These were Hill’s business plans, drawn up over the past two years, and he spent the next hour poring over them, even though every detail was ingrained in his memory. As a regular gym-goer, and former centre for the national police rugby team, Hill had been looking for a way to turn his passion for fitness into a career. Two years ago, he’d finally found it.
Hill wanted to create a national chain of gyms, but he also knew that 80 per cent of independent gyms failed in their first five years of business. Hill didn’t intend to become one of those failures. Instead, he would buy those that did fold, streamline them, and so grow his own chain of twenty-four-hour, low-cost fitness centres.
All he needed was money.
He had scrimped and saved what he could, but living in central London sapped even a detective inspector’s fifty thousand a year. Deb had insisted on the finest ring and wedding, and soon she’d want a family. Both in their mid-thirties, that day would have to come sooner rather than later, and with it the bills. Always the bloody bills.
So Hill had snatched at the opportunity for voluntary redundancy that the police budget cuts had mandated, and the package would almost give him enough money to buy the first of the failing gyms. It was a small step in what he saw as the beginning of an empire. Having studied the markets and gone over the figures until he saw them in his sleep, Hill was now desperate for the day of his redundancy and the beginning of his new life.
Until then he was bored. Frustrated and bored. So he went in search of something to occupy him.
He found it in the form of Detective Inspector David Morgan. The Welshman was a drinking partner of Hill’s after a long day or a trying case.
‘You look like someone pissed in your tea, Mo,’ Hill greeted his friend. ‘What’s up?’
Morgan was pulling his winter coat over his thick shoulders.
‘Got a right stinker of a job, mate. Just about to call it a day for the weekend, and they shaft me with a bloody robbery in Hatton Garden.’ Morgan sniffed, gesturing at the notes on his desk.
‘Diamonds?’ Hill asked with interest.
‘Take a look.’
Hill picked up the notes, flicking quickly through.
‘So this wasn’t called in by a jeweller’s, and none of them have reported anything stolen?’ Hill assessed, eyes narrowing.
‘That’s right. The robbery was a snatch and grab on the street. Except it was more like a Royal bloody Rumble than a snatch and grab, by the sounds of it. The witness’s details are in there.’
‘Who the hell does a street robbery in Hatton Garden?’ Hill posed, puzzled. The high-end area was awash with CCTV. ‘And the uniforms didn’t get there until everyone had vanished?’
‘Exactly. Hence why I’ll be in all bloody weekend. This one’s got organised crime written all over it. It should be the NCA’s case, but they won’t touch it unless there’s something tangible. So it looks like I won’t get to watch Wales smash the French.’
‘You go, mate. I’ll take the job,’ Hill said, shocking the Welshman.
‘Bollocks, man, it’s your last week.’
‘It’ll be my last week on the planet if I don’t find something to keep me busy. And this has got something to it, I can tell.’
Morgan was unconvinced, so Hill came clean.
‘You know what the last case I closed was, don’t you?’ he asked his friend.
Morgan knew. Everyone knew. It was one of those stories that circulated around the station like wildfire.
A young woman had been murdered. Hill had been close with the grieving family for weeks, and then had discovered that the blood was on the victim’s husband’s hands. Before the man could be brought into custody, he’d taken his own life. The reason was money – two lives cut short by bankruptcy.
‘I don’t want to look back on this job and remember that as my last case,’ Hill told him with honesty.
Trying to lighten the mood, Hill put out his hand.
‘And twenty quid says I’ll have it wrapped up by the time you get back from watching the French kick your Welsh arses.’
‘I suppose I could just sign it back from you next week,’ Morgan conceded. ‘And you can keep your twenty quid when you lose. Rugby’s priceless.’
‘Right then. You clear it with the guv and I’ll get on my way to Hatton Garden.’
‘Don’t be shopping for Deb while you’re on the clock, mind,’ the Welshman laughed.
‘Bit out of my price range,’ Hill replied, smiling to himself.
