by Mark Dawson
“Just put the gun down,” Milton said. “You’re in charge. But just put it down, all right? Put it down now.” He laid extra emphasis on the last word, trying to find a difficult middle ground between urgency and conciliation. It was difficult not to sound like he was delivering an order, and that appeared to be the way that Spencer interpreted it.
“I’ve had enough of this.”
He raised the pistol.
“Do him,” Marcus suggested. “He’s bluffing about Eddie. We’ll take our chances.”
#
ALEX HICKS pressed the Bluetooth headset to his ear and tried to make out the conversation.
“What?”
“… should relax.”
Shit.
Hicks pulled the balaclava down over his face, collected the plastic bottle and the rag from the seat next to him, opened the door and stepped out of the car that he had stolen earlier. He hurried across the street to the large black doors that led to the ground-floor reception area of the vault. He saw the white Transit van with the woman inside it. He had been watching her all night, ever since the van had delivered Milton and the other men. She was keeping a watch. He had been careful, and he didn’t think that she had seen him. He had to hope that she was unarmed, but there was not much to be done about that now.
Laughter.
“… unbelieve…”
“… gun down.”
There were ostentatious signs fixed on either side of the door that announced THE LONDON VAULT LIMITED. The door was significant, with golden figures that read 88–90 above it and a brass letterbox in the right-hand door, next to a polished door handle. He pushed the letterbox open, jammed the nozzle of the plastic bottle into the gap and squeezed. He had filled it with turpentine, and he squirted it inside until the bottle was almost empty. Then, he took the rag, emptied out the rest of the accelerant, stuffed it into the letterbox and lit it with his lighter. He pushed it all the way inside.
He held the letterbox open and glanced inside. It was dark for a moment until the turpentine caught fire. The interior of the hallway was revealed in the sudden glow from the flames, oranges and reds and yellows, and Alex felt the waft of heat on the flesh around his eyes and against his lips. Black smoke gushed up to the ceiling and started to leak out through the letterbox and the gap between the door and the doorstep.
An alarm shrieked out a warning.
#
MILTON STARED into the small black hole at the end of the pistol. Where was Hicks? Something had gone wrong, and now he was underground, looking into the business end of a Glock with no support and no plan B. Spencer straightened his arm, the gun held out in a confident grip. What was their plan? Shoot him, leave him in the vault for the police to clean up? There was no connection between him and them. He would be a useful diversion, a red herring that would lead them away from the Fabians. And, in the meantime, they would have made a tremendous score from the loot they had been able to filch from the vault.
It was not how Milton had envisaged the end of his life.
“Do him!” Marcus urged.
The vault was suddenly filled with an ear-splitting shriek. There was an alarm on the wall on Milton’s side of the room, and it was deafening. A half second later, the sprinklers in the ceiling gushed into life and water spilled down onto them.
There was a moment of confusion, and that was all that Milton needed.
Spencer had turned a fraction to look up at the alarm. His attention was off Milton just for a moment. Milton punched hard into Spencer’s stomach, hard enough to knock him back. Spencer stumbled, tripping over a drill and falling to the floor, the contents of a nearby drawer spilling over him.
Marcus went for the small pistol that he had kept hidden inside the pocket of his trousers. Milton had anticipated that he was armed, and had prioritised him for attention. Marcus’s fingers struggled to get into the pocket. Milton’s right hand went out to the handle of the sledgehammer propped against the wall next to him, already moving quickly enough to yank it off the ground and begin a long and powerful swing. He hopped forward as he swung it, closing the distance enough so that Marcus was within the radius of the sledge. The head smashed into the side of his body with terrific force. Marcus collapsed. Milton let go of the sledge, crouched down and took his pistol—a Beretta—from him. He was wheezing as he inhaled, and Milton guessed that he had broken his ribs. That would be painful.
Milton quickly examined the pistol. It was a Px4 Storm subcompact with a single-action trigger and an ambidextrous thumb safety. The pistol was perfect for concealed carry, weighing less than thirty ounces when it was unloaded. This one weighed more.
Milton turned back to Spencer. He was on his back and the impact of his landing had jarred the Glock from his hand. Milton knelt down, collected the gun, and used it instead of the Beretta. He tossed the smaller pistol out of the vault.
Vladimir regarded him warily.
Milton trained the pistol on him.
“You,” he shouted to Vladimir. “Go and get box 221. It’s on the floor. Over there, where I was standing.”
Vladimir did as he was told, collecting the tray from the floor and bringing it open.
“What are you doing?” Spencer wheezed.
“Open the envelopes at the bottom,” Milton ordered Vladimir. “Tip them out.”
Vladimir looked to Marcus and Spencer. “I—”
“Don’t look at them,” Milton said. “They don’t have the gun. I do. Get on with it.”
The man did as he was told, opening the envelopes and upending them until the double-loop cable ties poured out.
“Hands behind your backs, gentlemen,” Milton shouted, making himself heard over the sound of the alarm. “Vladimir is going to tie you up.”
