Here Comes Charlie M

ELEVEN

A professional, judged Johnny Packer. A bloody good professional, too. The knowledge tightened inside him, a comforting feeling. Which meant he was regarded in the same way. So this was going to be proof. No one would doubt him, after this.

‘Drill.’

Johnny looked up at the order. The other man was breathing heavily through the exertion of crawling along the confined space and the jagged, star-shaped scar on the left side of his face had reddened into an ugly blotch. Appearing suddenly aware of the disfigurement, he put his hand up, covering it. He often made the gesture, Johnny realised. When they’d got to know each other better, he’d have to ask him how it had happened. They would become friends in time, he hoped. Proper friends.

Johnny passed the tool along the narrow air conditioning duct to the other man, wondering what his real name was. If he hadn’t been such an obvious expert, Johnny would have sniggered at the man’s insistence on Brown. But he hadn’t. It wouldn’t have been right. He wasn’t the sort of person you laughed at. Or with, even. If he wanted to play around with names, that was all right with Johnny. Another indication of how good he was, really; neither knew the other, so there couldn’t be any risk of grassing if one were caught. Not quite true, corrected the safebreaker. The other man knew his name. And his record. And that he’d only been out for four months. The knowledge didn’t disturb Johnny. He regarded it as another indication of professionalism.

The drill, rubber-cushioned, began eating into the ducting at the spot the other man had selected, working from a set of draughtsman’s plans. Johnny leaned against the cold metal, experiencing another surge of admiration. Plans not just of the adjoining buildings and central heating and air conditioning systems, but every alarm installation in the place. And all the tools they were likely to need, brand new and bought with cash, one at each town along the south coast in an undetectable preparation that had taken over a week. They’d spent at least?4,000, guessed Johnny. He’d even queried the figure.

The man had smiled and said: ‘You’ve got to speculate to accumulate,’ and made it sound original.

Bloody professional.

‘Cutters.’

The snips went along the narrow passageway and Snare enlarged the hole, then drilled into the mortar. Johnny started back at the sudden eruption of dust, lacking the protection of the face mask that Snare had put on.

‘Vacuum.’

The more subdued whine of the cleaner came as a relief after the harsher bite of the drill.

‘There!’

Johnny strained forward, narrowing his eyes at the brightness of the extension lamp which Snare had erected over the hole he had begun to mark. The blue and green wires of the alarm system embedded into the concrete stood out like veins in an old man’s hand.

Snare reached back and Johnny gave him the bypass leads. Snare clamped them at either end of the exposed alarms, scraping his way through the plastic covering with a surgeon’s scalpel, then cut through the middle of the wire. They had made long connections, maybe five feet, giving themselves room for a big entry hole. Snare taped the surplus wire against the metal sides of the ducting so there would be no risk of dislodging it, and then began drilling again, enlarging the hole.

It took almost an hour, with two stops to vacuum away the debris before Snare stopped.

‘Enough,’ he announced. He turned, gesturing Johnny back. Dutifully, the safebreaker turned and crawled along the shaft until he reached their carefully reinforced entry point, then dropped down into the basement of the building adjoining the bank in Brighton’s North Street.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked worriedly, as the other man dropped through immediately behind him.

‘Coffee break,’ announced Snare.

He went to one of the four haversacks they’d brought in, took out a Thermos and poured the drinks. His hands were shaking, Johnny realised, embarrassed, as he cupped the plastic beaker to his lips. And the heat of the drink was making the surgical gloves he wore wet and sticky.

‘We’re thirty minutes ahead of schedule,’ he said.

‘You mustn’t worry about time.’

Johnny smiled, knowing the other man had seen his nervousness.

‘It’s not yet midnight. Tomorrow’s Sunday, so you’ve got all the time in the world,’ the man assured him.

Johnny nodded.

‘Shan’t need it,’ he said, trying to sound confident. ‘Couple of hours and there won’t be a lock still in place.’

