The Sunshine Cruise Company (11 page)

A police car.

Parked right in front of her house.

She turned back to them. ‘It … I … it’s the police.’

Pandemonium.

Jill started crying. Nails started gibbering. ‘Facking Jesus. The filth. Pigs. Bacon. Rozzers. Old Bill. Someone’s stitched us up …’

‘Everyone, just calm down,’ Julie said, looking around the room, at all the guns, the balaclavas, the flip chart and the photos of the bank.

Ding-dong.

‘Dobbed us in. Shopped us. Grassed us up …’ Nails went on.

‘I KNEW THIS WAS INSANE!’ Jill shrieked.

‘Susan –’ Julie said, struggling to be heard.

‘How the fuck –’ Ethel said.

‘Can everyone please stop swearing?!’ Jill shrieked.

‘This is it,’ Nails said. ‘Nails ain’t going back inside. No way. Not again. FACK IT!’ He fell to his knees, grabbed the revolver off the coffee table and stuck it under his chin. ‘I’M COMING HOME, MA!’ he screamed.

‘For God’s sake,’ Julie said, snatching the gun out of his hand before he could pull the trigger. Nails toppled over on his side on the carpet, hyperventilating. ‘Susan! Just go and answer the door and stall them for a minute.’

‘How?’ Susan said.

Ding-dong. Ding-dong.

‘Just … use your bloody initiative!’

Susan hurried towards the hall. Julie turned back to the others. ‘Jill, calm down and help me with this. Quick.’

Susan took a deep breath and opened the front door. DS Boscombe and DC Wesley were standing there, Boscombe wearing a fixed, idiotic grin. It took Susan a moment to place them. ‘Sergeant …’

‘Boscombe! Yes, and you’ll remember Detective Constable Wesley?’

‘Afternoon, Mrs Frobisher.’

‘Yes, good afternoon.’

‘Sorry to keep ringing your bell like that,’ Boscombe continued. ‘It’s just that we saw your car and it looked like someone was in, so –’

‘Sorry, Sergeant, I am rather busy. Was there something in particular you –’

Boscombe held up a clear plastic evidence bag. Inside were Barry’s wallet, watch, keys, mobile phone and loose change. ‘Your husband’s personal effects. Normally we’d call and notify you that they’re ready for collection but I thought that, given all you’ve been through lately, we’d just bring them out to you.’

‘Oh, that’s very kind …’ Susan reached out to take the bag. Which Boscombe immediately withdrew.

‘I just need you to sign a couple of forms.’ Boscombe looked past her hopefully, into the hallway. ‘If we could just …’

‘Yes. I really am rather busy at the moment, Sergeant.’

‘It won’t take a moment.’

‘It’s really not convenient. I was just going out.’

Suddenly music became audible from inside the house. Boscombe looked at her. ‘Entertaining, are we?’

Susan swallowed. ‘Yes, I am actually. I was just out of … sugar. Was going to pop to the shops.’

‘Well, as I say. It’ll only take a mo—’

‘Have you got a … a warrant?’

‘A warrant?’

‘Yes. Don’t you need a warrant to come in here?’

Boscombe looked at Wesley confused, then back to Susan. ‘Ah, not if you invite us in we don’t.’

‘Why wouldn’t I invite you in?’ Susan said.

‘I don’t know,’ Boscombe said. ‘So can we?’

‘Can you what?’

‘
Can we come in?
’ Boscombe was beginning to wonder if this woman wasn’t touched in the bloody head.

‘Everything OK, Susan dear?’ Julie shouted cheerfully from the living room. ‘We could use your help in here.’

‘Oh, very well, Sergeant. Do come in,’ Susan said, opening the door for them.

‘Thank you very much,’ Wesley said.

She led them down the hallway and, taking a deep breath, opened the door to the living room. The music, a tango, was immediately louder and Susan and the two policemen were greeted by a strange tableau: Julie was tangoing Nails around the centre of the room, watched by Ethel and Jill. Jill had a fixed grin on her face. Ethel was happily clapping along to the music. Boscombe nodded politely to the old lady in the wheelchair covered with stickers. There was no sign of the weapons and the flip chart had been turned over. On the fresh page, Susan saw, Julie had hastily written some dance steps: a diagram of feet with various arrows indicating movements. The song finished and Ethel led the applause, with Boscombe and Wesley joining in. ‘That was much better, Bert!’ Julie said to Nails. ‘You led wonderfully!’ She pretended to suddenly notice the two detectives. ‘Oh! Goodness! Company!’

‘Having a little dance class, are we?’ Boscombe said.

