As Dolly picked herself up, they all heard the siren as the patrol car hurtled up the road from the cinema toward the car park. That was enough for Murphy, who quickly left his parking spot and drove away in the same direction as Tesco.

  Still surrounded by the running women, Harry maneuvered the car backward and forward, tires spinning on the gravel, and then crashed straight through the barrier on to the road and away, the patrol car flashing past him in the other direction.

  Shirley screamed a warning to Dolly.

  “Police! Police!”

  Dolly didn’t need telling twice. “Get out! All of you back to your cars! Move!”

  Dolly and Bella made for the green Fiesta.

  “Where’s Linda?” Dolly asked, her breath heaving. They could see the red Capri, the doors still open.

  “She’s there,” Bella yelled. “Now come on, let’s go!”

  The three cars all hurtled out of the car park just as the police approached the entrance. They sped off into the night, leaving the patrol car uncertain who to follow.

  Dolly watched anxiously over her shoulder as Bella drove. “Linda . . . Has Linda made it?”

  “It’s all right, I saw her in the car,” Bella told her. “The money, Dolly. Did you get the money?”

  Dolly’s face was set, her mouth rigid. “Just drive, Bella. Just get us home.”

  Murphy couldn’t get any sense out of Micky Tesco. He was so proud of his motorcycle antics, he kept looking at the money, saying, “We did it, by God we did it! You see that wheelie I did, over the ditch? Eddie Kidd, eat your heart out!” Then he suddenly looked at Murphy. “Murphy, you shouldn’t be back ’ere. What you doin’ back ’ere?”

  Harry entered the lock-up silently. “I’d like to know that, Murphy. What are you doin’ back here?”

  Murphy looked at Harry, then at Micky. He knew he’d blown it. “It was the Old Bill, Harry.”

  Harry nodded. “The Old Bill.”

  “They were there in a flash, Harry. Somebody must have tipped them off.”

  “Doesn’t mean you’ve gotta piss off! What a bloody cock-up!” Harry shouted furiously.

  Micky grinned, pointing at the money. “Come on, Harry. Does that look like it’s a cock-up?”

  Harry glared at him. He felt like slapping his face. He jabbed his finger at Murphy.

  “I told you to stay on her, follow her. That’s all you had to do. She must have driven straight past you, and you blew it!”

  Micky didn’t understand why he was so angry. “But we got the money, Harry!”

  This time Harry did slap him, a quick, vicious swipe. Micky reeled back, and Harry looked at the money spilled across the floor.

  “That is a frigging piss in a frigging, fucking ocean.”

  “Better than a kick in the arse, though, isn’t it?” Micky said sullenly, rubbing his cheek.

  Murphy could see Harry was on the point of really losing it. “I panicked, Harry,” he said, holding his hands up defensively. “It won’t happen again, honest.”

  Harry looked at him almost in disgust. “Again? You think you’ve got the bottle for the jewel caper, do you?” Again Harry prodded him. “Do you? You make me sick, the pair of you. Fuckin’ amateurs!” Harry walked out, throwing instructions over his shoulder. “Lock the place up and stash the cash . . .”

  Micky picked up Harry’s two suitcases and jogged after him. “I’ve got a great pad for you, Harry. Just you wait and see . . .”

  Left on his own, Murphy looked at the bundles of banknotes spread over the floor. He got down on his hands and knees and started to pick them up.

  “You told her to get this?” Dolly held out the gun, deliberately pointing it almost at Bella’s face.

  “It was for you. To protect you,” Bella said sullenly.

  “Well, you certainly made a bloody mess of that, didn’t you?” Dolly snapped.

  She began pacing up and down the room, hands on hips. “I’ll give her hell when she gets here!” Dolly looked down at the scrunched-up sheets of newspaper and old tights—stuffing for the dummy—scattered on the sofa. It suddenly dawned on her. “Oh God, it was the dummy!”

  Bella looked puzzled.

  “You didn’t see Linda in her car—it was the dummy.”

