Here Comes Charlie M

TWENTY-ONE

The man was irritable, decided Johnny. And for the first time he did not appear completely sure of himself. Nervous, almost. The bigger surprise, determined the safebreaker. Because there definitely wasn’t any cause for uncertainty. It had all gone like clockwork, just like the other two. Easier, in fact. Far easier. No dusty, gritty air-conditioning tubes. Or shitty drains. Just a simple entry through the back of the adjoining premises, a quick walk through the antique furniture all marked up at three times its price for the oil-rich Arabs and a neat little hole by the fireplace to bring them right into the main working area.

‘Never been into a private bank before,’ said Johnny, chattily. ‘Very posh.’

‘Doesn’t seem as if they expected anyone to. Not at night, anyway,’ said Snare, straightening up from the alarm system. He hadn’t believed the plans Wilberforce had given him three hours before.

‘What do you mean?’ said Johnny.

Snare reached into the bag, bringing up the aerosol tube of tile fixative and squirting it liberally into the control box, sealing the hammers of the alarms.

‘Must be fifteen years old,’ he judged. ‘They probably still count with an abacus.’

‘Probably,’ concurred Johnny, who didn’t know what an abacus was. The other man was definitely friendlier, he decided happily.

They found a pressure pad beneath the carpet in the manager’s office, three more behind junior executive desks and an electrical eye circuit, triggered when the beam was interrupted, in front of the strongroom and the safety deposit vault.

They were all governed by a control box it took them fifteen minutes to locate in the basement.

‘Kid’s stuff?’ ventured Johnny hopefully.

‘Kid’s stuff,’ agreed Snare.

‘Can’t beat a sock or a biscuit tin in the garden, can you?’ continued Johnny, as the man immobilised the second system.

Snare grunted, without replying. He’d enjoy seeing this cocky little sod in the dock of the Old Bailey, he decided, trying to talk his way out of a fifteen-year sentence. Where, he wondered, would all the bombast and the boasting be then? Where his brains were, he decided. In his silk jockstrap, as useless as everything else.

‘At this rate,’ said Johnny, ‘we’ll be able to retire by the end of the year.’

‘Maybe sooner,’ said Snare, with feeling. Whatever happened, he determined, positively, this would be the last time. No matter how easy they made it for him, with all the plans and wiring systems drawings, it was still dangerous. And he’d suffered enough. Too much. Didn’t he still need special pills, for the headaches? And they’d become more frequent in the last month. Like everything else, something that Wilberforce found easy to forget, in his anxiety to get his head off the block. He wasn’t any more considerate than Cuthbertson. Worse even.

‘Let’s get started,’ he said.

It took Johnny longer than they expected to open the safe in the manager’s office and then Snare wasn’t satisfied with the list of safe deposit box numbers he got from the top shelf.

‘Nothing entered since last week,’ he said almost to himself.

‘What does that matter?’

‘Try the desk.’

That was easier and it was there that Snare found the listing for Charlie.

‘Conceited bastard,’ he said, again a private remark. ‘The conceited bastard.’

‘What?’

Things were very different tonight, decided Johnny. Odd, in fact. It was making him feel uncomfortable.

‘Nothing,’ said Snare. As he had at the Savoy, Charlie had opened an account under his own name.

To get into the safety deposit vault, Johnny drilled out the lock on the protective gate and then filled three holes bored around the safe handle with P-4 to blow a hole big enough to reach inside and manually bring the time clock forward twelve hours, to open the door.

Inside the deposit room, Johnny worked with his steel wire, fashioning the skeleton keys as he worked, giving a little laugh at his own cleverness every time a tray snapped clear and came out on its runners.

‘Lot of documents,’ complained the crook.

‘Perhaps that’s why they don’t bother too much with alarms.’

Snare allowed twelve boxes to be opened before he said, ‘Now 48.’

Obediently Johnny hunched over the container, probing and poking. As the lock clicked back, Snare announced, ‘I’ll do this one.’

