Meaner Things (24 page)

“And we rely on human laziness,” Emma added smugly. “So what do we do next?”

“We get the key and find out if I’m right.”

Charlie took his lock picks and went to work on the storage room door. I stood behind him, anxiously waiting to get in.

“Don’t crowd me, you’re making me nervous.”

I stood back and looked at my watch. Everything was going slower than I’d planned. It was already past one o’clock in the morning. I wanted us to leave the building while it was still dark and had targeted our exit for six o’clock at the latest.

Less than five more hours to do everything we still had to do. It wasn’t much. God knows how long it would take to force open Zheng’s safe deposit boxes.

I rummaged in a bag and found what I was looking for, went back over to the storage room door and pushed Charlie aside.

“What the . . .?”

I ignored his protest and shoved the tip of the crowbar between the door and the door jamb, gave it a good hard shove and heard a satisfying crack. The wood around the lock and handle splintered. I gave it another go, the whole lock mechanism came apart and I wrenched opened the door.

“Why’d you do that?” I could hear the hurt in Charlie the master picker’s voice.

“You were taking too long. We absolutely have to get into the vault ASAP.”

“OK, OK. Now you’re at it, you can do the lock box too.”

He didn’t need to encourage me. I strode past the mound of eighteen litre water jugs and up to the grey metal lock box. The door of the box overlapped the sides and I jammed the tip of the crowbar in a narrow gap behind the lock. I adjusted my stance and put the full weight of my body behind it and brute force did the rest. The metal bent and buckled under my leveraged pressure as I prised the gap bigger and bigger.

All at once there was a mighty crack and the door shot open like a bullet. The long, ponderous-looking vault key hung on its middle hook.

I grabbed the key, tossed the crowbar back in the bag and gave Charlie a reassuring shoulder squeeze. “Remember, nothing I do tonight is personal, not the door, not anything. I just had to hurry us up.”

He nodded and seemed to understand. It was important he didn’t take personal offence.

I gave the key to Emma. “You do the honours.”

She went over to the vault and inserted the key. Using both hands she turned it anticlockwise. In the silence of the room I thought I could hear a series of faint clicks, but it could have been my imagination. She gave the centre wheel a few twists and the large bolts anchoring the door to the doorframe retracted from their moorings. The door was unlocked.

“We’re in,” I said.

23.

UNPLEASANT SURPRISE

“Here’s a reminder how we do it.” I paused until I was certain the other two were paying complete attention. “We can’t afford to mess this up.”

“This or anything else tonight,” Emma replied. But she stood side by side with Charlie and listened up.

“Emma, you get to open the vault. Charlie, you hold the magnets while she does so, making sure they’re well out of the way of the door. It mustn’t touch them.”

“You sure I can manage that thing?” Emma asked, looking at the big steel door, “I hear it’s pretty thick.”

“About thirty centimetres,” I replied. “Don’t worry, it swings open real smooth on its hinges.”

“And your job?” Charlie enquired.

I fished in my bag, took out a pair of night vision goggles and put them on, leaving them up on my forehead. Then I got the crowbar out again.

“We went over all this, Charlie. I switch out the lights first, then as soon as the door is pulled back I force open the day gate. Once I’m in I disable the alarms in the vault.”

It had seemed no more than a logical sequence of actions back in the apartment. Check off all the boxes and we were in. A bit like forcing a checkmate in three or four moves. Inevitable.

Now I realised just what a mad dash it actually was going to be. And it all had to be done perfectly.

We stood in our positions, ready. I switched off the lights and the room was plunged into darkness. I waited for several seconds for my eyes to adjust, but they didn’t get any better – the darkness was total, which is just what I needed. I pulled the night vision goggles down over my eyes and suddenly I could make out Emma and Charlie and the features of the room in a weird sort of green glow.

“Open the door,” I said. Emma pulled on the circular bars resembling a ship’s steering wheel in the centre of the door. She opened it very slowly, just a few centimetres at first, until it eased past the magnets that Charlie was holding tight against the wall. Neither of them could see what was happening so I kept up a running commentary.

“That’s good, Emma, perfect. You can slowly let go of the magnets now Charlie, but stand still where you are. Steady as she goes Emma, all the way back.”

I didn’t wait for her to finish but went up to the day gate to pry it open. The crowbar went deep into the gap between lock and doorframe, I put my full strength behind it and it gave way with a loud clang. As soon as I put my hand on it to push it open I realised I’d forgotten something important. The day gate closed automatically on pneumatic hinges. That meant I needed something to prop it open.

