Derailed

By David Davies

Birdy makes bad choices in assembling his team of villains. One despises him, one stinks and the other is dating an informer for the Flying Squad. Surprisingly, their burglary on the Mail Rail succeeds in spite of a tragic accidental death. They have also annoyed a wealthy villain and the police are hot on their trail. They suffer bad luck, trea

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Ward
• Release date: Apr 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781802274837

David Davies

David Davies has been writing since he left home. His poems have appeared in diverse places, including Rise Up Review, Granfalloon, Green Lantern Press and The Other Side Of Hope. He is the recipient of a 2022 Colorado Book Award and has twice won the King Edward Prize for Youth Poetry.

Book preview

Chapter One

Thursday 20th July 1989

3pm – Liverpool Street, London

Dennis eyed Jordo with suspicion.

He was Woody’s nephew, fair enough, but other than that he was an unknown quantity. Woody had assured him the lad could be relied upon and was a good grafter. Question was, could he keep his head under pressure? And, if need be, would he keep schtum? More worryingly, he looked like a lanky streak of piss – Dennis wasn’t sure if he had the muscle to do the heavy lifting.

Dennis and Woody went back a long way. So, when the call had come in, Dennis was ready to listen. He knew Woody was prone to bullshit, but usually there was substance behind his blagging. On the face of it, this seemed like a pretty good plan. And for him, all it involved was a long hike, some grunt work and then a walk up some stairs. And all the better was the fact Woody himself had grown too fat to participate below ground. So, at least he wouldn’t have to spend too much time up close and personal with Woody’s legendary aroma. Instead, he had fielded this nineteen-year-old wastrel of a nephew. He just hoped he hadn’t inherited his personal hygiene habits from his uncle. The kid was not the world’s best communicator. His responses had been limited to grunts from under the surly monobrow. Still, at least up until now, he had done as he was told.

Both dressed in the maintenance company overalls, the men entered the labyrinthine passages behind Liverpool Street Station. Once away from public visibility, Dennis pulled out the sketch map supplied by Birdy. Access to the unused dusty staircase was not obvious. Since the Mail Rail station had been mothballed years before, the passageways had been obscured by filing cabinets and piles of moribund office furniture. But the map was accurate to the millimetre.

The beauty of the overalls was that it conferred upon the wearers simultaneous invisibility and authority. People ignored them even if they were doing things and going places no one else normally would. No one was responsible for them. As long as they acted with confidence, it was no one else’s business what they were up to.

So, they worked without interference, moving the broken desks and the long-superfluous equipment to clear their path to the doorway they were looking for. As Jarnail had innocently guaranteed, the door was shut but unlocked. The layers of filthy gossamer confirmed this hadn’t been a thoroughfare for a long time. One look back and Dennis led Jordo through the door and quickly closed it behind him.

The staircase was lit only by dim emergency lighting. It wound round and round in monotonous repeat. It seemed endless and both of them lost track of how far down they had come and which direction they were facing.

When they ran out of stairs, they came to the heavy grey steel door as shown on the plan. Again, the door had been pulled to but was not locked. A bit of oomph and the door swung open on to the disused Mail Rail platform.

Mail Rail was a transport system whose sole users were Royal Mail. The track ran from Paddington in the west to Stepney in the east. At an average seventy feet below ground, access to the line was via long winding staircases. Although it was constructed before the end of the Great War, its existence and practical usage was not widely known. It was used for the fast transit through London of mail. The Liverpool Street stop, though, had long been taken out of service.

Still in good time, the two men sat on the platform bench and shared three fags as they recovered from the exertions so far.

As they stubbed the ciggies out in the sand of the fire buckets, Dennis pulled the map from his overall pocket and orientated himself on the platform. There was the central office space. There was the clock. There was the exit sign. He triangulated the three points and then turned to the rails on one side of the platform. He jumped down onto the track and turned left towards the gaping tunnel mouth.

‘Other way,’ said Jordo.

‘What?’ Dennis looked quizzical.

‘It’s the other direction.’ This was quite a monologue from the normally taciturn Jordo.

To be honest, having sat on the platform in the semi-darkness, Dennis was quite disorientated. The stairs downwards had made him lose all sense of where they were in relation to street level. He pulled the map out again and read the instructions: ‘Facing the platform with the office on your left-hand side and the clock directly in front of you, turn away from the exit sign and enter the tunnel’. Once again, he took in the three landmarks and physically repositioned his body to the direction indicated. Once again, this placed him in exactly the same position he had been before.

