by Linda Calvey
“Give me a private visit, will ya?” he said to the screw guarding him. “Shut the curtains,” he commanded.
The screw looked me up and down, before obeying. From behind the thin curtains came the bleeping sound again, regular and steady.
“Open your coat,” Ron said, his blue eyes staring at me, fiercely, in the gloom.
I could do nothing but obey. I pulled back my coat and revealed myself to him.
He whistled. “You’ll be the death of me, Linda Calvey.”
I hope so, Ron Cook, I hope so.
“I’m happy to oblige,” I said passively, stepping closer and letting him admire me.
“You’re wonderful, Linda, you’re magnificent,” he said, his eyes devouring me.
Just then the beeping sound went haywire. The screw called out from the other side of the curtain. “I don’t know what you’re doin’ in there, but you have to stop ’cause your heart monitor has gone crazy!”
I whipped the coat back around me just as the prison guard threw open the curtains, glaring at me as he did so. I scurried off to put my dress back on, wondering how close I’d really come to finishing off this cruel man.
After that brush with Ron, I suddenly felt bolder. Perhaps the wires and machines made me realise Ron was mortal, just like the rest of us. Perhaps seeing that gave me the courage to do what I did next.
I don’t know what it was, but the next time Brian announced he was going to get his balaclava and cosh out to do a job, I said, “I want to come with you.”
“Absolutely not, Linda.”
I was determined. “If you’re goin’ out on a job, then I want to be with you.”
Brian’s face softened.
“I am goin’ to do it, Brian. I’ve got contacts still. I can get us a group together and we can go on the pavement.”
I knew I’d be good at it, though who could possibly know they’d be a successful armed robber? There were too many variables, too many ways of it going wrong, but something in me clicked, and I just knew that, given half a chance, I could make a go of being a thief.
Weeks later, I invited Brian and a couple of contacts of mine to Harpley Square. One of the men was called Carl Gibney, a tall, thin man who was obsessed with the gym and modelled himself on Bruce Springsteen. He dressed just like him, in T-shirts and jeans, with long hair. I’d met him through Mickey. I knew that Carl wanted to do some robberies, but hadn’t found anyone decent to do them with.
That meeting between me, Carl and Brian was more of an introduction. Brian still wasn’t letting me carry a weapon or be actively involved, though he’d agreed to let me scout out possible targets. I began walking round the area, taking notes and working out escape routes and places to park possible getaway motors. I liked the thrill of it. I liked being in charge of those dangerous men who would risk their lives to steal the money. I was determined to honour my vow to Mickey, made three years ago as he lay ice cold and still in his coffin. I was about to become an armed robber.
Chapter 18
Becoming a Blagger
1981-83
That first raid went exactly to plan. I’d spotted the target – a bank security van – and had scouted the area. The three of us had planned the rest together. Weeks of careful preparation all came down to five crucial minutes of action as Brian and Carl burst out of their hiding places, brandishing shotguns, grabbed the money as it was brought out to the van, and legged it to our getaway vehicle, where I was waiting for them.
I kept a cool head as I dropped the boys off one by one, Carl walking off to the bus stop to head home from there, Brian sauntering over to his car before heading to the garage he rented in Hackney to drop off the gear. As I got into my car and pulled out into the traffic, with police cars tearing past me up the road, I felt a thrill like never before.
It was lunchtime when I arrived home, and though I felt hungry, I knew I was too overexcited to eat. As I shut my front door behind me, I let out the burst of laughter that had been building inside me. I don’t know if it was hysteria or nerves, or plain joy, but once I started I couldn’t stop. I laughed and laughed, tears streaming down my face, this time for sheer happiness. I’d done it! I’d actually gone out on a raid with the fellas and Oh My God I’d loved it. The buzz of it was like nothing I’d ever experienced.
