into Glasgow, but the night before, a storm had ripped the city apart at the seams, smashing down the chimney stacks and hurling them through the roofs of tenement buildings. The roads had become impassable, and she said she couldn’t take you any further; so you ran the rest of the way, weaving past people who stood outside the ruin of their homes.

You reached the railway station and stood on a platform until cold drove you into the buffet. It was dark in there, the windows opaque with filth. The only source of warmth was from a boiler, and a woman who served food let you sit up close, gave you Coke and a sandwich, asked if you’d lost your coat.

You wanted to tell her you’d lost everything but words to describe what had happened just melted away. She left you alone in the end, and you sat there, picking fat-streaked ham away from crusts too hard to eat. And when the London train came in, you climbed aboard, aware that she was watching; aware that she would remember you when the search for your brother began.

1

Before knocking on the door to that dim, neglected house, Detective Inspector Jarvis took stock of his surroundings. In doing so, he found nothing to suggest that thirty years from now, this part of north London would become fashionable, that each of these houses would be worth upwards of three hundred thou', or that a future Prime Minister would live a couple of blocks from here.

Elsa opened the door, her nine-year-old son beside her. It was one of the few times in her life that she’d willingly allowed the police to enter her home, and the fact that her husband wasn't simultaneously trying to escape it via the back made a pleasant change.

There was something of the 1940s icon about her face, the suggestion of a starlet who had aged before her time. She’d long put Jarvis in mind of the movie star, Jane Russell, and whenever he spoke to her, he tried to ensure that nothing of what he felt for her was betrayed by his tone of voice.

She led him into a room where the furniture was sparse, and her youngster flopped down on the carpet, sorted through Lego that lay on a rug, and started to play with it. Earlier, he’d built a small box, the bricks white, the roof green, and when he picked it up, something within it rattled, the boy instantly quelling the sound by holding the box very still.

Jarvis had seen this room on many an occasion over the years, most recently some weeks ago when he and his team had come looking for the boy's father, George McLaughlan. It was a month before Christmas and Elsa had been pinning paper chains to the Anaglypta walls. Now it was early January but the paper chains remained, their sticky links covered by a film of dust, their colours having faded from their former garish hues.

In seeing those simple, home-made decorations, Jarvis recalled that Elsa had been helping her son to make them, gluing the links, or holding the chains while he stapled them together. That would have been about the size and shape of their Christmas, and his heart went out to them. As a rule, he had no time for the wives of criminals, or at least, no time for those who made excuses for their predicament, but Elsa merely said, I've made my bed, Mr Jarvis.

He could relate to her straightforward acceptance of personal responsibility, but couldn't help wondering why she felt it her duty to lie on that bed for the rest of her life. He'd once said, 'You don't have to stick it, Elsa. Nobody would blame you if you cut free of George and made a new life for yourself'. And he’d then asked how a girl of her decent, working-class background had managed to get involved with a man like George in the first place, a man who, when she met him, had already served a sentence for armed robbery, a man who was bred in the Gorbals and whose background was so far removed from her own, Jarvis couldn't see what the attraction was for Elsa.

'Nobody forced me,' she said. 'I wanted him. Thought I could change him, you see.' She smiled at her own stupidity. 'How many women have you heard say that?'

Plenty, thought Jarvis, who now took his eyes off the paper chains and focused on Elsa's face, finding that this, too, seemed drained of all colour, a washed-out, careworn grey. There had often been times when he longed to give her husband a piece of his mind. What stopped him was the knowledge that if he did, George would somehow find a way to take it out on Elsa. Besides, he'd be wasting his breath. Men so totally devoid of any sense of responsibility towards their family rarely changed their ways as a result of being told a few home truths. 'You phoned the station,' he said. 'Asked me to drop by,' and Elsa, referring to the older of her two sons, said, 'Tam's gone off somewhere. He hasn't come back.'

'Gone off where?'

'Glasgow.'

'When?'

'A fortnight ago.'

A fortnight, thought Jarvis, and Elsa added: 'He went down by train the day before the storm.'

Jarvis knew well enough that Glasgow had just been hit by one of the worst storms in living memory, and his concern deepened. There had been deaths in the poorer parts of the city where roofs that were rotten with age had crashed down on the tenement dwellers below. 'What was he doing there?'

