As Dolly started to follow Linda, Bella stopped her.
“She turned up at my flat in a right state,” Bella said under her breath. “She saw him under the wheels of the van lying in a pool of his own blood, so you give her this one, OK? Let her be mad with you. Let her take it out on you. Let her blame you, because the only other person she can blame is herself. You can take it—she can’t. You want this robbery to go ahead? You take this one on the chin.” Bella went into the office, where Linda was shakily trying to make herself a cup of tea.
As Dolly watched, Bella put her arms around Linda’s shoulders and gave her a hug. She wished she could do the same. She wished she could tell her again how sorry she was. But Dolly knew that Linda would never see her as a friend like Bella; all she could do was provide Linda with enough money to live the life she wanted. Dolly mentally revised her plan for the day. She had been eager to get the girls into a run through, but she thought she’d give Linda some time to drink her tea.
While she waited, she picked up one of the shotguns and tried to cock it but her finger slipped and got nipped between the firing pin and hammer. She stifled a scream, but couldn’t help letting out a little screech: “Ow! For fuck’s—”
From the office, Linda snorted in derision. Dolly looked round, annoyed, but after a warning glance from Bella, let it slide. She freed her finger, shaking it up and down till the pain subsided. A large blood blister was already forming. Right—that was it!
“OK—let’s get our overalls and masks on and have a rehearsal!” Dolly shouted. This time she wanted to practice unlocking the body harness, picking up the shotgun and sledgehammer, Bella with the chainsaw, Linda with a shotgun and then Bella with the shotgun. “Everything has to repeated till it’s second nature,” Dolly said. “I don’t want nothing bad to happen to any of us.” She tried not to catch Linda’s eye.
They moved out of the annex into the large, filthy main garage. An old furniture truck, minus wheels and one door, would act as the lead truck for the rehearsal. Shirley had already placed the harness over the driver’s seat and unbuckled it. This is where Dolly would be sitting, all strapped in, at the moment she slammed the brakes on, forcing the security wagon to slam into the back of her. The harness had to be strong enough to keep Dolly in her seat during the impact, and simple enough to unbuckle the very next moment. They had to get this right. Dolly’s actions would start the robbery. If she couldn’t get herself free, they’d all be sitting ducks.
Dolly put the sledgehammer in the back of the van, right by the rear doors. Her shotgun dangled from her waist on a makeshift belt. She then got in the driver’s seat and buckled herself into the harness. Shirley watched every move, making sure the straps weren’t twisted, too tight or too slack.
“As soon as Linda gets the laundry van, I’ll move the harness into that and you can practice for real,” Shirley said.
Dolly threw herself back and forth in her seat. The harness held fast. She gave Shirley the thumbs up.
“Right,” said Dolly. “I’m in the lead van—Linda’s laundry truck—all strapped in, shotgun by my side, sledgehammer by the rear doors. The security wagon’s behind me and you lot are in the van behind the security wagon. Bella, you’ll have your chainsaw and shotgun, Shirley, you’ll have your shotgun, Linda, you’ll be driving.” Dolly looked at the girls, standing by the side door of her van, listening. “Go and stand by the back doors of this van for now. We’ll do everything from the stop to the moment I burst the back doors open.”
Shirley, Linda, and Bella lined up at the back doors of the furniture van. “Ready?” Dolly shouted.
“Ready,” Bella shouted back. “I’m timing you.”
“At the twenty-yard marker, I slam the brakes on, the security wagon rams into the back of me, I drive forward, then ram backward, and now the security wagon’s trapped between my van and yours.”
Shirley, over-excited, piped up, “I run up to the security wagon and cut their aerial off so they can’t radio for help.”
“Shut up, Shirley!” Bella whispered. “You don’t do that yet—Dolly hasn’t finished her bit . . .”
Dolly continued, oblivious to Bella and Shirley, “I undo my harness . . .”
There was a sudden silence. The girls glanced at each other. They closed in on the back doors of the van, and all they could hear was Dolly mumbling “fucking thing!” Bella stopped the stopwatch and they all waited.
Shirley asked. “Need a hand with the harn—?”
