Royal Heist

by Lynda La Plante

  After a moment he raised his arm and drew her close to him. “I do not have a second of regret, not one second,” he said. “We have two perfect daughters and”—he looked down into her face—“Royal Flush.”

  “I know,” Christina said, “but it’s not the same.”

  He gripped her tightly. “I don’t want anything to change.” His manner frightened her, but then he tucked the pillow beneath his head and closed his eyes, murmuring, “Good night, sweetheart.”

  “Happy Christmas,” she whispered. She remained curled by his side, lying in the crook of his arm.

  “Happy Christmas, sweetheart.” He would not allow anything to harm their idyllic life.

  By the end of Christmas dinner, he had to undo the button on his trousers. The Driscolls were in a booth in the main restaurant. He had ordered Krug champagne, as had most of the other guests. He had drunk more than usual, but he felt stone cold sober.

  “Do you like this color?” Liz paraded her pearly false nails.

  “Yes, very nice.”

  “Oyster pink shimmer,” she said. “It’s a perfect match for the dress I bought for New Year’s Eve. I was just testing the colors out. Do you remember the dress? From Chanel in Knightsbridge.” Driscoll recalled the floating chiffon with an embroidered vest top and ribbon straps. It looked like a nightdress, but he’d told her he loved it—he loved anything that made her happy. Suddenly he was overcome by emotion.

  “Tone, what’s the matter?” she asked, alarmed.

  Driscoll was crying now. How could he tell her he was broke? That he’d been a bloody idiot and lost his life savings. A few thousand here or there wasn’t going to keep this pretty little soul in the manner to which she was accustomed. “I’ve had too much to drink,” he muttered.

  She reached for his hand. “Let’s go to the room. They’ve got the porno channel. We could order more champagne, get into the Jacuzzi, and have dirty sex.” She giggled.

  Dear God, he thought, how am I going to keep this up until New Year’s Eve? All he wanted was to get back to London, meet de Jersey, and hear his plan. Just thinking about it, he got another erection. “Yes, darling,” he said. “Let’s go up to the suite.”

  They didn’t make it into the Jacuzzi, and he didn’t need to watch any porno film. To Liz’s delight, Driscoll didn’t even take off his dinner jacket, he was so desperate. They screwed against the bathroom wall, in the bedroom on the carpet, and then in their bed until he passed out. She wished their sex life was always this good.

  Wilcox had never been money-conscious. He lived life on the edge in Aspen, keeping his mind off his financial crisis with excessive amounts of cocaine. Rika worried about his recklessness. Wilcox had more innate class than de Jersey, but he lacked prudence. This man liked taking risks. Over and over again Rika tried to stop him going out late at night to ski, but she always backed down at the first hint of anger. Fury lay dormant in Wilcox, and she did not want to provoke it against herself. So when he left the house on Christmas night, she didn’t try to stop him.

  The loss of his fortune had left Wilcox balancing on a precipice. When he got off the ski lift at the level for experienced skiers, he positioned himself, checked his skis, adjusted his goggles, then eased forward. In the five-minute descent, he made a near-perfect run. Upon reaching the lower slopes, however, he felt a tightening in his chest. He gasped for breath, and by the time he was at a standstill he was bending almost double. Lately these pains had been occurring more frequently. Added to chest pain, he’d been experiencing dizzy spells, and a couple of times during this holiday his nose had bled profusely. Even now, as he pulled off his goggles, there were spots of blood on the snow.

  He removed gloves, then skis, which he carried to his truck. Once inside he leaned back until the dizziness subsided. Then he adjusted the rearview mirror; his nostrils were encrusted with dried blood. He took a tissue and wiped it away. When he got back to the chalet, every light was on. The kids would be listening to music, playing table tennis, or watching videos, and Rika was probably waiting to have another go at him for disappearing. He told himself he was too old to be indulging a serious drug habit—if he caught any of his kids using the same substance, he’d thrash them—but he could feel the itch starting. He dumped the skis on the ground by Rika’s car and hurried up the stairs.

  He locked the bathroom door, unfolded the wrap, chopped three lines of cocaine, rolled a dollar bill, and snorted. He was rubbing the residue on his gums when the door handle turned. “James, are you all right?”

