‘He ain’t dead...’ Charlie mumbled as Linda stormed off. She paused and turned back.
‘What?’
‘He ain’t dead. He looks like a minute steak, but he ain’t dead.’
Back in the cash booth, Linda felt sick. Tony Fisher turning up at the arcade out of the blue was one thing, but Boxer showing his face on the same night asking questions about her was too much to cope with. And now he was fighting for his life in a rat-infested alley. Linda was terrified — there was no one to talk to here, no one who’d understand. All she wanted to do was get to Dolly, Bella and Shirley and warn them about... what? Linda had no idea what it all meant, but she’d never felt so out of her depth in her entire life.
She sat for nearly an hour thinking it over. All she kept coming back to was Bella. Bella would know what to do. Eventually she got a grip of herself.
‘Cover for me, Charlie, will ya?’ Linda shouted, swinging her jacket round and head and deftly slipping her arms into the sleeves.
‘No! You can’t go! You only just started your shift!’ he shouted after her as she barged past him.
Linda stopped. She had no intention of explaining anything to Charlie in detail, but she had to convince him to cover for her. Dolly had said right from the outset that they needed to go about their business as normal so as not to raise any alarm bells. Alarm bells were ringing in Linda’s head now and she needed Charlie on her side. ‘Don’t be a plum, Charlie. We cover for each other all the time.’
‘No, we don’t,’ said Charlie. ‘I cover for you all the time. I don’t need covering for cos I’m always here when I’m meant to be.’ He sounded like a wounded schoolboy who’d been turned down by the girl he fancied.
‘Look... I’ve really got to go,’ said Linda. ‘I can’t explain why. But I’ll make it up to you, honest I will.’ She tried a smile.
Charlie wasn’t fooled. ‘If you go, I’ll report you and you’ll be sacked.’
‘Why are you being like this?!’ Linda yelled.
‘Cos, apart from the minute steak up the road, I’m the saddest bastard in the street, apparently! And sad bastards do sad bastard things like drop their mates in it when they get treated like shit.’
‘You know what, Charlie — sod you and sod the job!’ Linda screamed. ‘Cos I ain’t staying.’
As she charged off down the street, Charlie looked after her and was just in time to see the ambulance doors slam shut. It crawled through the crowds, who ambled out of the way regardless of the lights and siren.
By the time Bella came off stage at the strip club, Linda was pacing the dressing room, as white as a sheet. She started talking the instant Bella walked in. ‘Boxer’s been beaten to within an inch of his life. He was asking about me in the arcade, so was Tony Fisher and...’
Bella, as Linda knew she would, took control. ‘Calm down, Linda. I can’t follow anything you’re saying. Calm down and start again.’
Linda took a deep breath and did just that. Once Bella was up to speed, Linda added, ‘This has to be cos of what Dolly told Boxer about Harry being alive. Don’t you think?’
‘Sounds like it’s all getting out of hand. And it sounds like the Fishers are scared.’
‘They’re scared? Bleedin’ ’ell Bella, I’m shitting meself. Dolly’s gonna have to sort this out. I mean if it was Tony who done over Boxer, just think what he could do to us!’
‘Do we know it was Tony?’ Bella asked, trying to be rational for both of them. Linda had jumped to that conclusion because he and Boxer were both in the arcade on the same night. But they had also both been asking about Linda, and that was something to worry about. Bella took time to think while she wiped the sweat from her face and got dressed. ‘I’ll call the convent and leave a message for Dolly to meet me here as soon as she can. You got someone who can stay with you tonight?’ The wry smile that crept across Linda’s face told Bella that her friend would be just fine. ‘Call him and get him to pick you up from here. Do we know that Shirley’s OK?’
The smile on Linda’s face vanished as quickly as it had appeared. She hadn’t even considered that Tony might have approached Shirley.
‘Call your friend,’ said Bella. ‘I’ll call Shirley and Dolly. Don’t worry. Expend some energy. Everything will be fine.’
Dolly was sitting in her ruined armchair sipping brandy and looking through the notes she’d made from her visit to the bank earlier. Three envelopes of cash sat on the coffee table in front of her and Wolf was tucked into her hip as usual. There’d been no reference to Bill Grant in Harry’s ledgers, not even a William, or a BG. It crossed Dolly’s mind that the man who visited her at the lock-up could have lied about his name. She’d have to ask Boxer. If he knew anything, she’d get it out of him.
The phone rang and Dolly jumped. No one ever called this late at night. It was Sister Amelia from the convent.
‘I have a message for you from Miss O’Reilly,’ she said. ‘It’s in relation to your mutual friend, Mr. Fisher. Miss O’Reilly says your presence is urgently required at her workplace.’ The nun didn’t seem surprised to have been used as an intermediary.
Dolly remained calm and controlled as she thanked Amelia and put the phone down. She downed her brandy and peered out of her curtains. The usual parking spot the police used was empty. She looked up and down the street but could see no parked cars that didn’t belong there. In case the police had changed tactics, she decided that she would still go through the rigmarole of zigzagging to make absolutely certain that she was not being followed.
The club where Bella worked was dark and seedy and it smelt of beer, cigarettes and fat sweaty men. No one noticed Dolly walk in because all eyes were on the stage. She stood at the back of the room, watching a girl in her early twenties performing and listening to the men tell each other what they’d like to do to her. Their crude innuendos made Dolly’s stomach churn, but their drunken heckles were worse. As the girl struggled to remove her bra and stay upright in her four inch heels, they shouted at her as though she was a piece of meat. When her song ended, she left the stage to laughter and a hail of flying bottles.
The soles of Dolly’s shoes stuck to the beer-soaked carpet as she tried to push toward the stage; the men, thinking she was a punter wanting a better view, wouldn’t let her past. She folded her arms around her handbag and made herself as small as possible; she’d have to wait for a break in the show. The idea of touching or being touched by these men repulsed her; some of them had their hands down the front of their trousers.
When the next record began, there was a loud cheer from the men before they settled down almost to silence. Dolly strained to look over the shoulders of the crowd immediately in front of her, and eventually found a spot from where she could see the stage. Bella was already moving down the catwalk, her oiled body glistening and swaying with the grace of a panther. She was dressed in a black leather mini-skirt, a black leather bra and black leather knee-high boots, and wielded a long black leather whip, which she cracked above her head. There was a look of wildness and overpowering sensuality about her as she swayed to the music, staring arrogantly at the men. She met their eyes, every one of them, and they were totally under her spell.
Dolly was as spellbound as the rest of the audience, but for a completely different reason. She is so strong, Dolly thought to herself. She recognized something similar in herself: a hidden, almost masculine strength that allowed her a measure of control over people like Boxer Davis. But what Bella had went beyond that. Dolly looked around the room and could see that the men weren’t speaking, or looking about, or laughing and joking — there were no disparaging comments, no jeers, no insults; they were mesmerized. In that moment, Dolly knew that Bella was exactly the right person to be their fourth man. As the men imagined Bella naked, Dolly imagined her dressed in an overall and ski-mask, wielding a shotgun instead of a whip. She smiled to herself. Those security guards will shit themselves, she thought.