The Final Heist

By William Pullar

Four old men had spent most of their adult life in prison following many failed attempts to rob financial institutions. Now aged late 70s and early 80s, they are released from a long jail term to take up residence in a warden-controlled, local-authority owned block of self-contained apartments. Other residents are a strange mixture. The local diminutive vicar relaunches the campanology group. The bell-ringing group of gays drives the bats from the belfry, along with other animals. The four decide that life in Bogwash is not to their liking and plan the last heist, just to get convicted and return to a world they understand. Dressed as four gorillas, wearing flashy Bermuda shorts and high-visibility jackets, they plan on robbing a small post office.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781528955850

William Pullar

William Pullar, a retired local and national journalist with some 50 years of experience, was a crime writer who covered many headline-grabbing news items between the 1970s and the 2000s. Now retired, he enjoys recalling the characters he met in his heyday.

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Slang

About the Author

William Pullar is the pseudonym of a long-retired, Scottish-born national newspaper journalist. He covered many high-profile court cases and took part in several major investigations leading to convictions.

Dedication

Jessica – whose undying support and loyalty has enabled this book to be created.

Glynis and her tales from the care industry.

Copyright Information

Copyright © William Pullar (2019)

The right of William Pullar to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781788486644 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781788486804 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781788486811 (Kindle e-book)

ISBN 9781528955850 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2019)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgements

Thanks to The Cannae Sutra for the Scottish ditties by Rupert Besley, published by Birlinn Limited.

Author’s Note

For a glossary of the language used by members of the heist industry, see the Appendix at the end of the book.

The Release

The Retreat Residential Home lay half-way down Beech Road in the sleepy Sussex seaside town of Crabby-by-the-Sea. To the casual observer this former Victorian mansion was a quiet, unassuming, residential home for a mixture of the elderly with a variety of care and social support needs and a private wing for wealthy octogenarians.

Four newly released bank, post office and security van robbers were placed in the social wing of the residential home. Matters would never be the same again for some of the long-term residents, both social support and private.

Among the tenants some lived lives of quiet boredom. Secret romances blossomed. A few of the tenants taxed the patience of the warden and occasionally the local police.

* * *

It was late Friday morning. The shelves of the old Post Office’s little convenience store were empty. No one was manning the post office counter. The only activity was in the small café where a man and a woman sat waiting to receive their order.

Outside, and legally parked, a paunchy man in a weather-proof coat sat in the driving seat of a small car engrossed in the racing pages of the Sun. He ignored the arrival of a people carrier disgorging five passengers, who headed for the cafe. He paid no interest in a red Mark Two Jaguar as it pulled up a few minutes later and parked in front of him. Nor did he pay any attention to three, heavily disguised, men one behind the other, who left the car and headed for the Post Office. One was pushing a four-wheeled invalid trolley, one of the others assisting him from behind. The lead man waving a heavy walking stick, bulky in his disguise, also carried what first appeared to be a towel covering a second walking stick.

Behind him a large man beckoned encouragement to the last of the trio who was labouring to manoeuvre his walking trolley over a drainage grill in front of the door of the building. The two-front wheels became stuck in the grill of the drain in front of the door which continued sliding backwards and forwards as he tried to extract the walking-aid. As he struggled to free the wheels a loud blast came from within the shop followed by the sound of falling debris and shouts of indignation.

As the blast went off, the last man tugs the two-front wheels of his trolley from the grip of the drain, pulling the trigger of his 12-bore shotgun strapped to the handle of the trolley only milli-seconds after the first blast. The sliding doors were open and a TV blew apart into a million-pieces as the contents of the gun’s cartridges hit it. Much to the annoyance of the café customers.

Inside the old post office one man lay on his back. The re-coil of the gun had unbalanced him. The second was trying to get him on his feet. Both men quickly raised their hands and surrendered to the customers who, it transpired, were a heavily armed fast response team and two armed plain clothed police officers. They were awaiting instructions following a tip-off; there was to be a major raid planned for premises in Crabby.