  Shirley and Bella looked at each other, dumbstruck, then back to Dolly. She was rubbing her head, trying to piece it all together.

  “Which one of you pushed me?”

  They just stared at her.

  “Out of the way of . . . his car.” She couldn’t bring herself to say his name. “Come on, which one of you was it?”

  Bella and Shirley both shook their heads.

  Dolly picked up the gun and slipped it into her coat pocket.

  “Where are you going?” asked Bella.

  “I think we’d better get back up there. Shirley, you stay here in case she comes back.”

  Shirley looked nervous. “But what shall I tell her? I mean, what should I do?”

  “Tell her she’s for it. Tell Linda she’s really for it this time.”

  Micky was showing Harry round the flat he’d rented for a couple of weeks—well, not rented, borrowed. It was certainly much more Harry’s style, all very plush, with gold dolphin taps in the bathroom. Micky pointed to the bidet and picked up a bottle of Badedas.

  “You never know who you’ll meet . . .” he drawled in a TV ad voice.

  Sometimes Micky really got up his nose, but Harry couldn’t help smiling. He walked out of the bathroom and into the stunning lounge, with the brown-tinted mirrored walls and thick-pile carpets.

  “How long we got this place for?”

  “Few weeks. Friend of . . . a friend had a slight run-in with Her Majesty’s . . .”

  Micky didn’t mention that it belonged to a coke dealer who’d been done for dealing and was serving six months. Flashy so-and-so, Italian feller. Micky knew Harry would really go for a flash place like this. Yeah, he thought to himself, he was beginning to suss Harry out.

  “Fancy a drop of chilled Chablis, Harry?”

  Harry smiled, patting Micky on the shoulder. “I shouldn’t have sounded off like I did, Micky. You did a good job, and like you said, sixty grand is better than a kick in the arse.”

  Micky grinned from ear to ear. Suddenly, him and Harry were friends.

  The area round the oak tree in the car park had been sealed off with blue and white tape. There were two police cars in attendance, an ambulance and four other cars standing by. Already, great arc-lamps had been erected to illuminate the ditch and the surrounding area.

  Linda’s car was also surrounded by red tape. Local residents in dressing gowns huddled outside the tape, watching the goings-on. A man with a coat over his pajamas wandered over.

  “It was a woman, but they wouldn’t let anyone look. Nobody can get close,” he told them.

  Two police officers were standing ankle-deep in the muddy ditch, pulling the body of a woman out of the filthy water. An ambulance crew was waiting with a stretcher at the edge of the ditch, and the police officers carefully passed the body over. It looked like a muddy, discarded rag doll.

  Dolly and Bella stood with the group of watchers, frozen to the spot.

  Dolly made a move toward the body on the stretcher, but Bella held her back. “Don’t, Dolly.”

  Hanging on to each other, they watched as the ambulance crew covered the body with a red blanket.

  “She’s dead.” Dolly’s voice was empty, expressionless.

  More uniformed and plain-clothed officers clustered round the shape under the red blanket. It seemed so small and still in comparison with the milling bodies.

  Bella couldn’t believe it. She kept staring at that little figure under the blanket, willing it to get up, sit up and say something—something silly, something funny, that this wasn’t true, this was just a nightmare, and she was going to wake up any minute.

  Dolly had left the scene and was walking briskly up the street. Bella ran after her.

  “Dolly, Dolly, you can’t just walk away.”

  Dolly kept going, her face white. Bella tried to stop her, pulling her back, but Dolly shook her off, walking stiffly as if under remote control, just saying, “Go back and tell Shirley.”

  Bella stopped and saw them lifting the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. She started to cry. She looked to Dolly for help, but Dolly kept on walking.

  Bella leaned against a tree and wept.

  Over and over in Dolly’s mind, a voice was saying: “Be like ’aving a mum . . . Don’t leave me, Dolly . . . I want to stay with you, Dolly . . . Be like ’avin’ a mum . . . a mum . . .”

  Her rage was like a train in a long, black tunnel. Then suddenly it burst out into the light and Dolly screamed, “You bastard, Harry! You bastard!”

