Buried

Chapter 10

On the evening of the diamond raid, Dolly’s only plan had been to make absolutely certain that Harry went down for the crime. She hadn’t even considered where the diamonds might end up — she certainly had no intention of putting herself at risk to steal them. No, this was pure revenge.

But when she learnt of Shirley’s involvement, things started to go horribly wrong. No one Dolly cared about was meant to be at the event, but Shirley, when asked by her new boyfriend to model the jewellery they were intending to steal, had agreed, not knowing that Micky Tesco was one of Harry’s gang.

As soon as Dolly learnt that Shirley was at risk, her plan for revenge vanished in the blink of an eye and was replaced with a desperate need to protect her friend. She knew for a fact that Harry’s gang would be armed.

By the time Dolly arrived at the event, chaos had already taken hold. Police were racing into the building and glamorous people in black ties and ball gowns were flooding out, heels in hand, fear in their eyes. But Shirley was nowhere to be found.

A gunshot echoed from inside the building. Before Dolly knew what she was doing, she found herself running down the back alley and in through the open kitchen door. Dolly had seen many sights she’d rather forget, but none was more harrowing than that of Shirley, dolled up to the nines and as beautiful as ever, lying dead on the kitchen floor in a growing pool of her own blood.

It took Dolly a good ten seconds to realise the horror of what she was seeing. Behind her, Shirley’s low-life boyfriend was frozen to the spot.

As Micky recovered from the shock, he raced forward, pulled the jewels from around Shirley’s neck and disappeared out of the kitchen door. Rage filled Dolly’s heart and she charged after him like a woman possessed.

As Micky ran, he stuffed a dark blue cotton bag into his leather jacket, along with the broken necklace, jumped on his motorbike and raced away. Dolly was right behind him as she launched herself into her car and sped after the motorbike.

As Micky took a sharp right turn, he lost control of his bike and careered into a parked car. Without thinking, Dolly jumped from her car, grabbed the blue bag and broken necklace from inside his jacket, and drove off, leaving him for the approaching sirens to deal with.

When it was safe to stop, Dolly pulled over. Her heart was pounding and she gasped for breath as the tears welled in her eyes. Her fists pounded the steering wheel as she tried to forget the sight of Shirley’s body, but she knew she never could. It was what she deserved. It was she who had called the police and caused the chaos. She had been so consumed by vengeance that she hadn’t given the bystanders a second thought. What had happened to Shirley would be an eternal torment that Dolly would take to the grave.

An ambulance roared past, siren blaring, and snapped Dolly out of her melancholy. She looked inside the dark blue bag and saw jewels sparkling back at her. Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, pearls... every gemstone you could think of, encased in gold and platinum. Dolly put the broken necklace — torn from Shirley’s neck — into the bag, pulled the drawstring tight, put it into the glovebox and drove home.

The signal box at the old rural track crossing in Aylesbury was now abandoned. The lower half of the small oblong building was mostly wood panelling with two very small windows; it seemed to be entirely separate from the upper half, which was accessed by an external flight of wooden stairs. All of the wood panels were a creamy colour, or used to be, and all of the trimmings were dark brown. Ridley stood in the middle of the disused railway tracks, looking up, oddly transfixed by the signal box. The upper half of the building was all windows, giving a 360-degree view of the surrounding countryside. Each floor-to-ceiling window was split into eight smaller panes of glass, separated by wooden beams in the contrasting dark brown wood. All of the glass panes had been smashed by stones, probably thrown from where Ridley now stood. He glanced down at the sea of heavy gravel beneath his feet and the temptation to see if he could hit a window was almost too much to bear. Laura frowned as she watched a very slight grin creep over his face.

‘I’m not a trainspotter if that’s what you’re thinking, Laura. But I did have a train set when I was a kid. I saved up for two Christmases and two birthdays to buy a signal box just like this one.’

Laura shook her head as Ridley reminisced. She couldn’t imagine he was ever a child. Then Anik appeared at one of the broken windows — ‘stinks of piss in here’ — and Ridley’s beautiful childhood memory was shattered.

Anik stepped out at the top of the external wooden stairs.

‘Stop there!’ Ridley shouted. ‘What can you see?’

‘Nothing.’ Anik shrugged as he glanced down at Ridley’s stern face. He looked around again. ‘The trees would have been lower back in ’95 but, even so, the bridge where the train was held up definitely can’t be seen from here. Can’t see the new housing estate either ’cos of the... the... erm...’ He made a wavy movement with his hand.

‘Terrain?’ Ridley guessed.

‘Yes,’ Anik agreed. ‘The terrain’s, you know, up and down. So, The Grange wouldn’t have been visible from here either. Not much is visible from here, to be fair. Nice view though.’