Vladimir was resigned. He started with Spencer, looping the ties around his wrists and fastening them tight. Marcus grunted from the pain in his ribs as his arms were drawn behind his back. Milton then indicated that Vladimir should lie on his stomach and told him to put his arms behind his back. He knelt down so that his knee was pressed into Vladimir’s spine and fastened the ties around his wrists, pulling them until they bit into his flesh.
“Why are you doing this?” Marcus croaked. “What was in that fucking box?”
Milton knew that he shouldn’t tarry, but he couldn’t resist.
He leaned over and spoke into Marcus’s face, loud enough for them all to hear. “The night you killed your brother, he was coming to see his sister because he was frightened. He was abused when he was a child. He wanted to tell that story, just like he wanted to confess to the robbery that he did with the two of you, and someone had threatened him. I know you killed him. And he was my friend.”
“You’re dead!” Spencer Fabian shouted out.
Milton told them to sit with their backs against the wall and then worked fast. The alarm was deafening and the water continued to pour down from the nozzles overhead. He collected the tray from Higgins’s box and upended it into one of the empty bags. The bundles of money were sodden, but he scooped all of them out and dropped them into the bag. The clear plastic folders had protected the photographs from the water, and he pushed those inside, too.
“Smith!”
It was Spencer again.
Milton turned to the three of them trussed up and arranged against the wall, the water running around their bodies.
“Don’t worry,” Milton said. “You won’t be waiting long.”
“I mean it,” Spencer shouted. “You’re dead.”
Milton collected the bag and pushed it through the hole in the wall. “You’re not the first person to tell me that. One day it’ll be true, but not today. Don’t do anything silly. The police will be here soon. You can tell them what you’ve been up to.”
Milton collected his shirt. It was soaked through, but he put it on anyway. He pulled on the balaclava, put his head and shoulders into the hole and slithered ahead. It was an uncomfortable sensation again, made worse by the thought o
f the three men behind him and the clamour that announced that the emergency services must be on their way, and he was grateful when he managed to force his way through and into the corridor beyond.
He slid beneath the two doors that they had forced and reached for the rope.
He put the bag over his shoulder and started to climb.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
THE WHITE TRANSIT van drove away before Hicks could confront the driver. The sound of the alarm from inside the vault was loud, and smoke belched out from the gap beneath the door and a letterbox that didn’t close all the way. Hicks guessed that the driver had made the assessment that there was nothing to be done, so she had evacuated the area to save herself before the arrival of the authorities.
That moment was close at hand. As Hicks slid back into the stolen car and started the engine, he saw the flashing blue and red lights of a fire engine as it turned off Holborn and started north up Hatton Garden. Milton and Hicks had looked at the map of the area and added the locations of the nearest fire stations. It was one and a half miles to Soho, the location of the station they thought most likely to respond. With no traffic on the road and travelling under blue lights, they had estimated that the engines would take five minutes to arrive.
That was going to be cutting it very tight.
The truck killed its siren and pulled to a stop outside the vault.
“They’re here, Milton,” he said into the microphone of the headset. “You need to be out of there.”
No response.
The fire-fighters spilled out of the engine and hurried to the door, the tendrils of smoke uncurling into the light from the streetlamps. One of the men tried the door; a second went back to the truck and returned with a sledgehammer.
Hicks couldn’t wait any longer. He put the car into gear and pulled out, driving carefully so as to avoid drawing attention to himself. As he turned into St Cross Street, he saw another fire truck and a police car racing north along Hatton Garden.
“Milton,” he said, “respond.”
Still nothing.
“You’ve got to get out, Milton. Now. I’m going to wait on Kirby Street for as long as I can.”
Nothing.
#
MILTON STARTED the climb back up to the fifth floor. Smoke was dribbling into the lift shaft from ventilation shafts and between the imperfect seal of the lobby doors on the first floor. The sound of the alarm was louder as he ascended past the ground floor. The smoke thickened and he was glad of the wool of the balaclava over his mouth. He moved slowly and purposefully, hauling the rope hand over hand. There were plenty of footholds on his ascent, but the muscles in his arms and shoulders were burning by the time he reached the open doors. He stepped out and pulled the rope up behind him. He didn’t think that the men in the vault would be able to free themselves, but, in the event that they managed it, he wanted to make sure that they would find it as difficult as possible to follow him. He was confident that they would still be there when the authorities arrived and, as he rolled his shoulders to relieve the ache, he heard the sound of sirens from outside.
He needed to move faster.
Milton took the bag and ran to the sixth floor. He jogged through the office and pulled himself up the rope that they had used to enter the office. He braced himself on the lip of the opened skylight and pushed until he was out and on the roof, inhaling the cool air. He crept to the edge and looked down. Blue light flashed against the walls of the narrow canyon that was formed by the buildings on either side of the road. Fire-fighters were disembarking from two tenders, and, as he watched, a police car raced from the direction of Holborn. It screeched to a stop as another car pulled away from the kerb, rolled up to St Cross Street and turned to the east.
Hicks.
The street was too busy for Milton to exit through the coffee shop without drawing attention to himself. He had anticipated that.