“NO!”
They heard the harness buckle drop to the floor. Bella started the stopwatch again.
Dolly shouted, “I undo my harness, move to the back doors and . . .” with one huge kick from inside, the back doors of the van flung open to reveal Dolly standing there, legs wide apart like a bloke, swinging the sledgehammer above her head. One of the van doors smacked Shirley on the shoulder, sending her flying, and the sledgehammer was so heavy that it topped Dolly over backward.
Bella stopped the stopwatch again. “Don’t swing it overarm,” she said, “you swing it underarm, just like you did at the beach.”
Dolly clambered to her feet. “Again. From the top.”
The three women stood by the back doors of the van listening to Dolly shouting her routine again. This time, as Dolly kicked the back doors open, she swung the sledgehammer underarm, letting go of it at the end of the swing, sending it flying across the garage and forcing them to dive out of its way. She then swung the shotgun up to her hip, pointed it at the imaginary security wagon and yelled: “Stay where you are!”
From where she’d landed on the floor, Bella shouted, “Bleedin’ hell, Dolly! You didn’t say you was going to let go of the sledgehammer!”
“I’m throwing it through the windscreen of the security wagon! Course I’m going to let go of it.”
“I meant now!” Bella got to her feet and then helped Linda and Shirley up.
Dolly looked down from the van at them “How does it look?” she asked.
“Well,” Linda replied, “it’ll look a whole lot more convincing if you take the safety catch off the shotgun.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Dolly cursed as she looked at the shotgun. “I get my finger caught every time. You’ll have to help me, Linda.”
Without thinking, Linda stepped forward and talked Dolly through how to remove the safety catch. Bella watched Linda teaching Dolly, with patience and kindness; they could get on when it really mattered. Suddenly she realized what she was actually watching: a shooting arcade worker teaching a convent volunteer how to work a shotgun. She shook her head, put her hand to her mouth and snickered. Sometimes it was hard to believe what they were doing.
Once Dolly had got the hang of the shotgun’s safety catch, Linda returned to stand by Bella and Shirley. “Right, let’s hear what you’re going to say,” she said.
Dolly swung the shotgun up onto her hip and shouted, “Don’t move! Guard in the back, show your face at the hatch!”
Three blank faces stared up at Dolly. “Is that what you’re going to say?” Shirley asked.
“Well, what do you want me to say? ‘Stick ’em up, this is a raid’?”
“Come on, you lot, sort it out. I got to go to work.” Bella said, resetting the stopwatch.
Linda stepped forward again to help. “It’s not what you’re saying that’s the issue, it’s your voice. You sound like bleedin’ Bambi! Apart from pissing themselves laughing, the security guards will know it’s a woman’s voice and the cops will be straight onto us.”
“Can you lower your pitch?” Shirley suggested. “There was a singing round in a beauty competition I entered once and I had to learn how to sing a semi-tone lower than I normally—”
“DON’T MOVE!” Dolly bellowed.
Bella shook her head. “That’s still Bambi, just louder. Stick something in your mouth and try again.”
Shirley handed Dolly a white hanky with a red “S” embroidered in the corner. Dolly stuffed it into her mouth
and this time when she shouted, the words were completely inaudible and she nearly choked herself.
“Forget it for tonight,” Dolly said, spitting the hanky out onto the floor. “Bella’s got to go anyway.”
As Bella slipped into her motorbike leathers, they all chatted about Carlos. Dolly watched—three friends gossiping, reassuring, getting on like a house on fire. For a moment, she felt a twinge of jealousy, but she knew she had to keep her distance.
Dolly dished out her final orders for the night. “Right, listen you lot. It’s all coming together now, so let’s keep well away from each other as much as possible, right? I know you can only talk to each other about certain things, but it’ll have to wait till you’re all in Rio together.”
“We,” Bella corrected. “Till we’re all in Rio together.”
“Don’t start that again,” Dolly said, picking up her tweed coat and handbag.
Bella continued regardless. “It’s the only bit of the plan I still got a problem with, Dolly. But it’s easy fixed.”
