The Good Thieves

by Katherine Rundell

  ‘If this was a storybook,’ said Arkady, ‘when he woke up, he would have to do us a good deed.’

  ‘He won’t,’ said Samuel, and he spoke with absolute certainty.

  Dillinger was beginning to stir. Samuel bent and pulled the man’s elegant silver watch from his wrist. He stamped on it, shattering the glass face, and turned away.

  ‘Wait a second,’ said Vita. She brought her aching left foot down on the face of the watch, grinding as hard as she could with the heel. Silk spat on the silver links. Arkady stamped last and hardest, his eyes on his friend.

  Samuel kicked the watch into the grate of the open drain. He looked a little less exhausted. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  They were halfway back to Carnegie Hall when they became aware of someone following them. Arkady and Samuel carried the large IMPERIUM tortoise; Vita carried VITA. Silk was up ahead, choosing the quietest streets, staying in the shadows, when the footsteps came.

  They were not the light-footed, slyly slow footsteps of the men in grey. These were official footsteps, heavy with the confident authority of the law.

  ‘Just keep walking,’ murmured Vita.

  ‘Hey! Kids! Hey! What’s that you got there?’ A figure in dark blue, a wooden truncheon in one hand, stood at the far end of the long street. ‘We’re looking for a couple kids who busted up the Plaza – you wouldn’t know anything, would you?’

  They did not turn round. They passed under a street lamp, the light glinting off the IMPERIUM diamonds. At the sight of the gems the policeman broke into a run.

  ‘Stop! Hey, you!’

  Samuel twisted to stare, his eyes wide.

  ‘Run! The pact! Run!’ said Silk, and all four began to sprint, Arkady and Samuel vanishing around the corner clutching the tortoise between them.

  Vita’s hair flew wild in the air, and the street was a blur. Silk was ahead of her, far ahead now, her plait thumping against her back; Vita could hear the policeman’s footsteps, closer and closer, and though she tried to fire her legs forwards she wasn’t going fast enough.

  The policeman was barely ten feet away when Silk turned suddenly and came sprinting back. She wrenched the tortoise from Vita’s hands. ‘Go!’ said Silk. ‘Get out of here!’

  Vita tried to tug it back, but Silk gave her a great shove, and Vita stumbled. Knowing she was beaten, she darted round the corner and out of sight. Samuel and Arkady were there, crouched behind two dustbins, waiting, their faces tight with fear.

  The policeman’s voice called out, and Silk’s answered. There was a brief commotion, but the wind roared again, and Vita couldn’t hear above her thumping heart. She risked peering round the corner.

  Silk, who had never been caught, who never would be, stood with the policeman’s hand on her shoulder. His other hand was reaching for handcuffs. In Silk’s hands was the small bejewelled tortoise, the word ‘VITA’ picked out on the shell.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Arkady was struggling. Silk, of all of them, was   supposed to be indestructible. Arkady’s voice strained so hard to be cheerful it came out three octaves higher than usual. ‘She’ll be fine! I mean, she can pick any lock! So she’ll be fine, right?’

  They had run, all three of them, once it was obvious it was useless to stay; they had left Silk in the hands of the law. They stopped outside Carnegie Hall. Pain and shame and breathlessness had made Vita’s face turn scarlet, and she rounded on him now. ‘How is she going to be fine? Don’t say stupid things just to make yourself feel better.’

  ‘Don’t call me stupid for hoping our friend is all right!’

  ‘Don’t fight.’ Samuel spoke quietly, but there was ferocity in his voice. ‘We don’t have time to fight. We don’t have any time at all. Vita only means Silk doesn’t have tools.’

  ‘Exactly! She’s wearing that stupid coat – she doesn’t even have a hairpin. She can’t pick a lock with her fingers.’

  ‘Fine.’ Arkady scowled at Vita. ‘We’ll get some tools to her. Simple!’

  ‘How are we going to do that? We don’t even know where she is! There must be dozens of police cells she could be in!’

  ‘I know where she is,’ said Samuel.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I saw the serial number on his badge. I know which police station he belongs to.’

  ‘How on earth do you know that?’

