Dark Side of the Street - Simon Vaughn 01 (v5) by Jack Higgins Read Free Book Online Page B

it right? Gave all the credit for the planning to Ben Hoffa and he couldn't tell his arse from his elbow."
    "It was your idea then?"
    "That's it." Youngblood shrugged. "I needed Ben, I'm not denying that. He could fly a Dakota-- that was his main function."
    "What about Saxon?"
    "A good lad when he had someone to tell him what to do."
    "Any idea where they are now?"
    "Somewhere in the sun spending all that lovely lolly if they've any sense."
    "You never know your luck," Chavasse said. "They might be making arrangements for you to join them right now."
    Youngblood stared across at him blankly. "Get me out you mean? Out of Fridaythorpe?" He exploded into laughter. "Have you got a lot to learn. No one gets out of here, didn't they tell you that? They've got television cameras and electronic gates--they've even constructed special walls of reinforced concrete with foundations twenty feet deep. That's just in case anyone ever thought of tunnelling." He shook his head. "This is it--the big cage--there is no way out."
    "There's always a way," Chavasse said.
    "What have we got here then? A brain?"
    "Big enough."
    "It didn't do you much good on that Lonsdale Metals caper. You're here, aren't you?"
    "So are you."
    "Only because of Ben Hoffa and that bloody bird of his." For a moment Youngblood was genuinely angry. "He tried to drop her and she shopped him. That was the end for all of us."
    "But they didn't get the money."
    "That's it, boy." Youngblood grinned. "More than you can say."
    "I know," Chavasse said feelingly. "I had the same trouble as Hoffa."
    He sat there on the edge of the bed staring down at the floor as if momentarily depressed and Youngblood produced a twenty packet of cigarettes and offered him one. "Don't let it get you down. Between you and me that was quite something you pulled off. A pity you still had your amateur status. A bit more know-how and you might have got away with it."
    "You seem to be doing all right for yourself," Chavasse said, holding up the cigarette.
    Youngblood grinned and lolled back against the pillow. "I'm not complaining. I get as many of those things as I want and don't ask me how. When the blokes in here want snout they come to me and no one else. You fell on your feet when old man Carter decided to put you in here."
    "He told me you'd been ill. How bad is it?"
    "I had a slight stroke a month or two back. Nothing much." Youngblood shrugged. "Just one of those things."
    "I got the impression he was afraid you might peg out on him one of these nights. If he's as worried as that why doesn't he have you trans-ferreed to the Scrubs?"
    Youngblood chuckled harshly. "The Home Office would never wear that. They'd be frightened to death one of the London mobs might have a go at breaking me out in the hopes of getting their hot little hands on the lolly." He shook his head. "No, here I am and here I stay."
    "For another fifteen years?"
    Youngblood turned his head and smiled softly. "That remains to be seen, doesn't it?" He tossed the cigarettes across. "Have another."
    He quite obviously wanted to talk and Chavasse lay there smoking and let him. He covered just about everything that had ever happened to him, starting with his years in a Camberwell orphanage and dwelling particularly on his time in the Navy. He wasn't married and apparently had only one living relative--a sister.
    "You've got to look out for yourself, boy," he told Chavasse. "I learned that early. There's always some bastard waiting to take away what you've got. When I was a P.O. in MTBs I had a skipper called Johnson--young sub-lieutenant. Bloody useless. I carried him--carried him. We took part in the St. Laurent commando raid; he got hit early on. He just sat there helpless in the skipper's chair on the bridge bleeding to death. There was nothing we could do for him. I took over, pressed home the attack and put two torpedoes into an enemy destroyer. And what happened when we got back? Johnson got a posthumous Victoria Cross--I got a