The driver of the people carrier arrived outside the Post Office as the trolley man’s gun went off and he tumbled backwards with the trolley and the shotgun on top of him. He was handcuffed.

From the Jaguar, the driver got out and quickly walked up the street and headed for a pub. He too, was quickly arrested.

Chapter 1

SOME months before the debacle at the Post Office, the main gates of the Home Counties Jail clanged shut. Standing outside, four, now ex-prisoners, let out on licence, smelt the clean, fresh air of freedom for the first time in many years. All Four had spent most of their adult life behind bars at various times. Eighty-year-old Guy Granger was known by all as the ‘Colonel’, among other disparaging nick-names. He stood ramrod-straight, military style, waving his walking stick at nothing-in-particular.

Right. First thing we have to do is report to a probation officer and some goon from the council at a residential home at Crabby-by-the-Sea. It seems they cater for old ex’s like us, he said, as they waited for the mini-bus that would take them to the local rail station along with their wheelie suitcases. He hooked his walking stick over his left arm and removed his flat, tweed cloth cap, twitched his trim moustache and brushed imaginary detritus from the cap and pulled it back on as the mini-bus arrived.

He added, We’ve t’ meet a probation officer assigned to us, called Carol Smythe and some council wallahs. It seems we have t’ take these flats or we’re back behind bars. Our release conditions are that we must be well-behaved. They’ve given us single, one-journey rail warrants to a place, called Crabby-on-the-Hill. We have to get a bus or a taxi from there. The Colonel had worked hard on developing his ex-military persona. However, nothing could totally erase his East London verbal roots. He regarded himself as the Commanding Officer of the Gang of Four, as they had been dubbed by the Metropolitan Police. Other nomenclatures included the Foursome, the Four Idiots or the Colonel and the Stooges.

Grangers’ military experience was dubious, the reality was that he was one of the last of the post-war conscripts and had spent most of his time as a lowly Royal Air Force ‘erk’, the lowest in the pecking order. Most of his service life was spent at the old Shepton Mallet Military Prison in Somerset. Petty thefts and disciplinary disputes were the main causes of his incarceration under military rules.

Once married, he had been on his own since his young wife ran off with the manager of a South London Bank he had robbed. She told friends she needed companionship, stability and a family.

As Guy was serving a 15-year stretch, she decided comfort elsewhere was required. Enough was enough of his lifestyle: sometimes in the money, usually forcibly relieved from a financial institution or reliance on social benefits after he was jailed.

She now lived a life of splendour in Virginia Water and played golf at nearby Wentworth. Guy Granger was virtually a forgotten man. Only law enforcement teams and the prison authorities took an interest in him and his chosen career. He described himself as a ‘liberator’ of funds illegally stolen from the public. His warped view was that he had merely brought it back into public hands. The fact, that he and his fellow-robbers became the only benefactors from the heists, didn’t impress the courts. Most of his robbery schemes ended empty-handed with a jail term.

The Colonel, as he preferred to be called, remained single after the divorce and despite his continuing anti-social career, he had developed odd social graces and a rather quaint morality, considering his villainous past. Among these was a distrust of anyone ‘messing about’ with marriage or a relationship. He had a hatred of anyone stealing private property or robbing the elderly. His deep contempt was for drugs smugglers and dealers, or anyone growing cannabis plants or producing social help pills. He was also intolerant of anyone ill-treating animals, particularly cats.

Despite his long-term criminal history, he had strong views on anyone delivering drugs or illegal phones into jails by drones. His solution was to have armed-guards on the roof and shoot the offending delivery agents out of the sky.

As the years passed and he responded to the title, Colonel, only the foolish and alcohol-dependents called him by any other title.