‘Nah, it’s this way,’ Dennis reasserted himself.

‘It’s fuckin’ not.’ Jordo almost reached a state of animation. ‘It’s this fuckin’ way.’

Dennis was rattled. For all his failings, the lad seemed cast-iron sure, and he was younger and so perhaps more likely to have clocked the twists and turns better than him with his fag-addled, beer-buggered brain. He relented and turned one hundred and eighty degrees towards the other tunnel. Jordo allowed himself a self-satisfied grin and followed the older man. As they entered the tunnel mouth, Dennis looked up. High on the side wall was a dust-covered sign bearing an arrow and the legend: ‘Eastern District Office – This Way’.

‘Just hang on a minute.’ Dennis signalled Jordo to wait. He did an about turn on the line and retraced his steps to the other tunnel mouth. He looked up at the corresponding position on the wall of the tunnel. Sure enough, there was another dusty sign bearing an arrow and the legend: ‘Mount Pleasant – This Way’. Dennis had been right to begin with.

‘Right, you fuckin’ moron, follow me.’ Head torch on, Dennis strode into the tunnel not waiting for Jordo to catch up.

Within ten feet of the entrance to the tunnel, all residues of the platform lighting had faded to nothing, and Dennis found himself totally dependent upon the narrow shaft of white light emitting from his head lamp. Turning back, he saw Jordo’s lamp six feet behind him. They hadn’t spoken since the altercation about direction. Both men were naturally quiet, and the addition of tension had redoubled their self-absorption.

When Birdy had described the distance of their proposed walk, Dennis had looked at him in disbelief. The meeting with him and Eldine was to be at the also disused West Central District Post Office Station. To get there, they would cover two and a half miles in the dark. In doing so, they would pass the central depot at Mount Pleasant which was only three-quarters of a mile from the rendezvous point. Dennis had asked the obvious question of why they couldn’t simply descend at Mount Pleasant and so shorten the journey. Birdy’s view was that entering through the major hub would be too risky. Passing through the tunnel already in the right overalls would make them less conspicuous. For his own part, Birdy had said he and Eldine would have inside help at Rathbone Place to assist their own entry to the network. Also, they were going to be carrying more gear and so could justify their own mere one-mile walk.

Dennis had been a lifetime subservient and so, having asked the question, left it there. Birdy was the governor. The governor said, ‘walk two and a half miles’, so he would walk two and half miles.

Fifteen minutes in, Jordo started up. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ He echoed the whine of a backseat child passenger.

‘Nah, way to go yet, mate.’ Relief at the presence of a human voice in the darkness mitigated any irritation Dennis was feeling. The description of the walk had been one thing, but the reality of this sensory-deprived hike was becoming something different. Following the shaft of light played with his mind. Dennis had started seeing spectres and figures looming out of the blackness. The occasional skittering of rodents made him jump and look in all directions. The boy was obviously in the same state of nervousness and his regression to a more recent childhood made him seem vulnerable and weak beyond his apparent uselessness. The instinct of leadership of a weaker team member buoyed Dennis and the plaintiff wail strengthened his resolve.

‘I reckon we should see some light from Mount Pleasant Station in about half an hour. Then we’ll be beyond halfway.’

‘Fuckin’ spooky though, innit?’ Jordo sank into reliant followership and shed any vestige of adulthood. He was seven years old again – on the set of a Scooby Doo cartoon.

Dennis could do no more than agree with his young associate. It was indeed spooky and dark and miserable. His lifetime friendship with tobacco had left the vessels in his legs furred and the associated muscles prone to cramp and fatigue. Two and a half miles had sounded like some distance; he was now feeling every inch.

‘Fag break?’ Dennis proffered the opportunity to get a hit and recharge his nicotine levels.

The boy accepted readily. For him now, the comfort of any human connection over-rode any residual embarrassment about his lack of directional awareness. They stopped and faced each other, both of them dipping the head lights to create illuminated pools at their feet. Dennis opened the new Embassy Regal packet and discarded the cellophane onto the tracks. Ciggies dispatched and Swan Vestas struck, the men stood in states of calming inhalation. Like glow flies in the night, sometimes alternately and sometimes simultaneously, the lit ends glowed and faded as the men drew and exhaled.

