by Lee Martin
Bring it on, she thought.
Inside the third bank she discovered the plan Eddie had told her about. It was printed out on A4 paper and neatly bound in clear plastic. Trust him, she thought. If he hadn’t turned to a life of crime he might have been a good pen-pusher.
When she left the bank the folder was under her arm, and the deposit drawer was empty.
She went back home, made herself a drink and sat down to read the book. But before she did, with the help of the instruction manual she worked out how to load the Glock’s magazine, although it cost her a slice out of one of her fingers, and how to work the trigger mounted safety catch. She loaded a shell in the chamber and put the gun, which was a lot heavier when loaded, on the table next to the sofa where she sat, feeling pleased with herself.
21
Whilst Sadie and Kate were otherwise engaged, Poppy and Niki had become firm friends. Previously, they’d never really chatted without Sadie and Kate being there, but a mutual addiction to nicotine had thrown them together often outside the Bailey whilst Eddie’s brief trial had been going on inside.
They had agreed to meet afterwards, even though Niki assumed Connie would object, and told Poppy so. But Eddie’s incarceration seemed to be weighing on his mind, and he just dismissed her with a grunted ‘whatever’ when she told him, which she took for a yes.
The two women’s homes were equal distance from Canary Wharf, so they started to get together there and spend their days window-shopping. Poppy spent Joseph’s money prolifically, and couldn’t understand why Niki was on such a tight budget. ‘Connie doesn’t like me having my own money,’ Niki explained on their second meeting over coffee in one of the many little restaurants inside the wharf.
‘Why not?’ asked Poppy.
Niki shrugged, a uniquely Russian shrug that said a lot without words. ‘He’s worried I might run away I suppose. He bought and paid for me.’
‘That’s disgusting. It would serve him right if you did, tight arse.’
Niki laughed. ‘Tight arse,’ she said. ‘I like that.’
‘Joe doesn’t care what I spend,’ said Poppy. ‘Doesn’t care much about what I do these days.’
‘Why not?’
Poppy told Niki about her impossibility of conceiving and about Joseph’s baby mother and child.
‘And you put up with it?’ asked Niki.
‘You put up with Connie.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I’d like to kill that bitch, and her bastard, and Joseph for that matter,’ said Poppy, the bitterness inside her spilling out like bile.
‘And I dream of Connie being dead,’ said Niki. ‘A life of my own…’
‘But it’ll never happen,’ said Poppy.
‘I could kill Joseph,’ said Niki.
‘You,’ said Poppy, laughing. ‘You’re just a little slip of a girl. I’ve seen Joe take three or four men on. And win.’
It was Niki’s turn to laugh as she shared her story of the three thugs she’d taken on in Millwall Park.
‘You’re kidding,’ said Poppy. ‘You do martial arts?’
‘My daddy and grandpapa taught me well. They were soldiers. Russian soldiers. The best in the world. Cossacks. Wild men. Grandpapa was at Stalingrad. You know about Stalingrad?’
Poppy shook her head.
‘It was a famous battle in the Second World War.’
‘I didn’t go to school much,’ said Poppy. ‘I’m ashamed about the things I don’t know. Tell me.’
Niki explained about the long, cold battle for the city, that defeated Hitler’s mighty army, and helped win the Second World War for the Allies.
‘They were starving,’ said Niki. ‘Inside the city. They ate the dead when the rations ran out. Can you imagine that?’
Poppy shook her head in disgust.
‘But my grandpapa killed a hundred Germans. He was a shooter. A sniper. He taught me to use weapons. But he also taught me to kill silently using just my hands and feet.’
‘Christ,’ said Poppy. ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’
Niki smiled. ‘None of your business.’
‘You have. Jesus.’
‘Jesus had nothing to do with it.’
‘So tell me.’
‘Two men tried to rape me,’ said Niki. ‘Back home. I was sixteen. They drove the roads where I lived, and found women alone. Any woman, any age. It was a famous case, but the police were useless.’
