Widows

Dolly set off confidently on one of her regular journeys to Myra’s hair salon on St. John’s Wood Road. A glance in her mirror en route confirmed she was being followed by the unmarked car from outside her house. When she parked her Mercedes near the salon and walked down the road, she recognized Detective Constable Andrews, stuck in the middle of two women arguing as to who had seen a free meter first.

Myra’s was a boutique place frequented by a very regular, well-to-do clientele. The atmosphere was ‘home from home’ and Dolly loved being pampered here on her twice-weekly visit. The decor was plain and elegant, and the mirrored walls allowed for easy socializing without turning your head. Myra herself was a very astute businesswoman underneath her rather brassy appearance, and Dolly was happy to pay over the odds for her service. Myra knew that cups of tea and coffee, biscuits and the odd glass of wine turned a cut and blowout into an afternoon out — she earned loyalty from her clients and, in return, they earned loyalty from her.

Today, when Myra greeted Dolly at the door as she always did, Dolly got straight to the point.

‘Can you do me a favor?’ She handed little Wolf over. ‘Take care of him for me for an hour.’

‘What about your tint, Mrs. Rawlins?’ Myra asked.

Dolly smiled and kissed Wolf on the head. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll pay you.’ And with that, she took a headscarf from her handbag and slipped out the back door.

At the end of the alleyway, Dolly hailed a cab on the main street. DC Andrews was still trying to find a parking space with a clear view of Myra’s salon.

The corridor that led to the safety deposit boxes seemed to go on forever and every pair of eyes seemed to be on Dolly. Unnerved and strangely excited, she found herself almost swaggering along the marble floor, eyes fixed on the sharp-suited young man waiting for her at the other end. She needed to convince him — and herself — that she belonged to this world of locked-away secrets. That’s all anyone ever really put into safety deposit boxes: secrets.

Dolly had only been to the bank once before, with Harry. This time she had a nervous tickle in the back of her throat as the straight-laced young clerk took her details. She was so nervous, she nearly signed her real surname by mistake.

‘This way, Mrs. Smith,’ the clerk said. Dolly detected the heavy, knowing emphasis on the surname. Reaching the lift, he handed her a key and pressed the button for the basement.

When the lift doors opened, she was met by a security guard who guided her through a series of four heavy doors, each of which he locked behind them, before they got to the vault. The final door had a barred gate on the inside, which had to be unlocked separately. As the outer door was opened and the security guard searched for the key to open the internal barred gate, Dolly thought of the prison life which Harry had always so adeptly avoided. He’d been so clever and they’d been so lucky to have the life they did. For a split second, grief rose from the pit of her stomach and stopped somewhere in her throat. She felt sick. Hurry up, she thought to herself. I need to sit down.

Ushering her into the vault, the security guard showed her the bell on the desk, which would summon him when she was ready to leave. Dolly waited for him to leave the vault before she pulled out the key Eddie had given her. She slipped it into the numbered safety deposit box on the wall, and turned it. Inside was a heavy strong box.

Ten minutes later, the contents of the box were strewn on the table in front of her. She’d not had time to count the vast bundles of bank notes, although they must have totaled tens of thousands of pounds, and she left the .38 revolver concealed under the cash, untouched. It was Harry’s leather-bound ledgers that fascinated her.

The ledgers were bound in heavy brown leather like ones she’d seen in a Dickens play on TV. Each page was neatly handwritten, dated and labeled, with entries going back for almost the whole of their twenty years of married life. As she flicked through the pages she realized some of the names recorded were of people she knew to be dead, but it was the most recent ledger that stunned and amazed her. Page after page was filled with copious lists of names and the monies paid out to them, as well as monies stashed here, there and everywhere. The back of the ledger was filled with pasted and neatly aligned newspaper cuttings, resembling something like a film star’s scrapbook of reviews. But these cuttings were detailed articles on various armed robberies Harry had obviously committed and, next to the articles, were names that Dolly suspected referred to those who had been involved in each robbery. No wonder the Fishers wanted these ledgers! They could put all the competition away for a very long time and acquire a very tidy sum of stashed cash from Harry’s old jobs.