Armed and Dangerous--This is the True Story of How I Carried Out Scotland's Biggest Bank Robbery Read online

  For Marlene, my wife.

  Thank you for your devotion and loyalty.

  Iceland can wait.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter One: The Power of Money

  Chapter Two: The Rock

  Chapter Three: Ducking and Diving

  Chapter Four: Conduct: Exemplary

  Chapter Five: When I’m Breaking Windows

  Chapter Six: The Great Escapes

  Chapter Seven: The Ballad of Reading Borstal

  Chapter Eight: Sharpshooter Crosbie

  Chapter Nine: Tea Shops for Two

  Chapter Ten: Working for the Kray Twins

  Chapter Eleven: Pavement Artists

  Chapter Twelve: Pay Days

  Chapter Thirteen: Zombie Nation

  Chapter Fourteen: Anything, Anywhere, Anytime

  Chapter Fifteen: Gracious Living

  Chapter Sixteen: All That Glitters

  Chapter Seventeen: The Great Train Station Robbery

  Chapter Eighteen: Better Safe, Then Sorry

  Chapter Nineteen: Harry Roberts is My Friend, Crosbie Shoots Coppers… Not!

  Chapter Twenty: Twelve-gauge Action

  Chapter Twenty-one: A Bit of Business with Bob

  Chapter Twenty-two: Blagger on a Bike

  Chapter Twenty-three: The Most Dangerous Man in Scotland

  Chapter Twenty-four: Papillon of Peterhead

  Chapter Twenty-five: Poofery at Peterhead

  Chapter Twenty-six: The Coodgie Gang

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Blagger on the Box

  Afterword: Iceland Can Wait

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Introduction

  CROSBIE!

  WHERE IS HE NOW?

  The headline leaped out at me from the pages of the Scottish Daily Record in the reading room of the Falkirk Public Library. It was July 1974. My head jerked back in surprise and, out of reflex movement rather than reasoned intent, I quickly folded the crackling pages over and stared around at the library’s other visitors.

  Had anyone noticed my panicked reaction? Was there a curious eye peering suspiciously in my direction? No. All was peaceful. Everyone just continued to read or study quietly to themselves, simply minding their own business. Gradually, I brought my breathing under control and, careful not to rustle the paper too much, I teased the pages open again and read beyond the headline.

  BANK ROBBER SPOTTED IN CYPRUS. Apparently, the police were considering sending a squad of detectives to scour the beaches for me in that sunny land. It seemed to me that they would need a lot of cops if they were going to send squads of them to all the places I had been ‘spotted’ in so far: the Middle East, West Africa and various European countries including, of course, the Costa del Sol in sunny Spain. And how I wished I really was in one of those far-flung places – the further flung the better! Instead, here I was in Falkirk, not twenty miles away from the scene of my most recent bank raid.

  I weighed up my situation; out of jail through a trick by a wily Glasgow lawyer, my real money out of reach, my current cash reserve down to a last few hundred quid with my hotel bill quickly reducing that to zero, no-one to turn to for help, looking at a lifetime in prison if I didn’t get myself out of this predicament and – last but not least – every cop in Britain scouring the country for me. There was no question: I had to do something, and do it fast, if I was going to flee the country and head for Brazil or, more specifically, Rio de Janeiro, to meet up with Biggsy and find out how to beat the extradition laws and hopefully live happily ever after. There was only one way I was going to be able to do that. I needed money – lots of it – and I needed it now!

  There was only one thing for it. I would have to go and rob another bank.

  Jesus, when I thought back about it, life was a lot simpler when I was only stripping lead from the local factory rooftops.

  Chapter One

  The Power of Money

  I was born on 15 January 1937, the middle of three sons: Thomas Anthony, my big brother and William Ireland, my wee brother. I don’t know if I was born in a hospital or at home, but I do remember my young brother being born at home. As far as homes go, it wasn’t much: a single room and kitchen with a shared toilet on the ground floor of a grey, austere-looking sandstone tenement house at 47 Palermo Street in the heavily-industrialised district of Springburn, Glasgow.