‘Most police are,’ said Poppy.
Niki nodded agreement. ‘One afternoon I was walking home from school, when they found me. They were strong. They hit me from behind and I woke up in the back of their car. I heard them talking, and knew they were the men who had been doing those terrible things.’
‘Weren’t you scared?’ asked Poppy.
‘Terrified. But I knew terror was… How do you say it. Not productive.’
Poppy nodded, engrossed in the story.
‘They drove into the woods near my home. It is a terrible place. Dark and cold. No one goes there. It’s like a forest in a fairy story where the bad fairies live.’
Poppy was mesmerised.
‘They dragged me out of the car, and one held me down whilst the other dropped his pants. He pushed up my skirt, and was going to pull down my underwear when I kicked him in his balls. He screamed like a girl, and the other one let me go and pulled out a knife. I didn’t tell you, but the other women were all stabbed and killed. Stabbed in their privates. A terrible thing.’
Poppy remained silent as the business of the Wharf went on around them.
‘I like knives,’ said Niki. ‘Grandad had a collection. I took the knife off the man easily. You see he couldn’t believe a young girl in school uniform could hurt him. He must have thought the kick I gave his friend was just luck. Anyway, I took the knife out of his hand like taking a lollipop from a child. Then I stabbed him. In the heart. He was dead as he fell.’
‘What about his friend?’ Poppy could hardly catch her breath.
‘I cut off his cock and put it in his mouth. I left them both there and walked home. It wasn’t far. Months later some woodcutters found them. It was in the papers.’
‘What about the knife?’ asked Poppy.
‘It’s at home,’ said Niki. ‘I brought it with me from Russia. I smuggled it here, and one day I will cut Connie’s cock off too and stuff it in his mouth, just like that bastard who tried to rape me. Do you want me to go?’
‘Why?’ asked Poppy.
‘Because.’
‘No love,’ interrupted Poppy. ‘I feel safer with you around.’
22
The plan that Eddie had prepared was a blueprint for the perfect crime. That night, as Sadie sat in her lonely house, the only light came from an angle-poise lamp next to her, illuminating the dull sheen of the loaded pistol on the table below. She read the book twice. Once, quickly, to get the gist of the robbery, and then again slowly, absorbing all the details.
The plan was simple: Every month, regular as clockwork, an armoured truck left the headquarters of one of the major banks stuffed with worn out bank notes due to be incinerated at a furnace in Kent. Well, not quite clockwork. More as irregular as a Rolex manufactured in Taiwan. The cargo went on different days of the month. Different times. Different routes. Even different amounts of money. Sometimes as much as thirty-million quid, sometimes as little as ten. But one thing was certain. The notes had to be destroyed as they simply took up too much room at the bank. And nothing else but burning would do. That was the Treasury rules. No shredding, no pulping. The money, and more importantly, the special paper it was printed on, had to be destroyed. The first problem for anyone wanting to have a pop at this prize was finding out how much was going to be on board. If an attempt at a hijack was going to be made, it had better be a bumper bundle. Next, when exactly that particular truck was going to be on the move. They were all identical. Based on the chassis of a long wheel base Ford Transit, the bodies were steel lined, and the driver and his mat
e had no way of opening the rear doors. The third problem was the crew. That was vital, because Eddie needed someone on board who could be forced, by hook or by crook to work with the gang. Someone with a family, which Eddie intended to take hostage on the day of the robbery. Very risky. But it had been done before. The fourth was the actual route. And finally, what to do with a truckload of filthy dirty cash once you’d got hold of it. Even though the notes were thin and worn, that much cash wouldn’t go into a suitcase.
Eddie had the answers to all of these dilemmas. Somehow, he’d got an inside man. He called him Deep Throat, after the Watergate whistle blower. Sadie had no idea Eddie had such a sense of humour. No actual name for the inside man was mentioned. Sadie guessed that by coercion, bribery, threat, or possibly all three, Eddie could find out the details of the drop. Next, a friend of a friend as Eddie called him, once again nameless, would take the cash at fifty pence to the pound no questions asked, with transport to be supplied by the purchaser.
