[b]Scotland Yard, Westminster
7:42 PM[/b]

Detective Inspector Eddie Dunphy placed a cigarette between his lips. It lay there helplessly for the duration of Dunphy’s journey from Scotland Yard to a nearby phonebox. It wasn’t until the police officer had stepped inside of it that he bothered to light it up. It was a peculiar habit Dunphy had. That and wearing the peacoat his uncle had bought him for his eighteenth birthday all year round. Both had earned him his fair share of stick from his colleagues. But it was nothing he couldn’t handle.

He filled his lungs with smoke as he pulled up the sleeve of the coat. There daubed on the fat of the inside of his hand was a phone number that Dunphy was supposed to have memorised. In all of the day’s excitement, the task had proved beyond him.

He slid a few coins into the phone and tapped the phone number in. After three rings, he heard the receiver being picked up on the other end.

“It’s me,” Eddie announced.

“Ah,” Harry Handkerchief’s faux-surprise was tangible from the other side. “I had been wondering when you would call.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. It’s been a bit of a busy day at the office. Our little misadventure down at Carlisle’s place wasn’t even the evening’s main attraction.”

“What?”

“Some bastards with bollocks the size of Big Ben robbed Wembley Stadium blind while the final was going on, if you can believe that. Half of Scotland Yard are down there trying to figure out what happened. The other half are out on the piss, as you’d expect given the football and all.”

Dunphy had been hoping the World Cup Final would help draw the Met’s attention away from the Cooperage raid. And he thought it had done. But [i]someone[/i] had gone crying to Brown and his boys at the last minute and blown Dunphy’s plan to pieces. It was only a stroke of luck that Eddie himself had been called out there. If it had been someone else, Harry would likely have been blown away there in that alleyway.

“What of my colleagues?”

“Stockton and Walsh were dead the second they reached for their guns,” Dunphy sighed. “Your wheelman rear-ended a rubbish van trying to get away from the scene. Wasn’t a pretty sight. Coroner reckons he died on impact, though.”

“Christ,” Harry muttered down the phone. “And Clubber?”

“Conroy is alive,” Dunphy responded. “The bugger took six bullets at close range and it still wasn’t enough to put him down.”

“Well, I suppose that’s good news.”

“Is it?”

The sound of honking horns and cheering from passersby filled the silence between the two men. 

“What are you suggesting, Edmund?”

Eddie could feel the indignation in Harry’s voice. Their settlement, as they had come to refer to it as, had worked well for both men up to this point – Dunphy came up with the plans, Harry saw them through. Because of his day job, that was about as involved as Eddie could afford to be. That meant that Harry had to put together his own crews. Dunphy didn’t always agree with his choices. Clubber being one of them.

“He went away for a long time last time around,” Eddie ventured with some trepidation in his voice. “And he’s only been on the outside for, what, nine months? What if he starts getting ideas when he comes to? I’ve seen Brown crack bigger and tougher bastards than him.”

Harry’s tart, posh laughter sounded from the other side of the phone.

“They don’t [i]make[/i] bastards bigger and tougher than James Conroy.”

“Are you willing to bet your life on that?”

“I am,” Harry nodded. “Not that it will matter once Carlisle gets wind of my involvement in this bloody mess.”

“Don’t you worry about that old todger,” Eddie said knowingly. “I spoke with my family friends this morning. Rumour has it Carlisle will have a little more than a botched robbery to deal with in the next couple of days.”

Carlisle’s days were numbered. The Binneys were going to see to that. The old man [i]must[/i] have known that. With the Binneys territory creeping more westwards every week and the Kanes looking to make moves across the river, Carlisle was surrounded. Nearly a decade ago, a similar fate had befallen Eddie’s great uncle – Jack Donoghue. That had been when the Binneys were small-time. Now they ruled the roost. Carlisle would be lucky to still be around in six months time.

“You’ll see to it that no harm comes to Clubber on the inside? He’s a good man, Edmund. A simple one, perhaps, but he understands the value of loyalty,” Harry implored.

The copper thought on it for a few moments. It would be a ball ache convincing Albie and Alan not to have Conroy seen to once he was on the inside, but he felt like he owed Harry that much, given what had happened to the rest of them. He’d go to Frank first. Frank had [i]always[/i] been the key to getting the brothers onside.

“I’ll do my best, Harry,” Eddie agreed finally.

Harry intimated he’d be dropping off the map for the foreseeable and the two men said their goodbyes. Eddie put the receiver down and tossed his now dead fag onto the floor and ground it into mulch with one of his feet. 

He made the slow trudge back to the Yard as he mulled over when was the best time to contact the Binneys. Once he was in the Yard’s myriad identical halls, his thoughts returned to his day job. He caught a glimpse of Superintendent Thomas Brown. For years, Dunphy had been leaking and framing under Brown’s nose without him being any the wiser – but with two busts in one day, it felt like the net had begun to tighten somewhat.

