Widows

Eventually Linda maneuvered the chainsaw into the other seat, and flung herself out, dragging the saw after her. She gripped the start cord, pulled it much harder than required, let go of the wrong bit and dropped the saw on her foot. ‘Bollocks to this, I’m not doing it!’ Linda shouted as she hopped around. She threw her rucksack down onto the sand, and refused to budge. As though the raid was for real, Dolly ran back to Linda, picked up the chainsaw, started it and shoved the end into one of the Morris’ door panels.

Shirley was in awe of Dolly’s complete determination not to be beaten. Linda hoped the old cow would drop the saw and cut her own leg off. Meanwhile, Bella sat patiently on the picnic rug, timing everything. The noise of the chainsaw on metal was horrific. It will scare the living shit out of the guards when they hear that from inside their security wagon, Bella thought. By the time they glimpsed the four masked ‘men,’ they’d be putty in their hands.

It took fifteen minutes for Dolly to cut through the side of the car. It wasn’t so much that the saw blade was blunt, but that she simply didn’t have enough strength to push it down into the metal. Linda sat on the edge of the blanket, next to the pillowcases full of sand, feeling guilty as she watched the sweat drip from Dolly’s forehead.

Once Dolly had cut a segment out of the car’s door, she raced to the blanket and picked up one of the sandbags. Automatically, Linda leapt to her feet and Dolly stuffed the sandbag into her rucksack. ‘Ready to reset, Bella,’ called Dolly, breathing heavily. Bella got to her feet as Linda put one sandbag into Dolly’s rucksack and another into Shirley’s.

Linda spoke as she moved. ‘Why are we still timing this shambles? The coppers would have shown up, nipped for a tea break, come back and nicked us all before we even got a sniff of the cash.’

‘GO!’ Dolly screamed and led the way down the fifty-yard run. In no time at all, Shirley and Linda had overtaken her and were having their own race, while Bella effortlessly jogged along by their sides.

At the end of the run, the three younger women waited for Dolly as she came coughing and spluttering across the line and fell to her knees on the pallets. ‘Again,’ Dolly said, sounding as if she was about to be sick.

‘No,’ Bella said taking control of the situation. ‘Let’s get a cup of tea. We’ll go again in twenty.’

Dolly scrambled to her feet. ‘We’ll go again now!’ she screamed.

Bella stood her ground. Bent under the weight of the rucksack, Dolly looked even smaller compared to the elegant height of Bella. ‘We now know the order of events and we know we can do it,’ Bella said calmly. ‘But that took twenty minutes longer than it should have done. If we go again now, we’ll achieve nothing. So, let’s have a cup of tea, get your breath back and we’ll go again in twenty.’

For a moment, no one spoke. The four women walked slowly back along the beach between the neatly laid out pieces of driftwood toward the Morris, the picnic blanket and the waiting hamper.

‘I meant to ask, Shirley...’ Linda said, breaking the tense silence. ‘Where did you get that lovely jumpsuit?’

Chapter 18

Terry Miller had been at the disused quarry for two hours setting up the vehicles. Jimmy Nunn, an ex-racing driver, was an old mate of Terry’s and was going through a bit of a hard time, having, ironically, been banned for dangerous driving. Married and on the dole, Jimmy desperately needed a job and Terry thought he might be their perfect fourth man — not that he’d dream of making that sort of decision without Harry Rawlins’s approval.