Having seen her error, Ms Win-Kham had almost given up. She was not a bad person or someone who enjoyed having to manipulate and deceive in order to get her own way. However, she was a woman with limited prospects in a male dominated sector. Indeed, it was a male dominated culture: it was her situation that was forcing her to play the hand that she had been dealt.
As Ms Win-Kham hesitated, ruing the efficiency of Mrs Yeo-bo’s door-locking paranoia which was preventing Win-Kham from hatching her devilish scheme, she realised that her plan, with a slight tweak, would still work very nicely without the safe room money. The aim of operation ‘ensnare’ was to make certain that Mr Hua Lin was sufficiently indebted to her, albeit in a slightly illegal way, to give her the leverage to control him. The original plan was to steal some money and convince Hua Lin that it was his fault the money was gone. She would then cook the books to rescue him from certain arrest and achieve his eternal gratitude and loyalty. The new Plan B was far simpler, but would be equally effective.
Ms Win-Kham realised that all she had to do was cook the books in the first place. Most people involved in book cooking are doing so, as with Plan A, to hide the fact that they’ve taken money that they shouldn’t have, and therefore, when reviewing the books for error, these are the first people look for. In theory, the book cooker will have subtly increased the outgoings so that the documents show more money used and therefore the remaining amount of cash is lower than expected: then they pocket the difference.
This is a classic ploy for people whose aim is to steal money. Ms Win-Kham’s revelation was that she didn’t need to steal money, just put Hua Lin in a situation where he believed that he was responsible for some that had been stolen. That could be done without actually physically committing the crime itself. She would cook the books to make it look like the remaining cash in the safe room was not enough in comparison with the ledgers. She would then quietly show this ‘evidence’ to Hua Lin, demonstrating that there was less money than there should be. Having created sufficient panic and desperation she would then console the poor man by reminding him that only she had figured this out. No one else knew. She would then guide him to conclude that together as partners they could scheme their way to a solution. In doing this, she would guarantee that the only available solution was for Ms Win-Kham to cook the books to save her boss’s career. He would then be in debt to her for the rest of his life. Once the cooking scheme was agreed by Hua Lin, all Ms Win-Kham had to do was return to the ledgers and put everything back to how it should be. The books would be correct, the money in the safe would have never changed, and no crime would have ever been committed. Meanwhile her prey, Mr Hua Lin, would be well and truly ‘ensnared’.
Tomorrow, Ms Win-Kham planned that she would show Mr Hua Lin her tampered version of the books. She would then insist that she alone carry out a full cash count in the safe room. Of course, she would not tell Mrs Yeo-bo why she was doing this. She’d probably tell her that Mr Hua Lin had ordered it as part of the stricter adherence to the regulations. That would be perfectly plausible especially considering all the recent changes at the bank following his arrival. She would then return to the distraught Mr Hua Lin and use her skills and charm to make everything all right. With any luck this would be further inspiration for Mr Hua Lin to leave the Maklai backwaters and take himself, and the woman he believed to be his guardian angel, back to the high society of Khoyleng city.
Ms Win-Kham made her way home. She crossed the road opposite the old market and made her way down the dusty side street that led to her small house. She delicately pushed the gate forward so as not to further challenge its one remaining rusty hinge. As she did so, she took a moment to look at the small and uninviting building that was currently her home. The landlord had not painted it since it was built more than thirty years earlier. Even when the building was newly built it would have been a fairly undesirable residence. Some of the outer walls were now crumbling: clearly there had been insufficient cement in the blocks when they had been made. Creeping plants and weeds were starting to get into the gaps and make things worse. The landlord didn’t care. He’d get the same rent with or without repairing it. So why bother to make the repairs? What if the landlord didn’t care, what difference did it make any more? Win-Kham decided that right now she didn’t care either. She gave the sad little building one more hard look, knowing that her days of living in this disgraceful excuse for a home were almost over. She walked up to the kitchen door and let herself inside so she could start cooking the rice. Her next house would be hers, and she was going to care about it more than anything else in the world.
30. Action
Mr Salt arrived about twenty minutes late for the nightshift. His coffee mugs were out of his bag almost before he’d made it through the gates.
“Mr Kheng. How goes it? Not so well at my end. Sorry to be late. They’re still keeping my wife in. No real improvement yet. Not getting worse either. Such a worry. I had to sell some of our stuff today down at the market. If you need any furniture or anything let me know. I’ll have to start thinking about selling the house next. Couldn’t even give my daughter money for lunch at school today. I’ve never sold a house before. Only bought the one after we married. I guess it’s more difficult these days. Need lots of documents. More costs before you can get the money.”
Kheng nodded, and took the flask from him.
“Come on, let’s sit round the back of the bank under the hammock tree and talk. Mr Meebor should be here soon as well.”
Sure enough, almost as soon as they poured the coffee, there was the faint rustle of leaves crunching under foot and Mr Meebor appeared at the far side of the building.
“Good that you’re here, Mr Meebor. Did you come over the wall like we discussed?”
“Yes, Mr Kheng.”
