‘Ladies and gentlemen, CrossCountry trains would like to apologise for the delay. This is due to essential engineering works on the line.’
It may have been the shrill, distorted tone of the announcement over the tannoy or the absence of the train’s soporific motion that shook Harry from his slumbering, but he spluttered awake with the same look of anxiety as before.
‘Wha—? What’s ‘appened?’ he said, scanning his immediate surroundings for any sign of danger.
‘We’ve stopped,’ said MacFarland.
‘No shit.’ Harry’s voice was thick with sarcasm as he looked out of the window at the static view of fields and hedges stretching into the far distance. ‘How long we been ‘ere?’
‘Five or six minutes,’ said Delia without diverting his attention from the same snapshot of rural England. ‘Engineering works apparently.’
‘Bloody country’s gone to the dogs if you ask me. That’s why I got out in the first place.’
It was all MacFarland could do to stifle a hoot of laughter. Surely even Harry couldn’t delude himself that the real reason for his self-imposed exile was that he’d had no desire to spend most of the rest of his life in jail. He wondered if it might also have had something to do with getting away from Bracewell, but that didn’t make sense because, at the time, Harry’d believed he was already dead. Now he came to think about Bracewell, MacFarland realised he knew a fair bit of the story but not all the details. Maybe he should do a bit of homework in case he did show up again and was as dangerous as Harry thought.
‘So ye wanna tell us about this Bracewell guy, boss?’ he said.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Harry would have treated any question of MacFarland’s with contempt and told him to mind his own business. On this occasion, however, he seemed to actively welcome the invitation to tell all as if giving voice to the cause of his fear might have some kind of therapeutic effect. Whatever the reason, he launched into his story and began by explaining that he and Bracewell had once been the heads of two rival gangs operating in the same area of south London. The mutual animosity between them had eventually reached a peak with a particularly bloody spate of violence which culminated in the death of one of Bracewell’s men. A few days later, when both gangs had turned up to rob the same security van at exactly the same time, Harry and Bracewell decided that enough was enough. Both had agreed they were committing a disproportionate amount of their resources to fighting each other when they should be getting on with the real business of stealing other people’s money.
After a series of arguments over a suitable venue that would be equally acceptable to both of them, Harry Vincent and Julian Bracewell had finally sat down together in the back room of a seedy little nightclub in a neutral part of the city to try and thrash out the terms for some sort of truce. Any idea that there could be a positive outcome to the meeting had seemed doomed from the start as the two men spent the first hour or so hurling abuse, recriminations and threats at each other. However, about halfway down the second bottle of Chivas Regal, the atmosphere slowly began to mellow, and there was even the occasional manifestation of mutual respect. By about five in the morning, it was as if they had been soulmates since childhood with never so much as a harsh word between them. By six, a deal had been struck and cemented with handshakes, backslaps and – much to the amazement of everyone present – a prolonged and almost tearful hug. From now on, the two gangs would amalgamate into one with Harry and Bracewell as joint bosses, and everything they made would be put into a pool and split fifty-fifty.
Harry paused at this point in his story and laughed. ‘Dozy twat must’ve thought I was born yesterday.’
A beaming grin continued to illuminate his face as he told Delia and MacFarland how he’d never had the slightest intention of doing a deal with Bracewell. On the contrary, his only motivation for agreeing to the meeting in the first place was because he’d seen it as the perfect opportunity to ‘get the little bastard out from under my feet for good an’ all.’
It turned out that, unlike Harry, Bracewell liked to go on a job himself every now and then, partly because he missed the heart-pumping buzz of frontline action and partly because he believed it was good for the morale of his men. Harry made some crack about Napoleon fucking Bonaparte and then went on to relate how the first target of the newly formed joint venture was a smalltown bank near Croydon. Maybe he’d seen it as some kind of historic and defining moment in his criminal career, but Bracewell had made it crystal clear from the outset that he wasn’t going to be left sitting in some bar on the day of the heist.