There were just a few other snags. All the bank’s trucks were fitted with the latest state-of-the-art satellite tracking system, and of course sophisticated communication between the vehicle and base. So anyone on the rob had to get inside the thing and disable all comms. That was why Eddie needed an unwilling accomplice on board.
Blimey, thought Sadie, not easy. But quite a coup if someone could get away with it.
The actual rip off was simplicity itself. When the route was known, which would be the day before, two JCB heavy-duty mobile earth moving shovels would trap the money truck front and back, the crew would be removed from the vehicle and one JCB would smash open the rear doors. The money that had been counted and bagged up at the bank, then put into cages would be removed and transferred to the gang’s truck, the JCBs would be torched on site, and everyone would be a great deal richer.
End of story.
It was an audacious plan. If it worked it would net a lot of money, and if it failed… Well, nothing was perfect.
Sadie put down the book that Eddie had so carefully prepared. It was a four man job, and Sadie knew exactly who would be involved. But who would be the fourth man, now Eddie was banged up tight?
Right chaps, she thought. Time for a meet I think.
The next day she got in touch with Connie and told him they needed to get together, but gave no details.
He grudgingly agreed, as if Sadie was on the borrow, which in a way she was. She wanted the robbery to go ahead, succeed, and get Eddie’s cut as the architect.
But first she wanted to test out the gun she’d taken from the safety deposit at the bank. She didn’t know when she might need it.
23
The next morning, after a breakfast of bio-yoghurt, muesli with strawberries and coffee, Sadie loaded the other magazine she’d taken from the second bank deposit drawer with its fifteen 9mm bullets. Retrieving the already loaded Glock from its hiding place, she wrapped both guns in an old sweater and stashed them under the spare wheel in her 4WD Mercedes.
She drove down to Epping, into the forest where she and Eddie had done some courting, which was a euphemism for some hot and heavy sex in the back of the Jaguar he’d owned at the time. She drove off road until she was deep in the woods, far away, she hoped from prying eyes and ears.
She opened the back of her SUV and took out the gun and spare ammunition clip. Just holding it turned her insides to water. It was all very well reading the instructions, but she had never held a gun in her life before, and although it was a lightweight piece, it still felt hot and heavy in her trembling, sweaty hands.
She looked round for a target. There was a lightning struck tree about fifteen metres away, its blackened trunk strangely looking like the shape of a man, and it would do.
Here goes, she thought gripping the pistol in both hands like they did in the films, and she squeezed the safety, and pulled the trigger. The noise of the shot seemed massive in the quiet woods, and the gun kicked, and she almost dropped the thing as the bullet went God knows where.
‘Fuck,’ she said aloud, in a voice she hardly recognised through the ringing in her ears. ‘That was no bloody good.’
She relaxed her grip slightly and fired again, and a strip of wood sprang from the very edge of the tree. She smiled and fired again, then once more, as she grew more confident. When the gun was empty she went and looked at the trunk of the tree. She counted eight hits out of the fifteen rounds she’d fired, and thought that was pretty good for a beginner. She dropped out the empty magazine, inserted the spare, slapped it home, depressed the lever at the side, and the action clicked home. She put a bullet in the chamber, but decided she’d been in the clearing too long, and made enough noise to wake the dead, so it was time to split. She stored the Glock and the empty magazine away again and drove home. She saw no one, coming or going.
She’d arranged to meet Connie that afternoon, and arrived on time at his house on the Island. He was alone. ‘Niki’s out with her mate Poppy,’ he growled. ‘Those two are always together these days.’
‘You don’t approve?’ asked Sadie.
‘Couldn’t give a fuck really,’ Connie replied. ‘As long as she’s home in time to make my tea.’
