I well overstayed my Christmas leave, but I was in the clear with the RAF because I kept getting weekly sick notes from my doctor certifying that I was unfit to travel. When I was young I used to suffer quite a lot from tonsillitis and I had discovered how to ‘close’ my throat by sort of clenching it tight with my muscles. I would go off to see my doctor and give my throat the clenching business and he’d sign the ‘unfit to travel’ certificate. I don’t know how long I could have kept this up, but one day a bombshell arrived: a telegram for me! It was from RAF Melksham: ‘Return to unit immediately for discharge by purchase’. Christ! I had forgotten all about it. And now I was without a penny to my name. What was I going to do?
I was spending a lot of time with my girlfriend Eileen and quite often I’d go to her house at dinner time and walk with her down to her work in the Co-op grocery shop in Auchinairn Road. A few days after I had received the telegram, I was walking Eileen along Broomton Road on our way to the Co-op, desperately racking my brains for a way to get the necessary £25 to pay for my discharge. There was and still is, a row of shops in Broomton Road. One of these shops, the biggest, a double-fronted store, was having one of its plate-glass windows replaced. I watched as two men manoeuvred a huge sheet of glass into place. The shop itself was actually closed for its dinner hour and the glaziers were just working away fitting the glass with a couple of dirty-faced kids looking on.
‘Look at that,’ I said to Eileen as we passed by.
‘What?’
‘Look at the men fixing that window,’ I said.
‘What about them?’ She gave me a funny look.
‘How do you know they’re really fixing it?’ I stopped to watch the workmen. ‘They could be breaking into the place.’
Eileen laughed at me and said, ‘Don’t be so stupid.’ As she gave me a dig in the ribs with her elbow she went on to say, ‘It’s obvious what they’re doing. They’re putting in a new window, so they are.’
‘Hmm,’ I replied, my brain clicking into gear. ‘Obviously that’s what anyone would think, even me.’
Two days later, during the dinner hour, I was kneeling outside a newsagent’s shop in an almost identical shopping parade in another housing scheme where nobody knew me. I must admit I was a bit nervous and had walked past the closed shop several times before I finally made my move.
The pavement was clear of pedestrians when I kneeled down and, quite openly, spread out the contents of my ‘tool bag’. It wasn’t much of a tool kit, just a few odds and sods like a screwdriver, a wood chisel, a three-foot rule, a hammer, a duster and a huge ball of putty placed prominently in sight. I also had my workman’s tea can and sandwich where they could easily be seen. With a last look round to make sure no one was actually staring at me, I held the folded duster against the glass panel of the door and smashed my hammer against it. I had to hit it about three times before the glass actually gave way. It didn’t take a minute to pull out the loose shards of glass and in another few seconds I was climbing inside the shop.
Once inside, I turned and continued to work on the glass, making sure nobody was coming over to ask questions. Everyone was going about as normal – after all, I was only repairing the window – so I quickly stepped away from the door and jumped the counter. I rang up the till and grabbed its contents, silver and all. Hurrying, feeling a little nervous, I made my way back out of the hole in the door and packed my tools, not forgetting the tea can and pieces.
‘OK!’ I shouted into the empty shop for the benefit of anyone who might have been watching. ‘That’s thirty inches by twenty-four. Right! I’ll be back in ten minutes.’ With that I walked quickly away, turned off the pavement and on to a footpath that cut between houses, getting myself out of sight as soon as possible.
I could now buy myself out of the RAF and still have a few quid left over. My ‘tonsillitis’ suddenly took a turn for the better and I was soon on my way back to Melksham. On arrival at camp, I went to the administration office, produced the telegram and handed over £25.
‘There you are. Can I go now?’
No. Not as easy as that. I had to complete a clearance form. I needed about ten signatures from kit stores, bedding stores, medical unit, dental unit, the flight sergeant, flight commander, officer in charge of training, the library and another two or three. It took about three days to get sorted out, but finally I had all the necessary signatures and received my discharge book. Conduct: exemplary.
Chapter Five
When I’m Breaking Windows
My parents accepted my return from the RAF with little comment. I was never questioned or censured over it, nor did they seem particularly disappointed in me. But financially, things were getting pretty desperate. I was going around with another guy from my street, Stuart Ferguson. We would wander about in our mutual poverty, wondering how to put a few pounds together and we decided that we would have to get up to something that would throw us an earner. I had sorted out this shop in Duke Street, in the east end of Glasgow and once again it was a cycle shop. There was a ready market for good racing equipment, especially the very expensive and exclusive Campagnolo stuff.
One Saturday night, we crept through the close into the backyard area and set to work on the steel bars of the rear window. In minutes we had sawn through one of the bars and bent it to one side. The interior of the shop was fairly well lit up by the outside street lights and we could see the Campagnolo boxes on the shelves through the open connecting door of the back shop.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Working as quietly as possible, we held the bag we had brought with us against the glass of the window and I gave it a smart punch. The breaking glass made quite a noise and we stood still for several minutes in case anyone had heard it. We didn’t seem to have attracted any attention and after a minute or two I began pulling out the cracked and hanging glass until the hole was big enough to climb through.