'Trying to find his dad.'

Good luck to him, thought Jarvis, who’d been trying to find George for the past six weeks. 'Any particular reason?'

'We needed money,' said Elsa, simply, and she didn't have to elaborate, Jarvis could picture the scene. Christmas had come and gone, and with George on the run from police, it was understandable that either Elsa or Tam would try to get hold of him on the off-chance of getting some money out of him. 'Any luck?' he said.

'I've no idea,' said Elsa. 'He took Robbie with him, but Robbie came back on his own.'

Jarvis now spoke to Robbie. 'Did Tam find your dad, Robbie?'

Robbie kept his head bowed, clicked a small white brick into place, but didn't reply.

Jarvis tried again: 'Why didn't Tam come back with you?'

'You're wasting your time,' said Elsa. 'I can't get a word out of him.'

'Robbie?' said Jarvis, who crouched down low and spoke to the boy very softly.

He straightened as Elsa said: 'What do you think I should do – report him missing?'

Jarvis wasn't sure. Tam was sixteen so, unless they had reason to suspect he’d come to harm, the police weren't likely to do anything more than make a few enquiries. There were, after all, more adolescents living on the streets than the authorities knew what to do with.

'It isn't like him,' said Elsa, and Jarvis, who knew Tam well, couldn't deny she was right. When the family had first moved to London, Jarvis had been part of a team that was sent to the house in search of stolen money. Elsa had hovered in the background, an arm around each of her boys. Robbie was too young to understand, but Tam was clearly traumatised by the way police had come smashing into their home.

There was a model ship in the room, something Tam had made out of matchsticks salvaged from gutters and ashtrays. The delicate rigging was complex, and the varnish applied with care, but a copper crushed the rigging and jabbed his fist through the hull.

Watching Tam crack as his ship was torn apart really got to Jarvis. 'This is no place for the lads,' he said. 'Let me take them out,' and Elsa, unable to speak, nodded her consent. An hour later, he returned them with ice-cream round their mouths, and the next day he'd come back with matches, and glue. Too hamfisted to help, he’d simply watched as Tam repaired the model, and later, when he was leaving, Tam had mumbled something along the lines of, 'You're all right.'

Jarvis had wanted to tell him that most coppers were 'all right', but that unfortunately they had a job to do, a job that was often unpleasant for all concerned. He’d wanted to add that if men like George would refrain from committing armed robberies in the first place, it wouldn't be necessary for the police to descend on anybody's house with a view to taking it apart, but he’d kept these thoughts to himself.

Now, he reflected on the fact that, despite her circumstances, Elsa had so far managed to bring up the boys as law-abiding, responsible individuals. She didn't deserve to have problems with them, though what people deserved and what they got were often two different things. Even so, he would be disappointed if Tam was about to start causing her concern. He would also be surprised, for he reckoned he knew which of the lads sired by villains would eventually cause problems, and in his view, the McLaughlan boys were cut from a different cloth. 'Supposing something's happened to him?' said Elsa, and because he had no answer for that, Jarvis replied with a question intended to extract some practical information: 'When did Robbie come home?'

'The day after the storm,' said Elsa.

'And how did he get back to London?'

'Same way he got down to Glasgow in the first place – by train.’

Jarvis was staggered that any trains had managed to run from Glasgow the day after the storm and said so, adding: 'What were he and Tam wearing?'

The look that crossed her face made him hasten to reassure her that he only needed to know in case it became necessary for him to put out a description of Tam, and Elsa described the usual clothing of jeans, sweatshirts trainers.

'What about jackets, or coats?'

'I can't remember.'

Jarvis left it at that for the moment. 'Where were they planning on staying while they were down there?'

'Iris.'

That made sense. George was rumoured to have fled to Glasgow following an armed robbery that had gone badly wrong, and it would be logical for Tam to assume that his grandmother, Iris, might have some idea where he was. After all, Jarvis had recently paid her a visit for precisely that reason.