Nice, thought Sadie. ‘Look Connie I’ll come straight to the point. Eddie’s told me about this job you lot are going to do.’
‘What job?’ Connie interrupted.
‘The bank truck. Old cash.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I think you do.’
‘Not women’s business.’
‘It’s this woman’s business. I’m skint, Connie. Going under. I need money.’
Connie shrugged. ‘You’ve had a pot, the pair of you over the years. If it’s all gone it’s not my problem.’
Sadie could hardly believe her ears. ‘What’s the matter with you Connie?’ Sadie demanded. ‘You’re mates. The old firm.’
‘Eddie’s away. The old firm don’t exist no more.’
‘And if he’d talked to the law, so would you be.’
‘He’ll be looked after.’
‘So you do know about the job?’
‘Maybe.’
‘And?’
‘And we’ll do it, when we’re ready.’
‘When Deep Throat gives you the word.’
‘Deep Throat,’ Connie mocked. ‘Whose bright idea was that?’
‘Do you know who he is?’
‘Course I do.’
‘Who?’
He touched the side of his nose. ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you.’
‘And what will Eddie’s cut be?’
‘Whatever we give him. He always was too flash, your Eddie.’
Sadie felt like getting the gun she had in her car and putting one in Connie’s head, but she kept calm. ‘What happens when I tell Eddie what you’ve said?’
‘Tell him. See if I care. We’ll do the bizzo when we’re good and ready, and you’ll get what’s his. What’s the fucking problem?’
‘I don’t like your attitude.’
‘Get over it.’
‘I never thought it would come to this Connie.’
‘But it has. Now if that’s all, I’ve got things to do.’
Sadie left the house and sat in her car looking at Connie’s front door. ‘Right,’ she said aloud. ‘If that’s the way it’s going to be. Bring it on.’
24
Eddie gave Sadie a ring most days when his phone card was in credit. She’d already told him she’d done what he’d told her at her last visit, without giving any details. Walls have ears, and so do pay phones in the nick. ‘Gotta see you,’ she said. ‘Urgent.’
‘What’s rattled your cage?’ he asked.
‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’
‘OK, I’ll get a VO sorted,’ he said. ‘You’re OK though?’
‘I’m all right, it’s the rest of the world’s what’s fucked.’
‘See you soon,’ he said, and hung up.
She
got a visitor’s order for the day after next, and could hardly contain her impatience as she remembered Connie’s attitude, and the bills kept piling up.
She was first in line for the visit, and when Eddie joined her at the table, he said, ‘Where’s the fire?’
‘Listen,’ she said in a stage whisper. ‘Your mates have gone off the reservation.’
‘Not so fast,’ he interrupted. ‘You checked the boxes?’
‘Yes. I told you.’
‘Everything I said. Was there, I mean?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So, go see the boys and tell them you speak on my behalf.’
‘I already did.’
‘That was quick. Who?’ he asked.
‘Connie.’
Eddie nodded approval. ‘And?’
‘More or less told me to fuck off.’
‘You know Connie,’ said Eddie. ‘He’s old school. Don’t believe that women should be in the loop.’
‘Eddie,’ said Sadie, ‘he said the old firm’s dead and buried. You’re in here. They’re going to do the job and throw a few crumbs our way.’
‘I bet he never meant that. You got the wrong end of the stick.’
‘Did I bollocks. He had me out of the house so fast my bum nearly caught fire.’
‘Sounds like Connie.’
‘What? Is that it? Sounds like fucking Connie. Are you having a laugh?’
‘Keep your voice down, love,’ said Eddie. ‘You’ll frighten the screws.’
‘Christ,’ said Sadie. ‘I expected more than this from you. Are you going stir soft?’
Eddie shrugged. ‘What can I say?’
‘You can say that little bastard did the mail van with you, and end up sharing a cell.’
‘Can’t do it love. It’s against the code.’
‘Fuck the code.’
‘I don’t grass,’ said Eddie. ‘Whatever happens.’
