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

  I suppose it was the priests’ method of maintaining a regular flow of young lads ready to step into the shoes of retiring altar boys. I remember how excited I was to be permitted inside the vestry and would have scrubbed floors for the privilege. The old priest, Father O’Hara, bumbled about for a few minutes then left us to it. I dusted for a while before noticing a large cupboard that seemed to be unlocked. On pulling it open, I beamed in delight. There were boxes and boxes of biscuits stacked high inside. Without a moment’s hesitation, I grabbed a box and tore the lid off. When the contents were revealed, I just stared. I can still remember the shock of realisation hitting me: they weren’t biscuits. It was the little round hosts that the priest gave me at holy communion. I looked up at the ceiling, as if expecting God to give me some excuse. But there was none forthcoming. The evidence was all too clear: it wasn’t a miracle every Sunday at all. It was just a bowl of these little white round things.

  Then I spotted a small clutch of bells and gave them a tentative shake. And yes, sure enough, the heavenly chimes rang out. It was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. The priests were kidding us. Not knowing or understanding anything of symbolism, I just thought the worst. It was all a load of lies. After that, unless I was accompanied by anyone who might have informed on me, I seldom attended Sunday mass.

  The sixpence I was given for the collection plate was spent on a very different sort of plate – a plate of hot peas in the café at the foot of Balgrayhill Road. I would sit there and pass the time with my peas until chapel came out. Then I would mingle with the crowd and go home as piously as the next one. From then on, when old Palmer asked his terrifying question every Monday morning, I kept my silence.

  My time at the Saint Aloysius Primary was coming to an end. However, one serious obstacle remained before I could bid farewell to the big school and move on in my passage through life: the ‘qualy’. The Scottish Educational Authorities Qualifying Examination was the equivalent of the English Eleven-Plus and it was designed to sort out the wheat from the chaff. This looming event sent tremors of nervousness tingling up and down the spines of every child about to be tested.

  I had a tough example to follow: my brother Tommy. He was entirely different from me. Where I was uncaring and casual, plunking school at every opportunity and generally messing about, Tommy was a swat. He won prizes for everything and every year without fail received a special award and certificate for perfect attendance. Tommy had, of course, done extremely well in his qualy: he was top of the class and even awarded a bursary. It was the talk of the steamie (public washhouse), as they used to say in Glasgow and Tommy had gone straight into the best first-year class at Saint Mungo’s.

  Even though I did plunk school a lot, I somehow or other managed to do quite well in my class at end-of-term exams. Arithmetic and English were always my best subjects. The qualy came and went and then we all waited for the results: I came third in the class and everything was fine. We were told what school we would be going to. There were only two possibilities. The first was Saint Mungo’s Academy, the top senior secondary school, where a high percentage of students went on to university and the professions and most of the others into white-collar work. The alternative was Saint Roch’s Junior Secondary where they taught you rudimentary science, basic English, a little mathematics, technical drawing, woodwork and metalwork, not forgetting the ubiquitous religious instruction. When you left the Rock, as the school was called, you were ready to slip right into the shipyards or factory production lines. If you were one of the top boys you might even get the chance to become an apprentice and actually learn a trade. The top ten in the qualy were certs for the Mungo; the dross was shunted off to the Rock.

  Imagine my surprise when I was taken to Miss McGurnigan’s office, an unusual event in itself and told that, even though I had been third in the qualifying examination, I would be going to Saint Roch’s. I wasn’t the least bit bothered by this: my father and, as far as I knew, most of my uncles had gone there. I simply accepted it as routine and off I went. It was years later, about thirty years later as a matter of fact, that my mother told me that Miss McGurnigan had sent for her and told her that, although I had pass marks for Saint Mungo’s, to send me there would be wasting a place for a good student. She then asked my mother if she would agree to me going to Saint Roch’s and leaving the place at Saint Mungo’s for a pupil who would benefit more. My mother agreed and that was that: Saint Roch’s for yours truly. I couldn’t have cared less. I was 12 years old and going to secondary school. A new phase in my life was about to begin.

  Chapter Two

  The Rock

  Sometime in 1949 I presented myself at Saint Roch’s and began my secondary education. I was in class IA, the top class of the first year. I soon realised the potential for dodging classes and proceeded to take advantage of it.

  One of the ruses I used to skip school was to make use of the local health clinic, which was directly opposite the school’s main entrance. Very early on, I had to go across to the clinic for treatment as I had developed a bad case of chilblains. I was issued with a treatment card that I had to show to my teacher so I could get excused from class. I would wait until the teacher had marked the register, then present my card to him. ‘I have to go to the clinic, sir,’ I would say and with hardly a glance at my card he would wave me on my way.

  There was one or two others who used the clinic cards in this way and, once in the medical centre, we would quickly get our treatment and disappear out of a side door and take off for the rest of the morning. Even though the rest of the class knew what we were up to, they thought it was all dead clever and brave of us to dodge boring classes.

  My particular pal at Saint Roch’s was called PG Devlin: he was, of course, another truant. PG and I became good friends. During the times we dodged classes together, we went on shoplifting sprees in the city centre and collected vast quantities of useless loot. We eventually latched on to things we could actually sell and began making ourselves a little money. I am not trying to say that we made fortunes, but we always had two or three shillings in our pockets.

