Meaner Things (27 page)

“You’ve hit the mother lode,” Charlie said appreciatively.

I ran some of the diamonds through my fingers. “Everything from brown cognacs to yellow canaries,” I said. I recalled my evening at Zheng’s mansion and how he’d shown me similar diamonds to these. “This must be Zheng’s personal collection.” I took special delight in adding them to our burgeoning stash. The notebook went sailing into a garbage bin under the sorting table.

Emma struggled to open her box and I went over to help her. Just as I reached her the door popped and she reached inside. She gave a loud whoop and I knew she had found something to her liking.

She extracted a large burgundy leather attaché case and hastily tried to open it, groaning when the clasps failed to budge.

“Charlie, can you open this?” I said.

He came over and looked at the combination lock on the side of the case. “Simpler just to take it with us and open it later,” he said.

“No, I’ve got to know if it’s what I’m looking for,” Emma protested. “Once I know for sure we can leave.”

Charlie grudgingly sat on the floor and began moving the number wheels on the case, while Emma and I looked on impatiently. Soon Charlie was crouching over the case, his ear pressed tightly to the lock.

“Four numbers,” Charlie grumbled, “Most of them are three.”

I heard a click in the silence and a murmured “One” from Charlie. A minute later it was “Two” and “Three” in quick succession. Three numbers down, one to go. I held my breath.

Minutes dragged by that seemed like hours. My eyes roamed from Charlie’s fingers on the combination dial, to the vault door, then to Emma’s anxious face.

“Four!” A last click and the case sprung open, revealing a thick wad of documents. I leaned over Emma’s shoulder as she rummaged through the contents of the main tray, then the various compartments in the lid.

“Business records,” she said, “Invoices, letters, a transaction ledger, confidential memos, even photographs and passports of his diamond mules in this folder here.” She smiled up at me. “Just what I need, Mike, to be free of him forever.”

She closed the case, stood up and I gave her a hug. Charlie was already back at the deposit box he’d been opening.

“Leave it,” I said. “Saddle up and get out of here.”

He made no acknowledgement, simply increased his pace, twisting the handle of the door-opening tool as if his life depended on it. I went up and tapped his shoulder.

“Emma and I are leaving right now. You can stay and catch an early morning bus if you like.”

He didn’t even turn his head. “Two minutes,” he grunted between twists of the handle.

“Bye, Charlie.”

Emma and I hastily repacked the canvas bags as best we could, so that the zippers could close. We still had to get out of the building and I didn’t want any of the bags’ contents banging against walls or spilling out noisily onto the floor. I assessed the weight of each bag and gave her the two heaviest.

“You take these two and I’ll take the other four,” I said. I heard the sharp popping explosion of Charlie’s deposit box door bursting open and in ten seconds flat he was standing beside me.

“Wait a second,” he panted, “Just let me stuff these in and we’re off.” I saw he was holding several clear plastic bags full of American hundred-dollar bills. Somehow he managed to stuff them into one of the six bags he picked up.

“Sure you can carry all that?” I said.

“I’m not leaving any behind,” he replied. “We could always make two trips,” he added hopefully.

“No chance,” I said. “We agreed on one trip out of the building to minimise exposure. We stick to that.”

“What about the tools?” Emma asked.

“We leave them all, except this crowbar,” I replied. This was an unusual deviation from ‘normal’ practice, so far as I could tell. From the heist stories I’d read, on jobs like this the rule was to carry out everything brought in, so as to leave investigators as little as possible to work on. But we had no choice. We were still wearing rubber gloves, so there wouldn’t be any fingerprints on anything we’d touched. The only exceptions were the empty plastic water bottles, from which samples of our DNA might possibly be obtained. I tossed these into a small, light backpack I’d brought for the purpose. I swung this pack on to my back, hoisted the canvas bags until their straps were over my shoulders, and was ready to go.

Emma sandwiched herself between the vault door and the wall and we handed her the bags of loot before squeezing through ourselves, careful not to nudge the magnetic alarms in their casing.

“Don’t waste time with the lights,” I said. There was no point in trying to cover our tracks. The heist was going to be glaringly apparent to the first person who came down to the vault on Tuesday morning.

We hauled the heavy bags over to the stairwell door and I could see that Charlie was already having difficulty carrying all of his. He dragged them along the floor and clattered them painfully into the back of my legs. I paused inside the stairwell at the bottom of the stairs.

