Lights Out (12 page)

2 hours earlier.

Sarah Lam arrived at the Bank shortly after 9am after being notified
of the robbery. She’d tried calling Chow a few times, but his phone was
switched off which immediately irritated her. She’d deal with him later, she
thought, wondering where he may be.

She was taken inside the bank by one of the banks security officers
to the entrance of the secure vault. The forensics
team were
already busy dusting for fingerprints and she could see that the bank had their
own in-house security team on site, the area was full of people. She wondered
for a moment if she would bump into Ryan Harper. As she scanned her the people
around her, a familiar tall, grey-haired man walked across the marble floor
towards Lam.

Extending his hand and giving Lam a firm, but friendly handshake he
smiled, which made his eyes crinkle in the corners, when he spoke to her.

“Detective Lam, it’s good to see you again.” John McIntyre said in
his deep gruff voice. “It’s a shame that it always seems to be under these
circumstances. If you would follow me I’ll talk you through what we know so
far.”

“Thank you”, Lam replied.

Lam was relieved to be dealing with John directly and not some other
lower ranked bank official. She had met him briefly during her previous visit
to the bank and had found him both amiable and helpful. She liked his calming
manner and the way in which he made her feel respected. He appeared very laid
back, Lam observed. Surprising considering the current situation. Lam followed
John back to the main entrance.

“We know that the robbery took place during the eight minute black
out. It was all very well thought out and actually very clever.” He said with
an awkward half smile. He pointed at the main entrance.

Lam listened and followed with interest.

“We did have a security officer on duty, we have interviewed him
ourselves, but I’m afraid he was rather caught up in the moment, and spent most
of his time watching the countdown outside. They must have hoped that would be
the case, as they were able to simply walk past him unnoticed and enter through
the first security door.” John walked Lam to the first access door.

“They would have needed a security card to access this door.” Lam
asked this as a statement rather than a question, remembering the procedure
from the fumbled attempt a few weeks before.

“Someone had a card.” John replied flatly. “We have the door access
time at 20:00:09. Follow me and I’ll take you through to the next access door.”

Lam followed John silently down the short dull grey corridor stopping
at the door entrance. This door was standing open while forensics dusted for
fingerprints from around the doorframe, the main door and the keypad.

“This is the second door which then leads through to the main vault.
This time they used a swipe card and a key code, of which they had both. The
access time was recorded at 20:00:25.” John was about to walk through the door,
when Lam stopped him.

“John, may I ask, should an alarm have been triggered at this point?”
Lam said, motioning to the second door.

“That’s a good question, but so far they haven’t truly breeched
security. Many of our staff members have access to restricted areas and have
authority to come and go outside of normal banking hours. It’s normally limited
to Managers and Directors and some of senior security staff members. Also
considering that the swipe card and key code was valid, nothing would have
raised an alarm at this point.”

“And camera’s? Can you
see them enter on camera?” Lam asked.

John’s face stiffened slightly at the mention of the cameras. He
thought for a moment before responding. It was the first time that Lam noticed
that his normal calm exterior had a small crack in it.

“I’ll come back to that question shortly.” John replied stiffly,
making it clear to Lam that she must wait for the answer. She told herself that
she wouldn’t ask again until he was ready.

They stepped through the access door and continued towards the main
vault. Lam looked up at the vaulted ceiling above them, she followed the lines
of the stainless steel beams that framed the concrete up to its highest point.
The simplistic architecture impressed her. Lam felt as though she was standing
under the ceiling of a modern church for a moment, rather than a bank.

“It’s very impressive.” Lam said hearing her voice echo. “It’s a
shame that it’s so hidden away.”

“Yes, it’s one of the bank nicest features. Only a few of the staff
and our V.I.P clients get to come to this point.” John replied, glancing up at
the ceiling.

They walked on until they were at the vault entrance. Lam noticed
that the deeper into the bank they went to cooler it became, she wished she had
worn something warmer.

They reached the huge steel vault door, which stood closed. Lam could
see the silver dust from the forensics team that they had used to check for
prints, still fresh on the door.

“This is our most
sophisticated security access point.” John said. “We spent a lot of time and
money developing this with a company in the Netherlands.” John proudly pointed
to the small square screen positioned to the left of the large metal vault
entrance.

“Once they arrived at this point, they would have needed two things.
Firstly,
a palm scan
, followed by an access code.”
John bent forwards and leaned in closer to the small screen. Lam leaned in
until her shoulder was almost rubbing John’s. She looked at the screen.

“But it’s blank?” Lam said, feeling a little stupid at the obvious
question.

“How can you punch in your code if you can’t see the numbers?” She
asked.

“It’s very clever.” John
stated. “This is the latest in biometric recognition. Every person has a unique
palm print, similar to fingertips. The user presses their hand on the screen,
and the ultrasonic technology scans and recognizes the print. Once the print is
authenticated, which takes just seconds, then a back screen lights up revealing
a touch screen keypad. It’s set up similar to your run of the mill touch
screen, so it’s very easy for the user. Each user has a private access code,
which we change frequently, however the palm remains the same, so the user
always has to first pass the palm scan. It’s supposed to be fail safe, and
ironically, I believed that was, except…” John trailed off and straightened
himself up.

“Let me guess. They had both the code and the palm?” Lam stood
upright facing John, she knew the answer already before asking the question.

“Correct. We have their access time as 20:00:56. They knew that they
had a limited timeframe to get this done. They were very slick, under a minute
so far.” John said, motioning to Lam that she must keep following him. They
stepped through the giant metal vault entrance and straight onto the top of the
tall metal escalator.