It had been his first ever visit to Glasgow, and Jarvis recalled a dock stacked with cargo, streetwise gulls stealing food from a wharf, and some kind of iron bridge across the Clyde estuary. It had been a five minute walk from the red, sandstone tenement where George's mother had raised her lethal offspring, and when Jarvis poked his nose into the smaller of her two rooms, he’d imagined how, in childhood, George and his brother, Jimmy, had slept nose-to-tail on a shake-down bed, the mattress infested by fleas. The mattress was still in situ, a writhing, living thing, the material striped in blue and white, like a milk jug.

Iris was a biggish woman, her features hardened by years of deprivation. Jarvis had questioned her, and had quickly ascertained that she wasn't afraid of the police. At least, she wasn't afraid of him, who must have seemed soft by comparison with some of the animals Strathclyde had in its ranks. Jarvis had returned to London suspecting she knew where George was, but convinced that it would take more of a man than him to get it out of her. He was about to ask Elsa whether, in her view, George was still in Glasgow, when Elsa added: 'I told our Tam he was wasting his time. Iris wouldn't tell him anything, even if she knew.'

'Why not?'

'She'd be worried in case the police got it out of him.'

'Does she know that Tam didn't come back to London?'

'She says it's news to her.'

'Do you think she's telling the truth?'

Elsa had to think about that. 'I can't see why she'd lie,' she said. 'Not to me. And why hasn't he been in touch?'

She had a point, thought Jarvis.

Elsa added: 'She said they stayed with her the night, and then they set off early for the train.'

'How early?'

'Sixish.'

'What time does the express leave for London?'

'About one o'clock.'

Jarvis didn't say anything to that. It would have taken them no longer than thirty minutes to get from the Gorbals to Glasgow's Central Station. Therefore, they'd obviously gone somewhere in the hours between leaving the tenements, and Robbie catching the train. Since Tam had gone to Glasgow to look for their father, it made sense to assume that they'd probably spent the morning trying to find him. Whether they'd found him or not was a different matter.

He turned his attention to Robbie, who was still playing at his feet. He hadn't said a word since Jarvis got there, and he seemed, to Jarvis, unusually withdrawn. It had been the coldest January in Glasgow since records began, and if what Elsa had said about what they were wearing was true, neither boy had been dressed for the weather. Kids could sometimes be very withdrawn when they were sickening for something, and he wouldn't have been surprised if Robbie was starting with pneumonia. He said, 'Has Robbie shown any sign of illness since coming back?'

Elsa didn't seem too sure what he meant by that, and Jarvis elaborated: 'Has he run a temperature, had any time off school?'

She shook her head.

I’d get him to a doctor, just to be on the safe side.'

He crouched down by Robbie, and reached for the Lego box. Throughout his conversation with Elsa, he’d heard the occasional rattle coming from that box, and he was curious. 'Can I see your box?' he said, and, without looking at Jarvis, Robbie handed it to him.

Jarvis took it and shook it gently. 'Mind if I look inside?'

In the absence of a response, Jarvis tackled the lid. It was jammed down hard on the Lego, and he’d had to force a fingernail under the hard green plastic in order to get purchase and flick it away. He did it a little more forcefully than he’d intended, and the box fell apart in his hands. Pieces of Lego fell from his fingers and, among them, a small golden crucifix.

Reflecting that it was the very last thing he would have expected to fall from the box, Jarvis stooped to the carpet and picked it up. It was old, and very plain. It was also of very high quality, and it had a feel about it, as if it had been – a word came to mind, a word he couldn't replace with anything more appropriate – it had been blessed. Blessed or not, it was worth a bit, and he suddenly had a vision of it tumbling out of a safety deposit box in some bank or other.

George had a habit of keeping things that took his fancy. On more than one occasion, it had proved an expensive peccadillo, the evidence having been found, if not in the hull of a model ship, then in a hiding place that was equally ingenious, though no less detectable for that.

A chain had also fallen out of the box and Jarvis picked it up, finding it inappropriate for a cross of that size and weight. It was broken, which didn't surprise him. One good yank would have been enough to snap it. He couldn’t decide what to do for the best with it: he would have been well within his rights to pass it on to the Antiques Squad to check against their records, but he gave it back to Robbie – he couldn't say why.  Maybe he just felt that he could do with something in his life, something that was blessed, as if a little of whatever had blessed it might improve his lot.

