Dark Side of the Moon

by Les Wood

  ‘Platforms,’ said Campbell. ‘The store makes all the security guys wear them. To make them look taller. More intimidating.’ He looked at Kyle and Prentice, the uncomprehending looks on their faces. ‘You know… for the customers.’

  ‘Christ almighty,’ said Kyle. ‘You mean that…’

  ‘Ah forgot,’ said Campbell. ‘When Boag took his measurements, my height, Ah forgot Ah’d been wearing the shoes in the picture. It’s my fault, not his. My mistake.’

  Prentice shook his head. ‘Your mistake! Well, that’s a fucking understatement.’ He paced the floor behind the plinth, ‘Your mistake has just screwed the whole bloody deal, hasn’t it? Ah mean, what the fuck are we supposed to do now?’ Prentice took the litter-picker and hurled it into the corner where it smashed against the wall.

  Campbell flinched. ‘Ah’m sorry, it wasn’t intentional it just slipped my mind.’

  Kyle sucked air in through his gritted teeth. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘There’s fuck all we can do about it now, is there? Is there no way we can just try it, give it a go? You know, now we’re here?’

  Prentice laughed at him. ‘No way, José. You can try it if you like, but the angles are all wrong. It’s too narrow now. The pincers won’t fit through. And, short of just grabbing the bastard and running like fuck, Ah don’t see any other possibilities. Mind you, if we do that, there’s that wee matter of the security grills and the alarms and the two dozen polis that’ll be here in three minutes flat. Oh aye, and the twenty fucking years in prison, there’s always that too.’

  ‘Hang on, hang on,’ said Kyle. He picked up the litter-picker from where it lay in the corner. He held it up before Prentice’s face. The plastic grips which covered the pincers had broken when Prentice had flung it against the wall and had fallen away, leaving only the exposed metal of the pincers themselves. Prentice saw what Kyle had noticed.

  They were thinner than before.

  Thinner.

  Campbell looked from Prentice to Kyle and back again. ‘Do you think…?’

  Prentice took the picker from Kyle and squatted down on the floor before the plinth. ‘We’ll need to see won’t we?’ He squatted before the plinth. ‘Get spraying and let’s have a look.’

  Campbell moved to the right of the plinth and started spraying. Once again the diamond was enveloped by the bright red threads of light. Prentice cocked his head and settled lower onto the floor. He held his breath, squinting up through the beams and then at the picker in his hand. Five, six times he did this, each time puffing his cheeks and blowing air slowly from his lungs. ‘You know,’ he said finally. ‘Ah think it’ll go through… Ah think the fucker will actually make it.’

  Kyle and Campbell broke into wide grins.

  ‘Okay,’ Prentice said, getting to his feet. ‘Ah need to practice this. It’s an awkward position, Ah need to make sure Ah can get the right angle.’ He moved away from the plinth and lay down on his back.

  Kyle and Campbell stepped aside to give him room. Prentice took the picker and advanced it slowly in a rough approximation of the path he would have to take, bracing his arms against his chest. He tried it three times more, shifting position slightly each time to give him a more comfortable approach. At last he stood up. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Ah think Ah’m ready.’ He walked back to the plinth and settled himself on the floor at its base, squirming to adjust his shoulders to the right angle.

  Campbell fished in his rucksack and brought out another can of deodorant for Kyle. ‘Better with the two of us,’ he said. ‘Make sure we don’t lose the beams while he’s in there.’

  Kyle nodded. ‘Good idea.’

  They knelt either side of Prentice. ‘Ready?’ Kyle asked.

  ‘Ah suppose,’ he said. ‘We’re well past the point of no return, so let’s get this over and done with.’

  Kyle and Campbell began spraying, the beams flaring into view again, while Prentice moved the litter pole into the space between them. The clearance on either side was no more than half a centimetre. His progress was painfully slow; Prentice was acutely aware that the slightest tremble in his arms would be magnified by the length of the pole, causing the far end to dance dangerously close to the path of the beams.

  The pincers edged towards the diamond. The gap, narrow enough to begin with, seemed to close in, the perspective of the passageway tricking Prentice’s eyes as he struggled to maintain a steady hand.