Snare smiled tolerantly, hand up to his scarred face. It wasn’t proving as difficult as he had feared, he decided, feeling the well-concealed apprehension ebbing away. He found a strange comfort in having so many plans to work from: it was always easier, having properly prepared diagrams to follow.

‘Just don’t worry,’ he advised the other man.

It was ten minutes before they went back into the air conditioning system and this time Johnny led, hauling the light with him. There was a hole about three feet in diameter cut into the bank wall. Careful to avoid the clamped arms, Johnny eased through, wedging the light on top of a filing cabinet.

‘Storeroom,’ Snare identified it, a fresh set of plans in his hand now. He felt out for a switch and the neon light flickered into life. Filing cabinets lined the walls and in one corner files were heaped, one on top of the other.

They went out of the room, Johnny still in front.

‘Manager’s office first,’ instructed Snare.

The door at the top of the steps was secured from the far side, but by squinting through Johnny saw the key was still in the lock.

‘Easy,’ he smiled, looking for some reaction. Snare gazed back, unimpressed.

From the attache case, new like everything else, Johnny took the long-spined dentist’s pliers, poked through to grip the key shank and unlocked the door.

On the main floor of the bank they relied upon shielded torches, moving slowly between furniture towards the office which Snare had designated. That, too, was locked and this time the key was missing. Johnny smeared thick grease on to a sliver of plastic, pushed it into the lock and then gently twisted, as if it were a key. He withdrew it and the tumbler edges were imprinted clearly into the grease. He lay the coated plastic along a matching piece of metal, plugged a dentist’s electric drill into a table lamp socket and within five minutes had cut the basic shape of the key from the impression he had made. It took a further ten minutes to file away the mistakes and open the door. As he moved to do so, Snare touched his shoulder, pushing the light around the surround. The alarm breaker was near the top of the jamb. They used another bypass, magnetised this time, putting wedges either side of the door so that it wouldn’t swing and pull the wire free.

‘The first safe,’ said Snare.

‘Standard Chubb.’

‘Difficult?’

‘Course it’s difficult’

‘But not impossible?’

‘Not impossible,’ said Johnny.

He worked with a stethoscope, hearing the tumblers into place. Twice, in his nervousness, he over-adjusted, missing the combination.

‘What about the key?’ asked Snare, reaching out to the second lock.

‘Drill it out,’ decided Johnny. ‘Can’t work the same trick as with the door.’

He used the dentist’s drill again, first driving out the rivets and securing screws and then, when there was sufficient looseness in the lock to pull it back, revealing the securing arm, inserted the blade of the electric saw and cut through it.

Johnny pulled the door back and then stood away, for Snare to get to it. Files and documents were neatly stacked on the shelves and at the bottom there was a small cash box.

Snare worked through the documents in complete concentration. Anything he didn’t want he replaced tidily within the file and then put the file back upon the shelf from which he’d removed it.

‘Ah!’

Snare turned, smiling.

‘Here it is.’

The man moved away from the safe with a sheaf of papers.

‘What about the cash box?’

Snare turned to the safebreaker, the pain etched into his face.

‘Let’s leave them their tea money, shall we?’

Johnny trailed the man from the office, face burning with regret at his first mistake. At Snare’s insistence, he relocked the manager’s door, then went back down the stairs, turning off at the first landing towards the barred safety deposit room.

The opening was like a huge safe door, set into metal barriers within the protection of the wall. Johnny felt another jump of excitement. He’d done one before, he recognised. So it wouldn’t be difficult; he’d pass the test.

He used the stethoscope again, more controlled this time, so he didn’t over-adjust the combination control. After the third tumbler, he allowed himself the conceit, counting aloud as each combination clicked home.

‘No alarms,’ declared Snare, bent over another blueprint.

The man hadn’t noticed the expertise, realised Johnny, annoyed. Irritably he pulled open the entrance to the vault.