Johnny stepped aside, frowning. Definitely unsure of himself, judged Johnny again. He’d built up a conviction about the other man’s infallibility, like a child believing the perfection of a sand sculpture. Now the tide was coming in and Johnny didn’t like to see his imagery crumbling.

Snare was standing up in front of the box, staring down fixedly at a single piece of paper he’d taken from the tray.

‘Any good?’ enquired Johnny.

The other man looked at him unseeingly.

‘Any good?’ repeated the safebreaker.

Snare blinked, like a man awakening.

‘Let’s get out,’ he said.

Johnny stared at him, his own doubts hardening.

‘But we’ve only just begun … there’s dozens more … thousands of pounds …’

‘Finished,’ ruled Snare, abrupt now but completely recovered. ‘We’ve got enough.’

He mirrored Johnny’s look, challengingly.

The safebreaker moved from foot to foot, unsure whether to argue. Finally he spread his hands, overly dismissive.

‘Whatever you say,’ he agreed. Stupid to spoil the arrangement by appearing greedy. They still hadn’t agreed a price with the insurers yet on the Russian stuff and he didn’t want to risk that.

Snare went first through the hole, leading back into the antique shop.

‘You know what?’ said Johnny, trying to reduce the strain and at the same time build up the relationship he was sure he could establish.

‘What?’

‘I don’t know where your information comes from,’ said Johnny. ‘Don’t want to, not necessarily. But I don’t reckon we can ever lose. No way.’

Snare’s apprehensive anger at everything spilled over and he rounded on the safebreaker, face tight so that the scar was etched out vividly.

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘you piss me off.’

‘What?’ tried Johnny, backing away from the assault.

‘Because you’re full of piss,’ shouted Snare wildly, finding release in the role of the bully. ‘Full of piss.’

‘You’re fucking mad,’ said Johnny, trying to match the obscenity. ‘Absolutely fucking mad.’

Snare stopped the attack, taking the other man’s words.

‘You could be right,’ he said, quietly now. ‘That’s the trouble; you could well be right.’

‘Wanker,’ said Johnny, made miserable by the collapse of yet another relationship.

Charlie, to whom the isolation of detail was automatic, had recognised Snare from his walk the moment the man had left the car and made his way towards the rear of the antique shop. And there he was again, he saw, as Snare left the rear of the building and approached the carefully parked station-wagon. Still the same shoulder-jogging lilt he’d had when he’d strode away in East Berlin, to set the tripwire for the ambush.

‘Like a duck with a frozen bum,’ Charlie told himself, inside the darkened car. The cold had occupied Charlie’s mind for the last two nights. It was going to be a bad winter, he had decided.

Unspeaking, the two men entered Snare’s car. There was a momentary pause and in the darkness Charlie could see Snare putting on his safety belt. Probably too late for that, thought Charlie. Snare’s presence had surprised him.

Snare started the car and moved away slowly and almost immediately Charlie pulled out, holding back until they came out alongside the Playboy Club and two cars had intruded themselves between him and the station-wagon, a barrier of protection.

‘As Wilberforce might say, the hunted becomes the hunter,’ he muttered, trying to mock the man’s speech. ‘Now all you’ve got to do is to catch the bloody fox.’

‘They’ve been very smart,’ said Berenkov, admiringly.

‘Yes,’ agreed Kalenin. ‘Very smart indeed.’

He smiled across the table at Valentina.

‘After meals like that, I know I’m a fool to have remained a bachelor,’ he praised her.

The plump woman flushed at the compliment and continued clearing the table.

‘What can you do?’

Kalenin jerked his shoulders.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘To make anything more than diplomatic protests would show them we’ve discovered Charlie’s association with one of the insurers and allow the satisfaction of knowing we won’t be laughing at them any more.’

‘They’ll know that anyway,’ argued Berenkov. ‘That’s what it’s all about.’

‘We still can’t admit it,’ said Kalenin.

‘What about Charlie?’

Again the K.G.B. chief moved uncertainly.

‘Wouldn’t it be marvellous if Charlie were to win?’ suggested Berenkov, expansively.

‘Marvellous,’ agreed Kalenin, wondering at the amount of wine his friend had consumed. ‘But quite unlikely.’