Bombproof (12 page)

It took five more trains before it happened. Nadia squeaked, then she cried, then she screamed into the microphone, throwing back her head and howling as tears squeezed from her eyes. Sami always wondered what the passengers on the train must have made of the voice they heard booming from the underpass, drowning out the drumming wheels and rushing wind. Nadia had rediscovered her voice; heard it over the screams in her head; let it come pouring out in a rage of tears, snot and regret.

Sami pauses and listens. A vehicle has pulled up outside. The roller door opens and a white van pulls inside. Dessie is sitting up front next to a driver who’s wearing dark sunglasses and looks like a hod carrier. Certain details about him seem familiar - the pallid skin and balloon-shaped head.

Then Sami remembers. It’s the same geezer who spoke to him outside Wormwood Scrubs on the day he was released.

Sami imagines he’s going to be huge, but when he steps out of the van he only comes up to Sami’s chest. He calls himself Sinbad and doesn’t bother shaking hands. Instead he cracks his knuckles and flexes tattooed forearms which are thicker than his legs.

The van has ladders on top and a logo on the side:
Elevation Solutions: Lift Repairs and Maintenance.

Dessie tosses Sami a peaked cap, work boots and a blue boilersuit, nothing too new or clean. They’re supposed to be repairmen. Professionals.

Inside the van there are ropes, pulleys and tools. Underneath a tarp is some extra gear: a fuck-off drill on a frame, a stethoscope and a fibre-optic camera still in the box.

Dessie hands Sami a brown manila A4 envelope. Sami has a feeling it isn’t a permission slip. Opening the flap, he pulls out the specs for a strong room along with floor plans of a building showing the lift shafts, security doors and CCTV cameras.

Sami takes a seat and begins studying them, trying to look like he knows what he’s doing, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

‘Got to get moving. Job’s been called in,’ says Sinbad.

‘What job?’

‘Broken lift.’

‘I need longer.’

‘No time.’

Sami dresses in the boilersuit and work boots that are a size and a half too big.

‘I don’t think I can go. These don’t fit,’ he tells Dessie.

‘They’re not supposed to, dickweed. We don’t want you leaving any wee footprints that match your shoe-size.’

‘Good thinking,’ says Sami, marvelling at the logic.

Sinbad hands him a canister.

‘What’s this?’

‘Mate of mine knocked it up. It’s called TATP.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Triacetone tri-oxymoron,’ says Sinbad, ‘or something like that. You got to treat it real gentle or, you know what …’

‘What?’

‘It goes off.’

‘You mean it goes bad?’

‘No, it blows up, moron. The ragheads call it the Mother of Satan.’

‘I said I wanted plastic explosives.’

‘Tescos was fresh out.’

Sami takes the container from Sinbad. Holds it at arm’s length. Sweat prickles on his forehead. This is crazy. He could get a twenty-year sentence for possessing even half this shit and now he’s nursing a homemade bomb.

‘Check the gear,’ says Dessie. ‘Make sure we got everything. ’

Sami makes a show of flicking switches and holding up the fibre-optic camera, blowing on the lens. One half of his brain says, ‘How hard can it be to open a strong room? Andy Palmer managed it.’ The other half of his brain says, ‘Who are you kidding?’

Dessie is counting out the latex gloves and balaclavas. He loads the gear into a zip-up holdall and tosses an empty rucksack in the back of the van.

‘If anything goes wrong; if we get separated, call this number,’ he tells Sami.

‘I don’t have a phone.’

‘Use a call box.’

Dessie turns off his own phone. Mobiles can be traced.

He gives Sinbad the nod. They’re ready. The roller door opens and the van pulls out into bright daylight.

Sami sits in the middle, next to Sinbad, whose feet barely reach the pedals. Nobody is saying much. There’s not a lot to say. Sami decides to read the instructions for the fibre-optic camera.

‘I thought you knew how to use this shit,’ says Dessie.

‘Different brand,’ explains Sami. ‘This one’s Japanese.’ He shows him the box. Dessie blinks at the writing. It says
Made in Germany
. He can’t read.

Sami met guys doing bird who were illiterate. Some of them used to bring their letters to him to read or ask him to write back to their wives and girlfriends. It could be heart-breaking because the news from home wasn’t always positive.

