She's Out

by Lynda La Plante

  “Good.” Dolly said it like a schoolteacher satisfied with her pupils. “Goodnight, then.”

  No one could sleep that night. The job was for real and they had only two days to go. Toilets could be heard flushing throughout the night as their nerves hit their bladders. Only Dolly’s room remained still and dark as she slept a deep, dreamless sleep, knowing the last piece of the jigsaw was in place. Her only worry was that it might have come too late.

  Angela dished up breakfast, aware of the uneasy silence round the table. She put it down to them having had an argument about something, but none of them felt like talking now. She was cutting up toast soldiers for the little girls to dip in their eggs and told Sheena off for using her sleeve instead of the napkin to wipe her mouth. The others could hardly wait for Angela and the children to go on their morning ramble, eager to be left alone to discuss the robbery, but Dolly seemed more intent on making sure they had their wellington boots on, along with thick scarves and hats, before she waved them out of the back door.

  As it closed, they all started talking at once, but Dolly ignored them and walked out into the hall. “I need Gloria and Connie this morning.”

  Ester threw down a half-eaten piece of toast. “That’s it? Don’t you think we should fucking talk about this?”

  Dolly returned and stood, granite-faced, in the doorway.

  “No, love. You’ve got your jobs. The last part is to do with Connie and Gloria, nothing to do with you. When that’s done, we’ll have a meet later this afternoon after the ride.” Dolly left the room.

  Ester glowered at Julia. “Christ, I’d like to throttle her.”

  “Feeling’s mutual,” came the reply from Dolly in the hall.

  Gloria looked at the kit bag as Dolly unzipped it. “Now, you don’t need much and the most important thing is to know exactly where it’s got to go. I’ve got the instructions . . .”

  Connie felt her knees go and she slumped on the sofa. Her mouth was dry. “I feel a bit faint. I think it’s just the time of the month.”

  Gloria paid her no attention. She was studying the diagrams and then the kit bag. “I never handled nothin’ like this, you know, Dolly.”

  “Well, you’ll have to practice, then.”

  Gloria goggled. “Where do I do that, for Chrissakes?”

  Dolly waved her hands. “We got acres of space, Gloria.”

  “Who gave you this?” Gloria asked.

  “Mind your own business.”

  “Well, it is my fucking business because we’re dependent on him or her knowing what they’re doing for starters. I’m not playing with Lego here, you know. This is high explosives.”

  Connie had tried to stand up but then fell back again. She looked as if she was about to pass out.

  Dolly felt her head. “You’re not runnin’ a temperature, are you?”

  Gloria picked up the bag and looked at Connie. “I know what it is. It’s called shittin’ yourself with nerves. You watch her, Doll, she’s a liability.”

  Connie struggled up. “No I’m not, you leave me alone. It’s my period, I always feel like this.”

  Dolly gestured for Connie to come closer. She had a small, high-voltage generator on the floor. “Right, love. You get this over to the little landing-stage on the lake. I’ll get one of the others to carry it with you and then we got to get the light fixed up and hidden.”

  Connie’s face was ashen. “But do you think it’s a good i-i-idea for us to be lit up? Anyone will be able to see it for miles around and—”

  Dolly smiled. “Don’t worry, we’re not gonna be doing a cabaret act, Connie.”

  Ester moved closer to Julia as they stacked the bags for the horses’ hoofs. She pulled away bales of straw to reveal big leather saddlebags they were going to string across the animals’ flanks. She tested one. “I hope these’ll hold the weight.”

  There was a loud boom! followed by the sound of breaking glass. Both women froze and Ester peered nervously out of the stable door. “What the fuck was that?”

  A second boom shook the stables and Ester rushed out. Julia strode after her in a fury, almost knocking her aside. “I told her not to do it close to the bloody stables.”

  Ester looked back at Helen of Troy. She hadn’t flinched—unlike the pair of them.