“Charlie, something’s gotta go.” Without waiting for a reply, I began rummaging through his bags. My hands fastened around a familiar object and I pulled it out.

“How did this get back in?” I hissed. It was the gold brick.

“Always wanted one,” Charlie replied sheepishly.

I set it gently on the bottom step. “Any more in here?” I asked, pointing at his bags.

“Nope, that’s the only one I found. It’s the diamonds that weigh so much. They’re rocks, remember?”

“Then down some spinach or something and either carry those bags properly or leave some stuff behind.”

He nodded and hoisted the straps on to his shoulders. We started up the stairs, pausing on the ‘minus one’ floor for a brief rest. Sweat was pouring down Charlie’s glistening face.

“You don’t smell too good,” I whispered.

“I’ll be bathing in asses’ milk soon,” he replied.

Despite our situation I had to clench my jaw tight to stop myself from laughing out loud.

We stopped on the main floor just outside the stairwell and took another thirty-second rest. I made a quick decision.

“You two go on down to the garage and load up the car,” I said. “Leave the door unlocked, Charlie. Wait for me there and keep out of sight. I’ll do the security room.”

Emma turned to protest. “But . . . ”

“No arguing,” I said, before she could finish.

“All right, but give me two of your bags,” she insisted. “I’ll take it slow and steady.”

I gave her the two lightest ones, first removing the crowbar from one of them.

“Don’t use the jemmy,” Charlie protested. “Only amateurs do that. Here, I made this.” He fished in his pocket and handed me a key.

I could tell that he was still sore about the doors I’d prised open earlier, so took the key and put it in my jeans. But I kept the crowbar just in case.

Charlie and she started down the hallway towards the corridor to the garage. I put the crowbar in one of my remaining two bags and walked in the direction of the security control room.

26.

LAST HURDLE

I stood in the hallway and let the night’s events swim through my mind. A torrent of adrenaline had kept me going as we’d penetrated first the building, then the vault, and finally the deposit boxes. Sheer terror had driven me on in eluding Jeff D.. I’d experienced the emotional rollercoaster of searching for, finding and quarrelling with Emma. Now I had to battle the enormous weariness washing over me. I felt lightheaded, almost giddy, and had to reach out and steady myself against the wall. Full blown exhaustion could not be far away.

I forced myself to walk towards the security room to perform the one crucial task that still remained. Even with only two bags to carry, I felt extremely weighed down. One of the bags contained a sack of white diamonds that must have weighed at least twenty kilos, as heavy as a microwave oven, along with banknotes, jewellery, and more. Ditto for the other bag. I thought about stashing them at the stairwell door and picking them up when I was done. But I knew the right way to do it was take them with me. I was pretty sure that Jeff D. was sleeping off his drinking binge upstairs. But if he wasn’t . . . I couldn’t risk him coming across my stuff on one of his patrols.

Emma and Charlie should be at the car by now, loaded up and ready to go. They were relatively safe, but there were still risks ahead for me. I took things slowly, pausing every few steps to listen. On the ceiling above, one of the video cameras seemed to have its beady red eye trained right on me. The sight of it leant a spur to my stride.

I put the bags down outside the security control room and took a deep breath. Moving automatically, I had the crowbar in my hand before I remembered Charlie’s key. I took it out and inserted it into the lock. So far, Charlie’s pre-made master keys had been less than impressive. I turned the key and felt it jam inside the cylinder. Another dud. I gave it a twist and it went a bit further, its imperfect teeth now stuck tight in the mechanism. Cursing in frustration, I picked the crowbar up in my other hand. One last twist, then it would be time for brute force . . .

The key scraped all the way through the cylinder and the lock clicked open.

I pocketed the key, propped the crowbar against the wall just inside the room and took a good look up and down the hallway. There was nothing; just an empty foyer and silence. I picked up my bags and slipped inside.

Unlike the public areas, the room had no overnight lighting. It did have a large section of glass panelling along one wall, extending from about waist height up to the ceiling. I’d exploited this before, pretending to drop my diary in order to get a good look inside. Now it was going to work against me, as I daren’t switch on the lights in the room. The white fluorescent glare would shine like a lighthouse beacon, proclaiming my presence to anyone who happened to be in the foyer area.

