When large amounts of notes were carried by a recognised carrier, there was a massive operation involved as the goods were easily recognised because of the Bank of England logos and the distinctive livery of the wagons. The Bank would never be able to maintain credibility if one of its vehicles was attacked by armed robbers and the load stolen. It was always necessary to have armed escorts accompanying the transfer from start to finish. It cost a small fortune in itself to keep it safe and even the Bank of England were constantly looking for ways to save money.
Johnson and his brother had no idea, not many people did; they couldn’t believe that huge amounts of untraceable cash could be moved in such an insecure way. They had happened upon the information by chance during a drunken conversation with a lorry driver on the Dock Road several months earlier.
Tony Johnson was stood at the bar of the Bramley Lighthouse Pub. A well known alehouse on the edge of the Docks that played host to many of the ladies of the night. It was well frequented by local thugs and villains. Some were just small time thieves who bought and sold knock off gear, others like the Johnsons, were particularly nasty. They were well known by many regulars to be ‘players’ and, unless you were part of their inner circle, people to keep well clear of.
A few years earlier, a new licensee at the pub who was trying his best to keep order had made the mistake of barring the brothers from the pub as a result of a drunken argument. Tony, the younger of the two brothers, had smashed a glass over the head of a punter because he hadn’t asked him if he could look at his paper. The crewman of a nearby ship had not known the reputation of the thugs and had done no more than pick up the newspaper from the table that the Johnsons were sat at. Tony took umbrage at this lack of respect and, typical of their violent lifestyle, showed him the error of his ways. The police were called and attended mob handed but nobody saw anything, such was the reputation of the brothers. The senior police officer had spoken to the new landlord and advised him that he might want to think seriously about certain members of his clientele, bearing in mind that the liquor Licence would be up for renewal at the next session of the Licensing Magistrates. The officer,
‘Would hate to have to oppose the continuation of your licence Mr Evans because you can’t keep order at your pub’.
With the police in attendance and, feeling somewhat bolstered by their presence, bearing in mind the police ‘advice’, the licensee had made a grand gesture of barring the brothers from the pub and they left quietly.
There was never any evidence, well, none that people were prepared to swear before a court, but it was common knowledge among the regular customers as to what had happened when Evans was found in the cellar of the pub a few weeks later with both his arms and legs broken in several places as the result of a fall down the cellar steps when he had gone to change a barrel. The injuries were not consistent with being caused by a fall and even though the police wanted to investigate, as far as the licensee was concerned, there was nothing to look at.
‘It was just a simple slip off the top step of the cellar officer, must have spilt some beer there before I went down.’
He never recovered fully from his injuries and never managed a pub again.
The brothers stayed away for the next few months and then began to drink there once more. There were quite a few incidents over time, but they were never asked to leave again.
Tony sat down at the table and whispered in the ear of his elder brother,
‘Eh Luke, you won’t believe what Terry Penrose has just told me. It can’t be right. No fuckin way.’ He took a large swig of his pint of lager and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘He’s got a grand in his back pocket. Say’s he gets paid extra because of some special containers that he sometimes takes out of the yard. Tapped his nose a bit when he said ‘special’.
Luke never looked up from the racing pages of the Echo.
‘Now then little brother, what’s got you wetting your pants then?’
‘He reckons it’s absolutely kosher, I know he’s arseholed after about ten pints but just look at the bulge in his arse pocket.’ Tony continued to keep his voice low and recounted the story told to him by Penrose a short time earlier.
A few months earlier, he had been due to deliver a container of used engine parts to a scrap metal dealers in Bristol. He was late getting to the depot because of a massive smash on the Motorway. When he finally got there, the gates were closed and, as his driver’s hours were up for the day, he parked up outside the yard and slept in the cab overnight. In order to do a quick delivery and get away handy, he decided early next morning to remove the seal from the container, and as the container doors were often damaged and difficult to open, he opened the doors to make sure that there wouldn’t be any hold ups once he got into the breakers yard. He knew instantly, even before the doors were open properly, that there was something wrong with the load.
Usually, there was a distinct smell of grease and old engine oil as soon as the doors were opened, but this time, the smell was very different. He couldn’t identify the strange odour; it certainly wasn’t grease or oil.
He pulled one of the two doors open fully and in the half light, he could see that there were pallets of shrink wrapped goods where there should have been open pallets of engines, gearboxes and axles. He climbed up into the container and viewed the pallets, 24 in total. They were all quite nondescript and bland looking and he looked across the top of them for a name or a company logo but couldn’t see much under the gloomy conditions.
With his torch, he could just make out a name on the side of the pallet nearest the door, ‘property of The Bank of England’.
‘Must be old documents or something,’ he said out loud, although there was no one around at that time of the morning as the delivery premises was not yet open for receiving goods. He turned intending to get down out of the container and knocked the torch on the edge of the pallet. It slipped from his fingers and wedged halfway down between two of the pallets out of his grasp.
‘Bollocks,’ he said. Ordinarily, he would have been able to get the torch after the first pallet had been taken out of the container but now, he would not be removing any pallets at all, ‘Some knobhead back at the yard has given me the wrong bloody container,’ and he would now have to drive all the way back to Liverpool and sort the mess out.
‘I can’t leave the torch on for the next four hours, the batteries will be dead,’ he said to no one in particular and began to untie the small fork lift bogey in an effort to move the offending pallet. He slid the forks under the pallet and moved it back about two feet as he heard the metallic clang of the torch falling to the deck of the container and he squeezed in alongside to retrieve it. As he picked up the torch, the beam of light picked out something unusual. He saw the outline of a £20 note that was visible in between the clear plastic shrink wrapping and the cardboard boxes that the wrapping was covering.
‘Well, I’ll have that’ thought Terry and as the wrapping was quite thick, he thought it better to slice it with the ‘Stanley’ knife that was in his drivers cab and he jumped down from the back of the container to fetch it. As he climbed into the cab he saw his mobile phone on the dash board flashing and remembered that he had switched it to silent in order to have an undisturbed nights sleep. He checked the time and saw that he had 10 missed messages and calls.
‘Fuckin hell’ he said to himself, ‘I’ve never been so popular,’ as he turned the audio back on just as the phone rang again.
‘Is that you Terry?’ as he recognised the dulcet tones of his transport manager back at the yard.
Terry heard the strain in his voice instantly. He had known Frank West for fifteen years and he knew right away that his transport manager was in a bit of a flap. Not like him, not like him at all.