The Wigmaker

T
he sky was as black as a judge’s cap.

A man with a bag strapped to his back scrambled up a drainpipe on the side of a furniture shop to the second storey roof. He lifted himself up from the gutter, straightened his arms, swung himself on to the tiles and then scampered up to the apex of the roof. He picked his steps like a tightrope walker across it to the adjoining building, where he squatted astride the apex and began to unseat one of the blue slate tiles. It soon gave way. It had not been touched since it was built ninety years earlier. He placed the tile safely inside his jacket, then he tore at the next one until he had eight slates safely inside his coat. He had made a hole large enough for him, with the slates and the backpack, to get through. He shone a torch down inside to see how far he had to drop. It was about a twelve-foot drop on to cross beams about fifteen feet apart. He took a three-pronged hook out of his backpack, fastened a pulley to it, secured the hook round the apex coving, threaded a rope through the pulley, then, holding both ropes, he lowered himself down into the loft of the furniture shop. He landed quietly on the beams and left the rope hanging there. He placed the slates from inside his jacket tidily in a pile on a crossbeam; he hadn’t wanted to risk them clattering down the furniture-shop roof and smashing on to the pavement below. He wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. Then he flashed the torch around. It was, as he had expected, a dusty, unpleasant place, with more than its fair share of cobwebs. He put a hand into his inside pocket and took out a mask. It was a plastic face mask of a fox. He put it on and fitted the elastic over the back of his big shock of red hair: there was no knowing when he might come across a CCTV camera, perhaps one with a night lens. He crossed the loft in the direction of the beams underfoot to a rough door in an even rougher brick wall. He heaved at the door and it gave way easily. It had been there since the building was first built and had probably never been inspected or even looked at since. He flashed the torch around. He was looking for a loft cover into the floor below. There should be one. There was always one, sometimes several. He found it. It was about a yard square and made up of tongue-and-grooved five-by-one timber. He sighed with relief, crossed to it, crouched down, took out another three-pronged hook, dug it into a nearby beam, fastened on a pulley, threaded another rope through. He was ready for a second descent. He lifted the loft cover away, it weighed very little, then listened. He shone the torch down into the office below. As expected, the building was deserted and in darkness. He sat on the edge of the opening, his feet hanging down into the room. He put the torch between his teeth, took hold of both ropes and lowered himself through the hole.

He was safely inside the jeweller’s shop.

It was 7 a.m. Michael Angel was busily munching muesli and prunes in his blue-and-white striped pyjamas and red slippers while Mary, his wife, returned from the front door of 30 Park Street, a semi-detached bungalow on the Forest Hill estate. She had a copy of the local newspaper, the
Bromersley Chronicle
in her hand. She opened it up. The headline jumped out at her.

‘Oooo!’ She gasped. ‘You’ll never guess, Michael,’ she muttered, sitting down, pulling up to the little kitchen table and staring at the paper.

‘What?’ he said, being careful not to spray the muesli around.

‘Smith and Glogowsky’s shop in Sheffield has been robbed! Big page spread. Listen to this.’

Angel
was
surprised. His eyes opened wide. He was about to say something. She beat him to it.

‘Here, listen.’

She read:

THE FOX IN £4.5M JEWEL HEIST

She folded the paper. ‘What do you think to that?’

Angel shook his head.

It was bad news for policemen, there was no denying it.

‘The newspapers will have a field day, Mary,’ he said. ‘Whenever The Fox strikes, the press, particularly the tabloids, fill their pages with every detail of the latest crime and compare it with the earlier ones attributed to him, and gleefully publish cartoons and all sorts of tales ridiculing the police. I feel sorry for the Sheffield lads. This Fox chap makes them look like mugs, which they are not.’

‘The Fox must be somebody round here.’

‘Aye, he must be,’ he said. ‘Oh! Look at the time.’

Zoë Grainger was on her own in the tiny cramped kitchen, pressing a skirt on a skeletal ironing table squeezed awkwardly between the sink unit and the little kitchen table because of the limited length of the cord on the iron. She was concentrating on making the pleat in the skirt look tidy and smart, when suddenly something occurred to her. She put the hot iron on the stand, rushed into the little sitting room and looked around. She was looking for her handbag. It was on the sideboard. She grabbed it and felt around inside it. She took out a powder compact. She snapped it open and looked at her eyes and face in the mirror. She moved around a bit to get the best light and to see all her face. She wrinkled her nose, and shook her head. Zoë knew she had a great figure, long shapely legs, round bottom, slim waist and a big perky bosom. Her jet-black hair was thick and manageable, and much admired. She didn’t have need to tint it or do much at all with it. Even her voice, once described by a sexy man on the deli counter in Tesco’s as gravelly, she wouldn’t have changed. But she reckoned her face let her down. She had thought for some time that if she could have had a smaller, narrower and slightly turned-up nose, and less distance between her nose and her top lip, she could have had a more than equal chance of pulling any man she fancied. However, plastic surgery was expensive and not available to her, nor ever likely to be.