Dolly flung her handbag down. “Come on, Bella—say what you mean! You don’t want to fly off round the world because—what? Because you won’t know where the money is being stashed, right?”
“Spot on,” Bella replied.
“And you need to know because you don’t actually trust me, do you? Still, you don’t trust me! So far I’ve laid out nearly seven grand of me own money and trusted all of you with that. When the robbery’s done and we all head off in our different directions, who’ll actually have the money at that stage, Bella? Me? No. You will. The money will be in the boot of the getaway car, while I’m in the bleedin’ laundry van that we still haven’t nicked yet. Have I once doubted your honesty and whined about the possibility that you could run off with the money immediately after the robbery? No! I wouldn’t do that to you. I don’t make decisions just for my benefit, I make them to safeguard the lot of you.” Dolly moved toward the three women. Shirley and Linda stepped slightly behind Bella for protection. “I know you all much, much better than you think,” Dolly continued. “Do you reckon, after a few drinks, Linda could keep her mouth shut about all that money if she knew where it was? Do you think Shirley might not be tempted to slip her mum a couple of hundred?” Dolly paused briefly to see if any of them would be brave enough to answer . . . they weren’t. “I’m not telling you where the money will be stashed because one slip of the tongue and we’ll not only have the law down on us, but every villain in London including the Fishers who, you may have noticed, have gone to ground. Boxer’s dead, Carlos was raided—that’s why the Fisher brothers are keeping their heads down. They’re scared, confused and they don’t know what’s going on. All they know is that it looks like someone might be out to get them and they don’t know who. They think it’s Harry—good.”
“Nice speech,” Bella said. “But this isn’t about trust. This is about knowing where the money is if anything happens to you.”
Dolly’s face was now red with anger and hurt. “You think I haven’t thought of that after all we’ve bloody well been through? I’ve left a letter with my solicitor for each of you in case I die. In the letters is what you’re so desperate to know.”
If they were surprised by Dolly’s mention of the letters, it also seemed a very convenient addition to the conversation. She could see the doubt in their eyes. “Believe me, don’t believe me,” Dolly said in a weary voice. “But do the robbery as planned.” As Dolly went to pick up her handbag, Shirley spoke.
“I believe you.”
Dolly pulled a glove on over her blistered finger and winced. She looked at Shirley and smiled. “Thank you, Shirley.” She headed for the door. Her steps were short and slow; she looked tired and old. “Run off with the money, eh?” Dolly laughed. “How would I spend a million on me own?”
Bella shrugged and grinned. “We got to get our hands on it first, darlin’.”
“You said it, Bella. And it’s up to you lot now if we do it or not. Let me know what you decide. Come on, Wolf.”
Wolf was curled up asleep on the office chair and didn’t hear Dolly’s command. Bella picked him up, caught up with Dolly and handed Wolf to her. “OK,” Bella said, looking Dolly in the eyes. “Everything stays as planned.”
Dolly moved slowly toward the exit, keen to get out before any of them saw how close she was to tears. She hadn’t really left any letters with a solicitor; she’d lied to get the girls to trust her. But she would write the letters now, just in case something did happen to her. She felt unappreciated and betrayed by Bella and Linda—and after all she had given them! She hugged her little dog for comfort and kissed his head. “Let’s go home, my little baby, let’s go home,” she whispered. As Dolly walked gingerly across the cobbles in the dark, Wolf looked back over her shoulder and gave a low grumble. Dolly glanced back and caught sight of a rat disappearing into one of the lock-ups. “Ssshhh, Wolf. It’s just a rat.” But Wolf’s eyes, like huge, dark saucers, were fixed on something else.
Ten minutes after Dolly left, Bella left. Then Linda and, lastly, Shirley. As Shirley buttoned up her coat, she realized that the big dog from next door hadn’t barked when the others left. She shrugged the thought off and, reaching the main door, turned the overhead strip lights off, ignoring the drip, drip of water echoing round the cavernous lock-up. She was about to open the door when she heard a noise, a sort of scuffle that sounded as if it was coming from outside. She listened closer, ear against the door, and started to shiver. She switched on her small torch and shone it round the dark lock-up.
