Authors: Kate Kray
The meeting in Bristol was one that she really couldn’t miss. It was a get-together at Straw/Gold’s main office to discuss publicity and promotion, followed by a dinner. All of the top people from
My Fair Lady
were going to be there, and it was the first really important get-together since filming ended a week ago.
At just after eleven the next morning, Rosie arrived at the Chase Hotel, an up-market, converted coaching inn from the 17th Century, set in some of the most beautiful countryside in Essex… and smack in the middle of the loads-of-money stockbroker belt, Looking at her watch, Rosie saw that she was early. After ordering a coffee and Danish pastries she took a seat by the window so she could see when Eddie arrived. She looked out over the impressive view – there was a dovecote on the lawn, a slow-moving trout stream, and rolling fields reaching out to the horizon. Rosie had been up since the crack of dawn and was in dire need of some caffeine, so when the coffee and pastries arrived they really hit the spot. But, still, she couldn’t fully appreciate her breakfast or the beautiful surroundings – she was deep in thought as to why Eddie wanted to see her.
It had to be the Keyhole Club tape.
Eventually, a silver Mercedes with the number plate EDM1 pulled into the courtyard, taking its place among the rows of expensive cars parked outside. Many of them, Rosie had noticed, contained saddles, gun dogs and golf clubs. Eddie lumbered out of the car and casually flicked the remote, locking the doors.
Yep, that’s Eddie all right
… shoulders a mile wide, perfectly groomed hair, a serious, menacing face. He was alone – no Hate-’em-all-Harry – so Rosie knew that something was up.
Rosie watched him make his way inside. He looked very out of place there, she thought, surrounded by china cups, silver coffee pots, and crisp white tablecloths. He was turning some heads. People were giving him a wide berth, one man even pushing himself up against the wall as Eddie strode past. Not that Eddie noticed – he always moved slowly and deliberately, never side-stepping anyone. Spotting Rosie, he headed over to her, forcing a smile.
‘Rosie, how are you?’ he growled, holding out a hand the size of a dinner plate as he towered over the table.
From where she was sitting, Eddie looked bigger than she remembered. He had made an effort, covering his 17-stone – which was largely muscle – in a cashmere suit and a pale-blue silk shirt, and tie. Rosie thought back to what Aunt Madge had said once – ‘You can dress a pig in a suit, but you won’t stop it grunting!’ As she got up and shook his hand, Rosie smelled a hint of aftershave, Davidoff Cool Water, which reminding her of Johnny. They always did dress alike, down to the obligatory chunky gold ring set with diamonds that sparkled on their little fingers. Rosie often wondered who copied who. ‘Well, well, you’re quite the little film star these days,’ Eddie sneered, before calling over a waiter and ordering a freshly-squeezed orange juice and another coffee for Rosie.
‘How’s little Ruby?’ Eddie asked, sounding genuinely interested.
Rosie was familiar with this quirk of Eddie’s. He was a mass of contradictions – one minute he was polite and thoughtful and the next you’d catch a glimpse of all the pent-up fury that lurked beneath the surface, ready to explode. Rosie didn’t know if he did it on purpose, to keep people on the back foot, or whether he wasn’t aware that he was doing it at all. Either way, it worked. There was no way that anyone could second guess him.
‘What do you want, Eddie? I’ve got a train to catch, so just get on with it,’ she said.
‘We need you to do something for us, Rosie’
For us.
That meant ‘for the business’. Rosie felt her insides freeze. ‘Whatever it is Eddie, the answer is no.’
Eddie’s eyes narrowed, and displayed the expensive veneers that he had got in California as he gritted his teeth. Rosie knew that he wasn’t used to hearing ‘no’ from anyone… especially from a woman.
“‘No” is not an option,’ he hissed. ‘We need someone we can trust, someone with your talents.’
‘I’m not doing it.’
‘You’ve done it before, and you’ll do it again,’ Eddie snapped. ‘There’s an associate, a “friend”, inside on remand –’
‘I know I did it before,’ Rosie said, cutting him off, ‘but I was young and dumb, and Johnny bullied me into it. But I wasn’t happy about it then, and I’m not happy about it now. It’s your sordid little world, not mine… not any longer. I’ve got myself straight, I move in different circles now, with decent people. I’m not about to jeopardise that. Not for you, Johnny, or anyone else.’
