Jim had limped to the nearest house and called the police. He was incoherent but kept repeating police and train and bombs. It was confused but the police were moving out and heading towards the railway station. They would be there in four minutes.
Ester was first to leave. She ran down to the horses and loosened the reins of hers, dragging him towards the water. Julia was already waiting, looking with desperation towards the bridge. Then the spotlight cut out, the batteries overloaded, leaving the bridge in darkness. ‘Jesus, God, they’re gonna go down with the bloody carriage. It’ll hit the rowing boat.’ She wanted to scream out to them to get off the bridge but still the bags came over until the boat sat low in the water.
‘Get out, move it,’ muttered Ester.
Gloria was next to leave, and the carriage suddenly shot forward by three feet, so that it hung like a seesaw over the bridge. Mike started the speedboat. He didn’t care if they lost one or two bags — he wasn’t going to risk being under the bridge any longer. He opened the throttle and headed back to the jetty. Next stage was hurling the bags out of the boat and into the saddle-bags on the waiting horses. Mike began helping Ester and Julia. They turned as they saw masses of bricks and twisted metal crash from the bridge. Connie, still inside the carriage, whipped round to see Dolly waving for her to get out, but she froze as the creaking grew louder and louder.
Dolly looked at the men, and back to Connie. She reached out and grabbed her by the arm, dragging her forward.
‘Jump.’
Connie pulled back, stiff with fear, but Dolly repeated, the delay taking vital minutes. They would never make the run back to the horses and she pushed at Connie again. ‘Jump!’
Dolly pulled Connie to the edge of the crumbling bridge, and half-holding, half-dragging her, they jumped the twenty-five feet to the water below. The shotgun flew from Dolly’s hand as she hit the water.
Connie surfaced first, gasping and flailing in the water with her hands. ‘I can’t swim.’
Mike had hurled out the last bag. He had stacked two in the speed-boat and jumped aboard, heading across the lake towards the other side, unaware that both Dolly and Connie were in trouble in the water. Connie was bringing Dolly down time and time again as she clawed and scratched at her in a desperate panic to stay afloat.
Julia lifted her filled bags off Helen and climbed back into the saddle. ‘Just keep moving as planned — Ester, go on! We’ll catch you up.’ She kicked the horse’s ribs and set off into the lake, Helen not batting an eyelid as they waded deeper and deeper. Connie and Dolly remained dangerously close to the water underneath the rocking carriage. Bricks and concrete slabs began to plummet into the water.
Julia waded deeper, and Connie clung to Dolly, who tried her best to keep the frightened woman afloat. They had no time to clutch at Julia’s hands so they just grabbed Helen’s tail as Julia turned in the water and headed back to the shore. Gloria and Ester had gone, leaving the tethered horses standing loaded with mail-bags.
As they reached the shore, Connie began to scream but Dolly slapped her face hard. ‘Get out of here! Get on your horse and get out! Move it!’
Connie, sobbing and soaked to the skin, stumbled to her horse. She could hardly mount but neither Julia nor Dolly paid her any attention as they heaved Julia’s bags on to Helen. They had a long way to go before they were finished.
Mike left the boat, ran to his car. He remained calm, refusing to allow himself to put his foot flat to the car floor. If he was caught now, speeding or otherwise, he had two mail-bags crammed with money in the boot. He took the route away from the station and as far from the manor as possible. He had every road listed and directions at the ready. Dolly Rawlins hadn’t left anything to chance. He hadn’t seen that she and Connie had almost drowned.
The police cars, four in all, were hampered by the closed level-crossing gates and lack of information, but by now the scream was on that the mail train had been hit and their radios blurted out instructions for blocks to be set up on all major roads within the area. They had no information as to what getaway cars were being used by the bandits. Their instructions were that all vehicles were to be stopped and searched.
No police car could get anywhere near the bridge. The guards were running down the sides of the track, their only exit from the bridge. The carriage remained balanced. Police vehicles began to attempt to make their way down to the lakeside. There was pandemonium on all sides and as they tried to question Jim he broke down. He didn’t know anything, he could tell them nothing, he had seen no one, no vehicles. He was still in a state of shock.
The three guards were in a similar state as, one by one, they were helped from the bridge. One man was bleeding badly from where the glass in the carriage window had slashed his cheek. An ambulance was called.
Mike made it on to the motorway. No roadblock was as yet set up but he didn’t look back, he just kept on driving. It was a long drive home and he wasn’t safe yet. He wouldn’t be until he boarded the plane. He didn’t give any thought to the women. He just drove and stayed within the speed limit.
The final stages were hampered by exhaustion but not one of them flagged. They pushed themselves on. They had galloped across the fields, up through the woods, keeping to cover as much as possible. They galloped down from the woods into the manor grounds, their bags thrown from their horses and left by the side of the lime pit, which was open and ready.
Julia leapt from Helen in her haste to start ripping open the mail-bags. She hurled the money into the skip and threw the bags into the lime pit. Connie rode up, hurled her bags to the ground and, still sodden from the lake, wheeled her horse round and galloped off, passing Dolly, the last to return, just as she headed down from the woods.
Julia grabbed Dolly’s bag, ripping it open. The money was stacked high in the open skip but she never stopped and, as the pit gurgled and hissed, she pressed the empty canvas mail bags down with a rake. Without pausing for breath, she dragged the corrugated iron across the pit. She hooked up the skip chains to the old truck standing by in position and began to drag it across the pit, over the corrugated iron. It left deep indentations in the wet ground — the rain had not stopped all night.
Meanwhile, the rest of the women restabled the horses, gathered up the cladding used on their hooves and took them to the stable yard tip. They threw them in and set fire to them but they were so wet they took a while to ignite. The horses’ tack was replaced in order. No one spoke — they could hardly draw breath from exhaustion and panic — but they were still going by their plans, even down to replacing the stable-keys in their hiding place. Then they went to the parked Mini, where Gloria was waiting patiently at the wheel. They almost had to haul Dolly inside she was so tired. But it was not over, not yet.
By the time they returned to the manor, Julia had still not finished. She was hoovering up the money from inside the skip, then emptying it into thick black rubbish bags, each one tied hard at the neck. Gloria ran from the Mini as the others moved into their jobs, lifting the bags, stashing them into the back of the car. They pushed and squashed them inside as bag after bag was tied and handed over.
Gloria and Connie began a slow studied walk, eyes to the ground to look for any single note that might have come loose. They didn’t need any torches now as the sun was coming up and it was light. The Mini stashed to the roof, Julia and Ester drove out. They knew they could be stopped at any second and neither spoke as they drove on, both their mouths bone dry with nerves. They still had not seen a single police car as they drove into Norma’s cottage pathway and round the back to the barn.