Heist: the story of the Tonbridge robbery in Vale Road....

One of the highlights of the Tonbridge Arts Festival for me was a talk by Howard Sounes about his book Heist. Now you'll notice that the publishers have rather cleverly turned the e into a £ sign on the book's cover to make it H£IST. You may think that a little corney but I say why not? After all, as Mr. Sounes explained during his hour long talk, this was telling the story of the biggest cash robbery in peace time; not just in Britain but anywhere in the world and, even accounting for inflation, the haul was over twice as big as the Great Train Robbery. Amazing then to think that the heist took place only about a hundred yards from where Howard was talking at the Angel Centre just down Vale Road at the rather innocuous looking building called Medway House. That building was actually one of the most secure buildings in the country and was deliberately unmarked and bland looking so as not to attract attention. That building, which actually I drove past every day and didn't know what it was for, never even gave it a second thought, on a typical day held around £ 200 million pounds in used banknotes. Incredible really when you think about it.

The writer spend three years of his life researching this book, attending every day of the Old Bailey trials, getting to know some of the criminals involved, the lawyers and the witnesses along the way. He's had several death threats and still, with some justification, looks over his shoulder every day when he's walking around on his own. He had me captivated for, not only is it a great local and international story, he also tells it extremely well. Shame that only around thirty people turned up to hear him, less than a bad night for a Civic Society talk in the same room. Was this down to poor publicity or lack of interest? I'm not sure on that one but I'm certainly glad I went. He was signing the book afterwards and Mr. Books has copies for sale also.

Howard told us the story of a classic heist by a gang of unlikely bungling robbers; some of whom where local, who managed against all the odds, despite the sophisticated security arrangements, to pull off the biggest cash robbery in history. The only thing is they didn't seem to pay too much attention to what happened afterwards. One of them even left the badly drawn plan of the inside of the building behind a chair in his house in Southborough. It was found there a whole six weeks after the robbery! and in a nearby lock up in his name he had several million pounds stashed! In the gang there were cage fighters, illegal imigrants, boasting car dealer crooks, drug dealing would-be Mr. Bigs, a real motley crew. Like something out of a Tarantino movie. The alleged leader of the group, Lee Murray, who's now doing a ten stretch in a Moroccan prison for his part in the heist, even wore a stop watch around his neck during the robbery like George Clooney in Oceans 11. These weren't clever men by any means, but they did pull it off. Amazingly, but they did. Let's not forget before we go admiring them all though for beating the system that they pulled it off largely through violence and bullying. They held the manager, his wife and young son hostage and threatened to kill them if they didn't give them what they wanted. They were essentially evil, bullying, nasty, thoughtless men in the extreme. Fantastic story though which should be made into a film. In fact the author has been approached by Hollywood movie moguls who are in the process of putting the story onto the big screen. I hope it makes Howard lots of money because not many writers would have had the patience, the writing skill and, above all, the courage to write this one....