In catching Elsa’s eye, he saw a glint of gratitude that he hadn't deprived the child of it. 'You keep it safe,' he said. 'Don't go selling it – hear me?'

Robbie took it from him. The look that crossed his face. It sent a shudder through Jarvis, and it was then that he realised something had happened to Tam.

'Robbie,' said Jarvis. 'Where's Tam?'

The boy made no response, and in that moment, Jarvis wondered how many other lads of nine had ever had cause to wear the expression that Robbie was wearing now. It was as if he knew that, notwithstanding the charade with the game of Lego, his childhood was over, that he carried a secret of such magnitude it had hauled him out of childhood and into the grown-up world, where secrets aren't merely a game but a matter of life and death.

He curled his fingers around the cross as if attempting to burn it into his flesh, to hide it for ever within himself – something to draw strength from in the years and trials to come.

'Robbie?' said Jarvis.

The boy looked up at him, the cross clutched tight in his hand, but he didn't say a word.

'Robbie?'

Nothing.

2

(September 1999)

The house that Robbie McLaughlan had lived in over thirty years ago had undergone a transformation since he’d last seen it. Gone was the drab exterior, and the paintwork gleamed on a brand-new door and windows, recently fitted.

In looking at it now, he found that none of it tied in with his perception of what it had been like to live there, but he didn't doubt that its present occupants had no idea what it had been like in the sixties. Nor would they know that, regardless of the fact that it had been renovated to a high standard, he still saw it pretty much as it had been when he was a boy.

He half expected to see his mother at the door, watching as uniformed men dragged his father out of the house. And then it was Tam he saw – Tam who was still sixteen, his image frozen in time.

Tam had been in the habit of walking round the side to enter via a door that opened straight into the kitchen. The memory was so vivid it brought a tightness to his chest. And then he remembered Jarvis, who had tried to be some kind of father to him after Tam disappeared. Not all coppers are out to cause grief – remember that.

McLaughlan had remembered.

He hadn't seen the house in years, and he found it disconcerting to be in such close proximity to it. The memories it evoked weren't pleasant, and he tried not to let them distract him, because it wasn't the house that had brought him back to the area, it was his job.

He was looking through the window of a flat that stood opposite a branch of the Midland Bank. It used to be owned by the grocer who ran the shop below. Now it was owned by someone who had obliged by moving out for the morning, leaving it free for armed police to use for surveillance purposes.

As he took his eyes off the house and trained them back on the bank, an Armed Response Vehicle cruised past and disappeared down a side road.

The sight of that ARV didn't please him, and he knew it wasn't likely to please his guv'nor either. The order to keep a low profile was one that Leonard Orme expected the teams to observe, but for reasons that were lost on McLaughlan, the men in that ARV had driven it past the bank in full view of the public, the police, and maybe even the robbers, thereby jeopardising the entire operation.

'For fuck's sake,' said McLaughlan.

He wasn't alone in that room, and his partner, Doheny, a deceptively weak-looking man who had formerly served in the SAS, spoke into the semi-gloom. 'I don't believe they did that.'

The men inside that ARV carried Smith and Wesson handguns, two carbines, and enough ammunition to quell a revolt in some minor Third World country, and although he wasn't in any way religious, the realisation that those weapons might be fired, and that shots might be returned from hardware equally deadly, made McLaughlan reach for the crucifix rather than for the Glock 17 with which he’d been armed since early morning. It was concealed beneath a navy crew-neck sweater, bulky over a bullet-proof vest. Solid. Heavy. Protective.

He’d worn it since the day Jarvis had handed it back after telling him not to sell it. Initially, he hid it in the box reconstructed from Lego, but when he was slightly older, he plaited it into a leather strap and tied it round his wrist. Later still it dangled from a gold earring that he’d given up wearing long ago, and now it hung from a thick gold chain clasped around his neck.

Few of his colleagues had ever commented on it, but those who had were told that he wore it because he had the feeling that it protected him, that if ever he took it off ...

Most of them could relate to that, if only on the grounds that they each had their own little rituals, their touch-wood devices that they needed to believe would protect them in situations where anything could go down.

*

The news that an armoured van was about to be hit outside a branch of the Midland had come to McLaughlan courtesy of an informant – Gerald Ash.

