BISHOP E16 to SW 3

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James ‘Jimmy’ Bishop did not want to be here.

He owed money.

The Krays.

Ronnie, and Reggie.

Psychopaths.

Money that came with penalties.

Torture.

Murder.

Jimmy stared out from the Georgian window frame into the street below.

Blue moonlight spilled in from a clear night sky, casting his distorted shadow against a burnt-orange wall. 

A man, brown paper bag in hand, pissed against a streetlamp. 

Out of his fucking skull, he was. 

A taxi rounded the corner.

The man raised an arm. 

The taxi did not stop.

The man gave a two-fingered salute. 

Returned to the bag. 

Chugged. 

Empty.

He tossed the bag over his shoulder.

Jimmy caught the faint pop of shattering glass, barely audible through the thick panes of the window. 

A boozy chorus of “Molly Malone” followed the man as he staggered across the road. 

Jimmy pulled his balaclava up and over his sweat-coated Pancho Villa moustache, releasing the stink of his own breath. 

Wool scratched his cheek. 

Cheap shit.

Army surplus.

Twelve shillings and sixpence. 

A bright white light flared. Reflected from the glass. Blinded him for a second.

A man, bruiser big, stepped from the half-shadow. 

A sack hung from his shoulder. 

Official Royal Mail crest.

Hessian, sturdy…stolen.

He toyed with an army-issued TL122 angle-head flashlight. 

Billy Martin, better known as Mongo, but only when the missus was out of earshot, frowned. He lifted the eye slit of his balaclava and patted a handkerchief against the purple bruising surrounding the socket of his right eye. 

The flesh above his cheekbone, red and swollen. 

Crimson wept from a cut across his nose.

Jimmy’s anger burned.

Mongo clocked it. “Called Jenny a slapper,” he said with a shrug.

Jimmy exhaled. 

Three fucking days before the job and Mongo challenged Mad Dog Moxton to a bout of bare-knuckled fisticuffs for calling out Jenny, his wife. 

It could have gone tits up. Moxton dangerous when fuelled up on a cocktail of black bombers and alcohol. 

As it was, Moxton was spark out before the end of the first round.

“Like you would ‘ave done anything different.”

That hurt. Honour and impulse a small step from stupidity.

Jimmy spat out a strangled “cunt.” He nodded. Satisfied. He pulled the balaclava back down. 

Jimmy toe turned. Rubber-soled boots squeaked on the parquet floor. He stepped toward his first victim.

“Not so funny now, is it, laughing boy?” said Jimmy.

In the skylight-infused light of the gallery stood his adversary, full of swaggering self-confidence, rosy cheeks, and all too effeminate lips. 

“What? No comment?”

“You talking to me or that f’ing painting,” said Mongo, training the flashlight beyond Jimmy’s gaze. 

A cone of light captured hues of gold and white, haloing the upturned moustache of Franz Hals masterpiece, the Laughing Cavalier.

The beam stopped abruptly.

Darkness.

“Fuck,” said Mongo, juggling the switch in frustration.

Thin chains, mounted to the upper face of the frame, reached some twenty feet to a picture rail.

Jimmy yanked.

An explosion of plaster dust filled the air, covering his black boiler suit in white snowflakes. 

Mongo steadied the frame as Jimmy reached into his breast pocket. 

Butcher’s wrap¬¬. Unwrapped—Gillette razor blades.

He sliced, cutting around nails that held it onto the wooden stretcher. 

The canvas flopped. 

Mongo held an open-ended tube. 

Jimmy rolled the canvas and slid it in.

One down. 

They moved from gallery to gallery, filling the sack. Titian, Canaletto, Rembrandt—exclusive names somebody else was paying for.

***

Fluted columns stood either side of the wrought-iron balustrades of the staircase.

Jimmy leant with his back against one, checking items from the Gallery brochure. 

An essence of pear odour wafted from the black circles outlining pictures of selected masterpieces. 

Fifteen paintings, total insurance value of one and a quarter million quid. 

Accounting for middlemen, transport, the split with his own gang and the fence in Switzerland, he would net twelve thousand pounds.

Enough.

There was never enough for the Krays.

He chewed his lip.