  He unlocked the door, smiling. “I’m great. Just got caught short coming up the drive.”

  “I vas vorried vhen I saw you just throw your skis inside the garage. You haven’t viped dem clean.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it later.”

  “You do it now, James. You shout at the kids for doing just the same thing.”

  “Get off my back, Rika.”

  “I’m not on it.” She stormed out.

  Wilcox locked the door, then sat on the toilet. One more hit, he thought, then he’d dry off his skis. He snorted two lines, then reached for the phone. He knew it was against the rules, but he couldn’t stop himself. A little later he went into the bedroom, packed a bag, and went downstairs to Rika. “I’ve got to go away for a day. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  She gripped his arm. “Vhere you going?”

  He pushed her aside. “I’ve got a business problem. Just leave me alone!”

  “I von’t be ’ere ven you get back,” she screamed after him.

  Wilcox drove erratically down the drive, then reversed, almost skidding into the garage. Rika ran from the house and banged on the windscreen, but her anger turned to worry when she saw the look on his face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. She opened the car door and got in beside him. “I’ve got big problems.”

  She put an arm around him; he rested his head against her. “Maybe I’ll go tomorrow,” he said. Then she helped him out of the Jeep and into the house. He told her that he had lost some money and needed to talk to someone about it. The following morning she drove him to the airport.

  Wilcox flew to Florida. He had to talk to someone, and it could only be Driscoll. He had calmed down since the previous night, but he was cold—the air-conditioning made him feel as if he was still on the ski run. He was sitting at a booth in the bar, behind a massive aquarium with exotic fish diving around elaborate fake rocks. He’d had two diet Cokes.

  Driscoll—white golfing cap, white T-shirt and shorts—entered the bar and saw Wilcox slouched at the table. He headed over and sat down.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Simple. Phoned all the top-notch hotels. Got to the tenth and they said you were there.” Wilcox cast a bleary eye over his friend. “Christ, Tony, you look like a right arsehole! What have you got on your feet?”

  “Gucci sandals. You look as if you’ve had a night on the tiles.”

  “Still a label man, are you?” Wilcox asked.

  “The wife buys it all. I don’t give a shit, but if it doesn’t carry a designer name she won’t buy it.”

  Wilcox slurped his Coke, and Driscoll ordered a decaf coffee from a waitress in a pink uniform. Eventually Driscoll said, “How much did you lose?”

  “My shirt,” Wilcox said flatly.

  “Me too. I mean, I’ve still got a few thousand here and there, some property, but … He called you, did he?”

  “Yeah.” Wilcox rubbed his arms. “Bloody cold in here.”

  “Yeah, the hotel dining room’s like a fridge, gotta wear a jumper to breakfast.”

  “What are we gonna do?” Wilcox finally asked.

  “I dunno. The Colonel said he was trying to sort it all but not to hold out much hope. We may be able to salvage something.”

  “That prick David Lyons didn’t top himself for nothing, and we’re in a long line of losers. The Internet bonanza’s screwed thousands like us.” Wilcox twisted his glass. “Gonna meet us at the Ritz aga
in, right?”

  “He’s arranged the meeting for when I get back from here, mid-January.” Driscoll was staring at the fish.

  “What do you think he’s doing in the meantime?”

  “I dunno.” One tiny fish was swimming like quicksilver.

  “I’d say he’s up to his old tricks again. Nosing out some hit. What if he suggests we get involved in something? Are we up for it?”

  Driscoll burped. “Thing is, Jimmy, I owe him. His dad took care of my mother. If it hadn’t been for him she’d have been in a right mess. Paid for my school uniform. Like a surrogate father to me was Ronnie.”

  “I know.”

  Driscoll closed his eyes. “He used to look after a lot of people, did Ronnie, but when the shit hit the fan …”

  Wilcox leaned back against the booth.