It wasn't uncommon for villains to turn grass once, as was the case with Ash, they’d grown too old for the game and money was in short supply. At seventy-odd, planning and executing a robbery was rarely seen as an option. Few could face the prospect of another stretch if things should go pear-shaped, and McLaughlan had been benefiting from Ash's desperation for several years, on and off.

They’d met at a Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street, McLaughlan walking in from pavements that were crowded and a winter's afternoon sky that was already growing dark. He’d found Ash thumbing through a rack of golden oldies, and the sight of him came as something of a shock: it had been only a matter of months since McLaughlan had last seen him, but during that time, age had taken hold. His eyes had turned from the steel grey of his prime to the bluish grey of an infant who is not yet able to focus, and his movements, along with his speech, had slowed perceptibly.

It took him a good few moments to realise McLaughlan was there, but when he did, he simply resumed his search for a face from the past. Elvis Presley. Little Richard. Roy Orbison. These were the people who’d kept him sane in the type of prison where men only left their cells for an hour a day. I know every word of every song they ever sang—

He revealed that an armoured vehicle was due to make a delivery of cash to a branch of the Midland at 11 a.m. that coming Monday, and when McLaughlan complained that it didn't give the police much time, Ash had quipped that it gave them two days, and that Flying Squad was always bangin' on about being able to get to the scene of any bank raid in London in under five minutes, so what was he bleatin' about?

It hadn't been getting to the scene, or even ensuring that they had it fully covered, that bothered McLaughlan. It was getting the robbers under surveillance prior to the job going down.

He asked for names, and more than expected Ash to start screwing him around then, because this was the point at which Ash usually started talking silly money. But on this occasion he pocketed the fifty without even attempting to get more out of him, and then said the name Swift.  The minute he heard the name, McLaughlan thought Ash was either mistaken, or lying.

Calvin Swift, fifty-six years old, was one of London's more notorious villains. He’d started out as a messenger boy for a well-known East End firm, but he'd come a long way since then, and neither he nor his brother Ray needed to dirty their hands by pulling a bank job. Those days were gone for the Swifts, and McLaughlan couldn't imagine either of them returning to the type of activity that had finally earned Calvin a lengthy jail sentence back in the eighties – not unless business was poor, and business, to McLaughlan's knowledge, was currently booming. 'What would Calvin want with robbing a bank?'

'Who said anything about Calvin? It's his son, Stuart.'

This made no more sense to McLaughlan than the idea of Swift senior pulling the job. This time, he said, 'If Stuart wants money, all he has to do is tap his pa.'

'He's got a drug problem: said Ash.

If Stuart Swift had a drug problem, it was news to McLaughlan, but in a voice that sounded frankly incredulous, Ash added, 'I've heard he's been stealin' from the old man.'

Silly boy, thought McLaughlan. There was a certain type of person you didn't steal from, not even if you happened to be their only, much-loved son, and Calvin fell very much into that category. Nobody ripped him off and got away with it. Doubtless, people had tried it in the past, which was why Serious Crimes had a vested interest in keeping an eye on him, because people who crossed him tended to disappear. Some had done so of their own volition. Others had not. But rumour was one thing. Finding a body and pinning a murder on Calvin was another.

'Who else is involved?' said McLaughlan.

'Carl Fischer,' said Ash.

McLaughlan had never heard of him.

'The driver is a mate of Fischer's – bloke by the name of Leach.'

McLaughlan had never heard of Leach, either, but that wasn't his problem. It wasn't his job to have heard of every villain in London, and nor was it his job to decide what should be done on the strength of the information: he was merely required to brief his immediate superior, and it would then be up to Orme to decide what action, if any, to take.

Orme might decide that Ash was either lying or had been misinformed, in which case, Flying Squad would do little more than ensure that an ARV was close to the bank when the job was tipped to go down. On the other hand, he might decide that a full-scale op was justified.

McLaughlan demanded details relating to the way in which the armoured van would be attacked, and considered them carefully. Then, taking care to sound fairly noncommittal, he said, 'I'll have a word with the guv'nor.'

'Suit yourself,' said Ash, who drifted off to search through other displays.

McLaughlan watched him go, then left the store. It had grown dark in the past ten minutes, and Oxford Street was heaving with people who were staring into the face of a British winter. Most looked resigned to it. All looked cold.