Two ciggies did the trick. They were rested, calmed and refreshed by their strange camaraderie.

‘Right then. Back to it.’ Dennis shouldered his backpack and Jordo did the same, and the men resumed the trek.

After another five minutes of trudging, Dennis’s spectres began to resume. A feeling of movement in his peripheral vision, a movement of air around him, the noises. Then there was a new feature – a brief, but undeniable, flash of light.

‘Did you see that?’

Unhappily, Jordo confirmed Dennis’ presumed hallucination. ‘Yeah, what was it?’

Before he could answer, there was another flash and a howling noise.

‘What the fuck?’ Jordo was now crouched on the floor, his eyes like saucers.

‘Get up, you little turd.’ Dennis’ own anxiety became directed at the only other living organism in striking distance. ‘Start behaving like a grown up. I don’t know what it is, but whatever, we’ll have to deal with it.’

Another scream and then a series of flashes. There was no denying that something was down there with them – and it was getting closer.

When the screams coalesced into human voices and laughter, both men felt a moment’s reassurance that, at least, they weren’t in the presence of the supernatural. The reassurance was short-lived though, as they realised an unforeseen human presence was not a positive development.

The noises became louder and there was now a steady presence of light coming towards them. Four white beams like their own careered and bounced in the tunnel ahead. Shouts and screams of laughter followed as whoever it was came ever closer to the two men.

Suddenly, the noise stopped. The four random head lights all turned their way. Dennis and Jordo were blinded by the strong beams. Silently and tentatively, the beams advanced and the intensity of the light grew. Then a male voice.

‘Who are you?’

‘Maintenance.’ Dennis asserted his authority.

‘Maintenance of what?’

‘Tunnel maintenance.’

There was quiet and the beams looked inwardly as their owners clearly conferred.

‘Never seen you down here before,’ came the voice.

‘It’s a new thing.’ Dennis was struggling now – he hadn’t been taken on to improvise.

‘They’re fuckin’ blagging it.’ A female voice. ‘Are you adventurers?’

‘Are we what?’

‘Urban adventurers.’

‘I told you, we’re maintenance.’ Dennis was sounding less authoritative by the minute.

‘No you’re not.’ A third voice, another female. ‘You look guilty as sin.’

‘More to the point, who are you?’ Jordo suddenly found his voice.

‘We are the East London Urban Explorers,’ came the first woman’s voice. Her announcement prompted a cheer from the others.

‘What’s that then?’ Jordo was on a roll.

‘We find places where the public don’t go and claim them on behalf of the movement. We have claimed the Mail Rail.’ More cheers – it was becoming evident they were all drunk.

‘Well, it’s time you moved along now…’ Dennis was seeking to regain control.

‘Get lost. You two have got no more right to be here than we have. Unless, that is, you’re making a counter-claim? Which group are you from?’

‘I’ve fuckin’ told you we aren’t from a group. We’re fuckin’ maintenance.’

‘And we’ve told you—’

The second woman’s argument was cut abruptly short as the tunnel became fully illuminated by the ceiling lights that ran the length of the tunnel. Then a voice on a megaphone filled the space.

‘Please stay exactly where you are. You are in grave danger of electrocution in this prohibited location.’ The voice of a woman. ‘My name is Nicky Gee, and I am a team leader of the Post Office Investigation Department. You have been observed making an illegal entry onto Royal Mail property and you are all liable to prosecution under the Post Office Act. Our operatives are waiting at the other end of the tunnel. Please give yourselves up to these officers and you will be escorted to Mount Pleasant for processing.’

Dennis was initially blinded by the bright lights. It took him vital seconds to realise what was happening. His slow brain mulled the options. They could blag it and continue with the pretence of being maintenance men. Trouble was they had no ID and now in the hands of someone properly authorised to be asking questions, their bogus status would be rumbled quickly. They could turn and run, but as she had said, the other end of the tunnel was going to be covered – and anyway he was knackered already. There was only one thing for it.

As the security officers moved amongst them, Dennis saw the group that had confronted them were nothing but kids. Older teenagers at most with baseball caps, baggy jeans and Converse trainers – the lot. They put up no resistance but shouted loudly, ‘We are the East London Urban Explorers. Citizen Owners of Mail Rail.’

‘No!’