I had no time to think about it and simply stuffed my bag in the doorway so that the gate couldn’t close again. Seconds were thundering away in my head like hammers and I still had a lot to do in the dark.

I walked to the centre of the room and reached up to the ceiling with both hands. Carefully, but rapidly, I covered the light sensor with overlapping strips of broad black insulating tape. I counted half a dozen but gave it a couple more strips just in case. It was overkill but I daren’t risk the tiniest crack of light getting past the tape to the extremely sensitive sensor.

“Light sensor covered,” I reported back to Emma and Charlie.

“Remember to take the next bit slowly,” Emma reminded me.

She was right of course. I told myself not to panic. In the darkness my natural tendency, maybe from a childhood phobia or whatever, was to rush pell-mell to the light switch. I fought down the urge and took a deep breath to calm myself.

I couldn’t switch the lights on yet in any case, they might increase the temperature of the room too rapidly. Instead, I went back to my bag in the darkness and fished out the rest of the components. Fortunately all I needed were the Styrofoam panels, which I’d glued together to make a covering box, and the long, telescopic mop handle.

The base of the Styrofoam cover fitted on the end of the mop handle and only took me a moment to assemble. I held it out carefully in front of me and advanced slowly towards the motion detector on the back wall, scanning the floor as I went so as not to trip. It was a strange feeling, as if I were a native hunter stalking my prey with a spear.

I inched my way forward, telling myself that the thickened aerosol spray would still be doing its job. God knows I’d slavered enough of the stuff over the lens. Every step heightened the tension in my arms and my legs felt increasingly leaden, as if encased in a deep sea diving suit. If I set this thing off . . .

In slow motion I raised the Styrofoam box up to the sensor. I knew that this movement, directly in front of it, must be setting off the sensor’s microwave radar. But the alarm wouldn’t sound unless I also triggered the infrared detector. Both had to go off simultaneously in order to send the alarm to the security company that would end our night here prematurely.

I placed the rectangular Styrofoam box over the sensor. It fitted perfectly. Slowly I reached down with my free hand and adjusted the telescopic handle until it was firmly anchored on the floor, tightly pressing the foam box around the sensor. I took both hands away, ready to grab it again quickly if anything went wrong.

It didn’t. I checked the device again just in case, giving the long mop handle a firm jiggle. It seemed snug and unmoving.

“It’s done,” I said, or tried to say. No words came out, just a choked gasp. I realised I’d been holding my breath.

*

“Turn on the lights, please.” I took my goggles off and sat on the floor in the vault while Emma went over to the foyer wall and flicked the switches. The fluorescent tubes came to life, leaking light into the vault. I looked at my watch and panicked.

It was already almost one thirty. Time seemed to be accelerating. Where had it all gone? No matter that I kept telling myself to get a move on, it seemed impossible to speed ourselves up. Some things had to be done slowly – I’d just completed one of them – but everything else was going sluggishly as well. It was as if we were swimming through treacle.

Stress at the danger of what we were doing was making us hesitant, wary, and slow, despite ourselves. Despite myself. I was the leader here; I had to pick up the pace.

“Let’s get started, we have a hell of a lot to do.” I took a chair from beneath the side desk where tenants could examine the contents of their deposit boxes, and propped it against the day gate to keep it from reclosing automatically. With Emma and Charlie right behind me, I hauled my tool bag into the middle of the room.

“One more thing we need to check before opening the boxes. Charlie, how does it look in here? Gimme an expert opinion. Did I miss anything?”

Again, I was scared that I’d overlooked something. If there was some other additional alarm system which only came on after hours, and if I had missed it . . . we were truly screwed. In particular, I was wary of another layer of security around the safe deposit boxes, one that was only activated after closing the vault. I would have no way of knowing about that.

Charlie examined the ceiling and centred his attention to a lowered area just inside the door.

“I think there’s wiring above there,” he said, “Might be anything. Probably nothing.”

“Get up on the other chair and take a look,” I replied, “And be quick about it.”

He balanced himself on the chair and removed one of the ceiling tiles, revealing a mass of brightly coloured wires.

“What do they do?” I said.

He put his hands up among the wires.

“Careful,” I warned.

“I’m trying to figure out the paths and connections. It’s not easy.”

I glanced at my watch again. “You’ll have to be quick,” I said.

He poked his fingers in a bit more while I counted to ten and fought the rising frustration. By now the wires were partially hanging out of the ceiling.

“Looks innocent enough,” Charlie finally concluded, “They’re not part of the alarm system, as far as I can tell.” He began pushing the wires back in.