Eddie glared across the table at her. Rosie knew him well enough to see that his mask was beginning to slip.
‘I am not asking you Rosie,’ Eddie said slowly, pronouncing each little syllable carefully. ‘I am telling you. And you will do what I tell you.’
Rosie looked into Eddie’s unblinking eyes. He was terrifying when he was like this, capable of anything.
‘Now,’ he continued, his voice as quiet as a whisper, ‘you fuck off and get your train to Bristol with your hoity-toity new pals, and you think about what I’ve told you. I’ll be in touch.’
Rosie watched Eddie leave. She hated him so much she could almost taste it, hated everything he stood for… and hated his brother who brought her into their world. An old question screamed inside her head: ‘How could you have ever fallen for such a man?
Loved
such a man?’
Eddie climbed into his car and drove out of sight. Her long-term connection to Johnny, which she had once considered to be a love knot, was still wrapped tightly around her… so tight, in fact, that Rosie was beginning to see it as a noose that would eventually strangle the life out of her.
The Great Western train to Bristol was on time. Rosie made her way to her seat, in a carriage at the far end of the platform. She couldn’t remember the last time she had travelled first class – Straw/Gold, Andrew’s production company, didn’t do things by halves. She struggled to put her overnight bag in the luggage rack above the seat, and so turned to a fellow passenger for help.
‘Of course,’ the man said. ‘No problem.’ He had an unusually authoritative voice.
As her Good Samaritan forced the case into the rack, Rosie could smell stale cigarette smoke on him. Once it was safely stowed away, he nodded, sat back down on a nearby seat, and unfolded a copy of the
Financial Times
. Rosie stares at him – he looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. He was a balding, slightly portly man, with heavy jowls.
Was this Johnny’s ‘friend’ on day home leave? Rosie could feel her throat tighten… was this man following her to deliver a message? She knew that there was no shortage of lowlife criminals who were so desperate to impress Johnny that they would do anything that he asked them to do.
Once they were on their way, Rosie noticed that the man was occasionally peering over the top of the salmon-pink broadsheet. On the third or forth time that he did this, she looked back… and he quickly averted his gaze. Then it hit her: he was the man from Joe Allen’s, where she had gone for lunch with Andrew. Surely a con on day release wouldn’t go to smart restaurant or travel in a first class carriage? Then it occurred to Rosie that this man could be an obsessive fan, a stalker who had read about her in the paper. That was marginally better than if he had been sent by Johnny, but it was still hardly a comforting thought.
As surreptitiously as she could, Rosie looked for clues to establish who the stranger was. She noticed that his blazer looked as if it had been bought off the peg for someone else, and he didn’t look comfortable in it. And one of the turn-ups on his crumpled grey trousers was drooping towards a well-worn shoe… a very particular type of black leather shoe with an AirWair sole, and one that Rosie recognised. It was the type of shoe that was standard issue for police officers.
As the train hurtled away from smoky London towards the West Country, Rosie did her best to forget about the policeman… if that was, in fact, who he really was. She bought a black coffee and found her thoughts drifting back again to Eddie, and his ‘request’. Was this why she was being followed?
Rosie would never forget the first time she truly realised the extent that she was involved in with the business. She was so ignorant back then, the enormity and seriousness of what she was doing simply didn’t register with her. She was young and naïve, and just wanted to make Johnny happy.
It had all started when Hate-’em-all-Harry had phoned her, completely out of the blue. Rosie was immediately intrigued because he
never
called her… in fact, Hate-’em-all hardly ever spoke at all. His role in the brothers’ firm was as confidant – he was Eddie and Johnny’s ears and eyes – and he was the only person they completely trusted. Hate-’em-all was a big man with small eyes set closely above a corrugated nose that stared with an unnerving intensity into a private world of hostility and hatred.