She quickly snapped shut the compact and tossed it into her handbag, then glanced up at the bigger mirror over the clock. She unfastened the second button down on her blouse and pulled it tight to show a bit more skin. She smirked at the mirror. It exposed the smallest amount of cleavage, by today’s standards quite unremarkable. She smiled into the mirror, nodded and turned away. Then she stopped thoughtfully, scowled, turned back, fastened the button and checked it was tidy. As she did so she thought she caught sight of a hair or two out place. She began to fiddle with them. She heard a noise on the stairs … rushed back into the kitchen, and had her hand on the iron as the stairs door opened.

A tall, slim, sun-tanned young man, with blue eyes, dark hair and muscles as tight as a moneylender’s contract, swaggered into the little kitchen. He was looking pleased with himself. He flashed a smile at her as she stood at the ironing board, still running the iron over her skirt.

‘Hi, sweetheart. Got me a clean shirt?’

Her eyes flashed and her lips quivered. ‘You’re not going out?’

‘Yes. Yes. I’m going out,’ he said, his face tightening. ‘Why would I want a clean shirt if I wasn’t going out?’

‘Where you going?’

‘
You
can’t come.’

‘Why not?’

His blue eyes flashed angrily. ‘It’s business.’

She snatchily rearranged the skirt on the ironing board and banged the iron on to it. ‘I could come and wait, and we could go on somewhere, have a drink? Make a change.’

‘Naw. Where’s my shirt?’

She turned the skirt over, licked her lips and said, ‘Who was that on the phone?’

‘Nobody. Now can I have a shirt?’

She lifted up the skirt, put it on a hanger and hung it on a knob on the cupboard door. ‘It
was
a woman, wasn’t it?’ she said quietly.

‘No. It wasn’t.’

‘Sounded like a woman.’

‘You couldn’t possibly have heard, but, as a matter of fact, it was a man offering me a job.’

‘At this god-forsaken time on a Friday night? You must think I fell out of a tree.’

‘A job. Work. Money, Zoë.’

‘Huh.’

‘I’ve told you it would happen. Big money. I’ve told you.’

‘Huh.’

‘I told you,’ he said. He had to convince her. ‘I’m getting on really well with this man. He’s well-to-do.
Very
well-to-do. And great connections. This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for, Zoë. Now will you tell me where there’s a clean bloody shirt or do I have to go out in my vest?’

‘Huh. It’s funny time to be interviewing a man … Friday night at half past nine.’

‘Not an interview. I had the interview last week. He’s going to tell me what he wants me to do. He’s an important man. He works all hours.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Ah. I can’t tell you his name. It’s sort of … hush-hush.’

‘A government job?’

‘Yes. You could say that. Sort of under cover … for the police.’

He had fallen straight into her trap. She knew her husband so well.

‘Pull the other one.’

‘Well, not the police exactly, but it’s … confidential. You never believe me.’

‘Huh! It’s another woman. I knew it. I always knew that you had to have a bit of cheap skirt on the side!’

‘Are you going to give me a clean shirt or not? I shall be late.’

‘Where are you meeting her?’

‘It’s a
man
! He’s going to tell me what he wants me to do.’

‘Whereabouts are you meeting
him
then, Gabriel?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘In a pub? Is it the Fat Duck?’

‘It isn’t in a pub.’

The phone rang.

They looked at each other. Eyebrows raised. Neither of them expected a call at that time.

‘Could be him,’ he said.

He reached out for it. ‘Hello, yes?’ he said tentatively.

Zoë could hear faintly a distorted voice through the earpiece, but she couldn’t detect what was being said.

He looked across at her, his blue eyes looked overjoyed. He tried to convey the happiness to her. Into the mouthpiece, he said, ‘Gabriel Grainger, yes … For how long? … Oh? Right. No, I’m not busy with anything else … Thank you. Thank you very much. You won’t regret it … Ten minutes? I’ll be right there … Goodbye.’

He replaced the phone. ‘That was him. There you are,
now
do you believe me?’ he said, his eyes shining. ‘I’ve got to leave straightaway. Throw a few things in a suitcase, he said. There’s money in this, Zoë. Big money. Can’t you believe me, this time? Trust me.’

‘I’ve trusted you before. You’re a born liar. I should never have married you. It was for better or worse. It’s always been worse. Where are you going to?’

‘I don’t know exactly, but it will be OK. I’ll be back before you know it.’

He reached over the ironing board, grabbed her tightly by the shoulders, gave her a hurried, rough kiss on the mouth and said, ‘This is it, Zoë. My chance to hit the big money. Have faith in me, for once, you silly cow.’