In I went, leaving Stuart outside to keep watch. Next thing I knew he let out a yell and legged it straight across the backyard, vaulted over a set of railings like an Olympic athlete and disappeared into the darkness. A set of head and shoulders appeared at the broken window and I saw the unmistakeable silhouette of a policeman’s baton held high.
I was trapped. I suppose I should have heaved something through the window at the front and made a run for it, but I didn’t even think of that. It turned out that this man was a police detective and lived right above the shop. I was caught red-handed.
Tobago Street police station – the Eastern – always did have a terrible reputation. It was an old Victorian building, black from city grime on the outside, dark, murky and intimidating on the inside. Getting slapped about was part of the arrest-and-charge routine in those days and I was no exception to this. Heavy-handed constables thumped and pushed me about as I was led to the bar to be charged with breaking and entering the cycle shop. Once the CID came on the scene, I was asked who my disappearing pal had been. I gave them a tale about meeting some guy in a chip shop, café, pub or whatever and I got the usual treatment in return: heavy-handed clumps about the head and thumps to the body, as well as threats of more to come if I didn’t give them a name. I held on to my story. I had met the guy in a café and we got talking. He asked me if I wanted to make some easy money and I stupidly agreed. Finally I was taken to the cells and shoved in for the night. The next day, Sunday, I was taken back down to the CID room and there was my father sitting alongside one of the detective’s desks.
There was nothing I could say. My father asked me to tell the police about my pal and explained that if I did so it would go easier on me. I said I didn’t know who he was and, ten minutes later, I was back in my cell.
Next morning, I was fingerprinted, photographed and taken in front of the sheriff. Four days’ remand in Barlinnie Prison, the ‘Bar L’. Jesus, I was terrified! The Bar L was just shocking. On arrival, I was stuck in a small box about two feet square. I’m telling the truth here – and they still use them too. At fir
st I thought this was my cell and really didn’t know what to make of it. How was I going to spend four days in here? I was too terrified to ask. It turned out that these boxes were used in reception to keep arrivals under control and easy to mind. Obviously there wasn’t a toilet and kicking or banging on the wooden door only earned shouts of, ‘Fucking shut up, you noisy bastards!’
You could be held in these ‘dog boxes’ for three or four hours, even longer if reception was busy. And if they were inundated you would be packed in, two to a box. Believe me, this still goes on in Bar L to this very day. Eventually processing would begin. We were marched across a corridor into the medical section where, on a production-line basis, we were weighed, measured, questioned on our medical history and finally marched through a doorway to stand in front of the doctor himself. The medical screw would intone his ritual speech, ‘Shirt up, trousers down, name and number to the doctor and say “sir”.’ The doctor would inspect our hair, then bend down and shine a bright hand-held extension lamp against our pubic region. Nothing was said except your name and number: most men, including myself, just refused to say the magic word ‘sir’. I suppose they must have got fed up with yelling at prisoners, because I never heard of anyone being taken to task for ignoring this instruction.
On the odd occasion the doctor would say ‘disinfect’ and the unfortunate subject would be hustled into a side room where his head and pubic regions would be shaved completely bald and a huge dollop of blue ointment would be slapped on them. This was all done in a most offhand, routine and disinterested manner. Medical over, unshorn and unanointed, I was marched back across the corridor and into the reception area again. It was like something out of a Dickens novel – the cowed prisoner standing in front of a high, old-fashioned desk while the screw barks questions. This ritual completed, another screw marched a group of five newly-admitted cons out of reception and over to C Hall, the grim remand wing of Barlinnie Prison.
‘Five on!’ the screw on the desk yelled back, his words reverberating like an echo in a dark mountain valley as he altered his chalkboard tally. With that, the reception screw marched out, slamming the steel gate and clashing his keys into the lock.
I felt quite intimidated as I stared up at the spidery steel-and-slate galleries. Halfway down the block a steel staircase gave access to the landings and on each landing cross-tie I could just make out the dark, uniformed, shadowy figure of a screw staring silently down at us. The desk screw quickly allocated cells to us, all singles in those days and the shouting began.
‘One on the threes!’ the desk screw shouted up.
‘One on the threes!’ the reply resonated like an echo as I made my way towards the steel stairway.
‘Three on the twos!’
‘Three on the twos!’ Another echo smothered the sound of the men shuffling behind me.
‘One LGF!’ That one confounded me. I could understand the first two pieces of information, but this had me beat. I later found out that the screws liked to use what they fondly thought was their ‘professional’ language. LGF simply meant ‘Locate Ground Floor’. This meant that for some reason or other – ill health, protection or someone on a capital charge – the prisoner was to be kept on the ground floor.
I was quickly marched along the landing, my loose shoes creating an awful clatter as they hit the slates. The cell door was flung wide open and I walked inside.
‘You’ve got two minutes to get water,’ the screw barked and stood to one side. I looked around the cell and saw the metal jug and basin on a shelf that was grouted into a corner. The screw pointed in the direction of the toilet arch and made an impatient jerk with his hand.
‘Hurry it up, lad.’