As his name suggested everything about Hate-’em-all spelled violence. His shoulders started underneath his chin, and spread outwards like a rugged mountain. Touch him, and he felt like he was sculpted from granite. Rosie hardly ever spoke to him, but over the course of that two-minute phone call she discovered that he didn’t mince his words. He told her that she had to go and have her photograph taken, wearing a disguise.
Rosie had been very green back then, and she didn’t ask any questions – she dutifully went to a photo booth at London Bridge Station and had the picture taken. She had treated it just like an acting job, and hadn’t questioned Hate-’em-all’s motives in any way. Unbeknown to her, the photo was then sent to a Dutch inmate, serving 25 years in Ley Hill open prison.
It emerged that Hate-’em-all had been writing to the prisoner for months, making out he was the girl in the photo, the inmate’s girlfriend. Rosie was then ordered, by Johnny this time, to accompany him, Eddie and Harry on the journey to the prison in South Gloucestershire. She was made to visit the Dutchman, and relay a message – a date, a time, and a number – and that was it. Unbeknown to Rosie, the number referred to the part of the fence surrounding the prison, and the time and the date to when the inmate was to be sprung.
The day came, and Rosie made her way through the security checks – straightening her wig before looking into the security camera. It was only when she was shown into the visiting hall and told to wait that she realised that she had no idea what her ‘boyfriend’ looked like. Each time a prisoner came through the secure door, Rosie stood up. And, each time she realised that it wasn’t him, she pretended to look for something in her pocket.
Eventually a short, Nordic-looking blond man with cruel eyes came through the door, and headed straight for Rosie’s table. He didn’t smile or say a word as he sat down, so Rosie went and collected two plastic cups of lemonade from the canteen’s hatch. Another issue she hadn’t considered was the language barrier. It emerged that the Dutchman spoke very little English indeed. This made conveying the message very difficult, especially as she didn’t have a pen and paper, and did not want to arouse suspicion by asking for them. At long last, after 20 frustrating minutes, Rosie had finally got him to understand. Of course, once he had taken it in, she had no need to stay, and was eager to get out of the stinking visitors’ hall. Rosie smiled as she remembered how she abruptly stood up, shouted at the Dutchman, slapped him around the face, and walked out. She’d seen enough arguments during visiting time to accurately recreate one.
Once she was outside, Rosie made her way to the car park and found the others. She climbed into the passenger seat next to Hate-’em-all-Harry. Eddie and Johnny, as usual, sat in the back. She pulled the wig off her head and stared directly ahead, trying to hold back the tears. Of course, she had known the day she married Johnny that she would have some connection to the criminal underworld. But, now she had seen the harsh reality of it she was desperate to avoid being sucked into it completely. It was then that she vowed never to do anything like that ever again.
But, looking back, Rosie knew that she had actively helped Johnny and Eddie before that trip to Ley Hill. They were very meticulous men, almost pedantic, and it was important to them to have every detail of every robbery carefully planned. In the early days of Rosie and Johnny’s marriage, all the bank robbers, gangsters, thieves and thugs from their gang would regularly turn up at their home. Of course, Rosie was never allowed to overhear what was said on in her own front room – not that she really wanted to. She was always banished to the kitchen to make tea and sandwiches.
Rosie quickly learnt that a robbery is, in many ways, like staging a theatrical production. Certainly it’s dramatic, and requires a great deal of attention to detail to make it convincing. In fact, in those early days Rosie would often feel as if she had been unwittingly cast in some crude crime drama. Just like in a play, Eddie and Johnny had to have the appropriate props to make their operation as effective as possible. They had acquired so many over the years that, eventually, they had their own prop store – a lock-up on an East London backstreet. It was packed with workmen’s shelters (those red-and-white striped portable tents that electricians put up in the street – they could hide a couple of armed men, no problem); a whole range of costumes, such as reflective vests, street-sweepers’ brooms, donkey jackets and boots; ‘road closed’ and ‘diversion’ signs to keep unwanted traffic out of the way; temporary bus-st op signs (in case there was a bus stop directly outside the bank, so passengers would queue away from the target – or for when they wanted to have someone ‘queuing’ outside, who was actually casing it).