The Slaughter Man (31 page)

Ronald Christopher ‘Buster’ Edwards had been part of the gang that intercepted the Glasgow to London mail train in the early hours of 8 August 1963. By the time I was passing him on my way to the
NME
office on Stamford Street in the late Seventies, Buster was a florist at Waterloo Station.

But to a no-nothing kid in a cheap leather jacket, Buster Edwards would always be one of the Great Train Robbers.

Buster reportedly bagged £150,000 from the Great Train Robbery and, after the money ran out and he came home from Mexico, he was sentenced to fifteen years, serving nine of them before starting his flower stall outside Waterloo.

I often thought of Buster when I was writing the story of Peter Nawkins, the Slaughter Man, because Buster’s life and death – like the fictional Slaughter Man, Buster took his own life – suggest that even crimes that are paid for are never forgotten, not if they are spectacular enough. That’s what I learned from Buster Edwards, Great Train Robber and florist.

As Max Wolfe tells Echo Nawkins, ‘Fame comes and goes. Infamy lasts a lifetime.’

Tony Parsons,
London, October 2014

MAX WOLFE RETURNS IN 2016 …

The
Hanging
Club

Somebody just brought back the death penalty.

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Copyright © Tony Parsons 2015

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First published in UK by Century in 2015
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

HB ISBN 9781780892351
TPB ISBN 9781780892368