A hexagonal glass ceiling-light emitted a pale-yellow glow that illuminated Mongo. He sat on a circular sofa, unscrewing the battery cap from his torch, surrounded by marble busts. 

“I’m getting too old for this malarkey,” he said.

Mongo was right. 

Insurance companies had wised up, insisted on ever more sophisticated alarms.

The Wallace Gallery, short of funds, had been slow to react.

This was his last job; with the sale of the paintings, he could finally pay off the Krays and extricate himself from their influence, along with their ever-changing list of favours.

Jimmy sensed a presence.

The thick pile of carpeted stairs disguised any approaching footfall.

A beam focussed, Colditz style, on Mongo’s slumping figure.

“Sweet Jesus,” said a voice from the shadows.

Jimmy rolled from around the column.

The old man stood at the top of the stairs. His torch trembled.  

Their eyes met.

Shocked. The guard stepped backward into free space.

The flashlight, free to choreograph its own trajectory, spiralled high in the air. Mid-spin, captured in freeze-frame, he goldfish mouthed the words, “help”. 

Jimmy reached.

Too late. 

Air.

Swallowed by darkness, sounds muffled by carpet, the guard crashed to the foot of the staircase.

Jimmy followed, passing discarded objects that mapped the man’s fall.

Security cap.

Batteries.

Dentures. 

The prostrate figure lay crumpled at the foot of the staircase; Auschwitz-thin in a one-size-fits-all uniform. His right foot wedged between the marble balustrade and a gold statue of a griffin.

Jeez, wheeze Louise - what was he, eighty?

A black line trickled from a bony nose to thin colourless lips. 

Jimmy knelt. “Hold on, fella.”

Denture-free cheeks bellowed, sucked air. 

Eyes fluttered. 

The guard gasped. 

Fought for air. 

Turned blue.

A presence hovered.

“Did you see Granddad’s teeth?” said Mongo, screwing the flashlight back together.

A dark patch spread from the guard’s groin. 

The air reeked of a heady scent of wool, mothballs, and urine.

The old fart was gonna die unless… Jimmy plunged fingers into the guard’s mouth, gripped the lump of meat and pulled. 

Air rushed.

The guard wheezed. 

Shallow breaths.

Conscious–barely.

Jimmy sat back on his haunches, staring at saliva-tipped gloved fingers. His hands trembled. 

“Christ,” said Mongo, “fucking Florence Nightingale. You saved the old bugger’s life.” 

Jimmy unhooked the guard’s foot from the statue.

“Can’t leave him here,” said Jimmy.

“No, no, no,” said Mongo, shaking his head. “What about the time? You said two hours, tops.”

“Time, what do you think we’ll be doing if the other guard starts snooping and finds grandpa spread-eagle on the fucking floor?” Jimmy placed his arms under the guard’s shoulders. “Grab his legs. We’ll dump him behind the staircase and take care of the other one.” 

***

The faint noise of music led them to a half glass-paned door with SECURITY stencilled in red on the frosted glass. 

The small room was ripe with the stench of body odour, fags, and the thick blue-grey smoke of cigarettes.

Guard number two sat slumped in an armchair, asleep. A cup of tea balanced on the armrest. Trousers at half-mast. A smut magazine lay unfurled on his lap. A blonde tart stared suggestively from the pages. 

She lay on a pink bed. 

She mouthed a big “O” in red lipstick.

She wore a tie that draped between ample breasts. The tip covered her thick bush.

A radio played Frankie McBride singing “Five Little Fingers.”

Jimmy pulled the power cord from its outlet.

The guard snapped awake.

Mongo coiled thick arms around the guard’s throat and squeezed. 

Guard Number Two thrashed, clawing Mongo’s arm. 

The teacup smashed on the floor. 

Dregs of brown liquid splattered the linoleum. 

The magazine slid from his knees, landing cover-up. 

Mongo released his hold. 

The guard clutched his throat. “I…I got a wife and kids,” he stammered.

Not according to Jimmy’s informant, Kenzie McKay. Kenzie told him he was a sad sack of shit that lived with his mum and three cats. 

Kenzie, always open to making a few ‘bob’, discovered that the guard had an appetite for women dressed in uniforms. She picked him up at the local boozer, took him to her flat, dressed as an air stewardess and told Jimmy, as per Dan Air’s advert, that she’d gone both ways for twenty quid.