  “Those villains, Jimmy, were something else. They came in the bookies with fucking sledgehammers, terrifying! I didn’t know Eddy that well then. Seen him around, but he was at the grammar school so we didn’t mix. And after he got into Sandhurst I hardly ever saw him. It was hard to believe they were father and son. I mean Ronnie wasn’t a big fella, and Eddy was always head and shoulders above him. My mother said it was from Florence’s side he got the height. She was a big woman. Always knitting. She got him elocution lessons so’s he wouldn’t feel out of place at Sandhurst. But when I saw him at Ronnie’s funeral limping on a crutch after he’d busted his knee, I said to myself, ‘He’s not gonna be able to deal with these villains coming into the shop, extortin’ cash, smashing the place up.’ I said to him that, as much as I respected his dad, I wasn’t gonna stay around to get my head kicked in. And do you know what he said?” Driscoll asked rhetorically. “‘They’ve offered to buy me out.’ I said to him, ‘Sell. If you don’t, they’ll go after your mother.’ You don’t want to get in the middle of bastards like the Krays and the Richardsons fighting it out. ‘Sell up and get out,’ but he said he was going to the police.”

  Wilcox was looking around the bar, bored. He’d heard the story a thousand times, albeit many years ago.

  “Offered him peanuts, the bastards did,” Driscoll continued, “and those two betting shops were gold mines. Cops were no help. I said to him, ‘Eddy, they’re probably getting back-handers,’ and I’ll never forget his face. When they came back, pushing and shoving him around, he just stood there like a wimp. They threw the money at him and made him pick it up off the floor.”

  “I was there, Tony.”

  “I mean, if you’d told me then what he’d go on to do, I’d have laughed in your face,” said Driscoll.

  Suddenly Wilcox got up.

  “Where you going?”

  “To take a leak, then I want out of this place. We can go back to my hotel, have a sandwich.”

  “Oh, okay, I’ll settle this.” Driscoll took the check.

  Wilcox gave a soft laugh. “That’s generous.”

  Wilcox’s hotel was evidently not a five-star establishment, and Driscoll balked. “Gawd almighty, Jimmy, why did you book into a place like this?”

  “Anonymity,” Wilcox snapped, and they went into the threadbare foyer, then up to his room, where Wilcox opened a miniature vodka from the minibar.

  “I was thinking about you moving in with Eddy after Sandhurst,” Driscoll remarked. “I bet his mother didn’t like it.”

  Wilcox flopped back onto the bed. “You sound like a record that’s got stuck. You don’t owe Eddy. If you hadn’t helped us out we’d never have got away with robbing the shops.”

  “I know,” said Driscoll.

  Wilcox recalled the way de Jersey had laid the plans after selling out to rob his father’s old betting shops. They wore balaclavas and carried shotguns as they systematically cleaned out the takings. De Jersey became the Colonel because of the way he barked out orders when they rehearsed their attacks on the shops. They hit them on every big race meeting, de Jersey working out the details like a military maneuver. As a result of their robberies, the two big rival East End gangs started a war that eventually saw the shops firebombed and burned to the ground. Each believed the other was the perpetrator.

  “How much do you reckon in today’s money we got away with?” Driscoll asked.

  Wilcox shrugged. “Maybe a quarter of a million, not a lot.”

  “To me it was. When he shared it out three ways I couldn’t believe it. I thought I’d get a cut but not that much. You see that’s another reason I owe him. I was able to set my mum up for the rest of her life, God rest her soul.”

  Driscoll called room service and ordered two hamburgers and french fries.

  “You ever think, Tony, that he owes us?” Wilcox asked quietly.

  “No way. He even split it three ways for the train robbery. He didn’t have to do that.”

  “He couldn’t have robbed his dad’s shops without our help, and on the train job, all he did was suss out how to stop the train.”

  “And I was the only one with a car. Remember that Morris Minor? You two were havin’ to schlep all over the place to check out the trains. You guys were catching trains to stop one!”

  “We spent hours up at that railway bridge too. And it wasn’t Eddy’s idea about fixing the signals, it was mine.” Wilcox lit a cigarette.

  “But he worked out how to move the mail train into a siding.”

  This annoyed Wilcox. “You owe me just as much. I agreed to split that cash three ways as well. Look, you just did the route for that. Anyway, I don’t call twenty grand in cash a big deal or any reason to feel you owe him for the rest of your life.”