  ‘My uncle always said it pays for us to know the ways of the police: ever since I was a tiny kid. She’ll be in Brooklyn.’

  ‘Well, let’s go then!’ said Arkady. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  ‘We have to have a plan,’ said Vita. Arkady stared at her, but she sat down on the kerb and began to spin her penknife around her fingers, her jaw set with angry concentration. ‘This isn’t the circus. This is serious. This is real.’

  ‘I know that.’ Arkady sat down next to her. His shoulders were hunched, and he scrubbed at his face with his sleeve. ‘I do take it seriously. I take her seriously.’

  Vita glanced at him and saw with a jolt that his face looked ancient: haggard and old and weary. With gut-deep effort, she forced a small smile. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I know.’

  The minutes passed. And slowly, very slowly, Arkady’s face began to transform, until it looked thirteen years old again.

  ‘Can I say something?’ he said.

  Vita winced. ‘You don’t have to ask. I’m sorry, I—’

  Arkady interrupted. ‘Listen, then – I’ve got a question.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The tweezers in your penknife – are they shiny?’

  A crow flew in through the front door of the police station the next morning as calmly as if it were coming in to report a missing package.

  Arkady, who had carried the crow on a streetcar down to the Brooklyn Bridge, stroking and crooning to her all the way so she wouldn’t take flight, cast her in through the doorway. He whispered, ‘Good luck! Ydachi!’ and ducked out.

  The bird alighted on the desk, and for a split second, nothing happened.

  Then someone began to scream. ‘Get it out! Get it out, it’s unlucky!’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, that’s magpies!’

  ‘I don’t care, it’s filthy! They carry diseases!’

  The policeman behind the desk took a great swipe at it, and the bird took off. She swiftly became affronted and confused. Crows, when affronted, are apt to dive-bomb the nearest living thing, and soon pandemonium reigned.

  Silk sat on the bare bed of the barred cell she had spent the night in. She radiated despair. At the shrieks, she looked up, and saw the bird.

  Her black feathers stirred a memory, and Silk’s eyes widened.

  Silk approached the bars, a slow and steady presence in a room of screaming and flailing. And Silk, who remembered everything she saw, who memorised the faces on the street so she never robbed them twice, remembered the crow’s name.

  ‘Rimsky!’ she called, and the bird, harried now and panicking, swooped towards her, her beak still clamped around her prize. Silk stretched her arm out through the bars of her prison. The bird landed on it and dropped her cargo, nipping at her thumb before taking off again.

  Silk winced. Bird affection, she thought, was a painful thing.

  Eventually the panic died down, and Rimsky was caught in a tea towel and cast ignominiously into the street.

  Nobody saw Silk slip something silver-grey into her stocking, and sit back, quiet and hunched and dejected, in the corner of her cell. She unplaited her hair, and let it fall, a protective curtain, over her eyes.

  It was a good thing nobody saw her face. Because, try as she might to disguise it, Silk radiated hope. All that Friday afternoon and night, Silk radiated waiting, and hush, and count-down.

  At last, as the clock struck three in the morning, the officer on duty laid his head down on his folded arms for an illicit nap. Silk slipped the tweezers out of her woollen stocking, twisted them four, five, six times in the lock, and crept on soundless feet towards the door.

&
nbsp; A man in the cell next door, ex-army, ex-almost-everything now, with soot in his nails and a dog on a string, saw her go, but he only rose to stand, snapped to attention, and raised one hand in a salute he hadn’t used for many years. And Silk returned the salute, as she slipped out into the New York night.

  *

  That night the city was swept by a premature winter. An ice snap froze the water in the pipes. Sleet washed down the city, swept the detritus of the mud and old newspaper and furious cats out from murky alleyways into the main roads.

  And through the hail and sleet, glaring defiantly at the weather, came a lone figure, its shoulders hunched against the cold, walking towards Carnegie Hall.

  Up in Vita’s apartment, Samuel, Arkady and Vita sat in her bedroom, their eyes on the clock, waiting. Vita’s mother had blinked slightly at the sight of the two boys, but had agreed, rather than send them home in the dark, to let them spend the night in the sitting room.

  ‘It’s nice that you’ve made some friends,’ she had said to Vita. ‘Next time give me a little more warning.’