That day, my first as a blagger, I realised why Mickey had done it. It wasn’t just for the money – though that was very nice. No, it was the thrill, the excitement and the risk of getting caught. It was a heady melting pot, and I knew in that moment I was hooked, and I could never turn back. I’d made my choice to embark on a life of crime, and I could never go back to being a kept woman. I could take my life into my own hands, become an armed robber and fulfil my vow to Mickey. My destiny was set.
I paced around, waiting for the boys to arrive at my place in Harpley Square, where I’d agreed to meet them an hour or two after the raid. Neil and Melanie were at Mum’s as it was the weekend, and now I just had to contain myself until Brian and Carl turned up. I’d seen Mickey and his pals come back after a successful raid, and I knew now how they’d felt. They were always hyper. They bounced off the walls, shouting, joking and laughing, then they’d go and get drunk. I understood every part of their experience, so much so that I found myself pouring a large brandy to steady my nerves.
As I sipped on it, I reflected on my life with my husband – how relieved I always was when he came home safely, how little I’d really understood his life on the pavement. Well, now it was my life. It felt proper and fitting – a tribute to my murdered soulmate. I raised my glass. Tears threatened to fall again, but this time they were for sadness.
At that moment, there was a loud rap on the door. I froze. Put my brandy down, wiped away the tears and took a breath. Was it the Old Bill? Had I risked too much?
“Open up, Lin, it’s us!” It was Brian’s voice. I rushed over to the door and opened it. Brian and Carl walked in, both laughing, patting each other on the back. Brian was casually carrying the holdall as if he’d just got back from holiday.
“Let’s ’ave a look at the money,” said Carl. Brian unzipped it, and there it was. A small mountain of cash.
“Must be twenty grand in there,” Carl whistled.
“At least,” Brian said. He was pouring himself and Carl a large whisky each.
“Let’s sort it out then,” Brian said, glaring over at Carl. We all got equal shares, even though I had been waiting for them in the car. Our roles were all equally important.
Carl winked at me. “You played a blinder today, darlin’. We couldn’t ’ave done it without ya.”
“Thank you, darlin’,” I replied.
I looked over at Brian who grinned back at me, and said, “You can keep my share, Lin. Put it towards gettin’ yerself a place.” I’d confided in him that my dream was to own a house. I couldn’t believe that he was giving me this money towards it.
“But it’s a lot of money, Brian! Are you sure?” I gasped. He really was such a sweet man.
“’Course I’m sure. You take it, Lin. A couple more jobs and you’ll be able to buy yerself a nice place for the kids.”
I started looking for possible houses to move into, and settled on a small two-bed place in Northumberland Avenue, Hornchurch. It backed onto a park, had a long garden and needed a lot of work. It would cost £28,000, and so I needed a small mortgage. Brian and I went to view it.
We went to pick up the keys from a man who lived over the road, confusingly also called Brian. He offered to let us in himself and show us round.
Inside the house, there were cups left on the table, as if someone had just got up and walked out.
“Yeah, it’s very sad,” said Brian Crowley, the neighbour. “A young couple lived ’ere, and he died. She moved out straight away and won’t come back, which is why I got the key.”
“How sad is that!” I
exclaimed. “It’s a lovely house though, safe for my children. I’d like to take it. At least then she can move on with her life if this place is sold to me.”
Brian Thorogood and I quickly got friendly with Brian C. As he showed us round, he started getting curious about our lives.
“What d’ya do for a living, then?”
I laughed when I heard that.
“We’re bank robbers.” I expected the usual polite laugh in response.
But Brian C just gave me a curious smile, wide-eyed, and nodded his head.
“I wondered. Can I work with ya?”
It wasn’t the way to let just anyone join the team, but Brian T and I agreed to talk it over with Carl and spend time checking out Brian C, to check he was solid. And soon enough, he joined me, Brian T and Carl in my kitchen, planning robberies over ham sandwiches and cups of tea.
Our next plan was to raid a post office.