  Some of the little group of bystanders turned when they heard it, but they couldn’t make out what the woman was saying, and instead their attention was caught by Bella, who still stood weeping against the tree.

  Then somebody said that they were bringing something out of the red Ford Capri. They all turned as the policeman held up Linda’s dummy, its feet dangling, its head nodding, still with its cap on.

  It was 6:30 in the morning when Vic Morgan pulled up outside 44 Elgin Mansions to begin his round-the-clock watch on Harry Rawlins’ place. He poured himself a cup of coffee from a Thermos, and was settling in for a long, uneventful wait, when he saw someone walking up the road toward him, and almost dropped the coffee in his lap.

  Dolly Rawlins. She seemed different, an odd, haunted look on her face, and she seemed to be walking in a daze. She stopped outside the entrance and just stood, staring up for a long time. Then, as if snapping out of a dream, she pushed through the swing doors and into the block. Morgan got out of the car and followed.

  Dolly’s feet were like lead as she trudged up the staircase. She felt the gun in her pocket. The metal was icy cold.

  Morgan moved soundlessly up the stairs behind her until she reached the door of number 44. He watched through the banister rails and heard the bell ringing through the empty flat. Dolly’s left hand was held to her side and that was when Morgan saw the gun.

  She rang the bell again, and as it dawned on her that nobody was there, she seemed to deflate, leaning her head wearily against the door.

  He moved quietly behind her. Very gently, he said, “Mrs. Rawlins, you all right, love?”

  She didn’t seem surprised, just turned her face away, muttering, “No . . . no . . .” under her breath.

  She let him take the gun, let him hold her for a moment, then guide her down the stairs, and all the time he was talking to her, as if he was talking to a child. “That’s it, that’s a good girl, you lean on me, that’s a good girl. Now mind the stairs, easy does it, good girl. You all right now?”

  Dolly rested her head against his shoulder, the fear and the anger all drained out of her, and for the first time since she could remember, she felt safe. Safe and at peace.

  The chalk squeaked down the blackboard as the morgue attendant wrote the name “Linda Pirelli,” checking the spelling against the file in his hand. He then walked past the rows of drawers until he found the one that had been pulled open and there she was—naked, her head and shoulders covered with terrible bruising.

  He checked that the name tag was still attached to her right toe, and could feel that she was not yet cold. He slowly pushed the drawer back in.

  He flipped a page, noting that this one was due for autopsy the following day. There were already brief notes from the doctor, who’d done the first examination, stating that the girl had not died from the injuries inflicted by some kind of vehicle but from drowning. She had been found face down in four inches of muddy water.

  The attendant put the report on the desk. Another day, another body. He picked up the morning newspaper, turned to the back page with the sports headlines, and began to read.

  Chapter Four

  Bella had kept vigil all night, and was still sitting by the window in Shirley’s lounge when dawn broke. She was no longer looking out, no longer waiting for Dolly, she was just sitting, and thinking. Several times she got up to make herself a cup of tea, then left it undrunk.

  Shirley had been in bed when Bella had come back and told her that they had found Linda, that she didn’t think Linda would be coming back. Shirley couldn’t take it in to begin with. She made Bella repeat everything she had seen. Bella broke down and cried when she described the figure on the stretcher, with the red blanket over her face . . .

  All the memories now flooded back into Bella’s mind, making her cry again. In Rio, during the robbery, when they’d first met. In the back of her mind was a tiny, fragile hope that they’d been wrong, that perhaps she was still alive. But deep down in her heart she knew that Linda was dead, and she would never see her again.

  Shirley had been shocked at first, then she’d cried, then she’d got calm again. She asked Bella if she was sure, and then she started to cry again, and Bella had left her crying herself to sleep, while she went to sit by the window, waiting for Dolly.

  She kept asking herself questions, but she couldn’t find any answers, so she just sat and waited, and during the waiting time the memories flooded back in waves, drifting in and out, behind them all a terrible feeling of guilt.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d turned away from that last kiss. And how Linda had then put her hand out to her, asked if they were still friends, and Bella hadn’t shaken.

