Moustache Man removed a small crowbar from his pocket and pushed the end under the wooden lid. But as he reached down, Vince leaned against the door of the van. It was the signal for Glory to cause the distraction.
Moustache Man started to prise the wooden lid off the crate, his black two-tone shoe pressed on top to get some leverage with his jemmy. In the deathless quiet, Vince heard the creak of the leather in his shoe as he strained.
Vince started to bite his lip. Come on, Glory.
The plan was falling apart.
Suddenly, a police whistle sounded in the night. Peep!
“Bloody hell,” Amos snapped. “Sort that out.” One of his men ran forward to the sound of the noise – while Amos and Eyebrows peered out into the gloom to see if they could spot how many coppers were out there. They didn’t seem overly alarmed.
They didn’t seem overly – misdirected.
Peep! Peep! Peep!
But to Vince’s horror, Moustache Man stood still and didn’t move. Moustache Man waited, with his foot still on the partially opened crate.
There was no way that Vince could do the switch!
The plan wasn’t going to work!
He glanced into the distance, where the dispatched gangster was running to the trees. He was yelling, “Hey, you there!” He was going to catch Glory – the girl to whom Vince had promised everything would be all right. The girl he’d promised could get her dream cottage.
Vince knew that the situation was going badly wrong. There was only one thing for it. There had to be a plan B. Vince had to go on the attack. He had to pull the focus back from Glory and onto himself, if either of them had a hope in hell of escaping.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Glory being dragged out of the trees by the gangster. She stumbled into the grass and was roughly yanked back up on her feet. Amos was shouting that he couldn’t understand why a girl was blowing a police whistle. And then he recognised her and everything fell into place.
“Gloria,” he said, anger rising in his voice.
Vince had to act fast. He grabbed the crowbar out of Moustache Man’s hand and brought it up hard under the man’s chin. The gangster slumped unconscious across the box. Vince turned menacingly to Amos, waving the crowbar at him.
“Give me the money. And you let us go,” Vince shouted.
The other gangster slowed, taking in the developments as he returned, dragging Glory from the trees. He waited for his boss to tell him what to do. On the ground, a disorientated Moustache Man was nursing a broken jaw.
“I’ve got your girl,” Amos growled.
Glory looked more wide-eyed than ever. Her cloche hat was askew on her head. Vince felt a pang of guilt. She shouldn’t be mixed up in all this. But it was her who apologised. “Sorry, Vince,” she said in a small, wavering voice. That nearly tipped Vince over the edge. He’d failed her and now they were both going to die.
“They were going wrong anyway,” Vince said, offering a small smile, before turning his attention back to Amos Ackley.
“The money and you let us go.”
“What if I get my man to kill Glory?”
“Then I’ll kill you,” Vince said softly, his eyes had narrowed and he was strangely calm, as if he’d entered some sort of meditative state.
Amos smiled, as if he thrived on this sort of adrenaline rush. He loved a good stand-off, whether it was in a game of poker or standing in the dark on Barnes Common. Who would blink first? The stakes were high – life and death. Amos knew that either way someone would die in the next few minutes. He loved that. His heart was pumping and he felt more alive than he had in weeks. He relished the challenge.
Vince seemed to be relishing it too. Even if it was mostly bravado. A need to save Glory.
But then Amos changed everything. He gave a signal to the thug holding Glory.
The man sprang open a long flick knife from out of his left hand. Where did that come from? Now that’s a magic trick, thought Vince grimly. Glory was trying to pull away, but the thug pushed her onto the ground.
“Let her go.”
Amos shook his head, coal-black eyes boring into Vince.
Glory looked scared. The thug was gripping her arm above the elbow. A tight grip from a meaty fist. She glanced at Vince for guidance. What did he want her to do? Would it help if she screamed to cause a distraction or something? Or if she struggled?
Vince gripped the crowbar. He glanced from her and then back to Amos, staring intently – both men determined to break the other’s nerve.
It was a stalemate.
But it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
As dawn added a purple tinge to the retreating night sky, the ambulance slowed to a juddering halt. The petrol tank finally empty with even the fumes that had sustained the last few miles gone. As the engine clattered to a bone-dry, choking standstill, the driver managed to use the last of the vehicle’s momentum to tuck it onto a long-grassed verge. At the wheel, Vince winced as he wrapped the makeshift bandage tighter around his injured right hand. It had been bleeding badly, and it was only now that he noticed that the steering wheel was slick with redness. But it was a small price to pay for his escape. He staggered out from the cab, a gun butt sticking out from the belt of his trousers, and found his legs as he scanned his surroundings. It seemed to be the edge of a village: a fork in the road by some picture-postcard idyll of sleepiness. The place was called Thatchford Green, but the name meant nothing to Vince. He was simply relieved to be as far away from London as possible.
Walking along the road as the darkness finally lost its cyclical battle with day, Vince found himself in the village. He glanced up the main street and saw a pub. It was four in the morning, but maybe they would have a room for him to sleep things off.
He straightened his jacket, buttoning it to hide the gun and made his way towards the pub, bracing himself as he rapped on the door. After a moment, a bedroom light switched on above his head.
As Vince waited for a response, he noticed a newspaper vending stall next to the pub. The headline behind the mesh caught his eye.
“Courageous Connie Carter Saves Day”.
Vince was surprised. He knew that name.
It couldn’t be the same girl, could it? Vince plucked a newspaper from the pile behind the stall and leafed through it in disbelief. He was so engrossed, he didn’t hear the angry voice of the pub landlord behind him. He didn’t see the man standing in his vest and pyjama bottoms.
There was a photograph of Connie Carter and Margaret Sawyer on page three. He stared at the face of Connie Carter: her familiar