“Evening, guv,” Dunphy murmured to Brown as the two passed by one another.

The Superintendent nodded his head dismissively in response. If Dunphy didn’t know Brown better, he’d have thought he might have harboured some suspicions about him. The truth of the matter was that the old man was about as crotcetchy as they came – and was probably just running late for once in his life. Eddie smiled to himself knowingly and returned to his desk.

There was work still to be done.

[center][b]***[/b][/center][b]8:04 PM[/b]

“Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed at such short notice.”

“Am I in some kind of trouble?” Cecil asked.

“No, no, of course not. Your colleagues will all be brought in over the next couple of days for similar interviews but given your rather prolonged exposure to one of the suspects, we thought it best to strike while the iron was hot.”

Cecil nodded in agreement and Superintendent Thomas Brown quickly offered Cecil an explanation of what his rights were and explained how the state-of-the-art recording device on the table was going to be used. Finally, the officer laid out a few folders in front of him. He cleared his throat, pressed a button down on the recorder, and began his questions. They seemed routine enough to Cecil as he recounted the events of that morning.

When he reached the evening, Brown’s attention seemed to spike.

“You told an officer at the scene that the gentleman who robbed the counting room had a firearm, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Cecil nodded. “That’s right. He had a gun of some sort. I couldn’t tell you much more than that. I don’t know much about them, see.”

“It was a pistol?”

Cecil nodded again. Gladys and the rest of the staff in the courting room had seen as much. There was no harm in telling them that. Alf had walked him through what to say and what not to say in the interview room. One of the big no-nos was to be seen as non-compliant – it would make them suspicious, Alf had said. So far Cecil had been a picture of compliance.

Opposite him, Brown jotted down a few notes. He opened his mouth to ask another question but was cut off by the door to the interview room opening. A uniformed police officer stuck his head around the corner.

“A moment, guv?”

“Can it wait?” asked without looking up from his folders.

The officer shook his head and Brown sighed. He set down his pen and followed the officer out of the room. Cecil watched as the door shut behind the two of them quietly and he was left alone. He repeated Turner’s advice over and over in his head.

A minute passed, then two, then five, and as the time kept melting away, Cecil grew more anxious. Finally the door opened and Brown reentered the interview room. This time the schoolmasterly calm that he usually exuded had been left at the door. Cecil could tell that something he’d learned had worried him.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Cecil, but your colleague … the girl.” Brown mused as he began to thumb his way through the folders in front of him, desperately avoiding making eye contact with him. “What was her name? Do forgive me.”

“Iris,” Cecil shouted as he stood bolt upright. His seat fell to the ground with a bang. “What’s wrong with her? Tell me what’s happened.”

“I’m afraid she didn’t make it. Bleeding on the brain. The doctors say the knock she took during the robbery was the cause of it. This is now a murder investigation.”

The words nearly floored him. They had not known each other for long, but he and Iris had grown close over the past two months. A joke here and there over a fag had turned into something more – maybe even something lasting. Cecil had already been planning how he would use his share of the take to maybe take Iris away for a while, once the dust had settled, of course. But that was all a pipe dream now. She was dead.

“I am very sorry,” Brown said from across the table.

Cecil’s hands gripped the edge of the table tightly to steel himself. His grief turned to rage as he pictured the face of Turner’s hired muscle. The squat figure that had flung him to the ground after letting him through the door – and the absurd moustache that sat atop his lip. His face was imprinted on Cecil’s mind. He wanted to kill him. He wanted to get out of that interview room, find a weapon, and take from that man what he had taken from Iris.

“They’ll be sorry,” Cecil muttered under his breath.

Across from him, Brown stirred inquisitively and Cecil spotted the officer make a note in the folder in front of him. His anger subsided slightly as he realised anything he said to incriminate that mustachioed bastard would only incriminate himself too – even if it were done to avenge Iris.

“They?” Brown asked innocently. “I thought there was only [i]one[/i] man in the counting room, Cecil.”

It was a trap. Even poor, naive Cecil could sense that much – but Turner’s words rang in his ears one final time as his senses returned to him and his temper cooled. Non-compliance was suspicious. Cecil propped his seat back up and returned to it with an unconvincingly heaviness.

“Well, he couldn’t have been dropping the money to himself, could he?”

Brown smiled solemnly at the deduction.

“I suppose not.”

There was a slither of suspicion there. Cecil could feel it. He leant forward, crossed his arms, and prepared to navigate his way through the copper’s questioning without dropping himself in it. 

As Brown asked the next question, Cecil glanced up at the clock. If all had gone right, he’d have been out on the town with Iris and the rest of the staff by now – heck, maybe they’d have even invited the Thursgoods. Instead, Iris was dead and he was one more wrong word away from being sent down as an accessory to murder.

Turner had a lot to answer for.