Widows' Revenge

  Lynda La Plante was born in Liverpool. She trained for the stage at RADA and worked with the National Theatre and RDC before becoming a television actress. She then turned to writing—and made her breakthrough with the phenomenally successful TV series Widows. Her novels have all been international bestsellers.

  Her original script for the much acclaimed Prime Suspect won awards from BAFTA, Emmy, British Broadcasting and Royal Television Society as well as the 1993 Edgar Allan Poe Award. Lynda has written and produced over 170 hours of international television.

  Lynda is one of only three screenwriters to have been made an honorary fellow of the British Film Institute and was awarded the BAFTA Dennis Potter Best Writer Award in 2000. In 2008, she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to Literature, Drama and Charity.

  If you would like to hear from Lynda, please sign up to her readers’ club at www.lyndalaplante.com for further information. You can also follow Lynda on Facebook and Twitter @LaPlanteLynda.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © La Plante Global Limited, 2019

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by Nick Stearn

  Typeset by Scribe Inc., Philadelphia, PA.

  First published in the United States of America in 2019 by Zaffre

  Zaffre is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

  80-81 Wimpole St. London W1G 9RE

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4998-6204-1

  Canadian paperback ISBN: 97814998-6209-6

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-4998-6205-8

  For information, contact

  251 Park Avenue South, Floor 12, New York, New York 10010

  www.bonnierzaffre.com / www.bonnierbooks.co.uk

  Contents

  The Story So Far

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Afterword

  Readers’ Club

  A Message from Lynda La Plante . . .

  Excerpt from The Dirty Dozen

  The Story So Far

  Following a failed attempt to rob a security van, and a horrific explosion, three charred bodies are identified as Joe Pirelli, Terry Miller and Harry Rawlins.

  Dolly Rawlins, Harry’s widow, is left bereft. She had doted on her husband for twenty years. He was a revered and highly respected criminal, and his death leaves her unable to face life without him.

  Then Dolly discovers her husband’s carefully laid out plans for another security van robbery. She and the other widows, Shirley and Linda, have little in common, apart from their grief, but she convinces them to join her as they begin preparations to carry out the robbery that Harry had planned.

  Initially, the other widows think Dolly is out of her mind. But the lure of money encourages them to believe they are ready to go through with the plan. Dolly realizes they need a fourth person to make it work—a getaway driver.

  Amongst Harry’s plans, Dolly finds an address for Jimmy Nunn and decides to pay him a visit. At his run-down flat she meets Trudie Nunn, who has a young baby. Dolly had always longed to be able to have a child with Harry, but she tragically suffered a series of miscarriages. Trudie is young and nervous, and Dolly is shocked to learn that her husband, Harry, is still alive. Devastatingly, she also discovers that Harry is the father of Trudie’s child.

  This terrible betrayal fuels Dolly’s determination to proceed with her plans. This is now revenge. Bella O’Reilly comes on board as the getaway driver and the four women succeed in carrying out the dangerous robbery.

  After the heist Dolly hides the bulk of the money in a nursery school locker room, dividing it up into substantial amounts to enable each girl to escape to Rio. Dolly has outwitted Harry Rawlins, who cannot believe that his faithful and loving wife has proved herself to be an equally, if not more, masterful criminal than himself.

  Widows’ Revenge begins with the women living the high life in Rio, all waiting for the right time to collect their money.

  But they are fearful that the “dead” man Harry Rawlins is going to come after them.

  Chapter One

  Bella had recommended Mr. Jarrow to Dolly as one of the best men in London, and so Dolly had made an appointment. She was slightly taken aback to find five other women in the reception area also waiting to see him—it was more of a conveyor belt than she had imagined. But she enjoyed taking furtive glances over the top of her glossy magazine and trying to work out what each woman was having done. In some instances it was obvious: a nose needed shortening by a couple of centimeters; eye bags could be removed. But she did wonder what the two women sitting in the corner were in for. Why bother with a nose job if your face was completely hidden behind a black niqab? At least their husbands would see their faces when they took them off, she mused.

