Page 80 of The Impossible Fortune
Tia pulls out her gun. She screams, ‘Everybody on the floor!’
Benny, Bobby and the driver whirl towards her. None of them gets on the floor. They just look at each other. Hassan is now in the cab of the lorry.
Tia fires a shot into the roof. ‘Everybody on the floor!’
Reluctantly the three men sink to their knees and then lie flat on the floor.
‘A cleaner with a gun?’ says Bobby.
‘I don’t think she’s a cleaner,’ says Benny.
‘We know you,’ says Bobby, looking up.
Tia points the gun straight at him. ‘What’s my name, then?’
‘We know your face,’ says Bobby.
‘I doubt that very much,’ says Tia.
‘Just steal the truck,’ says the driver. ‘I get the day off if you steal the truck.’
Tia ties up the men one by one. She takes their phones as she does so. Hassan has got the lorry started, and she jumps up into the cab. There’s not a great deal of point in tying the men up – by the time they’ve driven the truck through the security gates the alarm will be well and truly raised – but it’s good practice to tie people up. Might come in handy for next time.
Next time? Tia puffs out her cheeks. Really? Do thisagain? Hassan drives the lorry over the apron and up the ramp. At the point he should slow down he speeds up, and the lorry ploughs through the security posts, then makes slightly tougher work of the outside security gates. Guards, including the man who let Tia smuggle her guns through not fifteen minutes ago, go through the motions of starting to chase the lorry, but, by this point, Hassan is gunning it towards the Coast Road.
It couldn’t have gone a great deal better. Half a million-odd in the back. There’s an old car park down on one of the estates by the power station, and Hassan has parked a van out of sight there. They’ll transfer the watches across and head straight for Connie’s.
There is a red light up ahead, and Hassan stops for it. Very wise. There won’t be police looking for them for the next couple of minutes, but there will always be police on the lookout for people driving through red lights. The lorry stops, and the moment it does the cab is filled with a piercing alarm. Tia looks at Hassan. He puts his foot down on the accelerator, but the lorry won’t move. A red smoke now begins to fill the cab, and they hear an electronic voice broadcasting:
This vehicle is being stolen, please contact the police. This vehicle is being stolen, please contact the police.
At the junction of an industrial estate and the Coast Road, there is not much foot traffic. No ‘have-a-go heroes’ to make a citizen’s arrest. Hassan is trying to open the cab doors, but they have locked shut. The same with thewindows; Tia and Hassan are trapped. Tia braces herself in her seat and swings both her legs with full force at the windscreen. Her legs bounce back, shooting pain through both. She takes out her gun.
‘If that windscreen is bulletproof,’ says Hassan, ‘you’ll kill us both.’
‘Yeah,’ says Tia. ‘But if it isn’t, I won’t.’
She pulls the trigger and the windscreen shatters into a sea of diamonds. Tia and Hassan drop through the windscreen onto the road below. A little crowd is forming now, taking photos. Tia runs over to them and points her gun at the photographers.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, taking the phones.
Hassan has run across the Coast Road and down into a pedestrian underpass that leads towards the power station. Plenty of places to get lost around there. Tia runs west along the Coast Road until she finds a turning into a residential road. She sees no cameras and, as sirens start to sound in the background, she hides in a small bus stop.
Tia can’t go back to Connie’s, she knows that. If she’s spotted and followed, leading the police to Connie is a greater crime than stealing a few watches. And she can’t get on a bus: they all have cameras. It wouldn’t take long to track Tia’s movements. Looking along the residential road, Tia sees the South Downs rising above her and decides the only thing to do is walk. No cameras on the South Downs.
Head down, Tia moves up the road towards the hills. What’s on the other side? No idea. A stream of police cars has turned into the industrial estate. As Tia reaches the endof the road, she sees a stile leading onto one of the paths across the Downs. She is wearing cleaning overalls with bright pink Crocs, and has a loaded gun in her pocket. But people wear all sorts of things when they’re out walking.
For the first time today, Tia feels a thrill. As she approaches the stile, however, a silver Tesla blocks her path. The passenger-side window opens, and she sees a familiar face.
‘Connie!’ says Tia.
Connie opens the door and beckons her in.
‘Seat belt,’ says Connie, and throws the Tesla into a three-point turn. ‘When I was ten, my mum said I could walk to school by myself. I felt so grown up. She told me years later that for that whole first year she followed me to school. There was a whole group of them, the Mums. Just making sure we were safe.’
‘I messed up,’ says Tia.
‘Ah, you tried your best,’ says Connie. ‘And you shot out the window of a security lorry. That’s got to count for something.’