CHAPTER 4
AS THE TUBE rattled into King’s Cross Underground station, Scowcroft raised his gaze from the carriage floor and met the eyes of Barrett amongst the other passengers.
This was their fourth and final station on the Underground, the multiple legs taken as a way to lose tails. As part of their escape, the trio had changed clothing in an alleyway with garments pulled from their backpacks. There, Charlotte had done what she could to clean up Barrett’s battered face, but baby wipes and a baseball cap did little to hide the destruction of his nose.
‘It’s the London Underground,’ Barrett had comforted his accomplices. ‘No one points fingers or talks to strangers. I’ll be fine.’
Hoping that he was right, they had boarded the westbound train from Chancery Lane to Bond Street. There they’d changed trains and lines for Waterloo, doing the same again to Leicester Square and then taking the Piccadilly line to King’s Cross. Having emerged from the Underground, the thieves once again changed clothing in the mainline train station’s public toilets. In the privacy of the stalls, secondary bags were pulled from within the original backpacks, which were then stuffed inside their replacements. Barrett had suggested that precaution, knowing that disposing of a bag in a train station was likely to raise an alarm in a city wary of terrorism.
Scowcroft stepped out onto the concourse and scanned the faces of those stood waiting for their trains. He saw nothing that raised his hackles. He looked over his shoulder, seeing Charlotte and Barrett in position behind him. He wasn’t worried if they should lose him in the crowd – they both knew the rendezvous point.
He kept his head down, fitting in amongst dozens of commuters and tourists and looking at the phone in his hand. The screen was locked, but it was the perfect excuse to keep his face from the cameras. Behind him, Charlotte and Barrett did the same.
Scowcroft took an escalator up to the champagne bar. He waited there patiently until his two accomplices appeared on his shoulder. The trio was now complete, and aside from Barrett’s nose, they resembled respectable tourists.
‘I’ve got a reservation,’ Scowcroft told the young hostess, who smiled at the handsome man in front of her as he gave a false name. ‘Ashcroft. Sorry I’m a bit late.’
‘That’s no problem, Mr Ashcroft,’ the hostess told him, pushing her hair back from her face. ‘If you’d like to follow, I’ll show you to your table.’
‘Thank you,’ he replied, wishing for a moment that he truly was an innocent tourist. His fantasy was cut short as he caught sight of the shock on the young woman’s face when she took in Barrett’s shattered nose.
‘He’s a cage fighter,’ Scowcroft shot in quickly. ‘We both are, except I’m a lot quicker than him.’
‘Not too quick, I hope,’ the hostess replied with a smile and swiftly left.
The table was at the English end of the champagne bar, and offered excellent views over the station below – if there was trouble, the thieves would see it coming. They all knew the location of the fire escapes, and their emergency rendezvous at St Pancras Gardens, but this was doing little to calm their fraying nerves as the adrenaline of that morning was being replaced by a bone-crushing weariness.
‘Be nice if we could remember why we’re here, instead of you trying to shag anything with a pulse,’ Charlotte scolded Scowcroft as they took their seats.
‘I know why I’m here,’ he shot back, his mood shifting from arousal to anger in a split second. ‘I’m here because Tony’s my broth
er. I wasn’t the one who tried to run out on him when he came back like he did.’
Charlotte’s first retort died as an angry choke on her lips. The second was stalled by Barrett’s intervention.
‘Easy now, Alex. We’re all here because we love Tony. Doesn’t matter if it’s by blood, marriage or mates. We’re all here for him.’
‘I’m not having her talk to me like that,’ the young man grumbled, showing the immaturity behind his confident facade. ‘You’re not my family,’ he told her, the words quiet but resonating.
‘I’m his family,’ Charlotte hissed. ‘I’m his family, in a way you can’t even imagine.’
‘We’ll see about that when he gets the full story,’ Scowcroft told her. ‘We’ll see who’s family when my brother wakes up.’
CHAPTER 5
HILL STEPPED OUT of the unmarked police BMW and looked at his shoes.