  Husband. Every time Dolly thought of the word she felt a strange tightening in the pit of her stomach. It had been a long time since she had referred to her “husband” . . .

  “Mrs. Rawlins?”

  Dolly was jolted from her thoughts. The receptionist, who spoke with a slight French accent, had a face that had obviously never needed any kind of cosmetic surgery.

  “Mr. Jarrow will see you now.”

  The consulting room itself was as immaculate as the waiting room, from the pale green carpet and the imposing desk to the perfectly placed antique carver chair for the patients. Mr. Jarrow himself was very good looking, but he seemed a little too neat; perhaps he’d had a job done on his own face? He was very quiet, his voice soothing.

  “I’d like a facelift,” Dolly said simply.

  “I see,” he said. “A complete facelift, Mrs. Rawlins?”

  Dolly nodded.

  He got up from his desk and came over to her. He held her head as he inspected her eyes and her neck, and his hands when he touched her face felt cool.

  “With this form of surgery,” he explained in his soothing voice, “the stitches will be placed behind the ears; your hairline will remain just as it is now. We will stitch here—” he indicated where the stitches for the eye socket would be—“and here.” She felt his feather-light touch below her right eye.

  He took a seat back behind his desk and began to sift through her file, looking at the photographs she had had taken earlier that day—front, side-view right, side-view left—looking at Dolly, then back to the photographs.

  Finally, he closed the file. “You were widowed six months ago?”

  Dolly nodded. She had already supplied this information.

  “And you have no relatives, no family?”

  Dolly shook her head. Again she had told him this already.

  Mr. Jarrow tapped the desk with a very fine, thin, gold pencil. “You do understand . . .” He paused. “You do understand that no surgery can permanently prevent aging?”

  Dolly nodded. This too had been gone over before. “But you can make me look younger, isn’t that right, Mr. Jarrow?”

  He looked up and gave her a sweet, direct smile. “You were married for twenty-five years?”

  Dolly said, “Yes.”

  “The loss must have been . . . very great.”

  “Yes,” said Dolly. “It was.”

  He gave a slight cough and opened her file again. “Did you love your husband, Mrs. Rawlins?” He flicked through the pages.

  He’d taken her completely off guard.

  “Why do you ask me that?” she said. And then, very quietly, rather shakily, she added, “I loved him.” She barely recognized her own voice.

  Mr. Jarrow looked up and slightly tilted his head. “I’m sorry?”

  “I loved him.”

  He nodded. His pale blue eyes seemed to stare right through her. “Then his death must have been a very great loss to you.”

  Dolly could feel her breath leaving her body. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, it was. It was a very great loss to me.”

  Harry Rawlins stepped out from the terminal into the sunlight of Rio. The glare of the sun bounced off his mirror-tinted glasses and he could feel the sweat trickling down the back of his neck and into his crumpled linen suit. He shifted his small holdall from one hand to the other and looked up and down the lines of parked cars.

  Jimmy Glazier had a strange lump in the pit of his stomach. There he was, Harry Rawlins, back from the dead. Jimmy’s pudgy, sweat-glistening face beamed, he waved, and he saw Rawlins stare toward him. Jimmy scuttled between the parked cars and reached Harry. He felt so childish, with all the emotion swelling inside him, and all he got out was, “Good to see you, Harry. Welcome to Rio.”

  Jimmy had always admired Harry Rawlins. He’d been one of the big ones, one of the good men, and even though he’d only worked for Rawlins once, he’d gone to him twice for help, and Rawlins had never turned him down. When Jimmy received the cable, he felt it was his chance to repay him. As they moved toward Jimmy’s car—a beat-up old Buick, which he’d bought when he first came to Rio—Rawlins was strangely silent. First he moved round to the wrong side of the car and Jimmy had to say jovially, “Ah, no, Harry, it’s this way round,” before nervously openi
ng the passenger door for him. Then he clumsily took Rawlins’ holdall—fumbling as if Rawlins was some sort of royal guest—and asked if there was any more luggage.