Information goldmine, floor plans, alarm locations, even down to the TV programs they would be watching. Everything apart from the unpredictability of human nature, which now lay tied up behind the staircase.

Jimmy hugged the radio, wrapped the power cord around his hand, and jerked the wire free.

“Arms. Behind,” said Jimmy. 

Jimmy flipped the power cord around the guard’s wrists and pulled. The cord bit deep, leaving white witness lines prominent against pale-pink skin. 

“On the floor,” said Jimmy.

“Please,” begged the guard. 

A string of snot hung from one nostril.

Bugs Bunny teeth gnawed on fleshy lips. 

Tears seeped from under clenched eyelids

Jimmy yanked him forward.

Guard Number Two twisted his body to lessen the impact. He face-planted Brit Eklund, the cover girl of Mayfair magazine. A hollow thump resounded as skull met concrete, followed by knockout groans. Tea-smeared strands of hair plastered his brow. 

Jimmy scanned the room. His eyes rested on a pair of black Army boots that lay haphazardly under a coffee table, where a trickle of liquid ran from an overturned bottle of Watney’s red.

Jimmy picked up the boots and pulled the laces from the eyelets.

“Telephone,” said Jimmy to Mongo, as he trussed the man’s legs with the laces. 

A drenched sock hung limply from the guard’s toes, revealing a blistered instep. Jimmy pulled at the sock, tied a knot, and forced it into the man’s mouth, gagging him.

Mongo placed his shovel-like hands on the top and bottom of the phone and twisted. A moment’s resistance before a crack of fixings brought with it chips of plaster and paint. 

The telephone swung by a single wire. 

A tinny chime, from its internal bell, sounded as it rebounded from the wall.

 Mongo stood over Jimmy; his facemask raised above his top lip. “Perhaps now his lordship is ready,” he said, reaching for the door and holding it open. 

 Jimmy paused at the threshold.

“Don’t even think about it,” said Mongo, grabbing a handful of Jimmy’s boiler suit. “You’re going soft in the head. The old codger will be OK, which we won’t be if we don’t get the fuck out of here.” 

***

They headed through the armoury. 

Medieval weapons lined glass-fronted cases. 

A statue of a knight, mounted on a horse, sword raised in battle charge, stood in front of a narrow concrete staircase that led into the bowels of the museum. 

Light from Mongo’s flashlight bobbled across a flagstone floor, exposing entrails of straw packaging from pried-open wooden crates. 

Mongo rested the sack of paintings next to the iron grate of a manhole cover and positioned himself so that his legs dangled into the black hole. 

He eased forward. 

The swell of his paunch caught against steel edges. 

Mongo winked. 

A button pinged, and he disappeared.

The hole said shit, and the light went out.

Fuck. 

Jimmy hyperventilated. His past lurked in the darkness. He was young, Beano comic young. The man—face red with rage, spat fiery whisky-tainted words that offered no explanation. Jimmy gritted his teeth and winced, feeling each stroke of the belt bite into tender skin. 

“Oi, it’s like the Black Hole of Calcutta here…” said Jimmy, his voice strangled. 

Jimmy heard the slap of metal against skin, and a shaft of light exploded from the hole, catching the lip of the manhole and spearing across the stone floor. 

“Are you coming?” echoed the hole.

Jimmy’s heart raced. 

“Oi,” shouted the hole.

“Yeah, yeah…” said Jimmy, steadying his breathing. He lifted the manhole cover, feeling the burred edges of the thin cast iron rim bite into the soft leather of his gloves, and placed it with an edge overhanging the hole. Standing astride, he lowered the sack into Mongo’s awaiting arms.

He followed.

Missed the last rung of the ladder and landed with a splash. 

His left leg slid on the Victorian brickwork, slick with algae.

Cold water rushed into his glove. 

Creatures screeched and scurried. 

Mongo climbed a few rungs up the ladder and stretched for the manhole cover.

The faint crescent of light vanished.

Scholars Pond sewage system traced the path of the Tyburn River, which flowed from Hampstead Heath through Regents and St James parks, passing under Buckingham and Westminster Palace before depositing its contents into the Thames. 

