Blood Men

chapter seven

The street has cleared somewhat, the onlookers having thinned out from lack of excitement. The media presence is still heavy, reporters desperate to catch more nuggets of gold with their cameras, probably the bodies being loaded onto stretchers. There is blood and glass and pieces of drywall and splinters scattered over the floor of the bank. Detective Schroder steps around them to the other side of the counter; Dean Wellington, the South Island manager for South Pacific Banks, follows him.

“I still can’t believe this has happened,” Wellington says, his face flushed with the disbelief he’s feeling. “I mean, Jesus, what a mess. We’re talking about all that money, we’ve got damage to the building, we’ve got staff members ready to hand in their resignations, and this whole thing is a press nightmare. People aren’t going to want to walk through these doors for some time. James was a good manager, a good man, we won’t be able to replace him until after the holiday season. The timing of all this. .”

“People died,” Schroder says.

Wellington adjusts his tie, pulling down on the knot and tightening it. “I know that, Jesus, don’t you think I know that? But this bank services thousands and thousands of people. We still have a responsibility to them, and you have a responsibility to find the men who did this. The bank wants its money back.”

Schroder stares at him for a few seconds. “Just take me to the vault.”

The vault is near the back of the bank in a downstairs basement, two doors in between requiring swipe cards to enter. The metal door is about half a meter higher and half a meter wider than any normal door and made from solid steel. Inside, the vault is the size of a single bedroom. There are shelves stacked neatly with blocks of cash.

“How much does this vault hold?”

“Well, normally we’ll have a float of around a million dollars,” Wellington answers, “but this time of year, we stock up on more cash. We have to reload the ATM machine four to five times more often and people are always coming in for cash. Christmas is still a cash business,” he says. “Not everybody has a credit card.”

“So how much?”

“About five million.”

“And how much was taken?”

“We still have to add up what’s here-but if you want a quick estimate, we think we’re talking somewhere around three million dollars.”

“And the procedure in a bank robbery?”

“It’s simple. Do what the robbers tell you to do. Press the silent alarm, and if you have to come out to the vault, make sure you load in the dye packs.”

“And they loaded them?”

“Yes. They would have gone off by now.”

“How do they work?”

“They’re magnetic. We store them next to a magnetic plate that controls them. You take them away from that, and it activates a timer. They explode five minutes after they’ve been moved. It ruins all the money, covers it all in red ink. Covers the robbers in ink too.”

“How long until you can get an amount?”

“An hour. Two at the most.”

The blocks of remaining cash vary between orange, blue, green, and purple-fives, tens, twenties, and fifties. Schroder wonders exactly what three million in cash would look like physically. He wonders how heavy the bags would have been.

“So the tellers loaded the bags,” he says, thinking out loud.

“Yeah. Nobody else came back here.”

“The robbers never examined the bags, right? According to witnesses, and looking at the footage, they grabbed the bags and another victim and left.”

“So?”

“So why load the bags with hundreds?”

“What?”

“I don’t see any red blocks of cash-the hundreds. The bank tellers could have loaded the bags with any amount. The bags would have weighed the same. Why not load them up with five- or ten-dollar notes?”

“Maybe they thought the robbers would check.”

“Even so, they could have loaded the smaller amounts on the bottom. The robbers would never have known unless they tipped it all out.”

“Maybe they were scared and thought that was the way to go.”

“Maybe,” Schroder says.

“It’s a good point though,” Wellington says, “and something we might consider implementing in case, god forbid, this ever happens again.”

“You do that,” Schroder says. “And get me some amounts,” he says, and turns his back on the vault and heads upstairs.