  She could hear Shirley moving round and looked at the clock on the mantelshelf. It was after nine. She heard the toilet flush, and then Shirley came into the lounge.

  Bella couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Shirley was dressed, made up; she looked very smart.

  “Are you going out?”

  Shirley sounded uneasy. “Yes, I . . . I’ve got an appointment.” She joined Bella at the window. “Still no sign of Dolly? Where do you think she’s gone?”

  Bella shrugged. Shirley picked up a tray with the cups of tea Bella had made in the night.

  “Just leave them,” Bella told her.

  Shirley put the tray down again. “We don’t know, not for certain,” she said suddenly.

  Bella shook her head. “I saw her. I saw them put the blanket over her face. She’s dead, Shirley.”

  Shirley’s mouth quivered as she tried to hold back the tears.

  Bella got up, just wanting to get out, to get away from her. “Don’t smudge your make-up,” she said with a brittle smile. “If you’ve got an appointment, you’d better keep it!”

  “Oh, Bella,” Shirley whispered, reaching for her hand, and Bella clasped it tight.

  “I’m sorry,” Bella said. “Look, you go ahead, do what you have to do. I’ll wait here for Dolly.”

  Bella watched as Shirley walked down the path. She turned at the gate and gave a little wave. Bella didn’t wave back. The anger had gone, but she still couldn’t quite believe that Shirley had something so important to do that she could walk out of the house now, with Linda dead and Dolly who knows where, and everything in pieces.

  She wished Dolly would come. Dolly would know what to do. Dolly always knew what to do.

  Dolly woke with a splitting headache, as if someone had clamped a band round her head and was pulling it tight. She opened her eyes and everything was hazy. For a moment she didn’t know where she was. The furniture was heavy, Victorian, masculine. There was a big dressing table, and Dolly saw her handbag on top of it. Then she saw the chair, with her torn stockings, her skirt and blouse, all neatly laid out, with her mud-spattered shoes on the floor underneath. She looked at the pillow next to her, the half-full brandy glass on the bedside table and felt a momentary panic.

  There was a tap on the door and Dolly reached for the sheet to cover herself. Vic Morgan walked in with a smile, carrying a cup of coffee.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Dolly just wrapped the sheet tighter round her.

  He put the coffee down and picked up the brandy glass. “Do you feel like something to eat?”

  Dolly was still desperately trying to remember what had happened the night before. It was all a blank. How did she get here? And, more importantly, what had she told this man? How much did he know?

  Morgan carried the glass to the door and took the dressing gown that was hanging there off the hook.

  “Would you like this? If you want a bath or something, it’s first on the left.”

  Dolly managed to say, “Thank you,” then added, “Do you have an aspirin?”

  He opened a small drawer in the dressing table, took out a bottle of aspirin and handed it to Dolly. “Your gun’s in there as well, by the way,” he said casually.

  As she took the bottle, she felt the sheet slipping away from her breasts, and Morgan could sense her discomfort. “I slept on the sofa,” he said gently. “You got yourself undressed, I just laid them out.” He turned to leave.

  Dolly could feel herself flushing with embarrassment. “Thank you, Mr. Morgan.”

  “That’s all right . . . Mrs. Rawlins.”

  A bolt of lightning hit Dolly. Did he just call her “Mrs. Rawlins”? Then he knew.

  “Er . . . what time is it, Mr. Morgan?” she asked, trying to keep her voice relaxed and casual.

  He turned to her with a smile. “Almost 9:30, Mrs. Rawlins.”

  Detective Inspector Alex Fuller also had a headache that morning. He was washing his hands in the cloakroom, wondering why he’d had so many lately. Probably something to do with his sinuses. He took out a nose spray and gave himself a squirt, hoping that would help matters. He wiped his nose and then washed his hands again. He examined his clean, short-cut nails and dried his hands, before looking at his watch. Perfect. Just time to nip up to the canteen for a cup of coffee before sifting through all those reports.