  The smell from the deodorant was overpowering, with both Kyle and Campbell spraying inches from his nose. Christ, if he should start to sneeze now! Prentice put the thought out of his head, tried to concentrate on the job. He was almost there, perhaps two or three inches from the end of the golden spike. A few more seconds and he would have it, a minute or two more and it would be in his hand. They could get out of this fucking place. They would be rich.

  He slowly stretched his arm till the pincers were a centimetre in front of the diamond. He squeezed the trigger on the handle and they opened. Campbell and Kyle continued to keep the beams lit, but he could sense their anticipation, knew they were staring bug-eyed at how close he was, willing him to clasp the diamond, finally make contact.

  He released the pressure on the trigger and the jaws of the pincers closed on the Dark Side of the Moon. There was a tiny crystalline clink and the diamond rocked slightly on its mounting at the top of the spike. Prentice smiled – a thin slice of satisfaction – and prepared to lift it clear and withdraw back down through the gap in the beams.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ a voice sounded from way behind them.

  They froze, Prentice straining with the effort of keeping the diamond in place.

  ‘And Ladies! You are moments away from the experience of the year… ’

  Someone had entered the Walkway. They stared at each other.

  ‘It’s Boag,’ said Campbell. ‘It must be!’

  ‘He was under instructions to stay put!’ said Kyle. ‘Why would he come up here?’

  They heard the tok-tok-tok of high heels coming down the Walkway towards the Bubble.

  ‘Well, unless he’s been raiding the women’s shoe department, Ah don’t think that’s Boag, do you?’ hissed Kyle.

  ‘Fuck!’ said Prentice. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ He let go of the diamond which dropped back into its holder, and began backing out of the space between the lasers. ‘Help me! Quick!’

  They abandoned the deodorant and began pulling on the pole, keeping it as steady as they could and as far away from where they supposed the paths of the beams would be.

  They made it. The pincers came clear. They breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  But the footsteps were coming closer.

  ‘Quick,’ Campbell hissed. ‘Over here.’

  They scrambled across the floor and into the space behind a counter holding a selection of souvenir catalogues and guides.

  A figure emerged from between the two golden gates at the entrance to the exhibition area, dark and indistinct in the light seeping through from the street below. It stepped into the room, a firm, confident stride, business-like and efficient. They could now see it was a woman; neat tailored jacket over short blue skirt, high heels and dark, cropped hair. She walked forward to the plinth and stood sniffing the air. Campbell winced. The deodorant. Christ, what a giveaway.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Prentice about to stand up, his knife in his hand. Kyle was crouched ready to move too. Campbell stretched out, grabbed Prentice by the arm, widened his eyes, signalled for him to wait. She hadn’t seen them; there was still a chance.

  The woman placed her hands on her hips and scanned the room. As she turned towards them, Campbell ducked behind the counter, but just had time to see it was Miss McKinnon. Fucking hell, what was she doing here? She was supposed to be at the…

  His thoughts were interrupted by McKinnon’s laughter, a deep belly laugh which rolled around the confined space of the exhibition room. She put a hand to her forehead and shook her head. ‘You boys,’ she said trying to compose herself.
‘You really crack me up. This place smells like a fucking bomb went off in a Rightguard factory.’

  Campbell, Prentice and Kyle were rooted to the spot. You boys? What the hell did she know? More to the point, how the hell did she know? They shot each other quick glances, unsure what to do next.

  ‘You truly are amateurs,’ she said. ‘I warned Boddice, but he wouldn’t listen, wanted to plan things his way. And this is what you get.’ She shook her head. ‘I tried to make things as easy as possible for you… smooth the way. A bit of research wouldn’t have gone amiss, boys.’

  She stepped forward and reached towards the Dark Side of the Moon, stretched her arm across the beams and lifted it from the plinth.

  ‘No!’ shouted Kyle, getting to his feet. ‘Wait!’

  At the same instant, Prentice rose up and vaulted the counter, lunging at McKinnon in a swift sweeping movement, his knife raised high above his head.

  He never made contact.

  Seemingly without thinking, McKinnon spun away from him and in the same movement landed a spiked heel directly on his balls. Prentice crumpled to the floor, clutching his wounded testicles and folding into a foetal position. Kyle and Campbell sprang round the counter and sprinted towards her. ‘Stop!’ she shouted, holding up her hand.

