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But the box was empty.
FOURTEEN (#ulink_09b0130e-785e-5aac-9a86-39bd9a8665e8)
Amsterdam, Holland
21st July – 4:40pm
Cindy and Pete Roscoe were enjoying themselves. London had been impressive, Paris beautiful, but Amsterdam was fun. The coffee shops, the girls in the windows, the canals. It was as different from Tulsa, Oklahoma as it was possible to be. Hell, the concierge at their hotel had even tried to sell them some pot. They’d both pretended to be shocked but secretly they were pleased. It had made their trip seem somehow more authentic.
Amsterdam was also a special place for Cindy, whose grandparents had fled from Holland in the 1930s. She had endured an emotional visit to Anne Frank’s house the day before.
‘That poor sweet girl,’ she had sobbed into Pete’s strong arms, her mascara dissolving into spidery streaks across her face as the other tourists thronged around them.
Today was their last day and after a fortnight of trekking round museums and across cites, they had agreed that a relaxing guided tour around the canals was the perfect way to round off their trip before the long flight home. Ten minutes in, clad in matching Dallas Cowboys jackets with the open-topped canal boat slicing through the city and the tour guide pointing out the various sights, they knew that it had been a great idea.
Cindy, as usual, was armed with a guidebook of biblical proportions, a parting gift from her emotional mother at the airport that she now believed to be the gospel on all things European. Such was her faith in its pronouncements that she had developed an annoying habit of matching any guide’s commentary to that of her book and then whispering to Pete if they got something wrong, or even worse, omitted some crucial fact.
Pete, meanwhile, had mastered a knack of nodding and making the appropriate noises while only half listening to his wife. His priority, instead, was to capture as much of their trip as possible on film. So while Cindy had her nose buried in a book, Pete had his eye firmly glued to the viewfinder of the tiny digital video camera that nestled in his broad hands.
He had even developed his own dizzying cinematic style, his camera swooping up and down buildings, or suddenly panning in or out, the image uncertain and jumpy. This time, as they went under a bridge, Pete attempted a particularly ambitious shot, zooming out from the detail at the top of a building down to a wide angle shot of the canal. He then tracked slowly across, until he had framed the rows of seats ahead of him and the tour guide standing right at the front of the canal boat. He smiled. She was cute.
Suddenly, something at the edge of the viewfinder caught his eye. An ex-cop, Pete had learnt to recognise when things did not look quite right and instinctively he moved the camera to the right so that the tour guide’s face now only took up half the screen.
It was not the agitated man with the tanned face and the shaved head in the phone box just before the next bridge who looked out of place, but rather the two men in dark suits that had just stepped out of the large black Range Rover and were walking towards him. There was a repressed energy in their walk, an assured confidence in their manner that reminded Pete of a dog walking at the very limit of its leash, tugging on its owner’s arm. These two were about to cut themselves loose.
He zoomed in on the phone box, past the tour guide’s face, just as the man in it saw the two approaching figures. The phone instantly fell out of his hand and his head jerked from side to side, as he weighed his options. But Pete could see that he’d noticed them too late. Hemmed in by the phone box on one side and the men on the other, he clearly had nowhere to go.
As the two men approached him, their backs came together like heavy black curtains, blocking Pete’s view. He kept the camera trained on them, hardly daring to blink in case he missed something. Suddenly their shoulders parted and Pete got a glimpse of the man, his eyes wide with terror, a hand pressed over his mouth to stifle his screams. An arm was raised and a long serrated blade flashed in the sun, hovering for a few seconds, its shiny surface silhouetted against the cobalt sky, before swooping down and diving into the man’s chest. He collapsed, lifeless.
The boat was almost level with the two men now and Pete widened his shot as they hunched over the body and went through his pockets. But just then, at the very moment that he was going to get slightly ahead of them and catch their actual faces, the boat went under a low brick bridge and they were lost from view. When Pete emerged the other side, his camera poised, the two men and the car were gone.
‘Holy shit. D’ya see that?’ Pete whispered to his wife, his mouth dry with fear and excitement. He kept the camera trained on the receding image of the corpse that lay slumped in the embrace of the phone box’s shadow.
‘Oh I know honey, isn’t it bad?’ Cindy said shaking her head disapprovingly. Her hooped earrings bounced merrily against her orange cheeks. ‘That was where Van Gogh used to live and she didn’t say a thing!’
PART II (#ulink_00a881b0-7eda-5259-8e47-fe3d220c1c65)
Plate sin with goldAnd the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw doth pierce it.