I took my penlight out of my pocket and switched it on. The tiny beam was enough to reveal the outline of furniture in the room: a small table right in front of me and behind it the desks with their video monitors standing like stark, square-headed sentinels. I wound my way behind the desks to the back of the room where most of the wall was covered with locked cupboards. The keys were probably in one of the desk drawers, but I didn’t have time to look for them so applied the crowbar to the doors.

The soft wood around the first lock gave way easily as I forced the tool into the gap between door and jamb. I used the flat end of the crowbar to lever the gap wider then switched to the curved end for maximum leverage. The door cracked and I could feel the lock begin to give way as the bolt was forced against its housing.

It took half-a-dozen attempts, which probably showed how very tired I was, before I heard the loud crack I was waiting for and the door suddenly sprung free of its lock. Now that I’d got the hang of it the other locks broke cleanly and easily, revealing many shelves of videotapes.

The building’s surveillance archive looked depressingly mundane. Not for the first time, I shook my head in near disbelief at the out-of-date technology. By now, the building’s CCTV footage should be stored on a computer hard drive with an automatic backup in another location, not on these ancient videotapes. I smiled grimly. Zheng, a billionaire diamond magnate, too stingy to upgrade his security. It was a mistake he would soon be deeply regretting.

I scanned the rows with the penlight and found that the tapes were in neat chronological order, each one labelled with the date, extending back many more months than I’d been here. This made my work a lot easier. From my pocket I took a slip of paper on which I’d written down the days when I’d had to go waltzing around the building with the hated man purse, and located the surveillance tapes for those specific days. Then I found the tapes for Thursday 28th when Charlie and I had carried out our trial run and sabotaged the magnetic alarm.

I slipped my backpack off, placed the tapes into it, and pushed the cupboard doors closed.

That left the tapes for tonight. I went to the video recorder and ejected the tapes currently recording. Beside the desk there was a cardboard box full of old tapes that were obviously being recycled, their dates covered over with fresh labels again and again. I replaced the current tapes with ones from this box, but kept the button on the video recorder switched off. I still had to get out of here unseen and unrecorded.

With all the incriminating tapes now in my backpack, I went back to the door and peeped out. The foyer was still pleasingly silent and empty. A few more minutes and I’d be back with Emma and Charlie, speeding down the road as newly-minted multi-millionaires. I picked up the two heavy bags of loot and slipped out, pulling the door behind me until it clicked shut. There was no need to lock it again and I was too weary to bother anyway.

Then one of the elevator bells dinged, announcing its arrival.

*

I reckoned I had two or three seconds before the elevator doors opened. My brain went into overdrive and somehow my arms and legs followed suit. With a bag still in each hand I pushed the door handle down with my butt and stepped back into the security room. I dropped the bags and closed the door quickly and quietly. Assuming whoever was in the elevator hadn’t stepped out and immediately looked straight down the hall to this door, I should be okay.

I squirmed sideways until my eyes were just high enough to peek through the bottom of the glass panelling on the wall beside me. Jeff D. was standing outside the elevator. I made an instant assessment of his demeanour and it didn’t look good. If I’d had to put a bet on it, I’d have wagered he’d sobered up quite a bit since I’d last seen him. There was something about his erect posture and the stern look on his face that sent a shiver down my spine.

Maybe he’d had a sleep and a mug of strong coffee. Maybe it was time for another of his night patrols. Maybe the girl – Vanessa, was that her name? – had had to go home. Whatever was going on, it was bad news for me. I ducked down again in case he turned his head and looked in my direction.

Everything now depended on what he did down here. I thought I heard his boots treading the thin carpet and risked another peek through the corner of the glass. Jeff was walking towards the front entrance of the building. I watched as he opened the security cubicle door and looked inside. He was finishing what he’d started the last time. Finding nothing, he reclosed the door and turned to come back. He passed the elevators and continued on. A wave of utter terror surged through me.

He
was
coming
to
this
room
.

I crouched like a sprinter and rapidly examined my options, thoughts frantically coursing through my brain. My eyes fell on the short crowbar I’d left propped against the wall by the door. If Jeff came in here, the logical thing to do was use the jemmy as my ticket out. Standing behind the door I’d have the element of surprise; one good, heavy swipe on the back of his head would be all it would take. There were no other options. I had to do it.

But I couldn’t convince myself. In the movies it would knock him out cold and in the next reel he’d be bandaged, but fine, laughing about it to some detectives. In real life it would be different. I might kill him or leave him brain damaged, a vegetable in a hospital bed. I imagined Jeff collapsed on the floor, moaning in agony, his skull fractured.