  My mother came from Greenock, on the Clyde coast. I never knew my maternal grandparents: when they died, she and her big sister travelled to Glasgow and became laundry maids in Stobhill Hospital. It was there, I suppose, that she met my father who lived in Springburn, a 15-minute walk from Stobhill. After they married, they moved to 47 Palermo Street, next door to my father’s family.

  So there I was, brought up in a room and kitchen along with my two brothers, where we slept in a recess bed, all three of us together. Just through the wall, my mother and father slept in a similar recess bed in the kitchen. In those days and right up until the mid-1960s when they started tearing down the sandstone tenements, the kitchen in Glasgow tenement houses was the centre of family activity. A black, gleaming cooking range with its open coal fire, three-ring gas fitting and oven and, in those pre-television days, a wooden-framed wireless formed the core of our domestic universe. As young children, we played under the table around the feet of our parents who would sit listening to the programmes on the wireless. As we became older, we spent our time playing board games like ludo, snakes and ladders, dominoes and draughts. And when my father took the fancy for it, he would entertain us by playing the accordion. I had a better-than-average upbringing.

  My father, a hard-working tradesman, was a fitter who served his apprenticeship with the famous North British Locomotive Company of Springburn. He was fairly strict with us and I can recall getting skelped – hit – on the legs as a chastisement. Our values were based on being an honest, working-class family and our neighbours were the same. I grew up in a world of hessian rubbish-bag tents, football in the streets and jeely pieces (jam sandwiches) tossed out of kitchen windows to screaming demands of ‘throw us a piece, maw!’

  My schooling began at Saint Aloysius infant school in Elmvale Street, Springburn and it was while there that I got my first taste of the power of money. Yes – even at the tender age of five or six, I recognised the powerful influence of hard cash. In those days, our pocket money was sixpence; as you can imagine, that didn’t last long. Somehow or other, I came into possession of a shiny half-crown piece and all I wanted to do was spend it. And spend it I did! My pals and I headed for the ice-cream shop and small bowls of ice cream smothered in red strawberry sauce with a crisp wafer stuck edgewise into it. I don’t remember what they cost, but we had them for about three days in a row. That was my first lesson in the power of money and I never forgot it: I was suddenly popular.

  I can’t remember exactly when I started to steal, but I do remember being aware of the fact that if I wanted to enjoy myself, I needed money to do it. It was during WWII and every child in the class had to pay threepence a week – for a daily bottle of milk. The teacher would collect these coins in an empty pencil box which she would leave by the side of her desk.

  At the end of classes, our teacher would march us out of the classroom and along the corridor to the school gates into the care of our mothers, or send us off up the road for home. I soon learned to hang back until teacher was out of the door attend
ing to one of my classmates, usually one of the girls who was crying for some reason or another and quickly snatch a handful of threepenny bits from the pencil box. The handful of small brass coins wasn’t a lot, but it was a lot more than anyone else had – this was at a time when rationing was still in force. I spent it on daft things like chalk for drawing on pavements and once even on a tobacco pouch so I could use it as a purse. I have fond memories of going up and down Springburn Road buying ice lollies for my pals, sucking the last vestiges of flavour from the stick, then wiping my sleeve across my satisfied, stained lips.

  In those early days at Saint Aloysius, I was too young to really understand about stealing. I just knew that it was better to have money than to have none. It didn’t take long before some others and I naturally formed into a wee gang; among other childish shoplifting forays, we would run into a little fruit shop at the foot of Balgrayhill Road to grab an apple, or even a carrot if that was all we could get our hands on and run away. The old woman used to race out from behind the counter and chase us up Springburn Road for about twenty-five or thirty yards, or until we tossed the loot away and she would stop to pick it up.