A con called Phil Bucket (everyone called him Lunchbucket) got a letter from his missus one day and as Sami read the first line to himself he realised it was a Dear John letter. She was giving Phil the flick. Filing for divorce.

Sami looked at the expectation on Phil’s face and couldn’t do it. Phil had six years to go. If he took the news badly he might shoot the messenger and break a few of Sami’s bones. So Sami made up a different letter - one that said everything was great at home and the kids were missing him.

Then he sat Phil down and they wrote a letter back. ‘Tell me how you feel about Nancy,’ he asked him.

‘She’s a good bird.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘Well she’s let herself go a bit, I guess, put on a few pounds.’

‘But you love her, right?’

‘You trying to be funny?’

‘No.’

‘You think I’m a soft prick?’

‘No, Phil, not at all,’ Sami stammered. ‘I just think you should tell Nancy how you feel about her. Let her know how much she means to you.’

‘Why?’

‘She deserves it, doesn’t she? She’s raising your kids on her own. You’re not round to help.’

Phil thought about this. Mulled it over. ‘She makes a cracking sherry trifle with those little sponge squares and custard.’

‘I was thinking of something a little more romantic.’

‘Like what?’

‘How about we say this, “Dear Nancy, I think about you all the time. At night when I lie in bed I remember how nice it is to just hold you and hear you sleeping. A man like me doesn’t deserve a woman like you”.’

‘You can’t say that - she might leave me.’

‘Trust me, Phil. She’ll love it. Then you’ll say, “I know you’re paying for my mistakes, Nancy, but one day I’ll make it up to you and the kids. I’m gonna show you how much you mean to me. How much I miss you. Don’t give up on me, Nancy. Keep a candle burning for me in the window and I’ll keep one burning in my heart.”’

The letter did the trick. Nancy wrote back saying she’d changed her mind about the divorce. Mission accomplished. Body intact.

They’re in central London. It’s Sunday morning. The streets are full of tourists and tour buses. Rubbernecks. Sightseers. The city never sleeps.

They cross Blackfriars Bridge and turn right up Ludgate Hill towards St Paul’s Cathedral and left into Ave Maria Lane. They must be close to the Old Bailey, thinks Sami. The last time he was in this part of London he was being sentenced for the Hampstead job but he couldn’t see much from the back of a prison van.

Sinbad pulls up at a large set of security gates flanked by spiked fences. A yellow sign declares:
Warning: No Unauthorised Admittance
. Beneath it are symbols for security cameras, dogs and armed guards.

‘Why are we stopping?’ asks Sami.

‘We’re here,’ replies Dessie.

Sinbad is talking to a uniformed guard behind a grille. Hands him paperwork. A motor whirs and the metal gate slides open. The van swings into a parking area below the building and pulls up at a fire door. Dessie jumps out and begins unloading the tools and ropes onto a trolley. He’s wearing surgical gloves beneath heavy-duty cloth gloves. Sami has trouble getting his fingers into the latex because one rogue finger always gets caught on the outside.

‘Come on, dickweed.’

‘Don’t wait for me.’

Dessie gives him a clip behind the head. A security guard is watching him from a control booth that looks like a bomb shelter. Dessie gives him a wave, indicating everything is fine.

‘Keep your head down. Don’t look at the ready-eyes.’

Sami has to fight the urge to look up and wave at the CCTV cameras, which are aimed at the doors and stairwells. What would happen if the rozzers caught them now, he wonders. He could explain about Nadia, say he was acting under duress.

Dessie props open the fire door and they wheel the stuff inside. Meanwhile, Sinbad climbs behind the wheel of the van and spins back up the ramp.

‘Where’s he going?’ asks Sami, feeling twitchy.

‘Relax. He’s going to wait for us outside.’

‘But what if …’

‘We don’t want the van trapped down here.’

Wheeling the trolley along a basement corridor, they reach three lifts, including the broken one. Dessie sets up red and yellow safety triangle and prises the doors open, peering up the darkened shaft.

‘What are we supposed to be doing?’

‘Fixing it.’

‘Do you know how to fix a lift?’

‘Does it fucking matter?’

Dessie separates the gear and wheels the trolley into the adjacent lift. He presses
5
. The doors close. Sami watches the numbers light up as they rise between the floors. He can see himself reflected in a mirror. It’s like he’s going to a fancy dress party.