He walked down the wooden stairs, joining Ridley and Laura on the tracks.

The team then went their separate ways. Anik went to interview James Douglas, the signalman on duty the night the train was robbed. And Laura and Ridley went to interview John Maynard, the builder who had been helping to convert The Grange into a children’s home.

Jack was halfway through a 1 hour and 50-minute train journey from London to Taunton. He had his notepad out and was scribbling names down as he searched for various people in the HOLMES database and also googled news articles from back in the day. Jimmy Nunn, ‘Boxer’ Davis, Carlos Moreno, Joe Pirelli, Terry Miller: the same names kept coming up, over and over. The East End of London was definitely a different place back then. The criminal ‘underworld’ was actually quite visible, with everyone knowing who the key players were, who to stay away from, who not to cross. There was a definite hierarchy and it was respected. Not like today. Criminals today never climbed to the lofty heights of ‘notorious’.

Jack came across several old case files belonging to DI George Resnick who, back in the late seventies and early eighties, had seemingly been obsessed with tying the elusive Harry Rawlins to any of the numerous crimes he was suspected of. Resnick had been like a dog with a bone, ignoring all contrary opinions and faithfully following his gut. His name had been dragged through the mud by the gutter press; he’d been suspended, forced towards early retirement, denounced as an embarrassment to the force... Still, he stood by what he absolutely knew to be true — that Harry Rawlins was involved in the Strand underpass armed robbery on a security van. It was Resnick, and only Resnick, who’d claimed that Harry Rawlins had survived that otherwise deadly explosion. It was Resnick, and only Resnick, who’d chased a ghost with the absolute conviction of eventually being proved right.

Shit! Jack thought to himself. That’s what I want.

That all-consuming passion for catching the bad guy. That unshakable knowledge you were right.

But Jack knew he was asking for the impossible — because to be that kind of copper, he’d require a nemesis like Harry Rawlins and they just didn’t exist any more. Each day on the job, all Jack was doing was hoovering up scrotes, wasters, druggies and lazy bastards who had decided that crime was easier than working. That’s why the Rose Cottage case was so intriguing and why tracking Jimmy Nunn was so exciting: because he was being taken back to a time when being a criminal was a vocation and a crime could be a work of art. Jack couldn’t quite believe he was yearning for ‘proper’ gangsters, but the thought of his birth dad being part of this old-school criminal underworld was oddly exhilarating.

Jim Douglas was a timid, unassuming man who said very little, very quietly. He was round, in his early sixties and bald as a coot. He had a large, rosy-cheeked face with wide eyes like those of a child.

‘You OK being in the garden with me?’ Jim asked Anik. ‘Only, the grandkids are coming for tea and I want to get these trees planted before they arrive.’

He knelt on a flowery gardener’s knee-pad and dug the last hole, as Anik slurped tea from a chipped mug.

Jim’s house sat at the heart of the housing estate that had been built on the grounds once belonging to The Grange, and it was a clone of the rest of the street. But this garden had been lovingly landscaped and was clearly Jim’s domain. At the far end of the garden was a shed and, through the window, Anik could see the top half of a bike with a child’s seat on the back. Scattered about the lawn were numerous footballs, a miniature football net, some plastic skittles and stray pieces from a giant Jenga. Kids were obviously welcome here and any ensuing mess was most definitely allowed. There was even a home-made tree house in an old, sprawling oak that must have been around for centuries longer than any of the buildings which now surrounded it. The oak would have known the Grange women and all of their secrets.

‘Do you remember the night the mail train was robbed, Mr Douglas?’

‘Jim, please. Yes, I remember. Well, I remember my bit. All those police loading the money sacks into the carriage at the crossing, then me sending the train on its way. About a minute later, I heard a massive crack of thunder, then saw the lightning and that was it. Course, it wasn’t thunder at all — it was dynamite on the tracks. Very clever, that.’

‘Clever?’ Anik asked.

‘Well, the explosion made the carriage leave the rails, making it invisible to my track monitoring equipment. The equipment is very accurate but it can only “see” a train if its wheels are in contact with the tracks.’

‘So...’ Anik mused. ‘The robbers would have to have known that?’

‘Every trainspotter in England knows that. It’s common enough knowledge.’

Anik couldn’t see Jim’s face, but it had gone from rosy cheeked to deathly white; he’d started sweating and struggling to control his breathing.

‘Was there any aspect of the robbery that did require insider information?’

