LITMIR.BIZ

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yet still the young blonde remained dithering by a display of hats, looking nervous. Ada hadn’t wanted Mavis tagging along with her today; she’d guessed the younger woman would end up as more of a hindrance than a help.

      But Bill had insisted Ada be the one to teach the new recruit the ropes. She was convinced that if the little trollop hadn’t been dropping her drawers for Bill for weeks, he wouldn’t have let Mavis wangle a place in their gang at all.

      Ada squinted fiercely at Mavis, in the hope she’d snap out of her jitters, remember she was supposed to go to the door with an expensive item, and pretend to examine it in the light.

      It was a trick Ada had learned from Betty Pickering. They’d made an excellent team and had used it successfully many times in the past. A store detective would always be drawn to a person who gave the impression they were about to leave with unpaid goods. The chief hoister was then left free to pilfer at will for some minutes. If lucky, they could disappear, unchallenged, into the crowd of West End shoppers.

      Fifteen minutes ago Mavis had managed to keep a sales assistant occupied while Ada slipped the silk blouses out of sight. But they’d moved now to the more expensive stuff and Ada was keen to get done and escape.

      It seemed Mavis had finally plucked up the courage to make her move. The young blonde grabbed a feathered hat and barged swiftly towards the exit, bumping into several people in her blind haste. Ada chuckled beneath her breath as the flat-foot started to attention, then raced after her. Ada realised that if the new girl got herself arrested on her first day it wouldn’t bother her one bit. She’d have Bill all to herself ...

      Mavis’s panic made it seem she would run out onto Oxford Street with the hat but she remembered to halt sharply by the door to inspect it. Giggling softly, Ada turned her attention back to the rails and it took less than thirty seconds for three dresses to join the blouses she’d already tucked away. She liked the look of the tweed coat but knew it was too bulky to go into an inside pocket, despite the fact the clothes she wore were specially tailored to conceal large quantities of booty. Instead, she whipped it off its hanger and swung it casually about her shoulders like a cape.

      Feeling unbearably hot and heavy, Ada made her way swiftly towards the exit, endeavouring to remain inconspicuous by keeping close to groups of people. As soon as she noticed Mavis blushing and batting her lashes at the security guard, who now looked soppy, Ada went out of another door, and melted away into the West End throng.

      Despite icy gusts cooling her face Ada was sweating by the time she reached the alley where her receiver was waiting to relieve her of the clothes. Gratefully she shrugged off the heavy tweed, then began to pull the dresses and blouses from their hiding places.

      Charlie North packed the merchandise into a suitcase. Within three minutes of their efficient meeting, they were both going their separate ways, due to reconvene later to repeat the exercise.

      Once more ‘clean’, Ada sauntered back into view and began mingling again with early Christmas shoppers with the intention of raiding a different store. First, she needed to catch up with Mavis and she hoped the pest hadn’t forgotten where their rendevouz point was.

      Ada had hardly gone a hundred yards towards Marble Arch when through the crowd she spotted the weasel-faced store detective with a policeman at his side. She realised immediately the fellow had found the empty hangers and had rumbled that she’d been in cahoots with a decoy. Now he was out searching for her, perhaps both of them. Mavis had been instructed to make herself scarce immediately after she’d fulfilled her role and head to their meeting place. Ada just hoped that her accomplice had got clean away because she wouldn’t put it past the snivelling wretch to grass them all up under police interrogation.

      With a bitter curse Ada ducked down her head, pulled up her collar and weaved a path to safety. She knew she’d be going home to Lambeth early and that annoyed her because she’d seen some smashing shoes recently in Selfridges.

      ‘I’ve been hanging about waiting for her by Marble Arch!’ Ada was so enraged that the finger she had pointing at Mavis was violently trembling. ‘I’d’ve been better off doin’ the job on me own. The cowardly bitch nearly got the both of us arrested in Debenhams.’

      Ada continued stamping to and fro in the back room of the Windsor pub, sucking on a cigarette. ‘And I ain’t taking her with me again, so don’t go asking me, Bill. See if one of the others will have the useless article on their backs.’ She glowered, waiting for Bill to side with her and bawl the new girl out.

      If anything, Bill was sliding his latest young fancy encouraging glances.

      ‘Time she was sent packin’, Ada stormed, unpinning her hat and throwing it down on the table.

      ‘Cut her some slack, will yer, Ada?’ Bill drawled soothingly. ‘Be different next time. Virgin at it today, weren’t she?’ He twitched his head, giving Mavis a sly, sideways wink.

      ‘Only way she could be a bleedin’ virgin ’n’ all, ain’t it?’ Ada snarled sarcastically, staring hatefully at her rival for Bill’s affections.

      A few minutes ago her resentment for Mavis had escalated when, hot and bothered, she’d entered the Windsor public house on Garnies Street and found the young blonde hadn’t bothered going to their rendezvous spot so had beaten her back from Oxford Street. Not only that, Mavis had been looking like the cat with the cream, cosying up to Bill’s side, sipping gin and tonic.

      Having completed her initiation into the gang without mishap Mavis had begun to feel relaxed ... until Ada burst in, vinegar-faced and spouting her mouth off. As she listened to Ada’s criticism of her debut performance Mavis’s pretty features turned sulky. She knew there was truth in it but she wasn’t about to admit that to anybody, least of all Bill, even though she reckoned it was his fault she’d put on a poor show.

      She’d spent last night with him and if she’d been acting dozy in the shop it was because she’d been tired: Bill hadn’t let her get any sleep till the early hours of the morning. Besides, she might be a novice thief but her parents weren’t, so in Mavis’s opinion Ada could get stuffed. The Pooleys’ criminal pedigree was superior to the Stones’ and that, Mavis calculated, gave her the right to be part of Bill’s set-up.

      As soon as Mavis left school, she’d have happily gone into the family business. But her father had been against any of his kids taking up his and his wife’s seedy career. Mr Pooley had since died and Mrs Pooley had been less against seeing Mavis follow in her shoes as a shoplifter. Times were hard, and in Gill Pooley’s opinion, a girl did what she had to these days to get by. She’d encouraged Mavis’s relationship with Bill because she knew he’d look after her daughter while she learned the ropes. But she’d warned Mavis not to let the other girls push her around or to rely on Bill for too long. Mavis was heeding her mum’s advice. Bill Black might want her for now but as soon as Betty Pickering came out of gaol, she knew he’d drop her like a hot potato ... just as he would Ada.

      ‘Ain’t my fault you let the store detective get onto yer,’ Mavis sighed. She got up and sauntered towards Ada, swinging her hips and her gin to and fro. ‘If it hadn’t been fer me timing it just right you’d’ve had yer collar felt.’ She gave a contemptuous smirk. ‘I weren’t being a coward, see, I was being clever. I hung back playing me part on purpose. You’re lucky I helped you out best I could even though you was to blame for getting clocked. Then I scarpered straight away ’cos I knew the fellow would check the rails and call the police when he found stuff gone. You ought to be more subtle, Ada.’

      ‘That subtle enough for yer?’

      Ada, her face boiling with rage, suddenly jerked Mavis’s arm up, flinging her drink into her face. She followed that up by punching the side of the young blonde’s head, sending her staggering into a chair, which crashed over.

      By the time Bill sprang to separate them, Mavis was screaming abuse at the top of her voice and twisting a fistful of Ada’s mousy hair. A moment later Mavis howled as Ada bit her hand. As they wrestled back and forth, bashing into tables, one wobbled, sending several glasses smashing on the floor.

      The

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