  It wasn’t the way she had dealt with Prentice (Prentice for fuck’s sake!), or their surprise at the commanding tone of her voice that caused them to halt in their tracks. It was the diamond.

  There it was.

  In her hand.

  And nothing had happened. There were no alarms, flashing lights or security grilles crashing down around them. No police sirens in the distance. Zilch. Nada. Rien.

  She had just walked up, stuck her hand in and took it.

  She laughed. ‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘Could you be any more slack-jawed?’

  Prentice got to his knees, still clutching his balls. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he snarled through clenched teeth. Campbell and Kyle stepped forward and helped him to his feet. He shrugged them off. ‘Answer me!’ Prentice shouted. He made to rush her again, but Kyle and Campbell held him back.

  ‘Good move boys,’ McKinnon said. ‘You don’t want to be messing with me, Davie, unless you want more of the same.’

  ‘Answer him,’ said Kyle. ‘Who are you? How the fuck do you know his name?’

  ‘She’s Miss McKinnon,’ Campbell said.

  ‘Miss Who?’

  ‘McKinnon. The head of security for the store,’ Campbell replied.

  ‘Correct,’ said McKinnon. ‘And wrong too.’ She motioned for them to move back behind the counter. They stood their ground, a chest-puffing act of defiance. Did she have any idea who the fuck she was dealing with here? ‘Fair enough,’ she said, smiling. ‘Makes no difference to me.’ She stretched her hand towards them, the Dark Side of the Moon lying in her open palm. ‘Here. Take it.’

  They looked at each other, frowning. ‘Look,’ said Kyle. ‘Gonnae chuck the mystery shite and just tell us what’s going on here?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, tossing the diamond towards them. Campbell caught it and closed his fist around it, feeling its weight and coolness. ‘Miss McKinnon,’ she said. ‘Head of Security at Trusdale and Needham. Or not, as the case may be. Not everything is as it seems sometimes, Campbell.’ She walked over to the plinth, stood directly in the path of the beams. Her face, her arms, her dress were studded with little red pinpoints which glowed fiercely in the dark like undiscovered constellations.

  ‘Take this, for example. Pretty crap security system is it not, when you can just walk up and snatch the world’s most expensive diamond and there’s not so much as a doorbell ringing. You’d expect something approaching the third world war to be kicking off right now, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Get to the fucking point,’ Prentice said.

  ‘This is the fucking point, as you so eloquently put it,’ she said. ‘Did you really think something as important as this would be left sitting here overnight, unprotected, except by a bunch of low-paid drones who don’t know how to wipe their own arse without being given instructions?’

  ‘Hey!’ Campbell said.

  ‘Present company excepted, of course,’ McKinnon said. She walked around the plinth, stroked the gold spike with a long, red-varnished fingernail. ‘All this is just an elaborate hoax. None of it is real. That stone you’re holding isn’t the real deal.

  It’s just a bauble, a fake, a trinket put on display for the proles to gape at after their hour and a half of queueing.’

  Campbell lowered his head and examined the gem in his hand, its improbably dark interior leaching the light from the room.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ said McKinnon. ‘As a fake, that one’s worth a considerable amount of money. It’s an accurate replica, right down to the tiny variations in colour of the real thing, same weight, same dimensions. But it’s a fake nonetheless.’ She looked at each of them in turn. ‘If you’d bothered to do any homework before your daring little raid tonight, you’d have discovered these laser beams are old hat, passé. No security system worth its salt uses something like this these days. You’re only likely to see these in some crappy Hollywood spy movie, that’s all.’ She smiled at Prentice. ‘Something with wee Tom Cruise or Matt Damon. If anything, the beams would be infra-red, if they were used at all. Invisible to the naked eye.’ She swept her arm in a wide arc, taking in the room. ‘All this is just showmanship. A crowd-pleaser. Let the public think they’re getting involved with something slightly dangerous, something exotic. They can say they’ve been part of it. Tell their friends about it. Brighten their dismal little lives.’

  ‘Fuck all that,’ said Prentice. ‘If it’s a phony, then where is the real diamond?’