Bill Grant pressed his face against the cold wall as he stared into the garage through the slits in the air bricks. The blonde seemed to stare straight at him. As the torch light moved toward him, he stepped back briefly in case his eyes glistened in the light beam. Once the beam had passed, Grant returned to his vantage point. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. “I could keep you safe in the dark, my darlin’. Nice and safe with me.”
Shirley finally braved opening the main door and stepped out into the darkness of the night. She paused, and once her eyes had adjusted, almost ran toward the main road.
“The last one’s just left,” Grant said, turning from his spyhole in the wall. He laughed, a chesty smoker’s laugh with a dirty undertone. He leaned against the wall, arms folded. “Who’d have thought it, eh? The chicks are really fuckin’ gonna do it.” Standing up from the wall, he brushed brick dust from his coat sleeve. His lock-up was identical to Dolly’s, but much dirtier, with lines of wrecked cars covered in dust and pigeon shit. A flashlight shone in Grant’s face and he held his hand to his eyes. “Do me a favor! You can turn the lights back on now they’ve gone.” The flashlight clicked off.
Harry Rawlins held the straining Alsatian by the scruff of the neck while he untied the rag that was wrapped round its jaws like a muzzle. The dog started barking and snarling, its long shiny white fangs dripping thick spittle. Harry suddenly let the dog go and it hurtled forward toward Grant, who jumped backward in fear. The chain round its neck ran out of slack inches from Grant, jerking the animal’s head back and stopping it in its tracks. Harry laughed.
“Fuckin’ hell!” Grant exclaimed. He was shaking. Harry looked like the animal now, his mouth open with a snarl and his teeth glistening as he sneered.
“She’s copying my plans virtually to the letter,” Harry said. “So she’ll be the only one who knows where the money’s stashed when the job’s done. That’s when we move, Bill. It’ll be like taking candy from a baby.”
Chapter 28
Linda waited nervously in Warrington Crescent within sight of the Colonnade Hotel, a small and elegant Victorian boutique premises in Maida Vale. It was early Tuesday morning just after sunrise and she was cold, even though she had on a thick red sweater and Puffa jacket.
North West London wasn’t Linda’s usual stomping ground; there was no one here who would recognize her or even notice her. For the past few weeks, she had visited the area on five different occa
sions. She’d spotted the Leyland laundry van on her second visit, established the regular drop-off at the Colonnade Hotel on her next two visits, and today was the big day.
Linda rarely got nervous about anything, but as she waited she kept wiping her sweaty palms on her trousers, and she could feel her heart beating out of her chest. She felt frightened but, more than that, she felt excited. Linda had never quite understood the glint in Joe’s eyes whenever he set out on a job—but now she did. She checked her watch: the Leyland van was now less than ten minutes away. She felt invincible. The driver had no idea she’d been watching, no idea she was watching now and no idea that he was about to lose his vehicle. Poor bastard, she thought to herself.
The driver of the Leyland laundry van pulled up outside the hotel side entrance, just as she had seen him do on the previous occasions. She watched as he carried out his normal routine, stacking baskets of clean laundry onto a trolley and taking them to the side entrance of the hotel. He whistled away without a care in the world as he rang the side doorbell and was let in. Linda had about three minutes to nick the van before he returned with the dirty laundry sacks.
Linda walked over to the van—not too quick, not too slow—and wished that Dolly could see her. Her meticulous planning, her precision timing—yes, Dolly would be impressed. She took a casual look round before jumping in the driver’s seat. Pulling a small screwdriver out of her jacket pocket, she rammed it into the ignition barrel and turned it to start the van. It wouldn’t budge. Linda didn’t panic: she knew what to do next. She’d seen Joe hotwire a car on numerous occasions to get them home after a night out. She’d done it herself three or four times. She pried open the ignition tumbler, ripped out the wires and twisted two together. Next, she pushed her foot on the accelerator a couple of times to inject petrol into the carburetor, then touched the other two wires together to activate the starter. As the engine started, she smiled to herself . . . just like old times.
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