  Gloria picked herself up. The old greenhouse had been completely destroyed, leaving nothing but a gaping hole in the ground. She was covered in soil and other debris, shakily holding the dustbin lid she had used as a shield.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Julia screamed.

  “I got to fucking practice, haven’t I?”

  “Not inside a greenhouse, you idiot. Look at the glass it’s showered everywhere. You stupid bitch! You could have made the horse bolt—and you could have killed yourself.”

  Gloria dusted herself down. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “You could have fooled me,” Ester shouted, keeping her distance. “Just go and blow something up further away from the house.”

  Dolly appeared to inspect the damage. “How much did you use?”

  “Not that much,” said Gloria. She looked ruefully at Dolly. “Sorry.”

  Dolly opened her notebook. “Julia reckons we’ll need it at this point of the bridge, here and here.”

  Gloria looked at Dolly’s tight, neat writing. “Yeah. We been over it day in, day out. That’s the best spot, train moving slowly so it’ll get the full impact.”

  “Just don’t blow the carriage up, Gloria. You do that, the money will be blown to smithereens, too. More important, there are three guards inside that carriage, and I don’t want anyone getting hurt unnecessarily.”

  Gloria nodded. “I’ll have another go.”

  Connie and Julia rowed across the lake, the boat low in the water with the weight of the lamp, the cables and the battery-operated generator. Julia did most of the rowing as Connie still felt faint and couldn’t stop shaking. They dragged the boat alongside the jetty and then began to move the equipment, keeping an eye open for anyone who might observe them. Julia wore leather gloves and told Connie off because she hadn’t put hers on. They then dusted the lamp down just in case she had left her fingerprints on it, and stashed the gear in the bushes, with the petrol, before heading back to the opposite shore, Julia rowing again as Connie trained the binoculars on the bridge.

  Susan and the kids left London the next day. It was Wednesday, and, alone in the house, Mike began to wonder if he really was going to do it the next day, if his nerve would hold. But he knew there was no backing out now and took three or four mouthfuls from a bottle of vodka to calm himself down. He had to sell his car and then rent one—there was a lot to get organized and focusing on the details stopped him thinking too hard about just what he had got himself into.

  The phone rang, making him jump.

  “Hello, love, it’s me,” Dolly said softly. “The wife and kids gone, have they?”

  “Yeah, this morning.”

  “Good. Angela will be at your place Thursday with the girls.”

  “What?” He sounded like his wife.

  “Two reasons, love. One, you got a nice alibi, just in case you’re ever questioned. She’ll be there all night and will say you was with her. Might cause a bit of aggro with your wife but if nothing untoward happens she won’t know, will she?”

  “And the second reason?”

  “Because I don’t want her and the kids around when it goes down. Like I said, she’s not involved in this. Friday she’ll get the first train back here. You just go straight to the airport. All right, love?”

  His voice was even hoarser. “Yes.”

  There was a long pause. “Well, you keep out of sight and get on with your business. Goodbye.”

  “Norma home, is she?” Dolly asked casually as they drove back from their riding lesson.

  “You know she isn’t,” Julia said flatly.

  “Just checking. You got her keys still?”

  Julia sighed. “You know I have. We�
�ve been over and over it, Dolly.”

  Ester leaned forward from the back seat. She looked at Dolly and then Julia. “I don’t trust that Norma.”

  Dolly paused at the level crossing as the gates closed. “We don’t have to trust her, Ester, just use her. What do you think her friends at the nick would say if they found out not only that she was a big dyke but she was slobbering all over a—”

  “Shut up,” Julia said.

  “Yeah, leave it out, Dolly.” It was Ester now, as she saw Julia’s back go rigid.

  “No, you leave it out,” Dolly said, her mouth a tight thin line. “We need Norma. We got to use her place to stash the money, like we used her to get the cop’s hat and cape. It’s the only place close enough to us the cops are unlikely to search.”

  Ester gave Julia’s shoulder a squeeze. It was funny, really, Julia being decent enough not to want to involve Norma, and yet prepared to play a major part in the robbery. It really didn’t add up. Ester felt more love toward her in that moment than she had for a long time, and she liked it when Julia pressed herself closer, their bodies touching in an unspoken message.

