Dark Side of the Street

'Word certainly gets around.'

'That's the nick for you-we're all just one big happy family. You'll like it here-it's got everything. Central heating, air conditioning, television-all we needed was a bit of class and now we've got you.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Come off it-you were a Captain in the Engineers before they kicked you out. Sandhurst and all that. I read about it in the papers when you were up at the Bailey.'

'I've read about you too.'

Youngblood sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette. 'Where was that then?'

'A book called Great Crimes of the Century. Came out last year. There was a whole chapter devoted to the Peterfield Airport job. Written by a man called Tillotson.'

'That clown,' Youngblood said contemptuously. 'He didn't get the half of it. Came to see me by special permission of the Home Office. I gave him all the griff-no reason not to now-but did he get it right? Gave all the credit for the planning to Ben Hoffa and he couldn't tell his arse from his elbow.'

'It was your idea then?'

'That's it.' Youngblood shrugged. 'I needed Ben, I'm not denying that. He could fly a Dakota- that was his main function.'

'What about Saxon?'

'A good lad when he had someone to tell him what to do.'

'Any idea where they are now?'

'Somewhere in the sun spending all that lovely lolly if they've any sense.'

'You never know your luck,' Chavasse said. 'They might be making arrangements for you to join them right now.'

Youngblood stared across at him blankly. 'Get me out you mean? Out of Fridaythorpe?' He exploded into laughter. 'Have you got a lot to learn. No one gets out of here, didn't they tell you that? They've got television cameras and electronic gates-they've even constructed special walls of reinforced concrete with foundations twenty feet deep. That's just in case anyone ever thought of tunnelling.' He shook his head. 'This is it-the big cage-there is no way out.'

'There's always a way,' Chavasse said.

'What have we got here then? A brain?'

'Big enough.'

'It didn't do you much good on that Lonsdale Metals caper. You're here, aren't you?'

'So are you.'

'Only because of Ben Hoffa and that bloody bird of his.' For a moment Youngblood was genuinely angry. 'He tried to drop her and she shopped him. That was the end for all of us.'

'But they didn't get the money.'

'That's it, boy.' Youngblood grinned. 'More than you can say.'

'I know,' Chavasse said feelingly. 'I had the same trouble as Hoffa.'

He sat there on the edge of the bed staring down at the floor as if momentarily depressed and Youngblood produced a twenty packet of cigarettes and offered him one. 'Don't let it get you down. Between you and me that was quite something you pulled off. A pity you still had your amateur status. A bit more know-how and you might have got away with it.'

'You seem to be doing all right for yourself,' Chavasse said, holding up the cigarette.

Youngblood grinned and lolled back against the pillow. 'I'm not complaining. I get as many of those things as I want and don't ask me how. When the blokes in here want snout they come to me and no one else. You fell on your feet when old man Carter decided to put you in here.'

'He told me you'd been ill. How bad is it?'

'I had a slight stroke a month or two back. Nothing much.' Youngblood shrugged. 'Just one of those things.'

'I got the impression he was afraid you might peg out on him one of these nights. If he's as worried as that why doesn't he have you trans-ferreed to the Scrubs?'

Youngblood chuckled harshly. 'The Home Office would never wear that. They'd be frightened to death one of the London mobs might have a go at breaking me out in the hopes of getting their hot little hands on the lolly.' He shook his head. 'No, here I am and here I stay.'

'For another fifteen years?'

Youngblood turned his head and smiled softly. 'That remains to be seen, doesn't it?' He tossed the cigarettes across. 'Have another.'

He quite obviously wanted to talk and Chavasse lay there smoking and let him. He covered just about everything that had ever happened to him, starting with his years in a Camberwell orphanage and dwelling particularly on his time in the Navy. He wasn't married and apparently had only one living relative-a sister.

'You've got to look out for yourself, boy,' he told Chavasse. 'I learned that early. There's always some bastard waiting to take away what you've got. When I was a P.O. in MTBs I had a skipper called Johnson-young sub- lieutenant. Bloody useless. I carried him-carried him. We took part in the St. Laurent commando raid; he got hit early on. He just sat there helpless in the skipper's chair on the bridge bleeding to death. There was nothing we could do for him. I took over, pressed home the attack and put two torpedoes into an enemy destroyer. And what happened when we got back? Johnson got a posthumous Victoria Cross-I got a bloody mention in dispatches.'

Funny how a story changed according to one's point of view. Chavasse stared up at the ceiling remembering the official report of the action in the file on Youngblood which had been compiled by S2 at the Bureau. The plain unvarnished truth was that Johnson had signed his own death warrant by staying in command on the bridge and undoubtedly aggravating his already serious injuries. Youngblood had done well-and behaved steadily under fire-there was no question about his personal courage, but at all times he had acted under Johnson's direct orders.

He wondered now if Youngblood really believed his own account of the action, but then he had probably told it to others and himself so many times over the years that what might have been had become reality. Somehow in the fantasy version there was even an implication that the V.C. had gone to the wrong person although he himself would probably have indignantly denied the fact.

'According to Tillotson you were hit for smuggling first.'

'That's right,' Youngblood grinned. 'Worked in the Channel run in a converted MTB for a couple of years following the war.'

'What were you running-brandy?'

'Anything that would sell and almost anything would in those days. Booze, fags, nylons, watches.'

'What about dope? I hear there's a lot of money in it.'

'What in the hell do you think I am?' Youngblood demanded. 'I wouldn't dirty my hands on that sort of rubbish.'

It seemed a perfectly genuine reaction and was completely in character with the facts of his file. Harry Youngblood would never touch drugs or prostitution, two of the biggest money-spinners there were-a nice moral touch that. The newspapers had made a lot out of it at the time of his trial and the public had responded well, forgetting about the pilot of the Dakota hijacked at Peterfield who, in attempting to put up a fight, had been beaten so savagely by Youngblood that his eyesight was permanently affected.

And there were others. Over the years the police had pulled in Harry Youngblood again and again in connection with indictable offenses, mainly robbery which had too often included use of violence. At no time had they been able to make a charge stick and on one occasion, the night watchman of a fur warehouse, clubbed into insensibility, had afterwards died.

Chavasse surfaced and realised that Youngblood was still talking. 'Those were the days, boy. We really gave the coppers a thing or two to think about. I had the beast team in the Smoke. One job after another and every one planned so well that the busies could never put a finger on us.'

'That must have taken some doing.'

'Oh, they pulled me in-every time there was a big tickle they tried to pin it on me. I spent half my time on the steps at West End Central being photographed. I was never out of the bloody papers.'

'Until now.'