“No, that one isn’t viable, not enough outs,” I said, pointing to the map of East London Brian T had spread out on the table. People who have brains think carefully about the number of getaway routes. You have to go in thinking you’ll get caught. It’s the only way to engineer a successful raid. Every risk factor has to be taken into account.
“I’ve seen a security van picking up cash from there,” I pointed to a different branch. “There are a few ways out, down there, or you can go there, and we can park getaway cars either here or there, or maybe in both places, just in case.”
The men all nodded. They knew I was fast becoming the brains of the operation – not just a woman willing to don a disguise and drive the getaway car, though I could do that too if needed.
“Ok, we’ll head there and watch that one, see what times they come and go. Leave it with us,” Carl said, “and can I ’ave another cuppa, if there’s one goin’?”
“Of course you can, darlin’,” I said, pouring him a second cup of tea. Over the next few days, Brian T, Carl and Brian C staked out the post office I’d targeted. It wasn’t long before they came back to me.
“We’ve got the times. We think late afternoon will work best,” said Brian T.
I nodded.
They didn’t need me on this raid. Brian T would be first in with the sawn-off shotgun, holding up the security men as they walked out of the post office, seconds before they loaded the day’s takings into the van. Carl would be the anchor man, keeping an eye on anyone trying to be a hero in there, making sure they all got out before the police arrived. Brian C would drive the getaway car.
For this raid, they had two cars stationed at two different points, one at the end of a long, thin pedestrian alley with bollards at one end, so they couldn’t be chased by car. The other was stationed further away as a plan B, should their exit be blocked.
They all looked confident. It was time to send them off. I pulled out the bag in which I kept the disguises I borrowed from Mum’s stall, and they donned black wigs and moustaches, keeping their balaclavas until they were in place, ready to leap out of the motor. The shotguns were kept in the same bag, buried underneath brightly coloured wigs, fake moustaches and glasses. Once they were tooled-up and ready, I wished them all luck.
Brian T would be taking the money, which meant, yet again, he would give me his share on top of mine. Later that day, as Brian and I lay in bed, a bag full of money lying inches away in a cupboard, he said, “You’ve got enough for that deposit now, Linda.”
“Thank you, Brian,” I said, my head on his chest.
In those days, you could walk into a bank with £10,000 in cash and deposit it, no questions asked. I’d banked almost double that, and mortgages were easy to get. Finally, I was ready to buy that new place on Northumberland Avenue, opposite Brian C’s house. My brother Tony would take my old flat in Harpley Square.
I moved in with Brian T, and was delighted to have my own place. But soon enough I found out why the couple who owned the house before me had left it in such a hurry. Brian C revealed that the husband had killed himself because he’d found out his wife was having an affair. He hanged himself from the hatch in the ceiling directly above my bath.
“It was terrible, Linda, I had to cut him down. His body hit that bath like a slab of marble. If I hadn’t have built that hatch for him, he couldn’t have done it.” He shook his head.
“That’s it,” I said to Brian T as soon we heard the truth. “I can’t live here no more.”
“But you’ve only just bought it!” he protested.
“I know, but I’ll never be able to have a bath and not picture that poor man swinging over my head. No, I have to sell it. We’re movin’.”
I was adamant. Even though we’d had the whole place done up, I knew I couldn’t live there a moment longer. I felt like death was stalking me.
As the group’s getaway driver, I had all the tricks. I was taking on more and more responsibility, and I always had to be one step ahead of the police. One lapse in concentration and we could all end up banged up.
We were gradually recruiting more people into our group, and the latest recruit was a tall black guy called Winston. He was cool-headed during raids, but became a bundle of nerves as soon as he heard a police siren.