  Dolly’s beady eyes missed nothing. It was good, she thought, the pair of them backing each other up, because, come Thursday night, she reckoned Julia would need something to stiffen her nerves, maybe even a snort or two.

  Julia fed Helen of Troy, and checked on the sacking and bags for the umpteenth time that day. When she came back, Dolly was standing at the kitchen door, throwing half-eaten sandwiches out for the birds.

  “You’re something else, you know that, Dolly Rawlins?”

  Dolly brushed the crumbs from her hands and then stared at them, palms upward. They were steady and she smiled. “My husband used to say that, only he always called me Doll. Funny, I hated being called that but I used to let him, nobody else.”

  “Gloria sometimes calls you Doll, doesn’t she?”

  Dolly looked up into Julia’s face. She was a handsome woman and it was as if only now it struck her just how good-looking she really was. “Being in prison I got called a lot of things. Got to the point I didn’t really care anymore, but I used to, in the old days.”

  “Prison tough for you?” Julia asked casually.

  Dolly hesitated a moment and then folded her arms. “You know, I reckon there were only a few really criminal-minded women in there. Most of them were inside for petty stuff, kiting, fraud, theft, nothing big, nothing that on the outside a few quid wouldn’t have put right. Everything comes down to money in the end. The rest were poor cows put inside by men, men they’d done something for.”

  “That doesn’t include me,” Julia said softly.

  “You were a junkie. That’s what put you inside.”

  “No, Dolly, I put myself inside.”

  Dolly nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe your guilt put you in there. You tellin’ me you really needed to flog prescriptions? I reckon part of you wanted to be caught. I mean, you take how many years to qualify? Doctors when I was a kid were respected, like royalty. My mum was dying on her feet but she got up, made sure the house was clean before the doctor came.”

  Julia took out her tobacco stash. She began to roll a cigarette, thinking that she had never, in all the weeks she had been living with Dolly, actually talked this way with her.

  “Eight years is a long time inside that place, Julia. Maybe I met only four or five women that deserved to be locked up. The rest weren’t really criminals before they went in, but they were when they came out. They were made criminals by the system—humiliated, degraded and, I don’t know, defemalized.” Is that a word?

  Julia said nothing, carried on rolling her cigarette while Dolly continued in a low unemotional voice.

  “The few that were able to take advantage of the education sessions might have gone out with more than what they come in with but most of them were of below average intelligence, lot of girls couldn’t read or write, some of them didn’t even speak English. Lot of blacks copped with drugs on ’em. They was all herded in together.”

  Julia licked the cigarette paper. She found it interesting. The more Dolly talked, the more fascinated she became by her. The woman they all listened to, at times were even a little afraid of, Julia guessed was poorly educated, maybe even self-taught. This was highlighted by her poor vocabulary and her East End accent, which became thicker as she tried to express herself.

  Julia struck a match and lit her cigarette, puffing at it and then spitting out bits of tobacco. “Out of all of us here, who would you say was a proper criminal?”

  Dolly reached out and took Julia’s cigarette, taking a couple of deep drags. “You want the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ester was first sent down at seventeen. She’s spent how many years in and out of nick—a lot, right? But as much as I don’t like her, I know there’s a shell around her. Dig deep and you’ll just find a fucked-up kid that stopped crying because there was never anybody there to mop up her tears.”

  Julia was surprised. She took back her cigarette and sat on the step. “What about Gloria?”

  “Well, she’s been in and out like Ester and, on the surface, you could say she’s a criminal or been made one by her sick choice of men. But again there’s pain behind that brassy exterior, lot of hurt. She’s borne two kids and given them away—you never get over that. You, Julia, have got all this anger inside you, self-hate, and hate for your mother.”

  Julia leaned against the doorframe, wanting to change the subject now, but Dolly continued in the same flat voice. “Connie’s the same. Few years on she’ll be another Gloria but she’s not as bright. Some man will still screw her up—it’s printed on her forehead. But, you know, we all got one thing in common.”