The gates that formed the secondary barrier were ceiling to floor, protected by a wire alarm system and then by an electrified beam which triggered a signal when it was broken by any interruption between the ‘eyes’. Snare bypassed the first as he had the other wired precautions, then placed immediately in front of the door two wire cages used in hospitals to keep the pressure of bedclothes off patients suffering from broken limbs. Securing holes had been bored in the frames and he quickly bolted them to the floor. The beam played unbroken beneath the cages. To get into the deposit room, they would have to step over but even if their feet hit the protection, the bolts prevented it sliding into the beam.

Johnny stooped before the lock, then shook his head.

‘Have to blow it.’

Snare nodded, accepting the judgment.

From the attache case, Johnny took his favourite, the P-4 plastic and a detonator, pressing it around the lock. Briefly in command now, he sent Snare to an office to get cushions and these he wired around the explosives, legs straddling the invalid hoops.

The explosion, decided Johnny, made up for the mistake over the petty cash box. He’d wedged the door, in case it swung too hard against the cages, but so well had he primed it that the caution wasn’t necessary. The lock blew with a muffled, crackling sound, hardly displacing the cushions.

‘Very good,’ Snare praised him. The department’s detailed training in use and construction of explosive devices would have been more than sufficient, decided Snare. But then, the real purpose of Packer’s involvement came later.

Johnny smiled, grateful for the remark.

Inside the safety deposit room, Johnny worked again from impressions, operating to Snare’s quiet instructions from the list of box holders. They took only cash and jewellery. Documents were replaced and then the boxes locked again. Snare stood in the middle of the room, packing the cash into stiff-sided cases and the jewellery into a leather hold-all.

‘What do you reckon?’ demanded Johnny, unable to control the excited question. ‘How much?’

The other man looked at him, as if he found the query curious.

‘Maybe a million,’ he said, casually.

It wasn’t normal, thought Johnny, for someone to be as calm as this bugger was.

They worked for another hour, the only conversation Snare’s commands to the other man. Suddenly, Snare said: ‘Try 216.’

It took Johnny fifteen minutes to get the key right. He moved the lock, tugging at the deep metal tray as he did so and then stopped in amazement.

‘Jesus!’ he said softly.

Snare made no response, calmly reaching over his shoulder and extracting the dollars, banded together in tight bricks. He abandoned the suitcases, counting the money out on a small table in the corner of the room.

‘Two hundred thousand,’ he announced. ‘And some insurance policies.’

Christ, he was cool, admired Johnny. Still not showing the slightest excitement. His own stomach was in turmoil and he knew he’d have diarrhoea in the morning.

Snare packed the money into a hold-all he kept separate from the containers in which he’d stored the rest of the property.

‘What about the policies?’ asked Johnny.

The other man hesitated, then laughed.

‘Leave the policies,’ he said. ‘The bastard is going to need all the insurance he can get’

There were no incriminating documents anywhere: Charlie Muffin had been too conceited. Always had been. So now there wasn’t a thing he could do to prevent his own destruction.

Johnny frowned.

‘You know him, then?’

Again the hand came up to the disfigurement.

‘Oh yes,’ said the man. ‘I know him.’

It had been worth it, decided Snare. Every gut-churning minute had been worth it.

The Aeroflot freight carrier touched down precisely on schedule and taxied to the north side of London airport, where maximum security could be guaranteed. Ignoring the rain, the diplomats from the Russian embassy insisted on standing next to the ramp, ticking the numbered boxes against the manifest as they were unloaded on to the ground and then into armoured cars.

‘These sort of jobs frighten the piss out of me,’ said a Special Branch inspector, huddled in the doorway for protection.

His sergeant looked at him quizzically.

‘It’s only jewellery,’ he said. ‘And copies at that.’

‘Faberge copies,’ corrected the inspector. ‘Lose sight of one piece of this and our feet won’t touch the bloody ground.’