Dolly sighed, seeming to sag in her chair. ‘I’m sorry, Bella. It’s just I haven’t been able to sleep, thinking about whether it’s really going to work, watching the lock-up and then tipping off the law about the job, without Harry getting on to us. I just don’t know...’
Bella jabbed the air with her knife. ‘Don’t you worry about us, and don’t you treat us like idiots. It’s you he’s after, and you think we don’t know why? You wiped him out, Dolly — sent his girlfriend off to Australia. It’s you he’s after, not me, not Shirley... but it was Linda he killed.’
Dolly swallowed, then got up and put the kettle on. She leaned against the sink.
‘I underestimated you.’
Bella laughed. ‘If things had been different, you wouldn’t have given me the time of day, would you? Turnin’ tricks for a living’s not your style, is it, Mrs. Rawlins?’
Dolly blushed and turned away.
‘I got a tough hide, Dolly. And little Shirley’s not as sweet as she seems, neither. Next thing we do, we do it together, the three of us. No more ordering us about. What I want is Harry caught, and put away. Linda deserves that at least. And we can do it. We just have to hold our bloody nerve.’
Sonny Chizzel stood behind the door of his shop and peeked through the blind. The patrol car was still there. Bastards. What had they put a bleeding car on him for? Sonny shook out his wet raincoat and put his umbrella in the holder. The whole world and his mother would know something was going up, sitting directly outside like that, the sons of bitches.
Sonny went through into the back and put the kettle on, picked up his accounts and began checking the figures. Business was bad; the bottom seemed to have fallen out of the Louis Quatorze period and he hadn’t shifted half the stuff he’d been buying of late. Bloody fads, he thought, they come and they go, and he was left with a shop full of legit pieces that he couldn’t shift. It was then that he remembered the small ormolu clock under the counter. Sonny bustled back into the shop. There was thunder now, booming right over his head. He bent down to unwrap the clock, and the doorbell pinged. A customer. He scuttled to the door and opened it, but it was just some student, wanting to know if the magazine shop next door opened on Saturday. Sonny told him to piss off, and again he saw the police car sitting like a squat frog opposite. He was going to have to tread very carefully. If the cash Murphy had brought round was from the underpass raid he’d make a nice bundle, thirty grand. He could put the finger on Murphy, and that would get him off his back. The last thing he wanted was bastards like Murphy coming round with more cash and coming on heavy to make him change it. He was through with that; it wasn’t worth the risk anymore. And besides, his wife Sadie had made him promise to go on the straight and narrow.
Sonny decided to give her a call and tell her what he fancied for dinner. The phone rang for a long time before it was answered.
‘Oh, it’s you. Hold on, I’m covered in flour. Let me get cleaned up.’
He waited for a minute, then she started speaking again, but her voice was muffled by the sound of running water. He just managed to catch the end of what she was saying. ‘...put on weight. I’m going to have to get your suit let out.’
‘What? What are you talking about, woman?’
‘Arnie Fisher’s club, I’m telling you. There’s a big do on — everyone’s invited. He said DJ so I’m going to need a new dress...’
‘Who said? A do at Arnie Fisher’s club? Why the hell would he invite us? I can’t stand the man, and he knows it. Ever since he tried to knock me down on that desk—’
‘Sonny, listen to what I’m saying,’ his wife interrupted. ‘It was a Mr. Murphy that rang, said his guv’nor wanted to meet you, and that you’d understand. Now, if I wear the red...’
Sonny put the phone down without hearing any more. Why was Murphy ringing up, and at his home? He didn’t like that. ‘His guv’nor’ — did he mean Arnie? Sonny paced up and down, his brain ticking over, trying to make sense of it.
Shirley was exhausted. She’d had a two-hour dance class, then worked out at Lucy Clayton’s, and on top of it practically killing her, it had cost her an arm and a leg. Still, the photos had turned out well, not that Marion deigned to see her when she’d turned up at the office; in fact, the girl on reception had seemed a little bit frosty.
‘You listenin’?’
Shirley snapped out of her reverie as Bella gave her a prod.
‘Yeah, of course I am.’
‘OK, we’re gonna go through each name in turn, see who offers us the best deal, right?’
Shirley thought they’d already agreed on it. Bella kept going on and on about all three agreeing, all three working together. Shirley wondered what the hell she thought they’d been doing up to now. Bella spoke to Shirley as if she was a retard.
‘The one that offers us the best deal we’ll go with, OK?’
Shirley sighed. Well, they wouldn’t go with the one that offered them the worst deal, for God’s sake. Surely all you had to do was ring the numbers and get on with it.
The phone rang and Dolly and Bella jumped. What are they so edgy about? Shirley wondered as she picked up the phone.
She put her hand over the receiver and mouthed ‘my mum,’ then listened while Audrey told her all about her visit to the clinic, how she’d had a scan, then had a test done, and the baby was normal, and it was a he — she was going to have a baby boy.
Shirley listened, rolling her eyes, while Dolly and Bella paced up and down, glaring at her.
‘Look, Mum, I’ve got to go.’ Then the pips started, but Audrey shouted that she had another ten pence, if she could just hold on...
‘Sorry, Mum.’ Shirley put the phone down.
Audrey sat with the coin in her hand, listening to the dialing tone at the other end of the phone. She sighed and put the receiver back in its cradle.
At the bus stop, she recognized a girl who’d been at the clinic.
She patted her stomach and smiled. ‘Well, I’ve had the test, and it looks like everything’s all right.’
The young girl just looked at her, then looked away.
‘And guess what? I’m going to have a boy,’ Audrey continued. ‘How about you?’
The girl scowled. ‘Me?’
She wanted to tell Audrey that, yes, her test had been positive, but that she’d been told she’d have to wait another three or four weeks for an abortion, and that was going to be shit because now she’d have to go through all the lies and the dramas and the Britsh Pregnancy Advisory Service, the concerned faces asking if she was sure, sure she didn’t want it, on and on.
But she didn’t say any of that. Instead she just turned her face away.
When the bus pulled up, the conductor shouted that there was only room for one.
The bus moved off, and the girl was left standing alone at the bus stop.
Sonny didn’t recognize the voice of the woman on the other end of the phone. She seemed nervous, asking twice if she was speaking to Sonny, Sonny Chizzel. He had a lot like her, usually flogging something they shouldn’t be.
‘Yes, this is Sonny. Now what can I do for you? I didn’t catch the name, darlin’?’
He listened while she told him what she was proposing.
‘Rawlins... You’re calling on behalf of Harry Rawlins?’
His hand was clammy as he put the phone down. His mind started racing. What if — dear God, pray that it wasn’t — but what if Murphy’s guv’nor turned out to be none other than Harry Rawlins? Sonny paced up and down. Rumor had it that he was alive. What if he was, and what if it had been his sixty grand? Sonny got more and more agitated. If Rawlins was behind the sixty grand that Murphy had brought to him, then he had just grassed him up.