The teenagers and the guards turned at Dennis’ roar.

‘No. We’re the owners. We are the Train Gang. We claim the Mail Rail for our group.’

Jordo looked at Dennis as if he had gone mad. Dennis willed him with his eyes. Jordo had no idea what was going on but picked up the vibe.

‘Yeah. Up the Train Gang,’ he said unconvincingly, but at least more demographically suited to the role.

The East London group were furious.

‘I knew it was a counter-claim,’ said the as yet unheard voice – a boy of fifteen at most. ‘How did they know we were coming? Was it you, Carmel?’

‘No, it wasn’t fuckin’ me.’ The first girl was outraged.

The anger amongst them energised the group. They fought free of the surprised guards and made a run at the two men in brown overalls. Before they got there, the guards had regained their sense of mission and leapt upon them, pinning them to the floor of the tunnel.

Dennis and Jordo offered themselves peaceably to the remaining guards. They were taken past the restrained East Londoners. They were marched along the remaining quarter mile of tunnel to the Mount Pleasant platform where they were taken to the security office.

The processing officer looked incredulously at Dennis. ‘Aren’t you a bit old for all this, mate?’

‘Just looking after my lad.’ Dennis was getting good at this. Jordo’s default to natural sullen silence was perfect for the circumstances.

The man shook his head. ‘You people. Will you never learn? This is a really dangerous place. And you, sir, would be better to protect your lad by keeping him away from places like this.’

It seemed the other offenders were regular trespassers well-known to the security team. They had been warned many times and this time were to be formally cautioned. The security team was only expecting the four and only had staff available with that in mind. So, after much more tutting and many wagged fingers, Dennis and Jordo found themselves evicted into Farringdon with a warning not to return.

‘What now?’ asked Jordo.

‘What nothing,’ said Dennis feeling lucky not to have had his collar felt. ‘We’re blown and the others will all be where they need to be, I imagine. Birdy hasn’t told us anything else and I can’t contact him. Looks like the job’s off for us, mate.’

‘But I need the cash. They promised me cash.’

‘Ah well, sometimes these things happen, mate. Only one thing to do…’ he said.

Jordo walked with him as he headed off down Warner Street and then turned left onto Bakers Row.

Awaiting inspiration from his leader, he said, ‘What?’

It was at that point he realised Dennis’ eternal solution as he disappeared through the welcoming doors of The Eagle.

Chapter Two

Friday 16th June 1989

(A month earlier)

Upstairs Apartment, The Blind Beggar

Connie stirred to gentle snoring of the golden-haired man-boy.

Mick had finally resurfaced after his unexplained radio silence and, as usual, she was wooed by his startling blue eyes and long surfer-bleached curls. She hadn’t been the first to compare him with ‘the new one in Thin Lizzy’. Indeed, he had traded off his physical resemblance to John Sykes, the guitarist, to huge sexual advantage. His audibly evident Irish provenance lent credibility to the fact he was the band member and had been sufficient to assist his bedding of numerous young groupies. The truth was, of course, his lookalike wasn’t even Irish and was actually much less muscular than Mick. Mick wasn’t his real name, but rather the unimaginative but omnipresent sobriquet for all Irish building site workers. He had long since accepted it and it was only his mammy who still called him Eamonn. He had come over when he was just seventeen and had scraped by with a variety of labouring jobs and petty crime. He was aloof, and indifferent to material assets. He earned just enough to eat and drink and to fund his frequent trips to Cornwall for the surfing. The muscles and tone won from lifting heavy loads and manoeuvring the waves lent him attractiveness to ensure he was never short of a bed.

As was his way, he had turned up just before closing as the usual suspects were pissed and turning lairy. It was the part of the night Connie least enjoyed and it was always reassuring to have a reliable, and sober, face amongst the melee. For all his faults, Mick was not a drinker and was a very useful pair of hands when it came to encouraging the legless and the beery-brave to leave The Beggar. The pub’s infamous past attracted a range of ne’er-do-wells wishing to emulate some of the big men who used to frequent it in the sixties. Two bullet holes in the wall of the back room gave testimony to the fatal shooting of George Cornell in 1966 by Ronnie Kray. Other notable patrons like Frankie Fraser and Jack McVitie lent the pub something of a macabre fascination to more contemporary petty criminals. And the downtrodden area of Whitechapel and Bethnal Green had more than its fair share of those.