‘Good start. ’ He smiled, his toecap poking into a patch of congealed blood. ‘Now, where’s the rest of it?’ he mused, looking about him.
His eyes were drawn to the deep scratches in the pavement and scraps of rubber in the road, but there was no sign of how either had come about. Save for the patch of blood, there was nothing to indicate that a crime had taken place here only two hours ago.
Hill looked at the case notes Morgan had given him: a uniformed officer had arrived on the scene seventeen minutes after the call from a witness, but the report made no mention of any suspects or vehicles. The officer had initially written off the call-out as a hoax, but a second eyewitness came forward and corroborated the story of a street fight, seemingly over a bag. Hill searched the notes again, hoping he’d somehow missed the photos that the first responding officer should have taken. Finding none, Hill cursed the ineptitude of the constable.
Something had happened here, Hill was sure. But what?
He walked slowly to the address of the second eyewitness, scanning the pavement as he went. Besides some burnt rubber, there was nothing to draw his attention.
Hill pushed open a door and entered a glass-fronted coffee shop. The lunchtime rush was in full effect, and several queuing customers protested loudly as Hill eased his way to the front.
‘Police,’ he told the groaning line over his shoulder.
‘Can I help you?’ the shop’s manager asked.
‘Looking for Emma Pell,’ Hill told her.
‘She’s one of my baristas,’ the manager replied, pointing a finger towards a young woman who was frantically handing out fanciful concoctions of caffeine. ‘You can’t talk to her now. Look how busy we are.’
Hill smiled and pretended to care. ‘Yeah, but you see, this badge says that I can.’
‘Arse,’ the manager muttered beneath her breath.
Hill joined the patrons waiting at the end of the long counter for their coffees.
‘Emma,’ he gently called to the barista.
‘I don’t have an order for Emma,’ she replied without looking up.
‘No, Emma, I’m Detective Inspector Hill. I’ve come to speak with you about what you saw today.’
‘Oh!’
The girl looked to her manager for permission. The woman gave her assent with an angry nod, her eyes staring daggers at Hill.
‘Take me to where you saw it happen,’ Hill said, and Emma took him back out through the coffee shop’s front door.
‘It was down there,’ she told him, pointing in the direction of Hill’s BMW and the congealed patch of blood.
‘And you were here when you saw it?’
‘Yeah, I was just coming in for my shift and I heard the bikes, so I stayed to watch.’
‘Bikes?’
‘Motorbikes. They were riding down the pavement, heading straight at this group of people, and then it just turned into a massive fight.’
‘How many people?’ Hill pressed gently, taking notes.
‘Three or four, and the two bikers. I thought it was some kind of TV thing at first, but then I didn’t see any cameras so I guessed it was real. Was it?’
Hill resisted the temptation to tap the young woman’s skull to see if it was hollow.
‘It was real. Did you call the police?’
‘I didn’t,’ the girl admitted, shifting her weight on her heels.
‘That’s OK,’ Hill told her. ‘Were you worried they might come after you if you did?’
‘Nah, it’s not that,’ she laughed. ‘I was using my phone to film it. Then I put it on Insta and Snap. I was gonna call the police when I’d finished, but by then you guys were already here so I just popped across to tell them what I saw.’
‘And you gave them the video?’ Hill asked, incredulous that this evidence hadn’t been included in the case file.
‘No,’ the girl told him, her cheeks turning ruddy. ‘I forgot.’
‘But you remembered to put it on all of your social media?’ Hill laughed, thinking about how much he was actually going to miss his job. ‘You have it saved on your phone?’
The girl blushed a further red and shook her head. ‘Deleted it. I don’t have the space.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Emma,’ Hill smiled. ‘What’s your Instagram account?’
CHAPTER 6
SCOWCROFT PUSHED OPEN the door to the champagne bar’s bathroom. A sideways look in the mirrors confirmed that he had entered alone, his only company a rotund businessman wheezing at the urinal. Scowcroft dismissed him quickly as no threat and stepped into the stall.
The stall door stretched from floor to ceiling and fitted snugly. Scowcroft had the privacy he needed.