“Leave it,” I said, “Just leave it. Time’s ticking away. We have a hell of a lot to do.”

He jumped down, nearly knocking the chair over, and we began unpacking our bags. Soon the floor in the centre of the vault was covered with tools, bags, bottles of water and all the rest.

“Let’s get the box buster going,” I said.

“I’ll put it together,” Charlie replied.

“What? I thought it was assembled already?”

“Too bulky. It’s better this way.”

“OK, hurry up.”

Charlie took out one of his homemade pulling devices and began to assemble it in the middle of the floor. It consisted of an aluminium plate about thirty centimetres long, with a sturdy rectangular foot at each end. The feet were adjustable so that the device could open the tall deposit boxes as well as the letterbox-sized ones. Sitting on the floor it reminded me of a child’s toy bridge. Through a slot in the middle of the contraption, Charlie inserted a long steel bolt with a flat tip on the end with a hole through it. To this he attached another piece of metal shaped like a small clamp or vise, which had a hinge allowing it to rotate independently of the bolt. On the other end of the bolt he screwed a thick metal plug about the size of, and shape of, a size D battery.

It seemed to be taking forever. This all could have been done back in the apartment. I tapped my foot and bit my tongue.

He continued to attach bits and pieces; two slim metal tubes parallel to the bridge created a handle. I knew from his demonstrations that twisted to the right the clamp pushed itself away from the bridge, and twisted to the left it pulled toward it. Finally, he inserted a steel prong with small lip inside the clamp. This prong was the same thickness as my safety deposit box key and worked as a hook that would pull the door open. If we ever got that far.

Charlie checked the mechanics of the device and held it up. “Corkscrew’s ready. Which box first?”

“Any of the Zheng ones, doesn’t matter which. We don’t touch the others.” We’d discussed this many times, Charlie reminding us that he didn’t care which of the boxes he looted, whether Zheng’s or the tenants’. I’d insisted that we do Zheng’s side of the room only, Emma had agreed and the vote had gone two to one.

“OK, got it.” He went over to the Zheng Corporation side of the vault where safe deposit boxes stretched along the whole length of the wall. They rose from floor to ceiling, mostly with five rows of small, rectangular boxes above four rows of bigger, squarer ones. The pattern varied though, and seemed to be random; sometimes there was a row of big locker-size boxes along the floor and immediately below the ceiling, with shoebox-sized ones in between.

Charlie picked a small rectangular box in the middle of a row, at about chest height, and placed his device over it. He aligned it over the door, with the rectangular feet bracing it above and below. He adjusted the feet until they were positioned perfectly and inserted the steel prong through the keyhole.

Once attached, the door puller resembled an oversized corkscrew, one designed to open a very wide-mouthed bottle indeed. It worked on the same principle: Charlie twisted the prong in the keyhole so that the lip rotated inside the keyway behind the plug. He turned the handle to the left and I saw the entire device bend slightly and tighten against the box door.

Charlie gave the handle several more turns, slowly forcing the clamp holding the prong back towards him, and causing it to pull outward on the key plug. After a couple more turns he stopped and paused.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing. The tighter it gets, the harder it is to turn. It’s murder on my hand. I need a cloth.”

I fished through his bag and threw him a square of cloth we’d brought for the purpose. He wrapped it around the handle and continued turning it. Each movement was smaller now, but little by little the door was being forced out of its moorings. Charlie stopped again and shook his fingers in the air.

“Murder on the hands,” he said.

“I’ll take a turn.” I switched places with him and began to crank the device. The clamp would barely move and he’d made the handle too short to use both hands. It was a design flaw we’d have to live with; rather than popping a cork, this was more akin to unscrewing rusty lug nuts on a car wheel.

I gave the handle a mighty twist and felt the door bolt begin to pull away from the box frame. By now there must be tremendous pressure on the steel pin and I prayed it wouldn’t break. I gave the handle a succession of small turns, centimetre by centimetre, and the deadbolt emerged further, making a horrible wrenching sound as it scraped against its housing. Then came a loud snap from inside the box as the plastic faceplate splintered and gave way.

“Nearly there,” I said optimistically.

Finally . . . CRACK. The door burst open with a sound like a starting pistol and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

While my heartbeat normalised I flexed my stiff, sore fingers and looked at Emma and Charlie.

“Bit noisy,” Emma said, “Could be a problem.”

She was right. Bursting open the doors was going to make a succession of these sudden explosive bangs, like firecrackers going off in a confined space. If a security guard heard them and decided to investigate . . .