Admittedly, there were some genuinely hard lads in there, but there were far more pretenders who relied on being ‘hard by association’ to make their mark. Fuelled by Watneys and vodka chasers. these middling under-achievers suddenly became John Wayne, Bruce Willis or, since the release of Young Guns, Kiefer Sutherland, depending upon their age. But confronted by the genuinely muscular and battle-scarred Irishman, their delusions quickly evaporated, and they meekly melted into the night. On the nights when Mick appeared, emptying was much faster.

By 11:15, they had been sipping coffee in the scruffy kitchen and she had found herself enraptured by his brogue and blarney.

By 11:45, the headboard was battering the stained wallpaper. And what was wonderful about her young lover was his stamina. Their passion had continued well into the night. He was a considerate and patient partner. By 3:30, they had collapsed into an exhausted sweaty tangle of bedding.

She looked at the digital display on the radio alarm: 6:40. The night before, Mick had said he needed to be off to a building site for 7:30. She slid from between the sheets and went into the kitchen. She boiled the kettle and made the strong builder’s tea he loved. Adding the unbelievable four sugars, she left the cup on the bedside table.

‘Wakey, wakey.’ She grinned coyly and nodded at the still-steaming mug of tea.

Mick smiled that fatal boyish smile. He had reverted to the child who looked as if he had never had a guilty thought in his life.

‘I’m going to have to get off,’ he said swigging the tea and grabbing the mouldy-smelling towel.

‘I know,’ said Connie, ‘Will you be back?’

‘Soon,’ he said as he headed into the shower.

She heard the water run and sensed his movements as he went about his morning routine. He reappeared ten minutes later, nearly dry, and dropped the sopping towel onto the brown carpet.

‘There you are, I told you I’d be back soon.’ He grinned that winning grin.

‘That wasn’t what I meant, you sod.’

‘Ah, what was it you meant then?’

‘I meant will you be gracing me with your presence again anytime soon? You know you do my head in. Every time I see you, you just…’

‘Ah, now, I think you’re great yourself. I’ve never met a girl as sexy as you.’

Connie smiled. ‘Well, you know where I am. You’ve not been in for a bit.’

‘Well, I’ll be around for the foreseeable.’

Her heart leapt. ‘Great. Any particular reason?’

‘Yeah, looks like there’s a job on. Birdy’s been lining something up and he thinks I might be useful.’

‘I’ve seen him hanging about a bit lately. Him and Woody seem to have a new friend. Bloke in a turban.’

‘Ah, yes that’ll be our new best mate, Mr Singh.’

‘What’s that all about then?’

‘He’s a trainspotter.’ Mick’s face crinkled as he laughed at his own joke.

‘What?’ Connie giggled in disbelief.

‘Now, don’t ask me anymore. It’s all hush-hush.’ He put a finger to the side of his nose, grinned, and was gone.

Connie was left to herself again and she pulled the sheets around her. She would grab another couple of hours before the brewery lorry came to deliver.

And then there was lunch with Ross.

12:40pm – Bermondsey

Chez Nous was the tiniest of restaurants on Bermondsey High Street. The chequered tablecloths and repurposed wine bottle candle holders announced its Frenchness long before you got near a menu. Ross was seated near the back of the miniscule salon in his favourite ‘gunfighter seat’. He could see the whole room and the street beyond and had a wall to his back. He had been coming here for years and Marc, the owner, knew his preference.

This was Connie and Ross’ special place and had been so since the beginning of their romantic involvement when times with Jan had been a bit rocky. Since his wake-up call about the importance of his family life, the relationship had ended but he was still very fond of Connie and found her golden-proportioned beauty captivating. He justified her regular monthly ‘retainer’ on the grounds of her role as a deep cover human intelligence source. The reality was fifty quid a month gave her home comforts, and he had an excuse to meet this gorgeous woman from time to time. Truth be told, she had never really given him anything of interest and, frankly, he didn’t care. He spent enough of his time with the scrotes who were on his payroll that he considered this was his payback.

She wasn’t due until one, so he enjoyed the solitude with a fag and large glass of red. Detective Inspector Ross Darby was just past his forty-first birthday. Twenty years in the force, he was a grafter and was respected by his subordinates. Six foot three and stocky, Ross could handle himself in a fight if he needed to – but he tried not to need to. His style was the use