She stayed in the kitchen, smoking until the thin reed of a cigarette was down to nothing but a tiny scrap of sodden paper. She then chucked it into the sink and walked out. She needed a line; she was feeling so high and she wanted to get even higher. In the dark old stable, with Helen’s heavy snorting breath, Julia laid out her lines and snorted each one, and then she licked the tiny mirror and started to laugh.
‘Oh, man, if my mother could see me now!’
Chapter 18
Julia urged Helen of Troy forward. She scouted the area at length but there was no one in sight. They had arranged to have a ride before the stables opened for business, on the condition that Julia led them. It was not the first time that Sandy had allowed the women to ride solo with Julia, and none of them wanted her to see how accomplished they were becoming. They had their ride at six in the morning and after every lesson they returned the horses to the stable yard.
Julia and Helen of Troy continued checking the area. Their breath hung in the cold air, and not until Julia was truly satisfied that it was all clear did she lift her hand with the stopwatch as a signal to the waiting Ester, who then relayed it to the others.
The women pushed their horses forward until they formed a line over the brow of a hill, waiting for Julia to join them. Not until she was alongside, stopwatch at the ready, did she give the ‘go’ signal, and they all set off at a gallop. It was not a race against each other but against the stopwatch. Each rider had her own specific job to rehearse and accomplish. They jumped the hedges, split up, paced their positions, reformed and started again. Eight times they timed the ride until exhaustion took over, especially with Dolly. She was gasping and heaving for breath as Julia monitored each one, shouting instructions and orders until it was too dangerous to continue in case they were seen.
The horses were stabled and the women drove back to the manor. Julia was waiting with the stopwatch. They were still out of breath, faces flushed, shirts dripping with sweat. Julia ticked off Connie for not being in her position on time and angrily told Gloria and Ester she had seen both of them almost come off and if they fell and injured themselves it would finish the whole caper. She didn’t leave Dolly out, admonishing her for holding back too long and delaying by reining in her horse.
‘Sorry, I knew I was behind.’ She had to bend over as she had a stitch in her side.
Not until they had discussed in detail the entire morning’s exercise did they sit down for breakfast, laid out and made ready for them by Angela. Later, Dolly took a boat out with the little girls, rowing across the lake, eating crisps and drinking lemonade on the small jetty. The girls had a wonderful time and when they went off to play hide and seek with Angela, Dolly stashed the can of petrol behind the small boathouse. She shaded her eyes to look towards the bridge and saw Julia and Ester sitting on the wall at the end. She then called the girls to get back into the boat as it was time to leave.
Gloria was out of sight at the far end of the bridge. She had an artist’s drawing book and was sitting up on the walk seemingly intent on sketching, when the train passed in front of her. However, she wasn’t looking at the blank page but counting slowly, pressing the earpiece into her ear, heard by Julia and Ester at the opposite end of the bridge. Connie was the only one left at the house. She was on ‘listening’ duty, recording everything from inside the signal box.
None of the women discussed the robbery in actual terms, it had become ‘The Job’, and as the days went by, the rehearsals and timekeeping preoccupied them all and relieved any tension; they had plenty of time to coordinate everything that needed to be done.
There was still one area Dolly had not tackled openly: the stopping of the train itself. It would be done by Julia, on the tracks, with a flashlight, and as she would be wearing Norma’s police cape and hat she would look official. She would hold her position for some time as the train moved over the tracks, giving the driver fair warning that something was amiss. Because the train would be moving slowly, there was no chance of it running into her. The real danger was whether she could hold Helen of Troy steady, standing between the rails side on, with a massive and dangerous high voltage cable beneath her belly.
Julia had rehearsed the sidestepping move many times. On two occasions Helen had bucked and almost thrown her off. She had not rehearsed on the tracks themselves but on mock-ups she had made from logs, and Helen was getting better all the time. What worried Julia was that when she stopped the train and it paused on the bridge, what would make it stay there? If the driver felt any danger, he might start up the engine and move the train forward. ‘It’s all very well, Dolly, marking out where it’s got to stop, but how do we make sure it stays there while we get the bags out?’
‘Semtex.’
‘Pardon?’
Dolly was listening to the tapes she had collected from Mike’s house. She was now sure he hadn’t grassed on her. But could he get the explosives? She still didn’t know.
‘Semtex,’ Julia repeated.
‘Yeah, we’ll blow it on the bridge.’
‘Oh, brilliant. And if it’s not a rude question, where the hell are you going to get Semtex from?’
Dolly continued checking the tapes. ‘I’ll tell you when I’ve got it.’
Julia shook her head, almost wanting to laugh. ‘Oh, fine. Which one of us is going to be mad enough to use it?’
Dolly packed the tapes away, annoyed. ‘I’ll let you know that an’ all, but one thing I will tell you is that I’m not prepared to do anything, not one thing, until I’m sure it’ll work.’
Julia stuck her hands into her pockets. There seemed to be nothing left to say. In any case, Dolly was in one of her moods and it wasn’t worth attempting to have a conversation with her. If anything, she had grown more distant than ever; her mind seemed elsewhere.
Dolly felt at times as if she was a juggler trying to keep all the plates spinning on the ends of sticks, trying to keep the women calm, trying to eliminate the risk factors. Nothing must be left to chance, and if she needed a few more weeks, months, even, she’d take them. She spent hours with her little black notebook, jotting down things she must remember, crossing out others she had accomplished. Sometimes she sat in the dilapidated conservatory, wrapped in a coat, staring into space as she pictured each section of the heist. Could it work? Would it work? Was she insane? As yet the women weren’t restless and she put that down to fear. Even Ester, of late, had simply got on with the job in hand and was no longer pushing for supremacy. Dolly surmised that would probably come. Ester was sharper than the others, more dangerous, and Dolly suspected she was just biding her time. She monitored each one, watching closely as to how their nerves were holding out. So far so good, but it was still like a game. When it became a reality, they would begin to show their real state of mind.
A piece was missing from the jigsaw. Dolly knew it, and kept on returning to the bridge, the train and the damned explosives they still had not acquired. This was the most dangerous and most daring section of the entire ‘game’, and without that, it could not commence.