He despised anyone swearing, particularly in front of women, and usually told them in his developed ‘gentleman’s’ jargon: I say, less of that, ladies present. Most scoffed at his developed verbal delivery. Younger members of the prison community avoided him rather than be chastised. Prison staff treated him with a mixture of derision and humour and was glad to be rid of the ‘gentleman’ gangster. His periods of life outside the confines of prison life were usually quite short.

To him and his three friends, prison had become a way of life, their home. They’d had security of tenure for a period. Life outside would present challenges.

One of the four being released suddenly asked, What I wanna know is, can I get a place on the ground floor? Reg Crowther, a seventy-eight-year old man, pushed his four-wheel invalid trolley, with his suitcase perched on the seat, towards the waiting prison minibus that would take them to the station.

The Colonel responded, Expect they’ll cater for our needs. It’ll be fait accompli—

Wotcha mean cater for us? All we need is somewhere to lay our nut, responded seventy-five-year-old Lenny Smith, South London’s intellectually challenged 114 kilos ‘Heavy weight’. He was one of the founder members of the ‘Gang of Four’. He continued, Anyway, what the ‘ell is fate whatever? Sounds bleedin’ daft to me.

The Colonel growled and sharply responded. I’ve told yer before. I won’t have swearing. As fer fait accompli, it simply means all done; it’s over. Got it? Lenny grimaced with lack of understanding.

In his younger days, he was known as a seasoned user of a sawn-off shotgun in the furtherance of his chosen career. He had no family and had never married. Anyone who knew him, from fellow villains and the judicial system, regarded him as educationally challenging. He’d spent some of his villainous past in Glasgow, where he’d first met John ‘Jock’ Mackenzie and was the only one of the four who understood Jock when he was sober.

It was ‘suggested’ he left the city because of his cavalier attitude towards the use of shotguns. Glaswegian gangs had become annoyed with the Londoners’ overuse of firearms. They ‘invited’ him to return to his roots so the number of raids by Scotland’s diligent police looking for evidence of gun-related crimes calmed down. It took some weeks to recover from the ‘chastisement’ and the bruises to clear-up.

Jock Mackenzie, the fourth member of those being released, and the newest member of the ‘Four’, remained quiet. He rarely conversed with anyone. When sober, he uttered a strange mixture of languages and slang. No one generally understood him until he’d had a ‘few wee drams’. Then mysteriously, he could be understood.

In his early twenties, he had been the reserve driver for a Scottish company’s attempt to win the Le Man twenty-four-hour motor race. They had chosen to buy a second-hand re-built AC Cobra directly from the car company’s factory at Thames Ditton, Surrey.

The Tartan Team’s attempts lasted two years until it folded, leaving the young Scot jobless, homeless and broke. He took to becoming a ‘contract’ getaway driver for various Glasgow Gangs of the day. His favourite steed for such activity was any stolen Mark Two Jaguar.

Whilst doing a spell in Glasgow’s notorious Barlinnie Prison, his ‘Lassie Fiona’, as he called his girlfriend, ran off with a crofter from the Isle of Skye. They had never married but had two daughters. The eldest had emigrated to Canada and was never heard from again.

His youngest daughter, thirty-year-old Moira, looked after her father’s personal effects at her home in Perth. She wrote to him every week, no matter where he was imprisoned. She told friends: He’s a silly old, a bit cranky, but he’s m’ dad. She was one of the few who understood him when he was sober. He told her in one of his letters he’d given up being a getaway driver. Too dangerous, he wrote in his strange, garbled language, which she understood. Me eyesight’s failing, and I don’t trust English opticians. Prison guards frequently blocked his outgoing mail until they were satisfied with his explanations. He wrote in a kind of code which even experienced prison guards failed to decipher his enigmatic phraseology. He scorned anything that had a hint of southern beast stupidity’. This was usually said in Gaelic, ‘à deas bruid baoghaltachd’. He said it was Gaelic.

He’d moved south soon after Lenny was banished from his highland haunts and recovering from his punishment by the Glaswegian Crime Lords. He soon linked up with Lenny, then awaiting trial for a series of security van hijacks. All