He opened the bag and pulled the crushed leather holdall from its depths. The bag’s zippers were padlocked, so Scowcroft used his brother’s commando dagger to cut through the leather. The blade had no struggle in cutting open the bag, spilling its bubble-wrapped contents onto the floor: a dozen golf-ball-sized packages.
He reached for the closest. A flick of the dagger was enough to cut the tape and open the wrapping like a flower. Seeing what was in his hand, Scowcroft’s heart beat faster. He took hold of the next bundle and opened that, then the next, then the next, his heart beating faster all the time. Finally, he looked down at what was in his hands.
A dozen diamonds, and none below six carats. In the bathroom stall, Scowcroft held three million pounds’ worth of precious stones.
But it was more than that.
Alex Scowcroft held his brother’s life in his hands, and knowing that made him feel more powerful and more terrified than he ever had in his entire life.
For a fleeting second, an image pushed its way into the young man’s mind of what could be. A life in the sun. Beach houses. Yachts. A never-ending supply of women of every shape and colour.
Scowcroft rejected the image. Better the family’s terraced house with his brother than all of the superyachts and women in the world.
He placed the diamonds in a small leather pouch that was suspended from a chain that held two metal discs: his brother’s dog tags. Then he wound duct tape about his chest to hold the small pouch securely in position. It created a visible lump under his T-shirt, but nothing that would be noticed beneath his winter jacket. Scowcroft took deep breaths to ensure that the tape would not restrict his breathing – he knew that they were not out of danger yet.
Finally, the diamond thief performed a solemn task.
His brother’s commando dagger could not follow him on the final leg. Carrying such a weapon would draw unwanted attention from customs. So, after wiping it down thoroughly, Scowcroft reluctantly placed it into the walled cavity of the toilet’s plumbing, vowing that he would return for the blade his brother had endured hell to earn.
Remembering to flush the toilet so as to avoid suspicion, Scowcroft left the bathroom and rejoined the others.
‘I ditched his dagger,’ he told them with sorrow.
‘Never mind a bloody knife,’ Charlotte replied, earning herself a scowl. ‘What about the diamonds?’
‘On my chest.’
‘They’re on my chest,’ Scowcroft said again, challenging her to struggle for them in the busy bar and doom their mission. ‘I’ll split them when we’re closer to the target,’ he pressed on. ‘Our train’s in forty minutes. We should go and clear passport control.’
‘We’ve been talking about that, Alex,’ Barrett interjected with calm. ‘Something’s really been bothering me, mate. I think we should let this train go and wait for the next one.’
‘Why would we wait?’ Scowcroft asked with a frown.
‘The absence of the normal,’ Barrett told him, then explained. ‘Before me and Tony went to Iraq, they used to tell us to watch for the absence of the normal and the presence of the abnormal. In other words, you see something out of the ordinary, it probably means that bad stuff’s gonna happen. And if you don’t see something you should, that also means bad stuff’s gonna happen.’
‘What’s that got to do with us, Baz? We’re not in Iraq.’
‘What was missing this morning, Alex?’ Barrett posed.
‘Police,’ Scowcroft answered.
‘Robbery and a street fight on Hatton Garden, and no police? I don’t know why that is, mate, but it’s definitely not normal.’
‘And it’s more than that,’ Charlotte added. ‘Those bikers were after the exact same thing we were.’
‘Coincidence,’ Scowcroft shrugged.
‘Maybe,’ she conceded. ‘But then you look at the police not showing up, and it doesn’t feel right.’
‘It doesn’t,’ Barrett agreed. ‘My gut tells me something is wrong here, Alex. I’ve had my eye on the news since we got here. Nothing. No stories. No coppers. There’s another train in an hour and a half – let’s just get that. We’ve come too far to half-arse this now.’
It wasn’t in a Scowcroft’s blood to sit and wait, and the youngest of the trio baulked at the thought. He may be outvoted, but he was the one with the diamonds.
Heist: BookShots Page 2