“And you came across the front through the tunnel? Nobody saw you?”
“Yes, yes. It wasn’t easy though. It took me about five minutes to get my old man’s hunting rifle back out through the drain’s inspection hatch. It’s a difficult angle you see and the rifle has a really long barrel.”
“What?!”
“The angle. It was difficult. For the rifle barrel. Not such a problem on the way in though. Not sure why that was. Maybe it’s to do with the angle that I was crouching at inside the drain, ’cos I got it in through the top from the outside okay.”
“No. I mean ‘what’ are you doing bringing a hunting rifle to the bank? And where did you get that museum piece?”
“This? It’s the old man’s hunting rifle like I said, from when he was in the village. Seen a few good stories, has this. And provided the bush meat for some famous feasts that have become woven into the tales of the village history. My gun was taken by the authorities last time I was caught for robbery and sent away. Arguably, I suppose it wasn’t really my gun anyway. Either way, at short notice I don’t have access to a pistol, just this thing. But technicalities aside, this is a robbery, right? Of a bank? Normally you have to be fairly tooled up to do these things or there’s no incentive for anyone to let you in and help you to help yourself to all the money. Hence the firearm, Mr Kheng.”
“We are the guards, Mr Meebor. We’re the ones that theoretically you need to point that ridiculous thing at so that you can be let in. Besides, it’s nearly as tall as you are. If this was a conventional daylight robbery then the front of it would be in the bank a good few seconds before the rest of you. What are you going to do? Provide an accurate but mild injury to the bank teller and then ask everyone else to wait for a bit while you reload with shot and pour the black powder in? This isn’t a wild boar hunt. Besides, this is a clandestine night time operation in an empty bank with inside collaborators – namely us. Silence is the key. What if that antique goes off accidentally? Put the thing down somewhere out of sight. We definitely will not be needing it for this job.”
Meebor shrugged. In his experience robbing somewhere important like a bank was better done armed. No matter what me
thod you were going for. If something went wrong and you needed an edge, then the gun was the edge of choice. He should be thanked for this thorough preparation for all consequences, not berated the moment he snuck over the wall. However, to avoid a confrontation early on in the caper, he walked over to a shadowy corner of the compound and propped the aging rifle against an old tree stump.
“Good. Now that the weaponry issue is sorted out we can start. Both of you wait here, and I’ll go and do the same as Meebor. I’ll leave the bank normally so the cameras see me, and then sneak back in over the wall and past the cameras so there’s no record that I stayed. The film on the security computer will show that it’s business as usual.”
With that Kheng picked up his rucksack, and left the compound through the gate.
Mr Salt sat in the hammock, nursing his coffee and looking bemused:
“What is he talking about, Mr Meebor? Why did you bring your father’s rifle. Actually, why are you here?”
“Probably best to wait for Kheng to return. He can tell you better than I can.”
A few minutes later Kheng had returned, having walked a little way down the road and then doubled back. He’d climbed into the storm drain system at the front of the bank and crawled his way the short distance past the front entrance, up through the space where the inspection cover was due to be built. After that he’d got back over the wall.
Kheng picked up the mug that he’d left on the ground near to the jackfruit tree. He caught his breath, and took a long gulp of the warm coffee. He then began to provide his two colleagues with an explanation of the night’s agenda.
“It seems to me that the three of us all have different problems that are interlinked. Linked to each other and linked to the bank. First is Mr Meebor. During every moment that he stands guard in business hours he is mentally lining up all of the bank’s customers as potential targets for burglary. It’s only a matter of time before he weakens and gives in to temptation. He’ll either be arrested, viciously assaulted by his wife, or probably both.”
Meebor grinned and nodded in acknowledgement. Kheng had him sussed out all right. He’d even taken a long route home that afternoon, past Mr Navey’s house, just to have a look and do some recreational joint-casing. It was in his blood, and acting on his instincts would someday be inevitable. He couldn’t deny a bit of an intervention right now from Kheng was fairly well timed, although rather unlikely to have any significant impact.
Kheng continued:
“Meanwhile, Mr Salt is about to sell his home and take his children out of school so that he can get the vital hospital treatment needed for his wife. Even that extreme measure is only a stopgap. It’s only going to put the problem off for a few weeks. The long-term solution needs long-term money. This is by far the most serious of the three problems. He has no family support and no savings. Meebor, you and I are part of his team. We help each other out. Right now we are the only option for help that Mr Salt has.”
Meebor raised an eyebrow but remained silent. He wasn’t totally sold on the unshakeable team spirit thing. After all, they’d only known each other for much less than a month. However, he decided that he’d wait and see where Mr Kheng was going with all of this.
“Finally, I am being tormented by a meddling forest spirit which is regularly inveigling its way into my dreams each night and causing me to obsess about the full moon, a talking wild boar and my currently-deceased Aunt Kaylin. It seems to understand my life from childhood until now, and I may never sleep peacefully again until I appease the pesky little troublemaker. Three people, three problems, one solution. That’s why the three of us have to rob this bank. What’s more, we have to do it tonight.”