This didn’t sit well with my high-risk getaway tactics. One of my new ruses after a raid was to drive straight towards the police station, as that was the last place the coppers would expect you to head. After a raid in Hornchurch, I did exactly that, driving along with the traffic, slowly and carefully, so as not to draw any attention to ourselves. Brian was sitting in the front with me, ostentatiously holding up a copy of the Daily Express in front of his face, pretending to read it in the passenger seat in the most casual fashion possible. Winston was huddled in the back underneath a pile of blankets, curled up with the holdall containing the shotguns and £20,000 in cash.
As we approached Hornchurch police station, we began to hear the wail of sirens. The police had been alerted to the robbery and were setting off in pursuit.
Winston began to get nervous. “Are they onto us?” he flustered. “Is it on top?”
I murmured my reassurances to Winston and kept my eyes on the road. We were approaching a junction, and the road going off to our right led directly to the station. The sirens were quickly increasing in volume and number. I glanced to my right to see a swarm of police cars tearing up the road towards the junction.
Winston was spooked. “What’s going on, Brian? We need to get away, man!” He thought we were finished.
In the middle of a heavy queue of traffic, I thought fast. The police hadn’t noticed us in the getaway van and were heading straight across the junction, but I wanted to be sure the van wouldn’t arouse any suspicions on their way past. I needed to make the van look as innocuous as possible. So, when the car in front of me moved forwards, I drove straight out over the junction in front of the line of police cars and blocked their way.
The police cars screeched to a halt, stopping short of the van and desperately honking their horns at me to move out of the way for them. The coppers were gesturing frantically at me as I sat in the driver’s seat, playing the innocent traffic victim, helplessly looking around as if trying to work out how to get the van out of their way.
“What’s going on? Is it on top?” Winston stammered once again. The sirens were right beside us now, blaring deafeningly through the van.
Brian, from behind his newspaper, chuckled to himself. “No, we’re fine,” he said casually. “Our lady boss is being clever, she’s just holding them up.”
Winston groaned.
The stranded policemen were becoming even more agitated. I turned to look at them out of the van window, pointed to the traffic blocking my way forwards, shrugged helplessly and mouthed, “Sorry!”
The police gestured wildly for me to reverse to let them through.
“I’m turning white under here!” cried Winston.<
br />
With sirens wailing all around, I slowly looked around behind me and clunked the van into reverse. Slowly and clumsily, I shunted the vehicle backwards.
“Relax, Winston,” said Brian, “she’s just letting them through. They’ll be gone in a minute.”
The police cars squeezed through the gap I’d created for them, and the grateful officers waved their thanks to me as they blazed past and disappeared up the road to our left. The officer in the first vehicle mouthed “Thank you!” as they went.
I waved cheerily back at him and mouthed, “That’s alright!”
We got away with the money, and Winston became calmer as we did more jobs together. One morning, he asked to borrow my car, as he was going to meet someone in Brixton.
“I’ll be gone two hours Linda, I’ll bring it straight back,” he assured me.
I waited and waited, keeping myself busy around the house to pass the time, but it wasn’t until seven hours later that Winston showed up at my door again.
I opened the door to find him standing there, shifting from one foot to the other.
“What took you so long?” I demanded.
“Ah, well, you’ll never believe it Linda…” he began. “I left the car on the street to go and meet him, and when I came back the car was gone!”
Luckily, Winston was in with the thieves in the local area, and knew exactly where to find them. He turned up at their garage to find, to his horror, that they were dismantling my car.
“You can’t do that, man!” he’d shouted in desperation. “Don’t you know that’s the Black Widow’s car!”
Winston grinned at me. “I’m tellin’ you, I’ve never seen a bunch of crooks put a car back together more quickly than those fellas did. They were shit scared. And the car worked fine on the way back – it might not all be perfect, but it still goes alright!”
Whether it was put back together properly or not, it didn’t matter, because I quickly earned enough to buy a new car. I chose a Mercedes in maroon, and took an enormous box of notes over to the garage to pay up for it. As I lifted up the box of stolen cash and tipped it out over the counter, a look of horror spread over the garage owner’s face. He let out a cry and rushed round to lock the door behind me.
