Dirty Game

‘She’s fucking marvellous, Ellie,’ said Annie, sipping her brandy. She felt like she needed it. ‘Only she had a slight accident, you see.’

‘What sort of accident?’

Annie felt sorry for Ellie, but she ploughed on. This had to be done.

‘A serious one. You see, Pat Delaney cut her hand off.’

Ellie gave an audible gasp.

Annie went on. ‘He blamed it on Max Carter. He as good as told me on the night we killed him that he’d done it. He did it out of spite, on a whim. That’s what your precious Delaneys are like, Ellie. They’re vicious and they’re violent. And the fact that you’ve been passing information to them won’t help you if they’ve got you in their sights. It didn’t help Celia. She’s been paying them off for years, she must have thought she was well in. Well – she wasn’t.’

‘I don’t pass them information,’ said Ellie lamely, her face a picture of shock and dismay.

‘Come off it Ellie. It was one of the first things Celia told me about you. You’re a Delaney girl. That’s okay. But be your own girl first, Ellie. Don’t throw your life away and ours with it.’

Annie paused, letting it all sink in.

‘I’ve had bad dreams since it happened, Ellie,’ Annie went on. ‘Waking dreams sometimes. Seeing it all over again. That night.’

‘Me too,’ said Ellie in a shaking voice.

‘It’s going though, Ellie. It’s passing. Soon it will be gone. Yours will too. It will get better and soon it will be nothing but a memory. Until then, we’re all here to help you and talk to you, day or night. Darren and Aretha, they’ve been good friends to you. So have Dolly and I. We’re friends. We’re tight together, aren’t we? We’re the closest any of us have got to real family. You don’t betray your family, Ellie love, now do you?’

‘Thanks, Annie,’ said Dolly quietly when Ellie had gone off to the bathroom to sort out her ruined make-up. ‘I think you’ve done the trick. She was giving me the willies. Climbing the walls.’

‘Let’s hope that’s the last of it,’ said Annie.

But she wasn’t convinced.

51

The department store safe was ripe for the taking. Jack the gelly man had his pack of three with him. He was pleased with the way things were going, so far.

So was Jonjo. So was Max, who had the bags at the ready to stow the cash. The telephone chap was sweating up a bit and had taken his hood off. Obvious he’d never done a job before. But he was okay. They were all dressed in gloves and navy boiler suits and thick hoods, in case anyone spotted them. Jimmy had breached the frame-room door for the ex-GPO man to do his bit, and was now outside keeping his eyes peeled. Gary was parked round the corner, ready to go.

It was midnight. Everything was peaceful, just the way it should be.

The ex-engineer found the alarm line, got his tools out and started gently stripping back the wire in two places. Then he attached the two crocodile clips to the bared wires and had the diverter wire in place in a second. He turned and nodded to Max.

The alarm was inactive. They were going to steal away the thirty thousand as quiet as a mouse’s fart. Jonjo went over to the manager’s office and busted the door wide open. The two others were tearing around the store grabbing fur coats, blankets, rugs, all to mask the noise of the explosion.

The gelly man went over to the safe. It had a steel door built into concrete. He looked it over, then knelt down and unpacked his pack of three and his other bits and pieces. You had to keep gelignite cool and dry. Once it started to run in the heat, you were in trouble.

‘I should stand back a bit,’ he said.

Max, Jonjo and the telephone man moved out of the room. Jonjo went off to pick up whatever he could carry in gemstones and watches. The telephone man took his hood off and mopped his brow. Max watched what the gelly man was doing through the open door.

Jack had already snipped the ends off the condoms. Now he started to pipe the stuff all around the door, squeezing it into the gap with gentle precision. Then he turned to the lock, the safe’s weakest point, and used up the last of the gelly. Then he got out a spatula and a block of kiddies’ Plasticine and slowly covered the gelignite with it.

Max looked at his watch. Nearly twelve thirty.

Jack finished with the Plasticine and started setting up the detonator, a simple battery with a wire attached. All he had to do now was close the circuit and the safe would be cracked open like a crushed nut.

‘We’ll pack it now,’ he said.

Max and the telephone man started passing in the rugs and the coats and the sheets and blankets. The gelly man packed them around the safe until it looked like an igloo.

‘That’s fine,’ he said, and moved out of the room with the detonator, the cable unravelling between the battery and the safe.

Jonjo came back with pockets like Squirrel Nutkin. He was beaming from ear to ear, mask still off. Sloppy, thought Max, displeased.

‘Everyone ready?’ asked Jack.

Cool bugger, thought Max as he nodded. He could have been leading a Sunday School prayer meeting for all the concern he registered. They got down out of the way.

‘Put your hoods on,’ Max told Jonjo and the telephone man.

‘It’s too fucking hot,’ said the ex-engineer while Jonjo complied.

‘Put it on, you pineapple.’

The gelly man closed the circuit. The explosion was nothing more than a soft crack, but the floor shook beneath their feet. All the covers fell off the safe and the door lolled open. There was a heavy cordite smell in the air and a little smoke, but Max was pleased. No one outside the building could have heard that. Not even Jimmy, and he had ears like a bat.

‘Come on,’ said Jack, and started throwing all the covers back out the door of the manager’s office. He then neatly packed away his stuff.

Then Max got to the open safe and saw the huge stash of cash inside. He shook out the bags and started piling it inside and handing it back to Jonjo. God bless the January sales. Where the fuck was Jonjo? This was no time to be off on the rob around the shop.

‘Hey!’ someone said from behind him.

Jonjo was grappling with a man near the door.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ Jonjo demanded.

Max looked at the telephone engineer. His mask still off. The bloke had clocked him. Not good news.

‘Get off me!’ The man was squirming in Jonjo’s iron grip.

‘Who are you, pal?’ asked Jonjo again.

‘I’m the manager,’ the man gasped. ‘I came back for some papers.’

Now the engineer pulled his hood back on. About a lifetime too bloody late. Max was seriously annoyed. He was going to have words with Jimmy over this. What was he doing out there, having a wank? He wasn’t keeping watch, that was for sure. This bastard must have come right past him.

‘Fuck it,’ said Jonjo.

‘Take him into the storage room. Tie him up,’ said Max.

‘But he’s seen my …’ yelled the engineer.

Max gave him and slap and caught the front of his boiler suit.

‘Shut it, you.’

The man fell silent. Christ, spare me from bloody amateurs, thought Max. God knew what this idiot had been about to say. He could have roared one of their names out loud, he was that rattled.