Lam stepped on behind John and they began their slow descent.

“You keep saying ‘they’?” Lam asked.

“Yes, you will see why when we get inside the holding room at the
bottom.” John replied as he began to walk down the steps, too impatient to wait
for the escalator to take them down to the bottom.

The forensics
team were
still hard at work
when Lam and John arrived at the holding room. They had to stay close the wall
to allow people to walk past them through the entrance, carrying boxes, lights
and equipment, trying their best not to get in their way.

“We’ll keep this quick.” John said quietly. “I don’t want to tamper
with their crime scene.”

“This is where things get
interesting.” John pointed to an area just inside the holding room where Lam
could still see piles of plastic wrapped notes, bonds and gold bullion piled
neatly in various sections of the brightly lit room. It looked exactly as she
imagined it would.

“We know that they have
taken something in the region of 150 million Hong Kong Dollars, that’s about
twenty million US dollars in $100 dollar bills. It would be impossible for one
person to carry. That’s how we know that there must have been a few people to
help carry the money out, we estimate at least five, for that amount, and it’s
likely that they would have all been men, it’s a heavy load.”

John continued. “What amazes me is how fast they were. They would
have used the escalator to carry the money up. That makes sense. Then they
would have to open the vault door by going through the palm scan and access
code procedure again. From here I’ve hit a wall. I’m almost one hundred percent
sure that members of the public would have noticed people with large bags
leaving the Bank. The bags would have been big and cumbersome and it would have
been high risk for them. They would have been very exposed at that moment,
especially as they pushed through the crowd.” John paused for a moment.

Lam picked up the thread. “You mentioned earlier that a palm scan was
used for the entrance into the vault. We should be able to pull prints
relatively quickly through our system.” Lam said.

John fell silent for a moment. Lam watched as the mask that John had
been wearing so well up until this point, showed more cracks. His face fell and
he sighed heavily as he realized that he couldn’t avoid the subject any longer.

“Detective Lam, I’ve been skirting the topic. But I’m sure you’ve
realized by now that to get this far into any bank in the World, it would have
to be an inside job. I believe your men have sent the prints from all of the
keypads as well as the palm scan back to your lab for processing. The Police
have already requested a full staff list and everyone has been briefed and they
are waiting upstairs to be interviewed. Well almost everyone.” John said
somberly.

“Is someone missing?” Lam shot back, curiosity was now starting to
get the better of her.

“Actually we appear to have two staff members unaccounted for, and
I’m starting to get a little concerned.” John said.

“Who is it?” Lam demanded, her tone polite, but firm. “We need to
find whoever it is to rule them out of the investigation.”

John nodded.

“It’s Ryan Harper from RSG and another staff member from the retail
sector of the bank, Robert Black. Harper didn’t show this morning, which is
highly unusual for him. He’s very prompt and would normally call me if he were
running late. We know that Harper and Robert Black are good friends, so we
tried to contact Robert to see if he knew where Harper might be, but we’ve been
unable to contact him also. Everyone else is accounted for.”

Lam could sense the disappointment in John’s voice. It was bad enough
to have a robbery on your own turf, but to have an inside job was even worse,
especially if you liked the person responsible.

“OK”, Lam said, processing the information quickly. It was time to
ask about the cameras.

“Even though it was dark, we must be able to see security camera
footage?” Lam spoke quickly now; questions were popping up in her head faster
than she could ask them.

“This is another problem, it seems that whoever did this, new exactly
what they were doing. It’s incredibly sophisticated. All of our cameras show…”
John paused not sure how to explain. “Well, they show absolutely nothing.” John
shrugged his shoulders, still unable to believe it himself.

“They were upgraded recently, and have been working perfectly, we
test them every day.” John said, making sure that Lam knew that they followed
procedure. “We have looked at the footage from all of our camera’s and in
particular the camera’s that show the route that we have just taken, no-one
comes in, and no-one leaves. It looks like business as usual; we don’t know how
they managed to do it. It’s as though the money just got up and walked out on
it’s own.”

An uneasiness crossed Lam’s face. She thought back to the day when
the Chinese man was shot and killed after his poor breakin attempt. Then the
simple realization hit her. The camera‘s that day were not being fixed, they
were being rigged.

She’d been so fixed on finding out
who
the
old man was that she hadn’t even seen what was right in front of her.

“Oh, they’re clever.” Lam said, shaking her head in disbelief. “So
clever.” She said, her voice almost a whisper. Then she looked up at John and
gave him a broad smile.

“Which company did you use to upgrade your camera’s?” She asked John,
who was deep in thought.

He looked at Lam for a moment, and tried to follow her train of
thought. Then slowly the reality flooded over him in a sickening wave.

“Oh my God, we’ve just spent hundreds of thousands on this system.
”
His words almost stuck in his throat
as he spoke. He imagined having to stand in front of the board of Directors to
tell them the news. He had been right to fight the change in security
Companies, but of course they had known better. They had brow beaten him until
he finally agreed, and so the contract went to RSG. But Ryan had surprised him,
tricked him into liking him. He’d taken him in, wanted him to be his protégé.

Now he felt like such a fool. He thought he was a good judge of
character, but he had been played all along. John felt nauseous as he silently
worked through everything that Ryan would know about the bank. He oversaw every
camera placement. He knew every code, and every sequence; he had access to
every part of the building. Ryan Harper was a bank robbers dream accomplice.