  On the days we didn’t skip classes, we would take advantage of our dinner break to travel into the city centre and launch a raid on the old fruit market, a cornucopia of apples, oranges, pears, peaches, plums and any number of strange and exotic fruits that were beginning to reappear after the long years of deprivation caused by the war – an irresistible target for any schoolchild. Once there, we would wander round the traders’ tempting displays, stuffing everything we could get away with up our jumpers until we looked like rather lumpy miniature Michelin men.

  It was during one of these forays that I had the memorable distinction of being the first boy in our school to steal an example of the latest exotic fruit to reach our shores: a coconut. That day, PG and I returned to school in triumph. The usual expectant crowd was hanging about the back gate and we quickly disposed of our excess plunder. There being a distinct dearth of cash among the children of the Rock, we were always happy to barter our booty for comics, marbles, dirty pictures or any gadget on offer that took our fancy.

  The coconut caused a minor sensation. Most of the kids had never seen one before and it was passed reverently from hand to hand, each boy giving it a shake against his ear to listen to the magical milk sloshing about inside.

  During my first year at the Rock, I had been strapped umpteen times for repeated lateness and strapped even harder for persistent truanting. At one stage I was in serious danger of being charged with causing criminal damage. I used to go to school on my bike and kept a small spanner in my pocket for loosening off my handlebars so I could twist them at right angles to prevent anyone riding away on it. One Friday afternoon, just before we finished for the weekend, I idly tried my spanner on the brass valve of a radiator in my classroom. It fitted and before I knew it, water was gushing out on to the floor.

  I hurriedly closed the valve again, but not tightly. On the following Monday morning, th
e classroom was flooded and the ceiling of the room underneath had collapsed. I saw the janitor and the science teacher tapping at the radiator with a small hammer in an endeavour to trace the leak. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, leaning over, ‘but isn’t that valve loose?’

  The janitor, who was kneeling at the radiator, felt the valve and it turned in his fingers, releasing a sudden flood.

  ‘Here,’ says I, compounding my error, ‘this spanner might fit it.’ I was grabbed by the scruff of the neck and frog-marched to the headmaster’s office. I totally denied all knowledge. Even in the face of all the evidence I stuck to my story – the spanner was for my bike. They went off and tried it too! I insisted that the fact that my spanner fitted the valve was simply a coincidence. Very grudgingly they let me go, the headmaster warning me never to bring my bike to school again. But all that was a mere bagatelle: more serious trouble was looming.

  My first brush with the law came when I was thirteen; it was at a scrap-metal-cum-rag store, a conglomeration of ramshackle, corrugated-iron sheets somehow or other jammed against one another to create a kind of tumbledown shed. What held it together I just do not know, but it made an attractive playground for us and we began to make a habit of wandering over to clamber about the place. It was easy enough to gain entry: you simply pulled a sheet of the rusting corrugated iron aside and climbed in with Ben Kerr and Jim Marshall, two of my neighbourhood pals. I made the mistake of going there once too often – three evenings in a row, if I remember correctly.

  On the third visit, the owner and his two sons ambushed us. We were cornered and taken down to one of the red police boxes they used to have on street corners. A few minutes later the police arrived and we were taken to the police station. As we were too young to be locked in the cells, they held us in the station snooker room. We sat in terrified silence. Things were pretty strict in those days and by late evening we were carted off to Saint Vincent Street Remand Home near the city centre. What a carry-on! You would have thought we had robbed a bank or something. Next morning we appeared at the Sheriff Court and were remanded in custody and carted off in a Black Maria back to Saint Vincent Street.

  Time there was torture. All we did was sit in a huge room all day and, to make matters worse, we could see a big clock on a building across the street ticking off every minute as time dragged slowly by. I think we did about two weeks on remand before we were given a six-month deferred sentence. It had felt like two years to me and I was never so glad to get home in my life.

  That was my first court appearance and my first criminal conviction. It still annoys me that, for some strange reason, our game of jumping about on old piles of filthy rags was classified as housebreaking. That meant breaking into anything other than an actual shop (shopbreaking). So there I was, a thirteen-year-old housebreaker. It annoyed me then and it still annoys me now. I never broke into anyone’s house in my life.

  By this time, my parents had exchanged houses with a Mrs Buchanan and we had moved up to the top flat at 47. We now lived in a house the same size as my granny’s on the ground floor. My father was always strict with me. I can still remember him taking me into the small bedroom whenever my transgressions were serious enough to warrant corporal punishment. He would march me into the wee room and present me with a choice of sticks and canes. I don’t know where he got them from, but there always seemed to be a fair choice. Maybe he collected them in anticipation of my next misdemeanour. I had to pick one and he would proceed to beat me on the legs with it until it broke.

  I was always smart enough to pick a wooden stick instead of a cane. I knew the wood would break fairly quickly and I always made sure that I yelled loud enough so he would think it was hurting me a lot more than it really was. Even now I don’t think my father was being cruel and I don’t resent it. One thing was sure – I always deserved it. I would be kept in for a few days or a week, until things returned to normal.