The traffic was moving slowly, and as he made for the tube, McLaughlan thought about what Ash had just divulged. If Orme acted on the information only to find it was dud, they would all look stupid. More than that, operations on even a fairly small scale cost money, and Orme would be expected to account for what had prompted him to spend precious resources on an op that had proved a total waste of time. Therefore, it was in all their interests to determine whether the information was solid, and in this case, with the robbery fairly imminent, they could only rely on an analysis of the information and hope they got it right.

Trouble was, informants often lied. You could never really tell whether they were telling the truth, the partial truth, or – to use a phrase coined by Doheny – an out-and-out porker. Ash might be short of money, and provided he didn't do it too often and lose McLaughlan's trust, passing dud information was always good for a few quid. But already, on this occasion, McLaughlan was willing to state that, in his view, the information was probably totally sound.

Orme would want to know what made him think so, and McLaughlan would point out that coppers and villains alike shared certain things in common: if your only son is doing drugs, you'll usually try anything to stop him. In Calvin's case, that meant making it difficult for Stuart to get his hands on money. Conversely, if you're a user, you'll do anything to get your hands on money, and to someone of Stuart's background, armed robbery would seem the natural solution to the irritating problem of lack of funds. He would know precisely what the risks were, and how to go about it. All he needed was the guts to go through with the job.

Whether he had the guts, McLaughlan couldn't say, but in the circumstances, and knowing what he did about the family, he was prepared to advise Orme that in his opinion, come Monday, Stuart would most likely be found in front of a branch of the Midland. He would be holding a sawn-off shotgun to the head of a terrified guard, and he would be threatening to blow his head from Islington to Richmond. It won't even fucking bounce!

The guard would do the sensible thing: he would give him whatever money there was to be had. Even so, if Stuart was anything like his pa, he'd shoot him anyway.

But nobody was going to find out whether Stuart was as vicious as the old man, because this would be his first armed robbery – and McLaughlan was in no doubt that Orme would make it his last.

3

McLaughlan stood only feet from the window, which was slightly open despite the rain, which found the two-inch gap and spattered in. It ran off the sill in a cold, steady stream and dripped down the back of a radiator, streaking the wall and soaking into the carpet.

Checking the weather was the first thing he'd done after waking that morning. He’d pulled back the curtains and welcomed the heavy rain because he knew it might reduce the number of people on the street at the time that the robbery – then six hours away – was scheduled to go down.

Claire had remained wrapped in the duvet, her only concession to wakefulness to push her hair off her face and out of her eyes. She’d watched him dress in near darkness, his desire not to disturb her greater than his need to see what he was doing, and if his air of preoccupation had warned her that a job of some kind was imminent, she’d known better than to ask him about it.

He’d gone down uncarpeted stairs and into a kitchen where the cat, remarkably dry, had pushed its way through the cat flap and demanded food. He fed it, and the cat pushed off, back to whatever secret second home it had found for itself, a home where, McLaughlan suspected, it would be fed again.

In the knowledge that he would eat at the station later, he’d made do with coffee, but he took tea up to Claire, then walked into Ocky's room.

His son was deeply asleep, as McLaughlan had known he would be, and McLaughlan, who had never slept well, not even as a four-year-old, envied him his long unbroken nights.

His room was like no room that McLaughlan had ever slept in as a child. Its walls were textured in blues and greens, the colours bold and strong. It was a far cry from the windowless closet where he and Tam had slept when staying with Iris, and it was also as different again from their room in Islington. There, the walls had been mushroom, and that had been appropriate because damp had often resulted in fungi springing up to discolour the plaster. His mother had scraped the mould away with a knife, had slapped a coat of emulsion on the discoloured patch of wall, had promised that one day, some day, they'd have a better house.

McLaughlan couldn't remember at what point he’d realised they would never have a better house. He only remembered swearing to himself that if ever he had a son, he would provide him with something better than a damp patch of wall to stare at from his bed.

He’d gone back in to Claire, who was now sitting up and reaching for the tea he'd put by her bed. She hadn't asked what time he would be back, and he’d left without saying goodbye – there being something about saying goodbye that smacked of a man suspecting he might not make it home.