Milton quickly undid the knot that had fastened the rope to the chimney, coiled it around his arm and, with the bag over his shoulder, ran across the rooftop to the west. The block was wide, around eighty metres from one edge to the other, and the heights of the rooftops varied from building to building. Milton clambered up some and slithered down others, leaping gaps and vaulting over obstructions, moving as quickly as he dared while still maintaining his footing. It took him three minutes to reach the opposite edge. He looked down on Leather Lane. It was empty. He knew that it wouldn’t stay that way for long, especially when the men in the vault had been discovered, so he quickly looped the rope around an air-conditioning unit and tossed the rest over the side. The roof was around twelve metres above the street, and the rope was only six metres long.
He lowered himself over the edge, snagged the rope with both hands and then started to slither down it. He moved slowly, passing the rope from one hand to the other. The top two floors were empty offices, marked out by the estate agent’s board that had been fixed to the building below him. The rope ran out when he was at the level of the second storey. He shrugged the straps of the bag off his shoulder and let them slide down his arm. The bag fell, landing with a muffled thump that would not be audible above the din of the engines and alarms from the other side of the building. He looked down. There was a narrow cornice above the fascia of the shop below; Milton could see from the protruding circular sign that it was a restaurant called Soya.
He rested his boots on the sill of the nearest window and, letting go of the rope, lowered himself so that he was in a squat. He turned, gripped the wet sill as best he could, and, moving slowly, he gradually let his arms bear his weight. When his arms were fully extended, he took one final look down and then, hoping for the best, he let go. Milton’s descent was swift, but he was able to arrest it by grabbing his left hand onto the sign and his right onto the exposed edge of the cornice. His shoulders shrieked from the sudden exertion and the sign creaked as two of the screws that held it into place were torn out of the fascia.
Milton glanced down to the pavement, let go, and dropped the final two metres to the ground. He landed in a crouch, absorbing the impact easily, collected the bag and then set off at once. He headed north, passing the skeletal struts and corrugated sheets of a temporary market being built for Christmas, following Leather Lane to its junction with St Cross Street.
The alarms continued to wail behind him and, as he walked, he heard a crash and the sound of splintering wood. The fire brigade were breaking into the building.
#
HICKS HAD parked on Kirby Street, opposite the offices of a trendy creative design agency. He saw the figure as it turned right on St Cross Street. It was a man, medium height and build, a bag slung over his shoulder. He walked purposefully towards the car, approaching from the rear. Hicks tapped his foot on the brake two times, signalling with the lights, and then put the car into gear. The figure drew closer and passed through the downward cone of light thrown out by a streetlamp. It was Milton. He left the pavement and crossed into the street, opened the passenger door and got inside.
“What took you so long?” Milton said. “Any longer and I would’ve been shot.”
“I didn’t hear you,” Hicks said. “Reception wasn’t great.”
“Never mind.”
“You get it?” Hicks said.
Milton rested his hand on the bag on his lap. “I got it.”
“The others?”
“Left them inside.”
Hicks pulled out and drove south to Greville Street. “You get all of them?”
“Frankie Fabian wasn’t there. Just his boys and a man he put on the team. His daughter was in the van. What happened to her?”
“She left when the fire engines came.”
Milton nodded. “She’s next. Her and her dad.”
#
MILTON TOLD HICKS to drive them south, to Peckham Rye. He drove carefully, aware that to invite police attention now would be a very bad idea. Milton was silent, his face lost in concentration. He was soaked through, his shirt
and trousers sodden from the extinguishers.
“What now?” Hicks said.
“After we’re done, I need to look at what I’ve got. The photos. When that’s done, I’m going to get them published. Higgins is going to find out what happened soon. Tomorrow, most likely. It’ll be on the news. I don’t want to hang on too long.”
“And Higgins?”
“Relax, Hicks. I gave you my word. You helped me, I’ll help you.”
“You still want to play it like we said?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t suppose there’s a different way?”
Milton looked across at him, but didn’t speak.
“Never mind,” Hicks said.
They turned onto Bellenden Road and Milton told him to slow the car. They passed beneath a railway bridge and Milton pointed to the left, into a narrow road that offered access to the railway arches. Businesses had been established in the arches: a garage that specialised in clutch and gearbox repairs, another that offered MOTs, a warehouse. The two arches farthest away from the road looked as if they were vacant, and Milton told Hicks to pull up alongside them. He stopped the car and killed the engine.
“Lovely place,” he said, looking out just as a train rumbled over the bridge, squares of light from the brightly lit windows passing across the blue-painted wall to their right.
They both got out of the car. Milton walked to the door of the nearest unit. The arch had been bricked in, with a metal door set into the middle of the new wall. There was a manual combination lock on the door, and Hicks stood guard as Milton tapped in a code. The door unlocked and Milton pushed it open. He went inside first and Hicks followed.
It was dark. Hicks couldn’t see anything, but he could hear the sound of a powerful industrial extractor fan. Milton muttered that he couldn’t remember where the light switch was, and Hicks was about to offer to go and collect his flashlight from the boot of the car when two big strip lights flickered on above them. The room was filled with light.