  Dolly gave that cold smile and Julia lifted her eyebrows skeptically. “Come on, Dolly, you tell me what I’ve got in common with Connie.”

  “Defemalized, Julia. Not one of you could settle down and lead a normal life. Prison done that, it’s wrenched it from our bellies.”

  Julia chuckled. “That’s a bit dramatic. Speaking for myself, and being gay, I’m not and never was—”

  “You’re still a woman, Julia, no matter who you screw. We’re outcasts—that’s what they done to us, made us outcasts of society.”

  “But do we have to be? If every woman in our situation turned—”

  “Bad?” Dolly interrupted, and her arms were stiff at her sides. Her voice was angry now. “They didn’t give me a chance to be good, did they?”

  Dolly’s eyes were so hard and cruel, Julia stepped back, shocked.

  “I reckoned there were only five real criminals in the nick with me. Well, I was number six.”

  “I don’t believe you, Dolly. You had dreams of opening this place, of doing good, fostering kids.”

  Dolly smiled, this time with warmth, her eyes soft. “And with my cut of forty million quid, that’s what I’m going to do. I can go down Waterloo Bridge, pick them off the street and bring them back. I won’t need any social services, I won’t need anyone telling me what I can and can’t do because with money you can do anything. That’s all it takes, Julia. Money, money, money.”

  Julia grinned. “Well, let’s hope we pull it off, then.”

  “Oh, we’ll do it, Julia. It’s afterward we’re going to have to worry about because we’re gonna be hit, and hit hard. We foul up one little bit and we will go down. Every cop for miles will be round here, we’ll be searched and the house taken apart. We’ll be questioned and re-questioned, they’ll rip the grounds up . . . They’ll never leave us alone, for weeks, maybe months.”

  “If we pull it off,” Julia said quietly, and Dolly guffawed, a loud single bellow.

  “If we don’t, we don’t. But if we do, every single one of us can go for what we want, do what we want, be what we want.”

  Julia’s heart began to thud in her chest. Dolly’s face was radiant with unabashed excitement. “I’m not scared, Julia, not for one second. I’m feeling alive for the first
time since I killed him.” She lifted both her arms skyward and tilted back her head, like an opera star acknowledging the adulation of a packed house of applauding fans. Julia could see the pulse at the side of her neck beating and felt suddenly terrified that Dolly Rawlins was insane. As if Dolly read her mind, she lowered her arms and chuckled. “When we’ve got our hands on forty million quid—then you won’t think I’m so mad.”

  Chapter 19

  Angela arrived at Mike’s home with the children at three o’clock, blithely unaware of the drama that was to take place that evening. Mike opened the door, immediately handing her the keys, saying he had to leave but would be back that evening. He didn’t touch her, even when she tried to reach for his hand. “Just settle the kids in, I’ll be back later.”

  She closed the front door, and went straight to the wall socket receiver as Dolly had instructed her. The girls were already playing with Mike’s sons’ toys and Angela had a good nose around before she started to cook spaghetti for them. They had been scared of moving to yet another home but felt better when they all called Dolly and said hello to her and were told they would see her the following day.

  Mike headed for the manor in a hired car. He had plenty of time so he drove carefully, making sure never to exceed the speed limit. The last thing he wanted was anyone to remember him so he didn’t even stop at a petrol station.

  The women checked and double-checked everything on their lists. Julia went over the cladding and the bags, and the big machine for clearing up leaves. She tested the engine, the suction hose and the long trail of flex ending at the socket in the stables. The machine would be used to hoover up the money and they had already tested it to be certain that the suction was strong enough. Julia then went on to check the lime pit. It was ready for the mailbags to be hurled into; the lime would eat away at the thick canvas, and again it had been tried and tested. The corrugated-iron slats were standing by in position, the builder’s skip was in place and already attached to the truck so it could be towed across the pit opening.