William Shakespeare – King Lear (Act IV, Sc. vi)
FIFTEEN (#ulink_ab81b58a-ef43-5ffb-89be-019924f332ef)
FBI Headquarters, Washington DC
22nd July – 2:07pm
The desk fan was on its highest setting. The vibrations had caused it to skip across the conference table’s slippery surface until it was balancing against the thin rim of metal that ran around its edge and threatening to throw itself over the side.
‘Okay – let’s just go through them one more time,’ Jennifer suggested, slurping the dregs of her now warm and flat coke. She dropped the empty cup into the overflowing trash can that sat on the floor between them. Special Agent Paul Viggiano raised his dark eyebrows wearily.
‘What for? We’ve been through every single guy like a hundred times. Cross-checked them with the CIA and the NCIC databases. Been through their bank records. Checked their wives, their parents, even their kids for Chrissake. There’s nothing here. They’re all clean.’
Jennifer got up and moved around the conference table, the overhead halogens reflecting here and there in the polished walnut.
‘Because we’re not leaving here till we find something,’ she said firmly, her eyes flicking between the piles of paper and files and boxes that had been strewn along the table’s length, the rubble of her two day investigation so far.
Viggiano stood up, a trim, muscular figure, his dark hair slicked back, his chin covered in a seemingly permanent five o’clock shadow. Shaking his head angrily, he tucked his white shirt back into his dark blue suit trousers – shiny fabric with a faint red thread running through it – as he spoke.
‘You know what? This whole thing stinks. It’s a goddamned mess.’ He slammed his fist down in front of him, the fan wobbling unsteadily before finally toppling off and plunging helplessly to the floor, the flex trailing behind it like a bungee rope that had been tied too long.
Jennifer had to agree. The whole thing was a mess. She knew that Corbett had fought to control the number of people in the loop over the last two days, but cases like this wouldn’t stay quiet for long. It was too good an opportunity for a fundraiser, a chance to put the boot in on some of the other departments and agencies and grab a bigger slice of the Federal budget in the process. It was the sort of story Washington lived and prayed for.
‘Yeah, it’s a mess, but it’s our mess,’ she retorted. ‘So you’re just going to have to deal with it.’
She replaced the fan on the table while Viggiano shook his head again and loosened his military-looking tie a little more. Jennifer knew that he was finding this harder going than she was. He was about ten years older than her and two years ago she’d worked on a case for him for a few months. He’d even made a clumsy pass in a bar that she’d brushed off as politely as she could. Now she was in charge and it clearly hurt, although his feelings were the last thing on her mind. She’d worked too hard for this opportunity to let Paul Viggiano screw it up for her. And although she hated to admit it to herself, she’d had to put up with so much crap over the last few years, it actually felt good to be on the other end for a change.
‘Look, I’ve been there, okay. I’ve seen the place,’ she continued, her voice hard and urgent. ‘We’re not talking about Macy’s here. You don’t just walk in and help yourself. Whoever did this had detailed knowledge of the vault’s layout and security systems. Very detailed.’
Viggiano snorted.
‘Big deal. Everything’s for sale at the right price. If someone wanted the plans for Fort Knox they could have got them. Money talks.’ Viggiano rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and held it up to Jennifer’s face with a thin smile.
‘You think they keep the details down at the local planning department? Layout, alarm systems, access codes?’ Jennifer asked sarcastically. ‘Everything about that place is classified. Jesus, they probably incinerate the grass clippings. It’s wrapped tight. I’m telling you, someone on the inside must have been involved. So we’re going to go through all of them again. Now.’
‘Fine. Whatever.’ Viggiano ran his hand through his thick quiff of dark hair in frustration and picked up the file where he’d thrown it down on the table earlier. ‘Where do you want to start?’ His eyes flashed at her, brimming with resentment.
‘Right at the beginning. With how many people have had access or actually been into the vault in the last twelve months. If we need to go back further we will, but let’s focus there first.’ Viggiano muttered under his breath as he counted the numbers again, consulting various sheets of paper that he picked up from in front of him.
‘Like I said before. Forty-seven people.’
‘Plus me. That makes forty-eight.’
‘What, you think I’m an idiot? You’re in the forty-seven,’ he said, his chin jutting in indignation.
‘I am? How do you work that out?’ Jennifer flicked through her hieroglyphic notes, adding numbers in her head.
‘Twenty-five guards from the Mint Police, fifteen military personnel, five Treasury officials and two Federal agents, one of which was you. Not that many people get down there.’ Viggiano held up the sheet of paper on which he’d done his sums and waved it in the air as if to prove his point.
‘That’s strange. Rigby told me there were twenty-six guards. That’s why I made it forty-eight,’ said Jennifer, her smooth brown forehead momentarily creased by a slight frown.