She knew. She understood. He wasn't the only cop to harbour superstitions. Some wouldn't walk under ladders, whilst others wore their equivalent of the good old rabbit's paw. McLaughlan wore the crucifix, and refused to kiss his wife, or say goodbye. 'I'll see you later,' he'd said, and then he’d left the house for a briefing at Tower Bridge station.

*

The briefing had started at 6 a.m., and it had taken place in the kind of room that put McLaughlan in mind of a classroom in an underfunded school. The floor wasn't as clean as it might have been, and the walls could have done with a lick of paint to liven the yellowing cream.

Tables that normally served as desks had been pushed up against the walls, and plastic chairs had been dragged into rows so that McLaughlan and the rest of the team could sit facing Leonard Orme. He’d stood with his immense back to an even broader whiteboard where, on a map of the roads surrounding the bank, the positions from which his men would keep surveillance had been marked up in red.

He pulled a screen down in front of the whiteboard and photographs of the robbers had been projected onto it. Without exception, every man in the room knew who Calvin was, and a fair percentage were already acquainted with Stuart. Even so, Orme indicated one of the photos and said, 'Calvin Swift's son, Stuart. Twenty-two years old. Smack habit. Four convictions – three for burglary, one for possession of a class A drug.'

To McLaughlan's eye, the emaciated Stuart looked as though he’d needed a fix when the photograph was taken. No wonder Pa was worried about him. Stuart was in a bad way.

A second photo appeared on the screen: 'The driver. Leach. Late forties. Married, with young kids, apparently.'

'What's his form?' said Doheny.

'Burglary, car theft, and receiving,' said Orme, who indicated the third and final photo: 'Carl Fischer. Ten years older than Stuart. Numerous convictions, the most serious for armed robbery. Two convictions for assaulting a former girlfriend.'

McLaughlan took stock of details relating not only to the men's criminal records but to their physical characteristics, because once those balaclavas were on, the only way he would be able to distinguish one robber from another would be by their physique.

It often proved useful to know which individual was which, if at all possible, not least because it gave some idea of how that individual might react when they found themselves surrounded by armed police. One look at Leach's puffy-eyed, fat little face told McLaughlan he was stocky and unfit. Most armed robbers kept themselves fit. Their freedom could depend on them being able to put in the odd turn of speed, but Leach didn't look capable. McLaughlan doubted therefore that he would put up much of a fight, but Fischer – if his record was anything to go by – might. Stuart, on the other hand, wasn't known to be violent, but if he was high, he might do something stupid. It was worth knowing.

Orme had imparted the information that Stuart was currently living at an address in Islington, close to the bank. Fischer was living with some woman in Romford, and Vincent Leach lived in Elstree with his missus.

They were quite spread out, thought McLaughlan. Not that it made any difference. Now that police knew where they were currently living, it would be possible to keep them under surveillance from the moment they left their homes to the moment they attempted to pull the robbery.

Orme had gone on to ask whether anyone had any questions, and after satisfying himself that they all knew where they were at, he reminded them that Stuart’s father, Calvin was something of a legend in his own time in that he’d shot, stabbed, slashed and coshed his way through two generations of bank managers, security guards and rival firms – not to mention former wives and girlfriends. Word had it that he still ran protection rackets. Once, his victims were the owners of small businesses in and around the East End. Nowadays, they were the owners of larger concerns located in leafy business parks in and around Essex. Yet a combination of the best possible barristers plus a policy of terrorising anyone brave enough, or in Calvin’s view stupid enough to testify against him, had ensured that he’d spent a total of only twelve years in prison. His brother, Ray, took advantage of Calvin's reputation, but he was the lesser of the two evils. But families such as the Swifts had always existed. Savage and dysfunctional, some hid beneath a veneer of gentility and sophistication. Their kids attended private schools. They lived in desirable areas. It made no difference. Three minutes into a conversation with any of them, you knew where they'd come from, and you knew what they were.

‘Don't ever forget what you're dealing with,' said Orme. 'But remember, irrespective of Calvin's view of himself, Stuart isn't the son of God. He's merely the son of another sad fuck who thinks he's above the law – so let's put him straight.'