Jimmy knew all about these tunnels, courtesy of his National Service and the Cuban Missile Crisis that sent the world into a panic. 

Newspapers fear-mongered, “The Ruskies were coming.”

Days in the Army spent mapping abandoned underground stations and bunkers beneath London. 

Safe from the bomb.

Safe from the red peril. 

Post-army— safe from the law and other criminal enterprises.   

Jimmy pointed the flashlight down the tunnel. 

A yellow circle pierced the gloom. 

A fog of methane choked the narrow passage.

It stank of the foul smell of aged turds.

Mongo stooped to fit his six-two frame within the six-foot tunnel.

They both edged forward, careful to centre their footfall on the curved floor. 

As the tunnel straightened, Jimmy saw the faint outline of a rope ladder.

Passing through the narrow hole that conjoined the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. Jimmy lay on the brick and clay-strewn flooring of the Western District sorting office of the Post Office Mail rail.

Opened by King George in 1927.

Closed by the Post Office in ‘65.

Re-opened, unofficially, by James Bishop in ‘68. 

Jimmy removed his coveralls, revealing a grey postal uniform.  

Mongo, less subtlety, ripped at the cotton of his coveralls

Harsh fluorescent light bounced off cream walls.

Wooden sorting trays, bereft of the letters they once held, filled a wall. 

Discarded parcel bags, bundled in a corner, showed signs of brittleness from age. 

They made their way to the black void of a disused lift shaft, mechanisms long gone. Mongo yanked on a steel door next to the empty lift shafts and headed down a stairwell.

Footsteps cannonaded off iron stairs.

Twenty feet below ground, they exited onto a concrete platform which ran the length of a twenty-five-foot diameter white ribbed tube, containing two narrow-gauge tracks. 

Jaundiced lights dripped from the roof, catching silvery reflections from well-worn rails. Warm, stuffy, air stank of quartz-silica brake dust.

The Post Office underground railway was a miniature replica of the London Underground. It transported mail via nine stations, from Whitechapel to Paddington. Thirty-four automated trains ran every hour, twenty-two hours a day. 

That was six miles of rail under the heart of London, unseen.

The two-hour daily shutdown for maintenance offered a window of opportunity. 

Using the shift change as cover, Mongo, carrying a fuck-off spanner for added insurance, Jimmy, and the third man of the operation, Paul, the Hose, Davidson walked into Mount Pleasant station.

Mongo and Jimmy borrowed a mail train, complete with flatbed mail trolleys.

No one asked questions.

The Hose headed toward the central control room. 

His job—simple—pull a few levers and arrange the rail point system for an unobstructed run between all stations.

Rail points re-arranged they sped to Mount Pleasant.

They left the borrowed canary-yellow battery-powered locomotive, standing at the far end of the platform, on a side loop.

They were on the clock.

Two hours.

Now twenty minutes.

Jimmy headed for the supervisor’s office. 

A scratched plywood door revealed paint hues of shit brown and battleship grey. At the foot, needle-pointed teeth marks surrounded a gnawed hole—rats. 

Jimmy kicked the base. 

The door juddered against the rubber doorstop. 

His nose stung as he stepped across the threshold—ammonia, nature’s perfume—eau de animal piss. 

Taped to orange-peel walls were mementos from abandoned staff. Andy Capp cartoons cut from the Mirror, paper yellowed and brittle. A Kim Novak centrefold from Playboy. 

Foam entrails spewed from the slashed vinyl seat of a swivel chair. 

The chair wobbled drunkenly as he sat behind a chipped melamine desk.

Jimmy picked up a dull black Bakelite telephone, thick with the grease from a multitude of fingers, and cupped the receiver to his ear. 

A live wire hummed. 

He dialled the extension for the Mount Pleasant Central Control Office.

No answer. 

Jimmy repeated the process. 

Still, no answer. 

They had tried it twice, all perfect. 

Minutes ticked by.

Where the fuck was the Hose.

Jimmy stared at the blue track board. White spaghetti lines, punctuated by clear bulbs, depicted the track outline and the trains that moved along it. 

Jimmy’s plan rested on the Hose to re-align the points on the track. The same man who wasn’t answering the fucking phone. 

He didn’t fancy meeting eight tonnes of train coming in the opposite direction.