  I soon devised a plan. I got one of the gang to walk right into the fruit shop and, without any attempt to hide his actions, boldly grab a huge turnip. I can still see it today: John Flynn, my pal who lived up the road from me, was the turnip-lifter. Sure as anything, the shopkeeper raced out after him, leaving my pals and me to take advantage of the diversion and pounce on whatever we fancied. We raced into the shop, grabbing at anything that looked edible and we were out just as fast with our ill-gotten gains, heading in the opposite direction while the misguided shopkeeper bent triumphantly to recover the ‘stolen’ turnip. We thought it was great! This worked a further two or three times before she rumbled us. How we young toerags must have tormented that poor shopkeeper.

  My memory of life in those early days is just a blur of climbing walls and railings, playing in the rubbish tips and fighting with the Proddies from Elmvale Street Public School. Public schools in Glasgow were not, as one might suppose, expensive seats of learning where you picked up an upper-crust accent. In working-class Springburn, there were only two types of school – Catholic and Protestant. Although I swung my schoolbag at the heads of attacking ‘Proddy dogs’ from Elmvale Public when we clashed every day at 3.00 pm, I never felt superior or inferior or any different from them. It was just the way it was and, as far as I know, the way it still is. Catholic cats and Proddy dogs.

  Religion was very important in my family. My granny and grandpa had a miniature altar with candles and my father was a good practising Catholic who never missed a Sunday mass – nor allowed any member of the family to miss it either. And he always attended chapel on holidays of obligation, going to mass at six or seven o’clock in the morning before heading on to work.

  I suppose the Crosbies of Palermo Street were actually fairly well off, relatively speaking. I can remember one day raking through a drawer and finding what at first sight appeared to be a huge and very valuable banknote. My heart leaped with excitement – I think I had already started spending it in my mind. Then I took a closer look. It turned out to be a very fancy scrolled certificate stating that John Crosbie, my father, had satisfactorily served five years with the North British Locomotive Company. It is still the only certificate of a completed apprenticeship that I have ever seen.

  My early years were spent in a very austere world. Oh, we had a comfortable enough house when you consider all the slums that abounded in working-class Glasgow. There was always a fire and bread to toast on it. But there was only a cold-water tap in the house and the toilet was outside in the close to be shared by the occupants of one of the other houses on the ground floor. The third house on the ground floor, my granny’s, was bigger than the other two. My granny’s house was considered to be a ‘foreman’s’ house because it had an extra bedroom and the luxury of an inside bathroom with hot water as well as a huge cast-iron bath – although I never once had a bath in it. I wonder why! You would think that it would be handy for the grandchildren to nip across the close to their granny’s for a bath, but no. We were actually bathed in a large, two-handled zinc bath that had to be filled with kettles of boiling water and the one filling of water had to do the three of us. My father, like most other working-class men in Springburn, made his way to the public baths in Kay Street every Friday night or Saturday morning for his weekly douse. I wonder why he didn’t use his mother’s bathroom. It’s strange when I think about it now.

  I was always in and out of my granny’s house. She used to send me on errands and get me to beat her bass mat – the heavy mat just inside her front door. I would take it out and whack it off the side of the tenement. Clouds of dust flew everywhere as I tried to figure out which way the wind was blowing. I got twopence for this twice- or thrice-weekly chore. Then, with running messages for neighbours, especially when I was sent on the hunt for a pound of under-the-counter sugar, I could earn as much as two bob a week and most of it went on ice lollies.

  Most of the time, however, we kids were always skint. We knew about money, or at least I did, but unless we actually had a birthday present, or had accumulated a few coppers one way or another, we just amused ourselves climbing dykes and raking rubbish heaps, which we called middens or midgies. In every district, or perhaps every couple of blocks, there was always a lucky midgie which seemed to contain a much better quality of rubbish. Usually the middens behind shops were lucky. We would rake through the individual bins with our bare hands, even climb right in behind them for things that had been thrown too far in or had fallen down the back. We would eagerly grab a likely-looking object, sometimes finding old clothes and stuff which we promptly pulled on and proudly paraded about in until someone told our mothers and we were suddenly grabbed by the ear, had the offending article removed, marched back to the house for a good scrub with red carbolic soap (which my mother insisted in using right up until her death in 1994) and had our hair combed out for nits.