  Rawlins shook his head. “No, just the one bag, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy placed it carefully in the boot, before jumping into the driving seat. Inside the car was boiling, and Rawlins immediately lowered the window, with Jimmy doing likewise, before leaning his arm along the back of the seat and looking at Harry.

  “When I heard the news, I just couldn’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head. “You lost a good team, good men, Harry. Christ, I thought you’d gone down with them!”

  Rawlins cut him off sharply. “Can we get out of here, Jimmy? I’m sweating like a pig.”

  The air-conditioning didn’t work, and as the car eased into the traffic, the wind blowing through the open windows did little to cool them down. Jimmy couldn’t read Rawlins’ expression behind his mirrored sunglasses, but despite the boiling hot sun, he was happy. He had the big man, Mr. Rawlins, in his car, coming to stay at his place, in Rio.

  They drove down the hill from São Paolo and headed toward the center of town, passing several elegant-looking villas, with shady patios and their own pools, half-hidden behind heavy fencing, palm trees and shrubberies. Jimmy pulled up by a pale pink villa with solid-looking wrought-iron gates, to let a mangy-looking dog cross the road, before moving on.

  The driveway to the pink villa was lined with lush-looking palm trees. It went sweeping past a garage and round to the side of the house, where five sunloungers with umbrellas were arranged round the pool. The faint sound of the Tijuana Brass could be heard coming from a small transistor by one of the sun-loungers, where a woman was stretched out, covered with suntan oil.

  Linda Pirelli.

  She picked up the radio and turned the dial to find a different station, but all she could get was a garble of voices in a language she didn’t understand. She turned back the dial until she found the Tijuana Brass again, then hurled it into the pool, where it gurgled for a moment before sinking to the bottom.

  Up on the balcony above the pool, Shirley yelled, “Linda! Come up ’ere for a minute, will you? I saw that!” before stalking back into the bedroom. The twin beds were covered with neatly folded piles of clothes, ready to be placed into open suitcases. Shirley was all made up, hair done to perfection, and wearing a silk shirt, knickers, suspenders and stockings, and very high-heeled shoes. Carefully and methodically, she started filling the cases.

  Linda stormed into the bedroom. “Whaddya want?” She looked through the drawers. “Oi, you bin going through my things!”

  “I have not been going through your things,” Shirley retorted. “I just want that blue shirt back that you borrowed yesterday. Where’ve you put it?”

  Linda stomped over to the chest of drawers, rifled through a tangled mess of clothes and dragged out a crumpled shirt. “’Ere yer go.”

  Shirley looked at it in disgust. “Never mind, you can keep it!”

  Linda flopped down on the bed and sullenly watched Shirley go back to packing her beautifully folded, crisp new clothes.

  “Yer got enough bleedin’ suitcases?” She snorted.

  “Yes, they’re nice, aren’t they?” Shirley replied with a smile. “They’re all mock croc leather, you know.”

  Linda picked one up. “Well, they weigh a ton before yer even put a bleedin’ Kleenex in. ’Ow much did they cost?”

  Shirley squinted at her watch, the digits seeming to blur. She should have got the other one, the Cartier. “Bella’s going to miss me. I’ve got to go.”

  “Well, ’ow yer gonna get to the airport?”

  Shirley went back to her packing. “I’ve got a taxi coming. But Bella said she’d be here to see me off.”

  “Yeah, she also said she’d teach me to swim!” Linda threw herself back on the bed.

  “Linda, move off!” Shirley chided. “Go and sit over there!”

  Scowling, Linda moved to a chair and stuck her feet up on the edge of the dressing table.

  Shirley turned. “By the way, that cistern overflowed again. When you gonna move that money? Bella’s bought diamonds; why don’t you buy diamonds? I mean, I got my money changed into dollars. What did Dolly say? Change that money as soon as possible. That money’s traceable, Linda!”

