Buried (DC Jack Warr #1) - Lynda La Plante Page 0,37

respected. Not like today. Criminals today never climbed to the lofty heights of ‘notorious’.

Jack came across several old case files belonging to DI George Resnick who, back in the late seventies and early eighties, had seemingly been obsessed with tying the elusive Harry Rawlins to any of the numerous crimes he was suspected of. Resnick had been like a dog with a bone, ignoring all contrary opinions and faithfully following his gut. His name had been dragged through the mud by the gutter press; he’d been suspended, forced towards early retirement, denounced as an embarrassment to the force . . . Still, he stood by what he absolutely knew to be true ‒ that Harry Rawlins was involved in the Strand underpass armed robbery on a security van. It was Resnick, and only Resnick, who’d claimed that Harry Rawlins had survived that otherwise deadly explosion. It was Resnick, and only Resnick, who’d chased a ghost with the absolute conviction of eventually being proved right.

Shit! Jack thought to himself. That’s what I want.

That all-consuming passion for catching the bad guy. That unshakable knowledge you were right.

But Jack knew he was asking for the impossible ‒ because to be that kind of copper, he’d require a nemesis like Harry Rawlins and they just didn’t exist any more. Each day on the job, all Jack was doing was hoovering up scrotes, wasters, druggies and lazy bastards who had decided that crime was easier than working. That’s why the Rose Cottage case was so intriguing and why tracking Jimmy Nunn was so exciting: because he was being taken back to a time when being a criminal was a vocation and a crime could be a work of art. Jack couldn’t quite believe he was yearning for ‘proper’ gangsters, but the thought of his birth dad being part of this old-school criminal underworld was oddly exhilarating.

*

Jim Douglas was a timid, unassuming man who said very little, very quietly. He was round, in his early sixties and bald as a coot. He had a large, rosy-cheeked face with wide eyes like those of a child.

‘You OK being in the garden with me?’ Jim asked Anik. ‘Only, the grandkids are coming for tea and I want to get these trees planted before they arrive.’

He knelt on a flowery gardener’s knee-pad and dug the last hole, as Anik slurped tea from a chipped mug.

Jim’s house sat at the heart of the housing estate that had been built on the grounds once belonging to The Grange, and it was a clone of the rest of the street. But this garden had been lovingly landscaped and was clearly Jim’s domain. At the far end of the garden was a shed and, through the window, Anik could see the top half of a bike with a child’s seat on the back. Scattered about the lawn were numerous footballs, a miniature football net, some plastic skittles and stray pieces from a giant Jenga. Kids were obviously welcome here and any ensuing mess was most definitely allowed. There was even a home-made tree house in an old, sprawling oak that must have been around for centuries longer than any of the buildings which now surrounded it. The oak would have known the Grange women and all of their secrets.

‘Do you remember the night the mail train was robbed, Mr Douglas?’

‘Jim, please. Yes, I remember. Well, I remember my bit. All those police loading the money sacks into the carriage at the crossing, then me sending the train on its way. About a minute later, I heard a massive crack of thunder, then saw the lightning and that was it. Course, it wasn’t thunder at all ‒ it was dynamite on the tracks. Very clever, that.’

‘Clever?’ Anik asked.

‘Well, the explosion made the carriage leave the rails, making it invisible to my track monitoring equipment. The equipment is very accurate but it can only “see” a train if its wheels are in contact with the tracks.’

‘So . . .’ Anik mused. ‘The robbers would have to have known that?’

‘Every trainspotter in England knows that. It’s common enough knowledge.’

Anik couldn’t see Jim’s face, but it had gone from rosy cheeked to deathly white; he’d started sweating and struggling to control his breathing.

‘Was there any aspect of the robbery that did require insider information?’

Jim closed his eyes in silent panic. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m not suggesting you had anything to do with it at all, Jim,’ Anik assured him. ‘We know that you were privy to the normal running schedule of