  At the age of nine, I moved on up to the ‘big school’ – Saint Aloysius Primary. Mostly I would play truant, or plunk it, as we used to say. I used to keep my dinner money and spend it on sweets, ice blues (still a favourite) and wulks (whelks) for threepence a bag from a barrow in Wellfield Street. The wulks were sold in a twisted cone of ordinary newspaper with a tiny pin thrown in so we could hawk out the snotters – at least that’s what we kids called the dead molluscs inside the shells – and eat them.

  It was about this time that I learned to ride a bike. I remember it was Ronnie Gribben from round the corner in Ayr Street who had the bike – about the only one in the street. I think all the kids around us learned to ride on Ronnie’s bike. I can still remember that day in Flemington Street when I managed to keep my balance without anyone holding on to the saddle. It was a wonderful feeling. Bikes were destined to play a big part in my life in the years ahead. As a matter of fact, my father was a very well-known racing cyclist in his day, gaining fleeting fame and his picture in the papers as the first man to climb Balmano Brae, the steepest hill in Glasgow, using a standard 72-inch fixed gear.

  My time at the big school passed pretty uneventfully. I don’t remember getting into any real trouble other than having my teacher, Mr Palmer, come to my house to speak to my parents about my plunking. The only other aspect of my life there that had any lasting effect on me was the emphasis on religion. I suppose all Catholic schools must have been the same. The school was adjacent to Saint Aloysius Chapel and there was a connecting stairway between the two buildings. On special prayer days, which seemed to come round remarkably quickly, the whole school would be marched up a steep flight of stone stairs and along a narrow passage to the side door of the chapel, where we were herded inside and shown to our pews. Once settled down we would kneel and pray and do whatever it was we had to do, then after singing a couple of hymns we would be sent home about half an hour early – whoopee!

  Religion was alway
s being rammed down our throats at school. Every Monday morning, after prayers, our teacher stood behind his desk and stared silently at his cowering pupils. It was quite nerve-racking, especially when he leaned forward a little to add emphasis to his words. Then, in a most serious voice, came the dreaded question: ‘Hands up anyone who did not go to mass on Sunday?’ If anyone was stupid enough or honest enough to raise their hand, a shocked gasp would rise from the rest of the class and the guilty party would visibly quake under the concentrated stare of about thirty pairs of horrified, accusing eyes. Mr Palmer always appeared to have an apoplectic fit.

  ‘Do you not realise,’ he said with a voice like thunder, jabbing his long bony finger in time to his words, his voice rising by at least an octave as he neared the end of his warning, ‘that not going to mass on Sunday is a mortal sin? You could go to hell and your immortal soul will burn for all et-ern-it-y!’ His stabbing finger emphasised every syllable as he glared accusingly at any terrified, cowering child who had been foolish enough to admit this unforgivable sin of omission. ‘You will have to go to confession and tell the priest what you have done and accept his penance for your sin. And you had better not ever miss Sunday mass again,’ he ended threateningly, before commencing the schoolwork for the day.

  There was one incident, however, that shattered my burgeoning belief in religion. I had made my first communion at the age of seven along with everyone else in my class and had been going to mass every Sunday and taking holy communion faithfully every first Sunday of the month. Every time I went, a miracle occurred on the altar.

  I knew the priest broke bread into the silver chalice and I knew that he poured wine on top of it. Then, when he raised the chalice up on high, I actually heard heaven’s bells chime out as God changed this bread and wine into his own body and blood. I didn’t care that when I went forward to take communion all I received was a small round piece of white stuff. To me, it was Jesus’s body, the result of the miracle that had just occurred. I almost used to quiver when I witnessed and took part in this miracle every Sunday. Like most Catholic boys, I went through the phase of wanting to be an altar boy and in order to further this ambition I volunteered, along with a couple of other lads from my class, to clean the vestry after school hours.