He started the engine, feeling sick. He didn’t know how to handle her or what to say. He really thought she cared for him but, then, she’d ditched him the other day. ‘Why have you led me on?’ he asked softly.
She slipped her arm around his big, wide shoulders, massaging the nape of his neck. ‘I’m just not ready to get serious about anyone, not yet.’
He shrugged her hand away. ‘Not as if you were any spring chicken. How old are you, anyway? You carry on like this and no decent man’ll want you.’
Connie felt as if he had punched her, harder than anything Lennie had ever given her. ‘I’m twenty-nine.’
‘Well, you got a good figure but I don’t think you can count, sweetheart. You’re not twenty-nine, I am.’
She didn’t know what to say. She just felt the tears welling up, trickling down her cheeks. She was thirty-five but he made her feel as if she was old and worn out. He had hurt her deeply and she was incapable of even trying to come on to him. She snuffled as the van turned into the lane by the manor.
‘Just drop me here,’ she said quietly.
He stopped the van sharply, then leaned across her to open the door for her.
‘Jim asked me to marry him,’ she said as she climbed out.
‘Well, he’s a sucker. He can have you and I won’t rat on him. With you he’s gonna need every penny he can make unless you do more of those films you told me about.’
She slammed the door shut hard and teetered off along the uneven road in her stilettos. John watched her perfect arse as she sashayed along, her perfect figure and her curly blonde hair. Then he drove on, wondering whether or not he could make it up with his girlfriend. Maybe he should even ask her to marry him, she was a decent girl. Connie was trash, he’d sort of always known it, and sometimes it takes a Connie to make you come to your senses.
Julia passed him as she returned to the manor, not realizing he had given Connie a lift back. She turned into the drive and pulled up alongside Connie, winding down the window. ‘I was sent out to see if you needed any assistance.’
‘I obviously didn’t,’ snapped Connie, and continued towards the front door. She watched Julia head round to the stables before she let herself in, and ran up the stairs. She couldn’t face any of them but Dolly caught her halfway. ‘Eh! You get the alarm codes? You set them off, didn’t you?’
Connie sniffed, refusing to turn back to her. ‘Yes, I got them, but right now I want to be alone.’
‘Right now, Connie love, we discuss it. Come down here.’
‘Just stop telling me what to do, I done what you wanted, now leave me alone.’ She went on up the stairs. Dolly looked at her watch and then back to the drawing room. She was tired herself but she had to make sure Mike wasn’t setting them up. She felt it was all falling apart and it seemed, at times, that she was the only adult amongst them. She didn’t feel like their mother in any way but she was beginning to think she should call it all off, get rid of the lot of them. She smiled then: she’d got the perfect place, she could push each one of them into the lime pit.
Connie sat in front of her dressing table mirror, studying her face. Why had John said she looked old? ‘Maybe because you are old,’ she whispered, and then twisted her neck, pouting her heroine’s smile. ‘Gonna be rich, though, and then you’ll be young and beautiful, and...’ She stared at herself and for the first time knew she would go through with any robbery Dolly Rawlins had in mind. Rising out of her beloved Marilyn was a Connie that rarely appeared, the other side that she hid away, the angry, bitter, tough little Liverpool tart that’d give any lad a backhander, just like her dad gave her, like every man seemed to think he could dole out to her. She’d taken the punches, taken the shit, seemed like all her life she’d taken the easy way out, and she wasn’t going to take any more. She pouted and then let her wide sexy lips close into a tight line. ‘Fuck you, Marilyn Monroe...’
Connie breathed on the mirror and, with the tip of her finger, traced the numbers Jim had called to contact the police station. All he’d said was that it was a false alarm. This was valuable information; now Dolly had the code for the alarm. Connie beamed: she wasn’t as dumb as they all made out, but, as the numbers faded in the mirror, she began to panic, searching for something to write them down. She found her black eyebrow pencil and a piece of tissue, then closed her eves, replaying in her mind the moment Jim, in his panic, punched in the numbers. She might be no good with words, for reading and the like, but she’d always been able to count. No punter ever short-changed tough little Connie Stephens by a penny.
When Dolly appeared, she asked her twice if she was sure she had the right code, staring at the tissue with the childish figures.
‘Yeah, those are the numbers. If the alarm goes off, we call that number.’
Dolly gave that odd smile. ‘You did good, darlin’, very good.’
Connie preened but there was no further praise as Dolly left the room, folding the tissue into her pocket.
She was pleased; it meant that the signal box telephone wires had to be beneath the hut and if all Jim had used was a telephone, all she had to do was cut the wires because the alarm would also be connected to the central box.
Dolly went out alone later that night. She used a map-reading torch, inching her way beneath the signal box, to check for herself. And, sure enough, in the area marked ‘No Admittance’, was a large, secure, BT fixture, similar to those in residential areas, the ones an engineer sits by with hundreds of tiny wires, and you pass him by wondering what the hell he is doing. Dolly could just make out that she would need some kind of sledgehammer to prise it open. It didn’t matter which wire belonged to which telephone; she’d simply hatchet her way through the lot of them.
Dolly enjoyed the walk back to the house in the darkness. The air smelt good and clean, a light rain had fallen, the ground sparkled in the moonlight, and her expression wasn’t the usual taut grimace but a sweet soft smile as he talked to her in that low soft voice.
‘Check everything out for yourself. Never leave anything to chance or to anyone else. Remember, Doll, look out for yourself.’ Dolly stopped and his voice died. It was strange, as if she knew she would never hear it again, because a new thought began to dawn. What if it had been her voice that Harry had listened to. It had been Dolly who had quietly put him in the right direction. She had never been given the credit by him and had never acknowledged how much he had listened to her. Perhaps not until it was too late. But by then she had been betrayed and he had forgotten his own warnings. He could never have anticipated that she would kill him.
Chapter 16
Mike had a few beers with Colin. He’d called him to say that the prearranged dinner would have to be on another night as there were problems at work; some of his mates had got flu so he was doing extra night shifts.
They talked for a while about the army but then Colin switched the subject to Mike possibly being taken on at his company.
‘Yeah, well, you know, Colin, I’ve been thinking about it, but it sounds like it’d bore the pants off me. I’m not into schleppin’ around in a security wagon all day with a few drops here and there.’
Colin downed his pint. ‘You got it wrong, Mike, this isn’t that kind of company. Like I told you, we handle the big stuff.’ He leaned in and lowered his voice. ‘We deliver the sacks to the mail trains. Ever since they had the big robberies at the main stations, we were brought in. You know about them?’
Mike drank some beer. ‘Nah, they’d be handled by the Robbery Squad, special division, well, if it’s a big one.’
Colin stood up, buttoning his jacket. ‘Well, if anyone hit what we’re carrying it’d be the biggest in history.’