‘Indeed. Bert here is one of my most promising pupils.’ Julie indicated Nails. Nails looked as though he were on the verge of a major coronary. Bullets of sweat were trickling down his face and his jaw was locked in a demented smile as he extended his hand for Boscombe to shake. ‘Pleased to meet you, Bert. Detective Sergeant Boscombe, CID.’

‘Fuunnghhrrr,’ Nails said.

‘He had a little stroke a couple of years back,’ Julie whispered, stepping closer to the officers and very subtly twirling her index finger in the air near her right temple. Boscombe smiled and nodded kindly to Nails.

From behind them Susan made a strange, high-pitched squeak. Boscombe turned to look at her. Ethel noticed what Susan had been looking at – the barrel of the sawn-off shotgun was protruding from underneath her. ‘Sorry,’ Susan said as Ethel deftly covered the gun with her shawl, ‘just a frog in my throat.’

‘We were just returning some things to Mrs Frobisher here,’ Boscombe said. ‘Sorry to interrupt you.’

‘Oh, not at all,’ Julie said. ‘We were just working on our tango.’

‘Lovely, eh, Wesley? To see people of, well, advancing years keeping active. Keeping interested in things.’

‘Yes, Sarge,’ Wesley said.

‘Well, thank you, Sergeant,’ Julie said. ‘You know, we can always do with a few more able-bodied young men like yourself at our classes!’

‘Is that so?’ Boscombe said. ‘You know what? I’ve always fancied learning that there tango as a matter of fact. I love a bit of
Strictly
!’

A quarter of an hour later Wesley sat dunking a custard cream into his second cup of tea while he watched his boss dip Julie down into a reasonable, if strained, facsimile of the finishing position of the tango. The music stopped and everyone burst into applause.

‘Excellent, Sergeant!’ Julie said.

‘Oh, he’s quite the mover!’ Ethel added.

‘Don’t half put a strain on the old back that last bit!’ Boscombe said, not quite as sensitive as he could have been here to his partner’s feelings.

‘Well, Sergeant,’ Susan said, ‘if you have those forms …’

‘Oh yeah, of course. Sorry.’

A few moments later Boscombe was putting the keys in the ignition of their car while Wesley buckled up his seat belt. ‘Does you good, doesn’t it, Wesley? To see them enjoying themselves like that.’

‘Yeah, Sarge.’

‘I only hope I’m that active when I’m their age.’ He turned the key and pulled away.

Susan watched them go from behind her net curtain. She turned round and sat down on the floor, exhaling heavily.

‘Well!’ Ethel said, removing the sawn-off shotgun from under her bum. ‘That got the old blood flowing!’

‘Fack me,’ Nails said, puffing gratefully on his oxygen mask.

LATER THAT NIGHT,
in the same room, Julie and Susan sat sipping their tea in silence. They’d spent the rest of the day going over and over Nails’s plan in detail. Timings, positions, code signals. Finally Susan sighed and put her mug down.

‘This is just … nuts. Isn’t it?’

‘Completely,’ Julie said, staring into the fireplace.

‘We’re going to end up in prison. Or worse.’

‘Mmmm.’

‘I mean, there’s a chance, running around with guns and stuff, there’s a chance someone will get hurt, Julie. Isn’t there?’

‘It’s possible. Do you want that last piece?’

‘No, you have – Julie! I’m trying to talk us out of this. You sound like you couldn’t care less.’

Julie picked up the last slice of buttered toast and munched on it. ‘You know something?’ she said. ‘I don’t think I do any more. When the salon went under I was only what, twenty-nine or thirty? You don’t even think about it in terms of failure at that age. You just think, “Oh well, I’ll try something else.” Then, with the bistro, when that went down, I was forty-five. And that
was
hard. Starting again at that age. But these past few years, with the boutique … I always thought I was an “upwards and onwards” kind of person, Susan. But now, at sixty, I just can’t do it again. I can’t start all over again at this age. So if this is a short cut, and we’re not going to hurt anyone, then fine by me. Because anything –
anything
– has to be better than what I’ve got at the moment.

‘Even the “bum-palace”?’

‘Look at you. You played it safe your whole life and where have you ended up? Ending your days in Tom and Clare’s spare room on a state pension? Was that how you saw “retirement” when we were younger?’

‘You know what?’ Susan said. ‘When I thought of that word I always imagined somewhere warm and sunny. Tropical. Stretched out by a swimming pool. Going out every day for nice lunches.’

‘What happened to that idea?’

‘Barry wasn’t keen on the heat.’

‘Barry’s dead.’

The two friends looked each other in the eye. Julie raised her mug and said, ‘To the bum-palace.’