*

We'll put him straight, thought McLaughlan, provided he shows, and now, as he recalled what Orme had said, he saw a Securicor van turn into the road. But he also saw something else, a flash of silver high above the heads of people who were threading their way down the road. They walked with bodies slightly bent against the rain, their clothes as drab and damp as the walls of the buildings they passed. Many simply kept walking, but some took refuge in places such as the shop beneath the flat, waiting for the rain to ease, unaware that all around in the windows and doorways and cars, armed men were touching the glossy barrels of guns. They kept their eyes fixed on the armoured vehicle, and as it pulled up at the bank, McLaughlan slipped out of the room with Doheny.

Within seconds, they were down the stairs that led to the back of the shop, and then they ran down an alley that opened out onto the pavement opposite the Midland.

They stood in the rain with their backs to the brickwork, waiting for the getaway vehicle to pull up in front of the van. Once the robbers had the guards at gunpoint, armed police would converge on them from every direction, and when that happened, McLaughlan knew from experience that anything might be expected of the civilians closest to the action. Some might crumple and cower on the pavement. Others might turn and run. But unless the police were unlucky enough to come up against a 'hero', most would do nothing other than stand stock still, rigid with shock, which suited McLaughlan fine. He didn't need any heroes, and he didn't need anyone collapsing on him, but if anything untoward happened, there were men among the team who were trained to take care of whatever might arise from that eventuality. The rest would concern themselves solely with the robbers.

The doors to the back of the van began to open. Two guards climbed out, the first carrying a metal cash case, the second closing the doors, and walked towards the bank, but there was still no sign of a getaway vehicle, and McLaughlan now got worried. If the robbers didn't show, the sense of anticlimax after so much planning and waiting would be immense. That kind of scenario did nothing for the nerves, and even less for morale. But just at the point when he became convinced that the robbers had been warned off, a navy BMW pulled up in front of the van. It hadn't even stopped before the doors opened and the emaciated Stuart and the slightly taller Fischer jumped out, their faces hidden by balaclavas.

Within seconds, they were holding the guards at gunpoint, and from the radio that was strapped to Doheny's belt, an order to attack was given by Orme.

McLaughlan and Doheny ran across the road towards the van, and it was then that McLaughlan caught another glimpse of that flash of silver. Moments earlier, it had struck him as something that looked like a moon as it bobbed along the street. He’d thought it unimportant, but now its significance registered, and he saw how wrong he'd been.

He also saw something else, something that turned him cold: the men positioned around the scene had left their surveillance points and were running towards the robbers. They, like him, stopped running because they'd seen what he had seen.

The flash of silver came from a globe-shaped balloon. It bobbed above the head of a boy who was three, maybe four years old, and it was attached by a translucent thread to his pink, dimpled hand. As armed police converged on the scene, he’d run up to Stuart Swift, and he was currently pointing up at his gun and asking for a 'go'.

At that point, the boy's mother came into view. Immediately, she grasped the situation, and she froze. Good girl, thought McLaughlan. Good girl. But even as he thought it, Swift took the weight of the shotgun with one hand, and with the other, he reached out and grabbed the boy.

Don't do this, thought McLaughlan – the last thing he wanted to see was a child taken hostage – and then he heard a sound he didn't recognise at first. It came from the kid's mother, a pleading, whining paean that didn't sound human. She dropped to her knees, and initially McLaughlan thought she'd passed out, but then she began to crawl along the pavement towards her son.

Orme appeared out of nowhere and called out, 'Stay where you are!' But she carried on regardless, and McLaughlan was afraid that if she made a grab for her child, it might just be enough to tip the balance. He suddenly pictured the aftermath if Swift started blasting away with that sawn-off, and because he had to act quickly, McLaughlan did the only thing he could think of: he called out to Swift, and as he did so, he began to lower his weapon. 'You're out of here – just leave the kid,' but all he saw was a flicker of fear in Swift's eyes. It unnerved McLaughlan because he knew as well as the next man that a frightened armed robber was more of a danger to himself and everyone around him than any cold-blooded killer. Consequently, McLaughlan had no idea what his reaction was likely to be.

Whatever it might have been, nobody was ever going to know, because what happened next was something that was beyond McLaughlan's worst nightmare.

The child made a grab for the gun.

And Swift pulled the trigger.