The doors slide open. Dessie straightens and pushes the trolley into a large open-plan office with smaller private offices and conference rooms running down both sides.

As they wheel the trolley along a corridor, Dessie pushes each door open, making sure they’re empty. Most of the desks face away from the windows and the office walls are lined with shelves full of box files and bound volumes. Sami can see manila folders with red ribbons looped around cardboard wheels, like they’re legal files.

The last office has an annexe. Half of it is filled with files. The other half has a metal door. It’s the strong room.

‘You get started. I’ll be back,’ says Dessie.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to lay down some tarps and bang a few cables, just in case they come looking.’

Suddenly Sami is alone. He looks at the strong room. Taps the door. Tries the handle, just in case someone forgot to lock it. No, he couldn’t be that lucky. Not Sami Macbeth.

Then he glances over his shoulder at the nearest office. There’s one of those really smart phones, with a command unit, sitting on a desk. It’s most likely ‘9’ to get an outside line.

He should call the police.

And say what?

The truth.

Yeah, like that worked last time.

What would Tony Murphy do if Sami grassed him up? Kill Nadia. Then he’d find a way of killing Sami. Slowly. Painfully. Sami considers his other options but whichever way he looks at the problem he’s fucked seven different ways and it isn’t even lunchtime.

Putting the stethoscope in his ears, he places the end against the metal door. Listens. Nothing.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but we did all we could. In the end, we just couldn’t save her.’

Dessie reappears. ‘Who are you talking to?’

‘Nobody.’

‘So what do you think?’

Sami scratches his chin and tries to look crestfallen. ‘Can’t open this fucker.’

‘Why not?’

‘Too hard.’

‘Tony said you opened a safe that was ten times harder. This should be a piece of cake.’

Sami tries to be decisive. ‘They call it a strong room for a reason - cause it’s strong. If they called it a weak room anyone could open it.’

Dessie isn’t in the mood for sarcasm. He puts his face up close. Nose to nose. Bacon breath on the exhale. In the same instant he wraps the stethoscope around Sami’s neck and pulls it tight. Lifts him off the floor. Watches his eyes bulge.

‘You taking the piss? You taking the mickey?’

Sami doesn’t have the oxygen to answer.

This is Dessie Fraser in full Dobermann mode. He slams Sami’s head against the door, punctuating each of his statements with violent compelling exclamation marks.

‘It’s got locks! It’s got a handle! Open the fucking door.’

Dessie lets him go. Straightens his cap.

‘How long will it take?’

Sami rubs his neck. ‘Give me fifteen.’

‘You got ten.’

‘Just tell me one thing,’ he risks. ‘What’s inside?’

‘Exhibits.’

He makes it sound like a science project.

‘What sort of exhibits?’

‘Courtroom exhibits. Exhibit A, exhibit B, that sort of shit.’

Oh, this is priceless, thinks Sami. They’re inside the Old Bailey. The Central Criminal Court. The last time he was here he was wrongly convicted of carrying tools to commit a felony and being in possession of stolen goods. Now he’s carrying almost identical tools and is supposed to rob the place.

Dessie has gone back to his pretend lift repairs. Sami looks at the drill and considers how long it would take to get through the door. If this were a movie, it would take about four minutes. You can multiply that by about a hundred in real life.

Then his eyes rest on the canister Sinbad gave him. Maybe he could wedge a little of the stuff near the hinges and set off a small explosion, just enough to lift the door off its frame.

That’s one possibility. He considers the others. It’s a short consultation.

Sami looks through the nearby offices, searching waste-paper bins and mini-fridges until he finds two plastic water bottles. Emptying them, he unscrews the metal container. Inside is a white powder, granulated like sugar. He gently pours a small amount into each bottle. It doesn’t look like enough. He adds some more.

He puts one bottle at the base of the strong room door, beneath the lower hinge, and the second bottle balancing on top. Taking a length of electrical cord, he strips away the plastic coating from each end.

Among the gear that Sinbad had provided him are two small light bulbs. Sami shatters the glass and gently places the filaments into the powder in each bottle. He attaches a wire to the base of the bulbs and re-screws the bottle lids, before trailing the electric cord across the floor - ten, twenty, thirty feet … he should have asked for something longer. If he had a long enough wire he could be on a different floor or in another building or out of the county.