Page 175 - Once a copper 10 03 2020

somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour, and arrived back at
Leatherslade Farm at around 4.30am, at around the same time as the first
reports of the crime were being made.

At the farm they counted the proceeds and divided it into 16 full shares and
several 'drinks' (smaller sums of money intended for associates of the gang).
The precise amounts of the split differ according to the source, but the full
shares came to approximately £150,000 each (about £2.65 million today).

From listening to their police-tuned radio, the gang learned that the police
had calculated they had gone to ground within a 30-mile radius of the crime
scene rather than dispersing with their haul. This declaration was based on
information given by a witness at the crime scene who stated that a gang
member had told the post office workers "not to move for half an hour". The
press interpreted this information as a 30-mile (48 km) radius—a half-hour
drive in a fast car.

The gang realised the police were using a "dragnet tactic", and with help
from the public, would probably discover their hideout much sooner than
had been originally anticipated. As a result, the plan for leaving the farm was
brought forward to Friday from Sunday (the crime was committed on
Thursday). The vehicles they had driven to the farm could no longer be used
because they had been seen by the train staff. Brian Field came to the farm
on Thursday to pick up his share of the loot and to take Roy James to London
to find an extra vehicle. Bruce Reynolds and John Daly picked up cars, one
for Jimmy White and the other for Reynolds, Daly, Biggs and the replacement
train driver. Field, his wife Karin and his associate "Mark" brought the vans and
drove the remainder of the gang to the Fields's home to recover.
The gang members started to hide and “bank” their cash. Goody buried his
money under concrete slabs in his garden. Some gang members even
headed into the West End of London to celebrate.

All the television sets and newspaper boards were about the robbery. So
were the Sunday papers that were looking for someone to blame, be it the
railways, the post office, or the government. But there was no news in the
press about the hideout that by now should have been cleaned or torched.
Concerned about no news of the farm, Reynolds, Edwards, Wilson and James
met at a transport café on the North Circular. They considered going back
down to the farm to take care of it themselves, but the farm worker had
persisted and called the police again. Leatherslade Farm had already been
discovered by PC John Woolley at 10.50 am that Monday morning.

“We found the farm pretty much as they had left it,” Woolley recalled. “Their
vehicles were still in the yard, their foodstuffs in the kitchen, and the cellar was Page175