Free Nameless by Jessie Keane

her.
    ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
    Ruby raised a smile. ‘Yeah. Thanks.’
    She felt a little breathless. Not just from the fright the drunken toff had given her, but from the waves of charm Cornelius seemed to give off, like heat from a fire. For a moment their eyes locked and held.
    ‘I do apologize. Just high spirits,’ he said, and walked off.
    Ruby resumed her pose. But her eyes followed him.

18
     
    Charlie and Joe had high hopes of the Post Office. They had their boys out robbing meat trucks up and down the highways, but now they’d found bigger fish to fry. One night Charlie walked into a pub near the Angel with Joe at his side to have a chat with a Post Office driver. After that, he got a few of the boys drafted in as drivers and sorters.
    ‘Money comes up from the West to be returned to London by registered post,’ the man was telling Charlie and Joe over a pint.
    Joe was watching him suspiciously. He was an iffy-looking geezer, all skinny drinker’s sunken cheeks and furtive eyes; he’d done some time once, they knew that – that’s why they were talking to him. He’d been inside, he knew the score. It held no fear for him.
    ‘Some of it goes for pulping at the Bank of England, but most of it goes to the big banks in the City. Comes into Paddington in the small hours, then it gets driven over by Post Office van to the East Central branch at St Martin’s le Grand.’
    ‘What, a single van?’ asked Joe, sipping his pint.
    ‘Yeah, with just the driver, a postman and a guard. Not armed.’
    ‘They got an alarm or something on board?’ asked Charlie, intrigued.
    ‘There’s a button for the siren.’
    ‘How’d you stop it?’
    ‘You can’t. Once it’s on, it’s on.’
    ‘Fuck off.’
    ‘Serious.’
    ‘That’s bad news,’ said Joe.
    ‘Maybe,’ said Charlie. ‘You got what I asked for? That other thing?’
    ‘Yeah,’ said the man, and handed it over.
    After their meeting, Joe went on home but Charlie went round to the Tranter house and knocked on the door.
    Silence. Then a light went on and she said: ‘Who is it?’
    ‘Charlie,’ he called back.
    ‘Who?’
    Oh, she was really pushing her luck. He found himself grinning, genuinely amused.
    ‘Charlie Darke,’ he said.
    She opened the door. He stepped inside, closing it behind him.
    ‘I was just going to bed,’ she said, an edge of complaint in her voice.
    ‘I said this ain’t over,’ said Charlie, taking off his hat. ‘And it ain’t.’ He pulled out the gun, the neat little .22 the man had given him in the pub, and rested the muzzle against her forehead.
    She froze. ‘What the . . .’
    ‘Shocked yet? Scared yet?’
    She said nothing, just stared at him.
    ‘Now, what’s your name? And if you say Mrs Tranter again, watch out.’
    ‘Why do you even want to know it?’ she asked, and he saw her swallow hard.
    So she was human after all.
    ‘Humour me.’
    ‘It’s Rachel.’
    It suited her. It was dignified and solid, it had endurance, that name; just like her.
    ‘Well, Rachel, let your hair down.’
    ‘What the . . .’
    ‘Don’t even start. Just do it.’
    She reached back and loosened the bun, shook her mid-brown hair out. It was long, falling almost to her hips. It made her look gentler, sweeter. She stared at him. She was almost pretty, with her hair down.
    Charlie kept the pistol levelled on her forehead.
    ‘Now – upstairs, I think. Don’t you?’
    ‘No. I don’t.’
    Charlie laughed. Jesus, she was annoying! ‘Mrs Tranter, I’m holding a loaded gun to your head.’
    It wasn’t loaded, but she wasn’t to know that. Most women would have been gibbering and pleading by now, but not her. She was staring him out, the audacious cow.
    ‘So you are. And if I thought you were actually going to use it, I might be more inclined to go along with you. But you’re not. Are you?’
    She was calling his bluff.
    Their eyes locked.
    Charlie lifted the pistol away from her head, slipped it back into his