Jim closed his eyes in silent panic. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m not suggesting you had anything to do with it at all, Jim,’ Anik assured him. ‘We know that you were privy to the normal running schedule of the mail train, but we also know that the schedule changed on the night the train was robbed — and you wouldn’t have been told about that till the last minute.’

‘I might have been on the front line, but I was always the last to know anything.’

As he headed towards a panic attack, Jim knew he’d not be able to hide it; he knew he’d have to disguise it as something else. He brought the trowel down hard and fast onto the back of his hand. He yelled in pain and sat his bottom down into the fresh pile of soil he’d just dug. Anik raced over.

‘Sit still. Crikey, you’re as white as a sheet. Don’t panic, Jim, you’re OK. Try to control your breathing.’ Anik covered the cut on the back of Jim’s hand with a hanky, so that the seeping blood didn’t make him feel worse. ‘When you’re ready, we’re going to go into the kitchen and run this under the cold tap. Then we’ll see what the damage is. OK?’

Jim nodded, slowed his breathing, calmed himself down and Anik could see the colour gradually returning to his cheeks.

As Anik hunted for the first-aid kit in the bathroom upstairs, Jim’s hand was slowly going numb under the cold water from the kitchen tap. Diluted blood ran down between his fingers and into the white porcelain sink, but Jim was miles away, recalling the steamy nights he’d shared with Connie in the signal box. It was the most daring thing he’d ever done and she was the most wonderful woman he’d ever known. He could still feel her hot breath on his neck as she perched on the side bench, her legs wrapped tight around his waist, panting in time with him. Her hands caressed the top of his bare buttocks poking out from beneath his white Y-fronts and her nails dug into his skin as she urged him into her. He had never in his life, before or since, felt so desired. Jim’s wife, Jean, who he loved dearly, was the opposite of Connie. She was steady, loving and exactly the sort of woman Jim’s friends and family would have put him with.

Jim had had no clue why Connie allowed him to love her for those few short weeks back in 1995, but he had just been eternally grateful for the time they shared. He hung his head in heartbreaking pain. That was a lie. He knew exactly why Connie had allowed him to love her. She’d asked so many questions about his job: about how he knew where the train was on the tracks at any given moment; about the trackside alarm systems. She’d flattered him and been impressed by all of his ‘oh, so important’ responsibilities — she’d told him how such a complicated job turned her on and he’d fallen for it. Jim didn’t care. He, honest to God, did not care a jot. Connie had made him feel like he could take on the world. She’d been his beautiful secret and that’s how she’d stay until the day he died.

Jim knew nothing for certain, but if Connie had been using him for information, that would make him the inside man Anik was asking about. How lucky he was to have been used by someone so wonderful and so lovely — any man would be jealous. And any man would have done exactly the same.

John Maynard almost coughed up a lung when Ridley asked him about the building work he’d done for Dolly Rawlins at The Grange. He squeezed every last ounce of air from his body, spat into the bin, gasped a huge lungful of stale air, sat back in his seat, and took an extra-large drag of his cigarette before answering.

‘That happens every time I think about Dolly bleedin’ Rawlins, that does. Always paid me too little, too late. Paid me just enough to keep me happy though — knew exactly what she was doing, looking back. I gave her the benefit of the doubt for far too long. I thought, Cashflow’s hard on a job this size. She’ll come good. Never did. She drip-fed me just enough cash so that I couldn’t walk away. I should have known she was skint.’

John paused to finish the remaining quarter of his cigarette in one single drag. He then got up and headed into the kitchen.

Laura looked at Ridley and the sickly colour of her face said it all.

‘Step outside if you need to,’ Ridley whispered.

John’s home wasn’t small, but it was unfinished. From the outside, it was a four-storey, terraced town house in the good end of Aylesbury; inside, it was a building site. The room they stood in was currently being used as a lounge and, they speculated, a bedroom. The potential for this property was endless, but John was well past being able to do the work. Laura indicated to Ridley that she’d be OK to stay, just as John returned with a beer and a fresh packet of cigarettes. He was dressed in grey joggers, worn thin at the knees and at the crotch, a black T-shirt with tiny holes all over it, and black socks. He smelt of deodorant, but it couldn’t hide the stench of the unwashed body underneath.

‘Did Dolly Rawlins pay you in the end, Mr Maynard?’ Ridley enquired.

John smirked and glanced at Laura when he spoke. ‘Connie paid me. If you get my meaning.’

Ridley responded, so that Laura didn’t have to. ‘I think DS Wade got your meaning, yes.’

‘It’s an absolute fact, DI...?’

‘DCI Ridley.’

