[b]Lignum Vitae Ltd.
Fulham, London
9:35 AM, 30th July 1966[/b]

It took Red all over twenty minutes to make the journey from Battersea to Fulham. He’d took in all the smells and sounds that London had to offer on his way to the safehouse that morning. 

He had chosen the place because it was suitably off the grid. It had raised a few eyebrows to begin with. It’s not every day that hardened criminals rock up to a florists. But the West Indian woman that owned the place, Ms. Ambrose, was polite enough. She didn’t ask for much from them in the way of cash – and she [i]never[/i] enquired as to the nature of the meetings the men held. 

Turner had fought alongside a dozen or so blacks in Korea. Half of them ended up dying fighting for a country they’d never so much as clapped eyes on. But he learned a thing or two from the ones that stuck it out – namely, that they’d sooner sit round the dinner table with Lucifer himself than talk to the Old Bill. Ambrose was no different.

After Kinnear, that mattered to him more than anything.

As he opened the door to the back room, Turner noticed Charlie stood in full policeman’s garb, thin black moustache resting on his top lip. His skin was taut, freshly-shaven, but the bloodshot eyes betrayed his tiredness. He was never one for early starts.

“The moustache suits you,” Red said, running a thumb and forefinger across his own top lip with a fraternal smile. “You look positively Hitlerian.”

“Yeah, and good morning to you, too” Charlie scoffed.

Enfield reached across to pile of policemen’s uniform and tossed a set to Red. Turner caught it and swaddled over to the mirror and began to change out of his suit and into the disguise. As he dressed, he had one eye trained on the clock and the other on Enfield. It was difficult to tell read the boy sometimes. He seemed to oscillate between being a ball of nerves and teeming with bravado depending on his mood. [i]I was much the same at that age[/i], thought Red as he finished buttoning up his shirt.

“Any news from Coach?” Turner muttered as he took a seat and reached for the day’s paper.

“Figure he’ll be on his way over from St. Helier by now.”

Within ten minutes, the sound of Coach’s voice carried through the room walls. He’d tried to warn Crowder off talking to the old woman too much when they’d first started working out of the place, but with time Red had mellowed on it. It created a semblance of normalcy in the event they ever passed through the front when customers were around. Plus he knew he could no sooner change Coach’s way than he could hold back the tide – he was a cabbie, it was in his nature.

When the door finally opened, Bobby unexpectedly stepped through it and a few moments afterwards Coach came bounding through, catching the door just before it closed behind Lewandowski.

“Hope you two didn’t come here in the same motor,” enquired Charlie.

“No, no, I was rabbiting with the old woman in the shop and young Bobby here slid in right behind me without so much as a hello.”

“I didn’t mean to cause offence,” Bobby demurred in his half-Cockney, half-Polish accent.

“None was taken, lad,” Coach responded, slapping the Pole on the back supportively.

“Enough,” Charlie muttered impatiently. “Hurry up and get dressed.”

“The bastard’s early [i]one[/i] time,” Crowder whispered to Bobby as they took off their coats and began dressing for work.

Turner couldn’t help but crack a smile at the scene. There wasn't a nasty bone in Lewandowski's body. Red was sure the kid had sent half the money they’d made together back to some impoverished mother in Poland. What he did with his money was none of Red’s business, what mattered was that there was no finer an explosives man in all of London. You don’t acquire a nickname like “Bobby Bombs” for nothing.

That said, the outfit he’d be wearing for the job did him no favours. He looked like John Bull. Beneath Bobby’s blue suit jacket was a waistcoat emblazoned with the Union Flag. Coach had taken get pleasure in pinning several red, white and blue rosettes onto Lewandowski’s lapels.

“Please, not the hat.”

The final touch – the [i]dreaded[/i] hat – was a sight to behold. It was a soft, plush top hat in the colours of the Union Flag with the word “England” printed across the white cross in the middle. For someone as introverted as Lewandowski, wearing that getup in public was like being trapped in a living nightmare. But it would get the job done.

“I’m sorry, Bob,” Red said as he stifled a laugh at the outfit over the paper. “Just think of all the nice clothes you’ll be able to buy yourself with your share of the take.”

“Plus, you’re the only one that’s going to be able to see the game and you’re not even [i]bloody[/i] English. Try and spare a thought for the rest of us, St. George,” Coach added, itching at the pits of his snug ambulance driver's uniform.

Satisfied his associates were prepared for what lay ahead, Turner tossed the newspaper onto the table beside him and cleared his throat. He began to walk the crew through the plan. They had been through it a thousand times before and could all recite every second of it word-for-word at this stage. But Turner was a stickler for repetition. Every member of the crew had to know the others were going to be at [i]every[/i] point, the to the nearest second if possible.

Finally, Red reached, for lack of a better phrase, the interesting part. Getting to and from the stadium would be easy enough – it was everything that happened between those two points that worried him. Usually they worked in pairs, but today Bobby and Charlie would be shouldering the load.

“Bob, at sixteen-zero-nine, that’s nine minutes into the second half, you do what you do best: make things go boom. Spray those bangers of yours in among the crowd and cause enough of a ruckus that the wardens step in. If Charlie’s going to get inside, we need security focused [i]squarely[/i] on you – so don’t hold back.”

“Got it,” Bobby nodded.

“Our man Cecil is working on Gate L. Charlie, he’ll be expecting you at sixteen-ten. So the second you hear the banging, head to the gate and he’ll take you to the counting room. Once you’re there, put the fear of God into the staff – make them think you’re gonna blow a hole in poor Cecil’s back – but don’t get too rough with them. We need them to bag up the cash.”

Red watched as Enfield massaged his now gloved hands.

“Once they’ve done that, get the blindfolds and gags on them. At sixteen-thirty, I’ll move into position on the ground by the counting room – Coach, I’ll need you bring the ambulance round pronto. Bobby, once you’ve been turfed out by the wardens, you’ll meet me and Coach by the ambulance at sixteen-thirty-five. You start dropping the bags of cash down to us as soon as the coast is clear, Charlie, and Bobby and I’ll load them into the back.”

There were a lot of variables. Too many for Red’s liking. He’d lost count of the hours of sleep he’d missed out on wondering what would happen if England were down big and the stands emptied before the game was done. 

Or worse, what happened if England lost? The thought of the four of them crammed into that ambulance with only an inch or two of steel between them and nearly a hundred thousand drunk England fans didn’t bear thinking about. 

“Give or take a few minutes for extra time either way, the game ought to be coming to an end around sixteen-forty, Charlie. Use the crowd to slip out of the counting room and make your way out to the ambulance where we’ll be waiting for you.”

Coach lifted a hand into the air above his ambulance driver’s hat and Turner invited him to speak.

“Then we whack the old siren on and I get us home safely.”

“That’s the plan,” Red smiled.

“What are we waiting for then?” Coach said, glancing down at the watch on his wrist. “We’d better get this show on the road if we want to beat the worst of the traffic.”