Jimmy rolled himself out of his cubbyhole; the squeak of broken wheels following each exertion. 

“He’s not answering,” said Jimmy.

Mongo jumped down onto the tracks. 

He kicked a foot against a rail. “What’s the betting Doctor Shagnasty found some bird, and he’s giving her one?”

Jimmy gave an anxious laugh. The Hose’s cock—half donkey, and libido legendary. “Wouldn’t rule it out. Someday someone’s going to build a monument to it...” 

A gust of wind ruffled Jimmy’s hair.

“Shit.” 

Jimmy leapt from the chair. The steel frame bounced across the concrete floor. Smooth soles slipped on the slick surface. Scrabbling for support, he grasped the wooden doorframe. 

Splinters pierced flesh. 

Jimmy craned his neck and stared at the track board. 

A red light blinked, moving toward their location. 

He shouted his fears. “St—” His voice cracked. Jimmy swallowed, drew a deep breath, and bellowed, “STOP...”

A blue arc bounced from deep within the tube.

“…The line’s electrified.”

Jimmy’s feet pounded along the platform. 

A white-faced Mongo froze—foot poised above the live rail. 

A loud metallic thunk reverberated from the tunnel entrance.

Points re-aligning.

Inches from Mongo’s foot.

Jimmy roared. “Move.”

“I can’t.” 

Mongo’s leg trembled. He opened his mouth. His voice drowned out by the clank of steel upon steel.

In one fluid movement, Jimmy palmed the edge of the platform and jumped onto the tracks. Eyes centred on the live rail; he matched his stride to the pitch of the wooden sleepers.  

Mongo’s locked knee buckled. 

Jimmy shoved Mongo in the back. 

Mongo rocked forward. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Mother of Mary…” he shouted.

Unbalanced, he flung a leg forward. Momentum carried him past the live rail, and he staggered the few steps to the platform. Weak-kneed, he dug his fingernails into the platform edge. 

“You cunt, I could…” Hammer fisted; he lashed out. 

Jimmy ducked, placed his arms under Mongo’s armpits and crushed him against the platform. Jimmy closed his eyes, feeling the vibration of the automated mail train as it hurtled past. The roar popped his ears.

 “Fuck… fuck… fuck.” Mongo leant to one side and retched. 

From the office came the brng-brng of a telephone…

Jimmy caught it on the third ring. 

Restraint in his voice. 

The Hose speed talked. 

He explained the appearance of genuine maintenance workers and how he hid in a cupboard with one foot in a cleaner’s bucket. 

Wet foot, he said. Fucking wet foot, all right. 

Jimmy returned to the platform, pausing as he reached the sprawled figure of Mongo. He dropped a hand on his shoulder and patted it. “You, okay? That’s two lives today, one more and I get my Cub Scout badge.” 

A groggy Mongo stood.

“I, I could have… fuck,” said Mongo as he sat himself against the bulkhead of the flatbed. His eyes stared into space.

Jimmy continued to the locomotive, slipped inside the driver’s cage and engaged the battery motors. 

Axles clanged over points; the noise amplified in the darkened tunnels. The line dropped rapidly from twenty to seventy feet. A second set of points juddered the train, and it moved from moving the wrong way on the westbound line to moving in the right direction on the eastbound line. 

They hurtled through light-infused stations where out of focus grey-blue blobs humped sacks full of mail. 

At Liverpool Street, home of the Great Eastern National rail network, Jimmy disengaged the motors. Silently they sailed to the end of the platform. They passed men pushing mail trolleys, men drinking tea, men having a sneaky cigarette break who sheepishly stared in their direction.

Jimmy applied the brakes. 

Mongo headed for the stairwell. A door clattered behind him.

Jimmy tucked the tube containing the Laughing Cavalier under his arm and grasped the sack full of stolen paintings.  

He walked the few yards to a rubberised conveyor. 

Electric motors whined.

The intermittent clunk, clunk of the belt.

Jimmy dropped the sack onto the conveyor and watched it disappear behind plastic sheeting.

Three hundred feet to Platform 10.

Express train to Harwich Port.

Ferry across the English Channel to Hoek van Holland.

Distributed to Geneva and Luxembourg, awaiting expectant new owners.