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘The real Dark Side of the Moon is, in fact, in an altogether different room within the store. A room only those and such as those are invited to, well away from the prying eyes of the great unwashed. Private viewings only, I’m afraid.’

  ‘We’ve wasted our fuckin time,’ Prentice said. ‘Boddice knew all along this was never gonnae work. He’s hung us out to dry.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Kyle. ‘Why is she telling us all this?’ He glared at McKinnon. ‘You still haven’t answered his question. Who are you?’

  ‘You don’t need to know who I am.’ She turned to Campbell. ‘But my name’s not McKinnon.’

  ‘And you’re not the security chief for the store are you?’ Campbell asked.

  ‘Oh, but I am,’ she said. ‘You work for me, remember?’

  ‘Aye, but…’

  ‘There’s always a ‘but’.’ She shook her head in exasperation. ‘In fact I—’

  ‘In fact she works for Boddice,’ said Kyle. ‘She’s a plant. He’s had her hidden away in here for… how long? Months? Years?’

  She smiled. ‘Let’s just say a while, shall we? You’re almost right, Gordon. Well done. But I don’t work for Boddice. I work for myself. Boddice has just hired my services, that’s all.’

  ‘Hired? What do you mean?’ asked Prentice.

  ‘What part of that word don’t you understand, Davie? What would you prefer? Rented? Engaged? Employed?’

  ‘Don’t get smart with me,’ Prentice said. ‘Ah’ll come over there and—’

  ‘And what?’ she said. ‘You’re the one nursing balls that are going to be the size of melons before long. And I didn’t even need to try hard.’

  ‘Aye, but there’s three of us now.’

  ‘And?’ she said. ‘There were three of you before. Believe me it wouldn’t have made much difference.’

  ‘Ah’ve had enough of this crap. Ah’m out of here.’

  ‘Wait, Davie,’ said Kyle. Prentice turned to him. ‘Think about this a minute. How does she know our names? Why is she here, right at this particular time? The very night, the very minute we’re about to lift the diamond. Maybe there’s somethin in this after all. And she says she works for Boddice.’

  ‘Aye,’ Prentice replied. ‘And w
hy did Boddice leave that wee detail out of the plan he discussed with us? Do either of you mugs seriously believe this shite? How do we even know she’s tellin us the truth about the bloody diamond?’ He went over to Campbell and took the stone from him, turned it over in his hands. ‘For all we know, she’s just spinnin us some yarn to stall for time. This doesn’t look like a fake to me.’

  ‘Feel free to take it then,’ McKinnon said. ‘You can pass it on to Boddice and take a ringside seat to watch his face when he tries to raise some money from it. That should be good fun.’

  ‘Okay,’ Kyle said. ‘Suppose this is all straight up. Will ye just tell us what in the name of Christ is going on?’

  McKinnon grinned. ‘Follow me.’

  ***

  John caught disjointed snatches of conversation as he approached the top table. A couple of guys on the end, bow ties slightly skewiff, glasses of red wine poised halfway between table and lips, were discussing lawnmowers. Lawnmowers, for fuck’s sake! Something about the advantage of petrol-driven models for the larger garden. Further on, an older couple – man and wife? Boss and secretary? It was hard to tell – were in the middle of an argument. ‘If you loved me, you’d want to take me with you!’ the man whined.

  John ignored them. His goal was further along the table. There, isolated from the rest of the group, seemingly by choice, sat Sir James Corrigan, the Chief Executive and Managing Director of Trusdale and Needham, UK, and his wife. Sir James looked as if he’d rather be eating a runny shit sandwich than slumming it with the minions in Scotland. John almost felt sorry for him. Everyone else had a fucking PhD is having a good time, while Sir James wore the downturned mouth of the terminally crabbit. And now his evening was about to get a whole lot worse.

  John staggered to a halt in front of Sir James and his wife, planted a crooked smile on his face. Sir James looked up, glowering under his wild eyebrows.

  ‘Zzhorry,’ said John. ‘But Ah… Ah just had to ask… is this…’

  ‘Go away,’ Sir James said.

  ‘No, no, wait… hear me out. Ah only wanted to know if—’

  ‘Look, you’re being unpleasant. We’re not your sort. Go away.’