‘Fuck!’ the girl spat as she loosened the Velcro at her sweaty throat and yanked down the zip on her combat jacket. ‘Damn Maggie bitch put up more of a fight than I expected.’
The other girl drove the van steadily as they joined the traffic on the main road. ‘I told you she wouldn’t be run-of-the-mill.’
‘Maybe, but if that fucking cop hadn’t intervened …’
The driver, whose name was Ivana, frowned. ‘That guy on the bike was a cop?’
‘It was a woman.’
There was a brief, contemplative silence, and then Ivana cracked an amused smile. ‘A biker-chick cop? I’ve heard it all now.’
‘Yeah … well, I took care of her too.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Just busted her helmet open. Didn’t actually kill her.’ The passenger, whose name was Alyssa, scowled. ‘Fucking would have done if you hadn’t showed up.’
‘I drove round the back in case the nun came out. Is she dead?’
‘No. Like I say, that fucking cop …’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Oddly, Ivana seemed relieved. ‘It’s a good thing actually.’
Alyssa glanced around. ‘What’re you talking about?’
‘That cop saw you and the vehicle. If she’d also found a dead body, the whole pig pantomime would show up. We’d be in trouble. But if they think it was just a mugging, they won’t be too worried. The van’ll need to be sprayed again, of course.’
Alyssa acknowledged this with a grunt. It would mean a lot of work, but they changed the van’s colour almost as frequently as they changed its plates. It would have been highly unprofessional to keep on using it in the same unaltered condition. And professionalism was the name of this game.
They drove in silence for a minute.
Ivana and Alyssa were nineteen-year-old twins and they resembled each other closely, though Ivana was slightly more severe-looking, with her spiky, red-tinted hair and athletic aura. In contrast, Alyssa had a softer air, though not by much. Shapelier than her sister, she was still obviously an athlete. She wore her fair hair shoulder-length, though at present it was damp and hanging in strings. Ordinarily, she had similar good looks to Ivana, though they were rounder and smoother, but thanks to her foul-up with Lorna Cunningham she was currently battered and bruised, her left eye black and swollen and only partially open.
‘How badly did you hurt the cop?’ Ivana asked.
‘She got up again,’ Alyssa responded.
‘Fair enough. That works.’
Alyssa was amazed that her sister was being so conciliatory. They’d been looking for the dingbat in the habit and veil for days now, Alyssa hating her more and more because she’d somehow proved so elusive. Ivana, though she was calmer and cooler as a rule, had seemed equally angry.
‘I can’t believe you don’t mind that we’ve fucked this up,’ Alyssa said. ‘You reckoned she was with that old duffer down St Clement’s just before we nabbed him. You said you thought she might have clocked us. If the cops are looking into that one, won’t they link it to this? It was virtually in the same place.’
Ivana shrugged. ‘And who’s their only witness to that other grab? A smackhead scrote who dresses like a nun and sells her cooch to get gear. You think they’ll listen to her … if she’s able to tell them anything sensible? Yeah, there’s a vague possibility they’ll connect the two. But none of our plates are traceable, and like I say, we do another respray and we’re sorted.’
Alyssa wondered if this was a bit of bravado. The last time they’d been down St Clement’s and had grabbed the old guy, Ivana had actually been concerned enough that the fake nun might have seen the vehicle to stipulate that from that point on they’d stop using dummy plates bearing registration numbers that were non-existent, and start using copies – plates mocked up to look like genuine ones belonging to legitimate vans owned by real firms. That way, routine police camera checks wouldn’t throw up anything suspicious.
For her own part, Alyssa was just glad that they hadn’t mentioned to his lordship that the other grab had been witnessed. He’d have gone hopping mad, and would have had them back on Category Cs again.
‘We’ll have to tell him, of course,’ Ivana said, as though she’d been reading her sister’s mind. ‘That we went for a Category B tonight but blew it.’
Alyssa’s jaw dropped. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘Lyssa … you did all right. The plan worked. I never thought the nun’d be dumb enough to go back to the same place where we grabbed the other one, but you were right … she did, eventually. Plus, you’d have got her into the back of the van easy if that cloak thing she was wearing hadn’t ripped off. Okay, she was lighter on her toes than Category Bs usually are, but you still caught up with her in a few yards.’
Alyssa snorted. ‘And then look what happened.’
‘Fucking hell, doll. Even you can’t be blamed for a patrolling copper turning up. How often does that happen these days? When was the last time you even saw a patrolling police officer? Even the old fella’ll be on board with that. Anyway, like I say … it doesn’t matter. We’ll get her at some point.’ She had to suppress an excited grin. ‘For the moment, something else has come up.’
‘What?’
Ivana glanced at her chunky military-style watch, and then nodded at the phone lying on the dash. ‘Look at that text. It arrived just under five minutes ago.’
Alyssa grabbed the device and checked the last message.
‘Job?’ Alyssa said, mystified. ‘Does he mean like … the real thing?’
Ivana shrugged. ‘He said it’s urgent, didn’t he? Told us to drop everything.’
‘But we haven’t even done a successful Category A yet.’
‘So what was last night?’
Alyssa was puzzled. ‘That meathead from the gym? I was told when we got home that he didn’t count. That you’d spiked his drink, so he was Category B at best.’
Ivana snorted. ‘That’s because his lordship’s still pissed off with you about Cunningham.’
‘I don’t know why,’ Alyssa grumbled. ‘We got her off the streets, we still completed the job.’
‘Yeah, and it was all looking great – our first Category A, done and dusted. But then you insisted on going toe-to-toe with her. And look at the outcome. You letting your face get messed up could’ve set us back weeks. No wonder we got put back on Category B. But last night he was well pleased, trust me. After you’d gone up to bed, he said we’d made a chance out of nothing, thought on our feet, improvised …’
Alyssa couldn’t help feeling miffed about that as well. Okay, it had mainly been Ivana’s improvisation – she herself had only been called in by phone at the last minute. But they’d still pulled it off together. She was the one who’d struck the fatal blow. She was the one who’d come up with the idea to lift one of those eroded stone lids in the Victorian section of the churchyard and lay the meathead and his kit-bag to rest on the bones of some granny from the 1870s. She was the one who’d thought to use the fire-extinguisher from the church porch to wash the blood off the steps and path. And yet she was the one who’d been sent to bed while the old fella called Ivana in to offer his congratulations.
This was often the way of it, though. The two sisters were the same age, their births separated by a single hour, and had shared exactly the same life experience, and yet somehow Ivana had fallen into the role of leader and Alyssa into that of follower. She didn’t like it, but she accepted it because it seemed to be the natural order of things. Plus, Ivana was near enough everything Alyssa wanted to be. The younger-girl-by-one-hour loved her older sibling greatly and admired her even more.
‘And you know what he’s like,’ Ivana continued. ‘He’s especially happy when a plan comes together. And I mean a real plan. Not just brute force and ignorance. He didn’t like the Cunningham cock-up, but last night he reckoned we thought on our feet and basically snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.’
Alyssa pondered this again, the realisation of what it meant, and the subsequent excitement, only dawning on her with gradual, painful slowness. ‘Seriously, Vana? That’s it … we’re done on these practice runs, we’re actually going live?’
Ivana nodded again, still excited. ‘I think we are, doll!’
‘Tonight?’
‘Why else get us back in now?’
‘He can’t wait to retire … that’s all it is.’
‘And does that bother you?’
‘Does it bloody hell!’ Alyssa punched the dashboard. ‘I’ve been waiting for this ever since we left school.’