  Vita was just about to give up hope when the window began to intrude on her consciousness. It didn’t open; it didn’t become any less dark outside – but the darkness seemed to be watching her. It made itself suddenly felt.

  She crossed and looked out. On the street below stood a figure, her long blonde plait drenched to grey in the rain.

  The figure grinned up at her.

  ‘I came to drop off your tweezers,’ called Silk.

  Ten minutes later, all four children were sitting on Vita’s bed, and Silk was eating a sandwich made of everything sweet Vita could find – butter, peanut butter, honey, chocolate shavings, and a sliced banana. Vita had suggested adding ketchup, but Silk had refused.

  ‘So,’ said Silk, ‘tomorrow’s Saturday. Are we still on? We go tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m still in,’ said Samuel.

  ‘So am I,’ said Arkady. ‘Of course!’

  They looked at Vita, their faces alight. They could have powered a factory, so brightly did they shine.

  Vita looked at the red book in her hand. It felt far heavier than the paper it contained. She weighed the secret she had been carrying around in her chest since she had met Silk. She made a decision.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘There’s something I’ve not told you …’

  And she spread the book out in front of them, and began to explain, carefully, meticulously, the final part of the plan.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘So: 10.45 p.m. at Grand Central Station, near the coffee stall?’ said Silk. Her face was as unreadable as ever, but her breath came quicker than usual. The two girls had woken early the next morning, having slept head to toe in Vita’s narrow bed.

  ‘Like sisters,’ Silk had said. Neither had the cleanest feet; neither had minded.

  ‘Yes. The last train out is 11.02,’ said Vita. ‘But there’s one final thing I have to do.’

  Silk nodded. ‘I know. We’ll see you at the station,’ and she went into the sitting room to wake Samuel and Arkady.

  Bile rose in Vita’s throat, but she forced it down. This is not the time to be afraid, she told herself. You can be afraid later, when it’s over.

  That evening, Vita approached the Dakota slowly. She had wrapped her coat tight around herself, but it gave little protection against the cold, and none at all against the fear.

  She had known she would be followed, and she was. She had been counting on it.

  She did not turn round to see who it was, only registering the shadowy figure following her down the pavement. She stayed in the brightest streets, amid the widest crowds. They wouldn’t touch her in such a public place.

  It was 9 p.m. The lights of Sorrotore’s apartment were off. She set her jaw and tucked her hair behind her ears. The red book was rolled up in her coat pocket; she carried a cloth bag on her back with a collection of trowels clanking against her spine. She wore her blue dress, unfamiliar and tight around the shoulders. She was ready.

  She would be quick, as quick as her feet would go.

  The desk clerk at the Dakota looked up at the girl in front of him without interest.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but is Mr Victor Sorrotore in this evening?’

  ‘He’s dining with the young Rockefellers. You want to leave a message?’

  Vita shook her head. So Sorrotore was definitely in New York; definitely not up on the Hudson river.

  She walked slowly out of the building, her eyes sharp, searching every face she saw. She stepped on to the street. One second she was crossing the road; the next, a hand grabbed her shoulder, and pulled her round to face a man in a brown suit and hat and blue tie.

  ‘Hey, you.’

  It was Dillinger.

  Vita screamed. Instinct kicked at her solar plexus and it came out of her mouth without her permission, a shrill, thin shriek that surprised her. She screamed again, deliberately this time, and a woman with a vast coif of hair and a vast green handbag stopped and turned.

  ‘Shut up!’ hissed Dillinger. ‘I’m not going to hurt you – the boss just wants his signet ring back.’ There was a pleading look in his eyes. His fingers dug into her collarbone. ‘Come on, kid. I need this!’

  She twisted. ‘Let go!’

  Dillinger hung on. His eyes were hot. ‘The boss’ll forgive me! He will, if I give him that ring! You don’t understand—’

  She ducked her chin and bit, hard, at his hand. Then she darted to the right, into an oncoming crowd of tourists carrying red guidebooks, and ran, as fast as her left leg would take her, counting on the crowd to slow him down.

  ‘Stop her!’ cried Dillinger. ‘Stop that girl! Thief!’