‘Who?’
‘Rigby. The Officer in Charge, remember?’ she said impatiently, although the corners of her mouth twitched at the memory of Sheppard’s pink trousers and Rigby’s ashen face.
‘Well according to the Treasury, it’s twenty-five. I got all the names here.’ He held up several sheets of paper by their corners between his thumb and forefinger. ‘They faxed them over this morning.’
‘Let me see those,’ she demanded. Viggiano shrugged and passed them over to Jennifer who scanned through the names carefully. She paused on the final sheet and then frowning, held it up to the light.
‘What?’ Viggiano’s tone was immediately defensive. Jennifer didn’t say anything but just gripped the sheet between her thumb and forefinger and rubbed them together. A second sheet peeled away from the first with a faint sucking noise. Viggiano went white.
‘Like I said, twenty-six guards,’ Jennifer said quietly, inspecting the single name at the top of the newly revealed sheet with a grim look on her face.
‘I don’t understand,’ Viggiano spluttered.
‘I guess the ink must have stuck them together.’ She knew that if their roles had been reversed, Viggiano would have come down on her hard for that sort of oversight, but that wasn’t her style. They both knew he had screwed up and as far as she was concerned that was that. There was certainly no point in rubbing his nose in it. What was important was seeing whether this new piece of information led them somewhere.
‘Tony Short.’ She read from the piece of paper, ‘DOB 18 March 1965. Deceased.’
‘Deceased? So he’s irrelevant,’ said Viggiano with relief.
‘He had access to the vault.’
‘But he’s dead.’
‘Only just.’ She laid the sheet on the table and pushed it over to Viggiano so he could read what it said for himself. ‘Four days ago.’
‘A coincidence.’ Viggiano sounded like he was trying to convince himself as well as her.
‘Maybe. But he’s the only one we haven’t checked out. What do we know about him?’ Viggiano turned to the laptop to his left and typed in the name. A file flashed up a few seconds later.
‘Ex NYPD. Medal of Honour. Transferred to the Mint Police five years ago. Married with kids. Usual boy scout shit. It’s all here. Deceased*.’ He looked up. ‘What’s the asterisk for?’
‘Suicide,’ Jennifer replied. ‘The asterisk means suicide.’
SIXTEEN (#ulink_c885a301-abe9-5949-b205-fcf299fa0641)
Clerkenwell, London
22nd July – 7:42pm
It had been a hat factory when it had first been built in 1876, according to the inscription chiselled into its once proud façade. Then, during the Second World War, production had been given over to the manufacture of buttons for RAF uniforms. By the time Tom had bought it, the building had fallen into disuse, the store and warehouse level empty, the three upper floors carved up into office space in the 1960s.
Tom had chosen the, by comparison, palatial surroundings of the Managing Director’s office as his bedroom. Inexplicably it came complete with its own marbled en suite bathroom, as if the former boss’s managerial mystique would have crumbled had the staff ever suspected that he used the toilet much like the rest of them.
Eventually, Tom’s idea was to have this top floor as a huge open plan living room complete with kitchen and dining area. The second floor would be bedrooms and bathrooms while the first … well he still hadn’t quite decided what to do with the first. More showroom space perhaps?
It didn’t matter. That was all in the future anyway, after the store was up and running. For now, he had to make do with the cracked mirror on the back of the bathroom door as he adjusted his tie, picking his silver cufflinks off the chipped filing cabinet that now doubled as a chest of drawers and deftly threading them through the double cuff of his Hilditch & Key shirt.
‘I’ll see you later,’ he shouted to Dominique as he clattered down the concrete steps, his footsteps echoing back up around the stairwell’s empty carcass.
‘Okay.’ She had appeared at the doorway to the second floor where she had taken up residence amid the tea-stained walls of the former finance department. ‘Have fun.’
Tom stepped out into a cherry sunset, the sun scrolling down through an orange sky, a warm whisper of air shushing through the streets. He liked seeing the city at this time. It was a strange transition period, when one set of users melted away and another appeared.
He soon reached Smithfield, Europe’s oldest meat market, a low slung amalgam of a refurbished cast-iron Victorian market hall and a post-war brick and concrete hangar. It was surrounded on all sides by a crenulated roofline of alternately short and tall warehouses, a jarring convergence of red brick and white stone, of Gothic windows and industrial steel shutters. Five minutes later he was in Hatton Garden, the centre of London’s diamond trade.
It was nearly empty. Gone were the eager shop assistants enticing you to enter, offering you their very best price, suggesting a pair of earrings to go with the necklace. Gone were the courier bikes and the security vans and the anxious soon-to-be-weds, comparing ring prices in gaudy shop windows. Their shutters had been drawn down, their contents safely stowed for the night, their neon lights extinguished.