I couldn’t do it. It was a line I wasn’t prepared to cross.

In only a few seconds he’d be at the door. I ducked down, grabbed my bags and crawled across the floor, reaching up and switching the video recorder back on as I went down the row. At the last desk in the far corner I squeezed backwards into the narrow gap between the swivel chair and the leg space, curled my body up and pulled the bags of loot in behind me. It was the best I could do in the twenty seconds I had.

I heard Jeff insert a key in the door, pause, and try the handle. He’d discovered the door was unlocked. That alone would immediately make him suspicious. He entered the room and I remembered the crowbar sitting propped against the doorframe. Would he notice it? If he did, and picked it up, I’d have no chance of getting past him.

I lay motionless, my body scrunched up and barely able to breathe. The sharp edges of videos in the backpack pressed into the small of my back.

I imagined Jeff’s eyes roaming around the room as they got used to the gloom. He’d see the row of desks, each with its chair pushed snugly up into the space behind. All except for mine. He might think it odd and come over and take a look. Or it might never occur to him.

Anyway, it didn’t really matter. He was bound to notice the busted cupboard door locks as soon as he switched on the lights. I held my breath and waited for the inevitable.

Jeff didn’t switch on the lights. Maybe this room was so familiar to him he didn’t need to; it was impossible to figure out. I heard him come further into the room. What the hell was he doing?

Whatever it was, he didn’t seem to be in any hurry. A swivel chair squeaked, telling me he’d sat down behind one of the desks. Something clicked and a glow of light appeared in the room. He’d switched on one of the video monitors. Panic shot through me. Now I knew for sure that it was only a matter of time before he sounded the alarm. Once he saw the old tapes playing in the machine . . .

Then I realised that the surveillance equipment would be recording new, current images over the old footage. So I was okay and out sight. But what about Charlie and Emma?

The uncertainty, and my inability to see what was going on, was killing me. I reckoned that Jeff would be at his usual desk, which was at the opposite end of the row, near the glass partition. There was a small space between the two bags I’d pulled in behind me. Like a slowly unwinding coil, I eased my head, snake-like, out through this gap.

I had a side view of Jeff, and was slightly to the rear of him. He was peering intently at the image on the monitor screen, leaning right up close to it. The light from the screen lit up his frowning face in a bizarre, multi-streaked luminescence. I watched as he fingered some buttons beneath, switching from camera to camera with well-practised motions. He seemed to be checking the entire building. For signs of intruders?

This surveillance included, of course, the garage. If Charlie and Emma were following my instructions, they’d be lying prone underneath black sheets, the bags of loot stuffed in the trunk, and all would be well. The garage was a dark place and, provided Charlie and Emma kept still, Jeff would have great difficulty spotting them even if he knew exactly where to look.

I was a lot more worried about my own situation than theirs.

At last Jeff moved away from the screen and pushed his chair back. He fumbled in his pocket, took out a bunch of keys and bent down to the bottom drawer of the desk. Reaching in to the back of the drawer he took out a large silver hip flask.

He leaned back on the swivel chair, raised his legs and rested his heels on the desktop. With a sigh of satisfaction he unscrewed the top of the flask and glugged down several mouthfuls. His other hand rested on the video switches and he continued to survey the building through the images on the screen in front of him. Every minute or two he changed the camera view and took another drink from the flask.

Minutes that seemed hours dragged slowly by, and I wondered how long this would go on. I wanted to stretch, to crawl out of this confined space where I was feeling increasingly claustrophobic. I knew I was dehydrated and could cramp up at any moment. The room was stuffy and my breathing was becoming laboured.

Entombed under the desk, a wave of depression came over me. Jeff D. seemed to have some sort of sixth sense ability to hone in on me wherever I was in this building. If he’d been able to use his other five alcohol-numbed senses a bit better he’d have nabbed me by now. I peeped out again, observed his profile in the glow of the screen and silently cursed his existence, using every swearword I could think of, and inventing some new ones of my own.

It seemed much longer but it was probably only about fifteen minutes before Jeff emptied the flask and tossed it back into the drawer. He switched off the monitor and I felt a surge of optimism, sure that he was at last about to get up and leave.

Instead, he put his feet up again and leaned even further back in the chair. He folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes.

Now I knew why he’d kept the room dark. It was better for snoozing.