Susan brought her mug up to meet Julie’s. ‘The bum-palace.’

THE LANCHESTER BANK,
Wroxham.

2.05 p.m. on the last Tuesday in June.

It was, fittingly, the hottest day of the year so far.

The digital thermometer on the counter showed 31 degrees as Sally looked out at the line of five customers. Her blouse was sticking to her and she felt sleepy after lunch. Oh well, less than three hours till closing time. ‘Will there be anything else today, Mrs Trent?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes, I wanted to open an account for my granddaughter. Do you have the forms for –’

Sally’s eyes widened as she looked past Mrs Trent to the doorway, where three figures in navy boiler suits were walking in, all wearing balaclavas with something written on them. Her first thought was – students. That it was some rag week thing. But they didn’t have collecting buckets in their hands. They had … were they …

‘RIGHT, EVERYONE GET DOWN! THIS IS A ROBBERY!’ one of them was screaming, the tallest one, nearest the counter, the one with ‘FEAR’ plastered across the forehead. The customers screamed as the last robber came bursting through the door. Well, ‘bursting’ would be pushing it. ‘Trundling’ would be more accurate. Trundling in on a wheelchair, wearing a balaclava with the word ‘FUCK’ written on it and producing a double-barrelled shotgun from beneath their tartan shawl as they came in.

One of the customers, the last man in the line, laughed and said, ‘What’s this? Red Nose Day or something?’ Ethel smacked him very hard in the balls with the butt of her shotgun. The man went down groaning as Ethel levelled the weapon at the others and yelled:
‘DOWN ON THE FLOOR, YOU FUCKING SLAGS, BEFORE I TURN YOU INTO FUCKING TEA BAGS.
’ She pulled the trigger and emptied both barrels with a CRACK – blowing out the CCTV camera above the counter.

That did it. Screaming. People throwing themselves on the floor. Sally, panicking, instinctively palmed a button on the counter, causing the metal shutter to begin slamming down. But Susan and Julie were already there, already wedging Nails’s three-foot iron bars in the sides, stopping the shutter halfway down, levelling their guns at the crying girl. ‘OPEN THE DOOR. NOW!’

Sally hit another button and they slipped into the back room. Taking Sally at gunpoint, they made their way along a narrow corridor where they met Alan Glass, on the way out of his office to see what that great bang had been. Susan shoved her revolver straight in his face and grabbed his lapel. ‘The strongroom,’ she said, in the closest thing to a man’s voice she could muster.

Glass burst into tears.

Two hundred yards up the street Nails sat sweltering behind the wheel of his 1988 Ford Granada. The one with the dummy plates he’d dug out of the attic. He had his balaclava up his head like a woollen cap, ready to be pulled down when he got the signal. He looked at the walkie-talkie on the passenger seat. Three or four minutes they’d been in there now. Ten tops he’d told them. ‘Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ,’ Nails panted, trying to control his breathing. ‘Cool. You’re cool, Nails. Cool as a cucumber. You drink boiling water and piss ice cubes. Fucking ice cream. Fucking …’ He looked across the street and saw that there was indeed an ice-cream van parked there, in front of the supermarket at the top of the high street. Nails licked his lips as a salty bead of sweat coursed down his forehead and into his eye, stinging.

‘Ohgodohgodohgod,’ Jill was whispering to herself, her hands shaking as she tried to keep her gun level on the cowering customers. ‘What’s taking them so long?’

‘Please,’ one of the women on the floor sobbed. ‘Please don’t hurt us.’

‘We’re not going to hu—’ Jill began.

‘SHUT IT!’ Ethel hissed at them, ejecting the spent cartridges from her shotgun, thumbing two fresh ones into the side-by-side barrels. ‘If any of you so much as lifts their head up I’m going to unload this thing right in your bloody face.’

All of the guns except Ethel’s were, of course, already completely unloaded. The shotgun cartridges Ethel was using had been filled with the traditional farmer’s mixture of rock salt. At very close range the cocktail might be enough to kill but Ethel had no intention of firing it at anyone at close range. It was perfect, however, for taking out the CCTV cameras and, at a range of twenty yards or less, would deliver a stinging blast across the arse.

In the back Glass was punching the code into the lock for the strongroom while chanting his mantra of ‘pleasedon’thurtmepleasedon’thurtmepleasedon’thurtme’.

For God’s sake,
Julie thought.
Show a little leadership!

A beep, a light going from red to green, and the door opened. Julie and Susan herded all four staff into the room. There, in the middle, were half a dozen metal Securicor boxes all waiting to be loaded into the safe. While Julie kept the staff covered Susan opened the first box and started stuffing fistfuls of notes into their large canvas holdall.