  She glanced round. He was charging after her, and people, seeing his smart suit and elegant hat, were parting to let him through.

  Vita turned a sharp left, on to a great bustling street. She careened head first into a man absorbed in his newspaper as he walked.

  She thought about dashing into one of the great shining department stores that lined the street, but those would be conspicuous places for a running child. A crossing light turned green, and she thrust herself into the centre of the crowd as it strode across the street.

  At the far side she hesitated, looking to the left and right. She took in a great gasp of air, and went on.

  Her breath was becoming ragged, and her left foot was on fire, sending shooting pains up the whole left side of her body. She used the street lamps to propel herself forward, grabbing them and thrusting herself on. She tried to think as she ran.

  She limped past a sign: SUBWAY. A sudden memory came to her. The turnstile, where people fed it their tokens; it worked like a revolving door, but there was a space, underneath: wide enough for a child, too narrow for an adult.

  She stumbled down the steps, looking over her shoulder to see if he was following. The steps were wet, and she almost slipped, clutching at the arm of a woman with two children of Vita’s age, who stared after her. ‘Someone’s in a hurry for their bedtime story,’ said the mother, and the children laughed.

  Behind her came thundering steps. Vita didn’t let herself stop to think; didn’t let herself measure the gap between the turnstile and the floor. She pushed to the front of the crowd, ignoring the yelps and angry coughs and the call of ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ from one grey-haired man, and dived, head first, on to the floor, which was muddy and wet, sliding on the slick surface under the gate and pulling her left foot clear just as one of the subway officials made a grab for her shoes.

  She scrambled to her feet, ignoring the pain and the blood on her palm from the fall, and hurtled down the stairs. The crowd closed around her, and she became invisible.

  A train was just pulling into the platform. Vita stepped on to it, and stood, her heart thundering. She did not look back. It took all the willpower in her bones to keep facing straight ahead, her hands in her pockets, her heart pounding.

  Had she looked back, she would hav
e seen Dillinger bend to pick up what she had dropped.

  She would have seen him turn the notebook over in his hands, and the glint of its soft red cover glow against the grey of the darkening night.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Grand Central Station was almost empty. Rush hour had passed, leaving only the smell of raincoats and spilt coffee. The ceiling, painted with stars, shone down on wet floors and a few shivering homeless men, sitting in a corner.

  Vita stood under Orion’s Belt, in a pool of light, waiting. She had straightened her dress, wiped the dirt from a patch by her hip, and brushed her hair with her fingers. Her heart pounded with each footstep she heard. Every time a head came into view, she flinched. She had the cloth bag slung over one shoulder.

  The time ticked by, remorseless. Vita wrapped her fingers more tightly around the four tickets she had bought from the uninterested young man in the ticket booth. Her other hand clutched the bundle of hard-saved dollars in her coat pocket. It would get them from the station to the house and back again.

  ‘Eight minutes to eleven,’ she whispered. ‘Ten minutes until the train goes. That’s ages.’

  At 10.54, she looked again at her watch; and at 10.55, and 10.58. Four minutes to go. What were they doing? The cold in the station seeped into her stomach, but Vita whispered to herself, ‘Give them one more minute.’

  And even as the words left her mouth, she heard a sound that made her heart leap. Running footsteps thundered through the almost empty hall, and a girl and two boys, the girl’s plait flying horizontally behind her, came sprinting over the smooth stone floor.

  ‘We’re here!’ called Arkady, as if she could have missed them.

  ‘Nearly … got caught,’ panted Silk.

  ‘My father … almost saw us,’ said Arkady, doubled over.

  ‘Discuss later!’ said Samuel. He carried a bag across one shoulder. ‘Two minutes!’

  ‘Platform seven!’ said Vita.

  Her foot still throbbed from her sprint earlier that night, and she could not keep up with the others. An unexpected crowd of late-night commuters came out from the station café as they went past, and Vita was jostled by a tall boy running the opposite way. She dodged sideways, and he stepped the same way – then again, the boy hissing with frustration, the other way – then he looped around her and was gone. His hat was pulled low over his eyes, but he grinned as he darted off, and his grin was familiar.