  I was always the only one that got into trouble. I even got caught stealing a bar of chocolate that big brother Tommy had won as a prize. He hadn’t eaten it because he was saving it as a sacrifice for Lent. I just couldn’t resist a whole bar of chocolate. Tommy went berserk, beating me up and screaming at me in a rage. Still, he was too late. The damage was done, the chocolate gone.

  After my first conviction, I more or less kept out of real trouble for a long time. I ran away from home on several occasions, sometimes staying away for three or four days at a time, but I avoided getting into trouble with the police until I was a good bit older. I was a terrible bother to my parents, though. My mother used to say her heart was roasted over me.

  Gang fights were usually settled on Paddy’s Park, a large green hill behind Adamswell Street. We would arm ourselves with broom handles and home-made axes – tin cans flattened on to wooden handles – and fill our pockets with stones suitable for throwing. I honestly don’t know how no one died during the hour-long pitched battles fought on Paddy’s Park. I do know that I often went home with a split head or with half the clothes torn off my back.

  One final incident was to mar my last few weeks at the Rock. I had obtained a Gat slug gun, the type where you had to push the barrel in, unscrew a nut at the back and insert the projectile – a slug. I took it to school and a guy called Peter Kennedy had a shot at it. He loaded it up and fired it at another boy. The shot struck this boy about half-an-inch above his right eye. I can still see it today: he was howling and we couldn’t pull the slug out as the skin just kept stretching. Finally a housewife came running down from her house and the boy was taken to the Royal Infirmary. He wasn’t seriously hurt, but it really was as close as you could get. I got the blame. I don’t know why the police weren’t called in.

  Once more I found myself marched in front of the headmaster. I received six strokes of the strap and a severe talking-to. Although I still had about four weeks to go until I formally left, I was told that there would be no need for me to attend the school any longer. I suppose I was expelled and I think I deserved it. I have always regretted that incident.

  So that was it. I was sent home from the Rock in disgrace. My schooldays were over.

  Chapter Three

  Ducking and Diving

  Only 15 years of age – still more than two years away from even trying a razor – I was clumping up Palermo Street at 7.15 am on a cold, dark morning wearing a new pair of heavy-duty, tack-studded boots and a brand-new boiler suit. I had a tea and sugar tin in my pocket and I was carrying sausage sandwiches for my ‘dinner piece’ – just like my father.

  I remember my father’s anger when I told him I was starting in Connell’s shipyard as an apprentice welder. After the initial shouting and bawling match was over and I continued to insist that I wanted to be a welder, I remember him telling me, ‘You’ll hear a lot of bad language and dirty talk in that shipyard. Don’t pay any attention to it and don’t listen to the things the older men will say to you.’ For all the years that he had worked in the sort of environment where swearing and filthy talk was the norm, my father never used that sort of language himself. He even lost a trade union case because he refused to repeat the swearing that had caused him to bring the case in the first place. He did make an exception and said he would repeat the words if a young woman shorthand-writer left the room. The chairman denied his request and my father then point-blank refused to repeat the bad language used on him. He lost his complaint. My father also avoided alcohol. He didn’t have anything against it – it was just something he personally didn’t like.

  So, on that winter’s morning in early 1952, like thousands of Glasgow school-leavers before me, I set off for the Clydeside to begin my working life in the yards. Of course, the first days, or perhaps even the first couple of weeks, were a novelty, but I soon realised this was not for me and was on the verge of leaving. Then I was lured by some of the older lads with a couple of other new-starts away from our welding school area to roam about the shipyard searching for unattended lengths of welding cable. We would collect th
ese cables and strip away the insulating rubber. The copper core was quickly chopped into smaller lengths for easy carrying. We would smuggle the copper out of the yard for sale to a scrap-metal dealer. There was always a few shillings in it for us junior apprentices and it was only the lure of this extra money that persuaded me to stay on at Connell’s for longer than I would have had I been relying purely on the pittance of £1.25 that was my weekly pay.

  There was a back way out of the yard which meant that, once we boys had checked in, shown ourselves about a bit and arranged to have our time tokens handed in at the end of the shift, we could skip away for the rest of the day. To accomplish this we virtually had to take our lives in our hands. Connell’s backed on to a fitting-out dock and there was unrestricted access from this dock on to the main road. All we had to do was get into the yard and walk out the gate – but getting into the yard was the hard bit.

  A high brick wall divided Connell’s from the fitting-out dock. This wall projected a few feet out over the turbulent waters of the River Clyde and it had a fan of rusting spiked railings extending even further from its extreme edge. To reach our goal we had to inch out to the end of the wall then grasp the rusting spikes and swing out, under or around them, before climbing back up to terra firma in the other dock area. This was a dangerous manoeuvre in itself but, to add to the danger, very often one of the Clyde tugboats would come racing by just when someone was in mid-swing. The bow wave from these fast-moving tugs could easily swamp the bottom half of the spikes and caused many a terrified, panicky scramble. However, once into the next dock, you could just stroll out the gate and head for home.