  Linda frowned. “I’ll do it tomorrow.” She then started unscrewing pots of cream from Shirley’s already neatly packed vanity bag. She dabbed her finger in and began rubbing lotion into her face.

  Shirley watched her disapprovingly. “You don’t put dollops of that on your face, Linda. That’s Queen Bee jelly with vitamin E. You’ve only got to use a drop.”

  Linda moved away from the dressing table. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Queen Bee jelly! Christ, Shirley, if they put gnat piss in a bottle you’d buy it if they said it was good for your face!”

  Shirley squinted at her watch again. “Wonder where Bella is?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been waitin’ by that pool for her all mornin’.”

  Shirley looked at her. “You’re burning, you know. Look at your skin. It’s awfully bad for it, Linda. I’ve told you, you shouldn’t sit in the sun, you’ll get cancer.”

  “Bollocks.” Linda sat down on the bed. She watched Shirley finishing packing for a moment, then asked, rather plaintively, “Why can’t I come wiv yer, Shirl?”

  Shirley turned. They’d been over this before. “You are not coming with me and that is final. Dolly said separate, and that’s what we’re gonna do!”

  Linda mimicked her. “Dolly said sep-a-rate! Dolly also said no taxis to the villa. Well, you’ve just blown that, ’aven’t you? She said no taxis and no cars. Bella’s bin in and out of ’ere like a dingbat in that Rolls-Royce . . .”

  Right on cue they heard the crunch of gravel on the drive. Linda rushed to the balcony.

  “’Ere she comes. Gawd, what does she think she’s come as—Shirley Bassey? Look at ’er!”

  Linda watched as Bella stepped out of the white Rolls-Royce. She looked stunning. It was a strange thing with Bella—she might have been a tart, she might have come from the streets, but God she had taste. She knew what she wanted, and she always wanted—and got—the best.

  Linda yelled down, “Dolly said no taxis and no cars to the bleedin’ villa! Well, you’ve come fucking incognito, I must say!”

  Shirley had packed her suitcases and was now inspecting a jacket. “You sat on this, Linda. Look at it, you’ve crumpled it.” She stepped into her skirt and zipped it up.

  “I’ll take a couple of yer cases down for yer.” Linda walked unsteadily down the stairs, staggering under the weight of two suitcases, and dumped them in front of the Rolls.

  Bella looked at them quizzically. “Hey,” she said, “unbelievable! We’ve got the same suitcases—just different colors.”

  Linda stomped back into the house, paying no attention, as Shirley appeared with suitcase number three. “What’s the matter with her?” Bella asked.

  Shirley shrugged. “I don’t know, she’s like a bear with a sore behind, sometimes.”

  Bella jerked her head toward the chauffeur. “It’s all right, he doesn’t understand English.”

  Shirley nodded. “Oh, well, thanks for coming.”

  Bella handed her a small packet. “This is for you, kiddo. You take care of yourself!”

  Shirley unwrapped the tiny locket decorated with an “S” in diamonds; very tasteful and no doubt very expensive.

  “Thanks, Bella, it’s lovely.” She beamed.

  Bella grinned. “Well, kiddo, you have a good time in LA. If you do everything I’m doing, you will!”

  Shirley gripped her hand. “I hope it works out for you, Bella. He’s a super guy.”

  Bella nodded. “Yes, he is, Shirley. He’s everything I’ve ever wanted. I’ve never been so happy in my whole life.”

  Shirley’s jacket suddenly flew down from the balcony and landed on the roof of the Roller.

  Shirley whipped round. “There was no need to do that, Linda!” She turned to Bella. “She hasn’t changed her money yet, you know! It’s still in the cistern; made me soak my skirt.”

  Bella shook her head, smiling. “I’ll have a word with her later.”

  Linda appeared with suitcase number four. “That’s it!”