‘It’s an absolute fact, DCI Ridley, that women fancy men who have physical jobs, like builders. Connie came out of The Grange on the very first day I was there, immaculate except for a tiny cobweb in her hair, holding a tap or a pipe or something, I can’t recall. “This just come off in me ’and. It’s from the sauna.” Girly little Liverpool accent she had.’

John laughed and rearranged his balls before he sat back down. Ridley got to the point before Laura passed out.

‘What happened after the train robbery, Mr Maynard?’

‘The coppers searched my building yard and my house. They even poked about in my pond, if you can believe that. But that robbery wasn’t done by anyone from round here. It was a bunch of outside fellas. They’d have had a barge or something, ’cos over land would have been impossible. Remote controlled maybe, so they could be miles away just in case it got seen. Or maybe they sank the money in waterproof bags, using weights, and came back for it later. That’s what I would have done. I’m a bit of an engineer at heart, see — building and engineering go hand in hand and I can do both. So, yeah, I’d have put the cash into waterproof bags and sunk it. Could have stayed there for years, no bother. You should talk to Warren at the Dog and Gun. He’s been here for centuries — knows everyone and everything. He’ll have some ideas for you, an’ all.’

Ridley asked for John’s opinion on a few more subjects, such as Norma and the other women from The Grange, but he had nothing useful to add.

Outside John’s house, Laura gasped at the clean air, as though there wasn’t going to be enough for her and Ridley to share.

‘I’m really sorry, sir. I can’t believe that Connie Stephens, that carbon copy of Marilyn Monroe, would let that touch her. Did you see his fingernails?’

‘Call Anik,’ Ridley said as he unlocked the car. ‘Tell him to meet us for lunch in the Dog and Gun.’

He dropped into the driver’s seat and lowered his own and Laura’s windows before she got in, to create a through-draught of fresh air for her.

‘And I’ll tell you what, sir,’ Laura continued as she fastened her seatbelt. ‘Women do like men who have physical jobs, but we also quite like personal hygiene... Oh, thanks for opening the windows.’

Across in Taunton, Jack headed along Hazel Lane towards The Grange B & B. As he got close, the front door opened and a stunning, slender, 40-something, bleached blonde woman exited to water the plants on the front doorstep. Connie still looked like a glamour model. She wore far more make-up than in the 20-year-old photo of her on the evidence board, and comfy shoes instead of heels but, my God, she was still a head-turner. And she still had her figure. Jack tried not to look but she was side-on to him, so there was no chance of that.

The Grange B & B was one of five in a row, all connected, all displaying a three-star plaque. Jack speculated that each B & B probably had three or four bedrooms. The Grange had a handwritten sign outside boasting ‘Bed & Brekfast’, which made him smile. He knew that Connie had no education to speak of, so he found this misspelling strangely endearing.

There was a large expanse of grass in front of this long row of buildings, with benches and picnic tables randomly scattered about, all approximately facing the bottom of the hill, from where you could just about see the start of the Blackdown Hills — an official ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’.

A tall wooden signpost indicated that the Blackdown Hills were a twenty-minute drive, the village was a ten-minute drive, and the ruins of an old fort were a steep, ten-minute walk. And beneath the three directional wooden arrows, carved into the vertical wooden signpost was a cock and balls. Jack frowned. Even in such a beautiful place kids were still dickheads.

The front door opened wider and an elephant of a woman stepped outside.

‘I’m off to the shops. Need anything?’

‘We’re out of butter,’ the bleached blonde answered, ‘and get some more pens for the bedrooms. Why does everyone nick the pens?’

The women shared a knowing chortle, before ‘elephant woman’ squeezed herself into a Fiat Punto and drove away. The bleached blonde shouted after her.

‘Ta-ra, Connie! See you at five!’

Jack stopped in his tracks. Shit! He’d just watched his interviewee drive away.

He sat down on one of the benches and got out his mobile to check the time; just gone midday. He opened Google Maps, typed in his Aunt Fran’s address and discovered that she was no more than a twenty-minute taxi ride straight up the M5, in Burnham-on-Sea. Jack requested his Uber and waited.

He looked across at the Blackdown Hills and remembered how he and Charlie had walked the hills when he was in his early teens. Of course, they’d walked the Exmouth end, where the hills met the south coast, so all of this part was, in fact, completely new to him. But it felt the same.

Even though Dartmoor National Park had been right on their doorstep in Totnes, Charlie liked Jack to explore different places and see different things.

‘Everywhere and everyone has its own beauty, Jack,’ Charlie would say. ‘You gotta find your spot.’

Charlie loved the Blackdown Hills, because they had a tranquillity to them, whereas Jack always preferred the rugged, unpredictable wildness of Dartmoor. But, right at this moment, he loved these hills and the memories they held, and he didn’t want to leave.