  “All I’m saying is, he didn’t always have to cut it three ways.”

  “Just think about his reasons. The others got thirty years apiece, right? And when they questioned us we could have put him in the frame with them. We were lucky they thought we were just dumb kids.”

  “Not that dumb. We got away with it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. And here you are, Christ knows how many years later, bleating on about how much you owe him. That’s why he always did a three-way cut.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “So we’d feel indebted to him,” Wilcox snapped.

  “So you do feel you owe him, then?” Driscoll asked, surprised.

  Wilcox sighed with exasperation. “No. We all took the risks. It was only fair to cut three ways.”

  Driscoll opened a bottle of gin from the minibar and yanked out the ice tray. “Not the same on the last caper, though, was it?”

  Wilcox tensed and opened another bottle. “I was up for it,” he said shortly.

  “Yeah, but the last time it was a big number.”

  “All right, I hear you.”

  “Yeah, stealing fucking gold bullion, Jimmy. If we’d been copped that would have been thirty years. Without Eddy we’d never have got away with it. It wasn’t you or me that found out how to launder the cash.”

  “And it was almost a fuckup. He didn’t have any idea how much there was.”

  Driscoll laughed. “Three tonnes of gold. Worth twenty-five million pounds. Damn right we owe him.”

  Wilcox reclined, his eyes drifted upward. Most of the gold had been melted down and moved abroad fast with the assistance of de Jersey’s friend’s helicopter and yacht. The robbery had been almost effortless, but moving that volume of gold had been a nightmare. De Jersey had deployed everyone he could think of to melt, move, carry, and shift the bars. Some were melted in a private kiln in a jeweler’s garden; others were buried around London, carried out to Spain in suitcases, or even left in safety-deposit boxes. De Jersey shipped some to Africa, then brought it back into England after purchasing a smelting plant; there he altered the hallmarks and later sold it on the open market. The largest amount, however, had been stored in a small jeweler’s workshop in France.

  There was a rap at the door, and Driscoll got up to take in the hamburgers. He handed one to Wilcox and unwrapped the other.

  “He moved those gold bars around,” Driscoll said. “
Turned them into cash.”

  “I don’t know how he bloody did it,” Wilcox said.

  “He used assumed names and identities. He told me he’d worked out a system of depositing cash into high-street banks, in amounts as large as eight hundred grand.”

  Wilcox unwrapped his hamburger.

  “It wasn’t just us he took care of. Those ‘soldiers’ who were picked up, he looked after them. They never put any of us in the frame.” Driscoll tried to open his ketchup packet; he swore as the ketchup spurted over his T-shirt.

  Wilcox remained unimpressed by the argument. “Well, they wanted their payoff when they came out of the nick.”

  Driscoll peered at his hamburger. “You know Scotland Yard officers recovered eleven melted-down bars in 1985. None of the remaining stolen ingots has ever been found. Have you got a raw one? This is like old leather.” Wilcox passed over his untouched hamburger, opening another miniature vodka instead.

  The two men fell silent, Wilcox drinking, Driscoll stuffing french fries into his mouth.

  Under de Jersey’s orders, Wilcox and Driscoll had split up and moved to Canada, then to Los Angeles. De Jersey covered their tracks; he had given them fake passports and instructed them to be constantly on the move—and apart—until all was quiet. They were not due to receive the big payoff for another few years. They showed how much they trusted their “colonel” by their patience. The laundered money eventually ensured that all three men could lead a life of luxury. By now they had growing families and flourishing businesses. De Jersey himself emerged as a racehorse and stud-farm owner.

  Driscoll looked up suddenly. “Why did you come here, Jimmy?”

  “Thinking of writing my memoirs,” Wilcox replied.

  “You’re here because you’re worried about what he’s gonna suggest, right?”

  “Well, you keep saying how much you’re in debt to him, so I guess whatever he suggests, you’ll be up for it.”

  “And you don’t feel like you owe him?”

  “Like fuck I do. It was his idea to back that Internet company.”

  Driscoll opened a half bottle of white wine.

  “Okay, let’s be honest with each other.” He sat back, watching Wilcox open another miniature. “Reason you’re here is that you’re scared shitless.”