A minute later the door slammed behind me. I stood still and looked around the bare cell. The only furnishings were a table and a green-painted metal chair. On the table lay a chipped enamel plate with a pint mug sitting between a spoon and a flat tin knife. I also spotted a set of wooden boards leaning against a wall and, when I investigated them, I found that they were hinged at the bottom and swung down to form a solid bed base. In a corner, by the window, a mattress stood on its edge, folded into a tight circle. On top of the mattress lay two regulation folded blankets. With nothing else to do I set about making my bed for the night. About an hour later I heard doors banging, the sound coming closer and closer until finally my own door was thrown wide open.
‘Cocoa!’ A passman stood at the door with a large can of steaming cocoa. I grabbed my mug and held it out, watching a half-pint of watery, unsweetened, dark-brown liquid pour into it. The passman gave me a nod and moved away. The door banged shut and the bolt snapped over. That was it for the night. I just sat on the bed sipping the weak cocoa, wondering what the morning would bring. Finally I slid between the stiff, chlorine-smelling sheets and fell into a fitful, uneasy sleep.
I jerked fully awake from my half-sleep by the sound of the Judas hole in the cell door sliding open as the screw made his first morning check. From my position of about four inches from the floor, the cell looked really unwelcome. ‘You’ve got two minutes to get out of that bed and get it folded up,’ a voice snapped at me before the cover fell back over the glass. A minute later, the shouts started echoing all over the hall.
‘Forty-two on the threes!’
‘Forty-two on the threes! Correct!’ roared back from the desk.
One by one, the landing screws called out their numbers, each one getting his congratulatory ‘Correct!’ as if they had accomplished some difficult task. Finally, the principal officer at the desk completed his sums and yelled out his grand total.
‘One hundred and fifty-four!’ There was a slight pause, almost as if he was teasing his staff. Then a triumphant ‘All correct!’ reverberated round the hall. He kept them waiting another moment before stretching his vocal cords to the limit for his final command: ‘Unlock!’
No screw ever opened a cell door quietly in Barlinnie. They would clash their huge key into the old-fashioned lock and throw the door open with such force that it swung right round on its hinges and slammed against the wall inside, accompanied by a loud exhortation to ‘slop out!’
The morning parade of half-awake men queuing up in the recess with their overflowing chamber pots, the stinging stench of shit and urine almost bringing tears to the eyes: that’s morning slop-out. Simply overwhelming. You just had to screw up your face and get on with it. Five minutes later, it was dub up again.
Food was always brought round the cells in the Bar L and still is to this day. About half an hour after slop-out a metal trolley would trundle its way along each landing as passmen dispensed breakfast: porridge with milk, two slices of prison-baked bread, a knob of margarine, a half-pint of grey-coloured tea and then the door was slammed shut.
At about half-past-ten I was unlocked and marched downstairs to stand outside the governor’s office in the long dark passage that connected the five individual cell blocks of Barlinnie Prison. The rest of the previous day’s receptions gradually filtered down to stand in the dingy tunnel, a ragged row of forlorn-looking derelicts. As we stood there waiting to see the governor, a screw handed neckties to the first two men in the queue. These ‘ties’ were nothing more than strips of grime-polished, once-blue cloth, already knotted so that they could be quickly slipped over your head.
As each prisoner came out of the office, the next man would be marching past him, tie correctly in place. The outgoing prisoner would have his tie whipped off and handed to the man next in line who would still be adjusting it as he was hustled through the office door. When I was marched in, filthy tie properly in place, I stood in front of the governor who sat behind his desk, a demigod surrounded by uniformed acolytes.
‘Name and number to the governor and say “sir”!’ A huge highlander screw with a row of military medal ribbons stretching across his chest shouted into my ear from about two inches away. This time I said ‘sir’. Not to have done so would very obviously run the risk of a severe thumping.
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‘Crosbie, sir! Four-day remand. Court on Thursday.’
‘About turn! Quick march!’
That was it. Four days of doing absolutely nothing. Banged up except to slop out, take in meals and be ordered outside for the compulsory half-hour exercise every morning and afternoon. I was lucky enough to meet someone on exercise who promised me a couple of books the next time out. I got them too, thank God. Other than that, there was nothing.
On the Thursday morning, I was taken down to the Sheriff Court. I was lucky this time and was remanded on my parents’ recognisance. What a relief! My feelings about being charged with breaking and entering never really bothered me. I knew I’d done wrong of course, but I just didn’t feel particularly guilty about anything. Even then, without any conscious thought, I was just accepting that I had tried something and it had gone wrong. So what? I hadn’t liked Barlinnie – who could? But already the experience had been left behind. It most certainly failed to impress me as a deterrent. The only place I’d really felt sorry – and that was for myself – was in the police cells at Tobago Street.
I saw Stuart Ferguson when I got home and he was pleased that I hadn’t told on him, but he had had a scare and didn’t want to know any more about thieving. I accepted that, but I knew that with his attitude he would have told on me had our positions been reversed. Still, we’re all made different. About a month later I was put on probation for a year. Everyone else was far more worried about it than me.
Armed and Dangerous--This is the True Story of How I Carried Out Scotland's Biggest Bank Robbery Page 5