31. Explanation
Kheng’s two colleagues looked back at him with desperately perplexed expressions, indicating that further explanation would be useful.
“It’s all in the dream, you see.”
The expressions before him failed to morph into something less glazed or bemused.
“The dream is telling me I have to steal. The triangle is us. The three sides of the buffalo’s plan. The full moon is the money. And also it’s just the moon. Tonight’s full moon in fact.”
Mr Salt smiled:
“You’ve finally worked it out then, Mr Kheng. I knew you’d get there in the end.”
“Yes. The key to this entire puzzle was the tree. It was there all along but I just didn’t see it. You remember you said that sometimes trees can be people and people can be trees, in dreams anyway. Well last night I remembered being at Old Papa Han’s funeral. As I had watched the flames rise in the pyre and consume his coffin, I had imagined that he would be reincarnated as a mighty tree, deep in the forest. It was that same night that I first had the dream. The tree in the dream was Old Papa Han. Somehow he knew that I believed that he’d passed to the next life as a mighty tree and appeared before me in that form, right at the start of the vision. This is Old Papa Han helping us out. He was telling me that the three of us have to take some money from his bank to solve the problems: in the dream the wealth comes to us from a full moon. Tonight is the first full moon since the dreams began, so it has to be done now.”
Meebor still looked perplexed:
“What dream?!”
“Oh, right. You don’t know do you?”
Kheng had quite overlooked that fact that he’d not been involving Meebor in his recent dream analysis. He quickly explained the whole thing in detail to Meebor so that he was fully up to speed. Meebor gave it all some deliberate thought before eventually adding to the analysis:
“So this pig then? What was that about?”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking about that. My wife snores quite loudly so for a while I suspected the wild boar was a bit of transmission interference. I figured that if I’d been in the hammock at the back of the bank then maybe a colourful bird or a butterfly might have been the bearer of the message. However, then I realised the first dream did happen when I was at the bank, and it was still the wild boar that spoke. Either way the animal was the forest spirit taking the form of a creature so that it could speak the message. Unless of course the pig has any special significant to either of you two. After all, you are part of the triangle it spoke of.”
“Right. Plants can’t speak and don’t have a mouth. I get that, but why use a pig not a person? Why is a speaking pig more acceptable than the spirit deciding to look like and then speak like a person? Why doesn’t Papa Han just appear in person and lay out the whole scheme in front of you?”
“I don’t know. ’Cos that’s not how dreams work. It’s probably not how tree spirits work either. When did you last wake up from a dream where someone you know had given you a full set of clear and memorable instructions and then you got out of bed, decided it all sounded very sensible, and then followed them to the letter?”
Meebor considered this explanation for a moment before replying.
“Okay. So, one more question then. If we are to rob the bank, how do you plan to do it?”
“Well, getting in is the easy part. We just go in through the back door.”
Kheng looked as their faces returned to expressions of puzzlement, and sensed further details would be necessary.
“Well, you see, the reason for choosing the back door as our way in is that I already have a spare key.”
32. Locks and Hinges
Security measures on a building are rarely foolproof. Most are primarily put in place to slow down a potential miscreant, or to deter them from bothering to break in in the first place. Logic would tell them that it would be less effort to break into somewhere else less secure. However, there is usually a way to get around most security measures if you have the time and inclination. This was very much Kheng’s opinion anyway. A good example from recent times was the video camera aimed at the front gate at the bank. It was marginally inconvenient; however, given some motivation and an absence of any other priorities, this security obstacle was easily overcome. Kheng now always made the ch
oice to climb over the wall in the corner of the compound when he wanted to pop out during the evening shift to go home for his dinner.
The back door of the bank was another security measure that Kheng had felt inclined to master. The building where he worked was not purpose-built as a bank, it was just a regular place on the main street modified for the purpose many years ago. Despite its formal and business-like veneer at the front, at the back it was very much like every other building in the street. There was a large wooden door which would originally have opened into a small family kitchen area. Now the room was a place where the bank staff with indoor jobs could take their coffee breaks and eat their lunch if they didn’t want to go down the road to the noodle shop. More importantly, it led into the bathroom where the toilet was. Kheng had never been a jealous person and by and large accepted his lot and position in life. However, the unkempt and rather alfresco latrine in the back corner of the compound that he was expected to use was smelly, fly-ridden, had gaps at the bottom of the walls where the wooden boards had rotted away, and had never been emptied. In the face of this, Kheng had felt a little neglected compared with the other staff. The prim and well-dressed office staff were rewarded with a tiled and hygienic modern convenience for their needs, meanwhile Kheng was locked out at night with the run-down rat infested health hazard as his only choice. Being a man of gathering age, it was unavoidable that he would need to negotiate the rodent-filled facility several times throughout the night, and he was rather irked at the injustice of his options.
Meanwhile, security, as Kheng had often pontificated, was only there to slow you down. It was never impregnable. Also, for many years Kheng had had quite a lot of time each night in total solitude at the bank, more than twelve hours a day in fact, so being slow was no particular constraint.
The Feiquon Heist Page 12