And yet the street projected a latent energy. Rather than be asleep it was merely resting. A few Hasidim with pale faces and dark suits still stood in doorways, plunged into shops and buildings, swapped anxious glances from under their dark fedoras. Behind the scenes, the work went on, stones were cut, deals were done, hands shaken, money counted.
Perhaps because his own life had been so lacking in order, so devoid of any fixed reference points or rules, Tom was fascinated by this place. As in Smithfield, he drew an almost spiritual reassurance from the continuity of these streets, their daily cycle, the comforting embrace of their familiar routine. In a way, he craved their predictability.
Stepping in off the street, Tom presented his pass to the security guards on duty in the dingy fluorescent lobby of the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd. Sitting behind their barred window they inspected it carefully, flickering screens in front of them covering every angle of the lobby and vault and staining their faces blue. Satisfied, they buzzed him through the first door and then, when that had closed behind him, the second door with metal bars running through it.
The reinforced vault there, at the foot of the dark green linoleum stairs, is about seventeen foot square, its walls lined from floor to ceiling with 950 identically-sized tungsten and steel doors that gleam silver under the lights, each individual box numbered in black. Unusually for that time it was empty. That suited Tom perfectly.
He took a key out of his pocket and indicated to the guard who had followed him into the room which box he wanted opened. They both put their keys into the two separate keyholes and turned them. With a click, the door opened; Tom drew out the long black metal container it concealed and placed it on the metal tray that slid out from between two layers of boxes at about waist height. It was empty apart from another key which he removed. Turning to a second box on the opposite wall, he and the guard again inserted their keys. This time, Tom waited until the guard left the room before opening the black container.
He already knew what was in it but opened the small leather pouch it contained anyway, emptying its contents into his gloved hand. Just over quarter of a million in cut diamonds, his share for the Egg he’d stolen in New York. Much easier to move than cash and, if you knew who to ask, accepted in more places than American Express. He tipped the diamonds back into the pouch.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he removed the Egg and placed it in the second box. He’d wrapped it in his ski mask, a small symbolic act that he knew wouldn’t be lost on Archie when he came to collect it. He slid the box back into the wall and locked the door. He then dropped the pouch and the key to the second box into the first box, returned it to the wall and again locked it shut.
He passed through the security gates again, nodded at the guards and then stepped out onto the street just in time to see the street lights buzz on.
SEVENTEEN (#ulink_451383da-65ee-5ba9-9c98-6931f1c83740)
Louisville County Mortuary, Louisville, Kentucky
23rd July – 11:37am
Jennifer had always believed that there were no such things as coincidences, just different perspectives. From one perspective, a series of individual events could appear totally random with nothing binding them together other than their actual existence. A coincidence.
From another, however, events could evolve, become more complex, deepen in significance until they ultimately emerged as constituent parts of an overall pattern of cause and effect that could never have been dreamt of originally, let alone guessed at.
These were the facts as far as she could tell: Short had worked at Fort Knox. He was young and healthy. He was happily married with three children he adored. He was a regular churchgoer. And he was liked and respected at work. So from one perspective, the fact that he had committed suicide just a few days before the discovery that five gold coins had been stolen from Fort Knox, was just a terrible coincidence. And yet, when viewed from another, more cynical perspective, it was no coincidence at all. It was downright suspicious.
Corbett had agreed when she had finally managed to track him down the previous afternoon on his way to another internal meeting, a look of grim-faced resignation stamped across his face. He had greeted her with a tired smile.
‘Five minutes, Browne, that’s all I got. So you’d better make it quick. Let’s talk and walk.’
She had rapidly explained what she had found out about Short, choosing to omit Viggiano’s mistake, although she knew he wouldn’t have done the same for her. Corbett had clearly been impressed, even pausing to give her a pat on the side of the shoulder that had made her swell with pride.
‘So he didn’t leave a note?’
‘No.’ She had given a firm shake of her head. ‘All the witness statements say it was totally out of character. He was happily married and doing well at work. He just doesn’t fit the profile.’
‘I agree.’ A brief pause. ‘And you say he was one of the guards down at Fort Knox?’
‘Yeah. One of their star performers apparently. Whatever that means.’
‘And tell me again when this happened?’
‘Four days ago. That’s just two days after Ranieri was murdered in Paris.’
‘Hmmn.’ Corbett’s forehead had creased in thought.
‘The autopsy hasn’t happened yet. I spoke to the Louisville coroner’s office earlier and they’ve agreed to delay the procedure until tomorrow so I can observe. I’ve booked a flight.’
