Bombproof (13 page)

Dessie has come back.

‘You want to do the honours,’ Sami asks him.

‘Why?’

‘No reason.’

‘Why are we standing way back here?’

‘This is a job you can only fuck up once.’

Sami shoves two bare wires into a power socket and flicks the switch. He’s hoping for a dull
kerplunk
as the hinges pop off. Instead he blows the door through the next wall, bringing half the ceiling down.

Brick and plaster dust fill the air. Every window in the vicinity has been blown out and the sprinklers have triggered. They’d be getting wet if the pipes weren’t so twisted by the force of the blast that instead of spraying downwards the water is jetting off at crazy angles.

Dessie pushes a lump of plasterboard off himself. He looks like someone has painted his face white.

‘Where’s the safe?’ he asks.

‘It was here a minute ago,’ says Sami.

They pull aside a desk and broken ceiling panels, looking for the strong room. Dessie wraps his arms around a buckled filing cabinet and tosses it to one side.

Sami’s ears are ringing from the blast.

‘Maybe we should get out of here,’ he suggests.

Dessie doesn’t answer.

‘Well, if you don’t need me, I’ll catch up with you later.’

Dessie’s smacks him in the side of the head. ‘Shut the fuck up and keep looking.’

20

For a moment Sami considers whether he could have blown the strong room through the floor. Instead he finds a cistern and a sink from the bathroom above.

Dessie muscles them aside and discovers the strong room behind a collapsed wall still smoking from the blast.

Clearing away the last of the debris, he starts going through drawers, pulling out exhibits and evidence bags, looking at the labels. There are guns, bags of drugs, knives and artefacts.

He picks up a semi-automatic - checks the label. Puts it in a rucksack. Then he grabs bags of white powder. Cocaine. Sami gets a look at one of the labels.
Court 4. Exhibit 1a. Raymond Peter Garza
.

One moment his heart is racing, the next it stops completely. It’s a mistake. Insanity. No way they’re doing a job for Ray Garza.

A sprinkler has been spraying down Sami’s back, soaking his overalls. His face is coated in brick dust and the ringing in his ears turns out to be the fire alarms.

Dessie screams at him above the noise. ‘Pack up the gear. Leave nothing behind.’

Sami tosses the drill, the camera and the canister of TATP into the holdall. He has to drag a shelf to one side to lift the bag. Suddenly he spies a lump of cash the size of a house-brick, wrapped in plastic cling film.

It has to be fifty grand. Maybe more.

Dessie looks at him. Looks at the cash. Grins. In a heartbeat Sami has gone from being a fuck-up to having golden bollocks. Dessie takes the money and tucks it into the rucksack.

Sami is still trying to get his head around the Garza connection. If he weren’t so scared already, even the mention of Garza’s name would make his throat close and scrotum tighten. Some criminals get their reputations for being violent bastards, but Ray Garza is notorious for being a completely ruthless fucker. The Keyser Söze of the British underworld.

Tony Murphy might rip off mug punters, horny businessman and foreign tourists, but Ray Garza ransacks entire countries. Diamond mines in Angola, nickel mines in Botswana, platinum mines in Zimbabwe. According to the press reports he’s Mugabe’s favourite Englishman - a pretty elite club.

Occasionally in prison Sami heard blokes brag about having worked for Garza. They said he was a genius, a visionary, top of the food chain, but most wouldn’t talk about him or even mention his name.

Then some dumb moke would shoot his mouth off, saying Garza was a pussy or a wanker. From that moment you knew the poor bastard would spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, paranoid that Garza would find out. Every car backfiring, every set of headlights in the rear mirror, every bit of bad luck, every fuck-up and they’d be wondering if it was Garza. They might as well have bought a shovel and started digging their own grave.

Dessie is still stuffing evidence bags into the rucksack. The sirens are getting closer.

‘We should go,’ says Sami.

‘Wait. I’m not finished.’

‘No time. Let’s split.’

‘I said wait.’

Next minute they’re legging it down the corridor. Dessie has the rucksack. Sami is trying to carry the holdall, which is bashing against his knees.

The lifts aren’t working. They’ve managed to break all three of them. Either that or the fire alarms have cut the power. They head for the stairwell. A security guy comes charging out the door, puffing hard, hand on a nightstick.

‘Thank God you’re here,’ says Dessie, pointing down the hall.

‘What happened?’

‘Some sort of explosion.’

He looks at their bags. ‘What were you doing?’

‘Fixing the lift,’ answers Dessie. ‘We smelled a bit of gas earlier. Must have been a leak. Blast brought the roof down.’

The guard looks at Sami for verification.

‘Anyone hurt?’

Sami shakes his head.

‘We could have been killed,’ says Dessie. ‘Health and Safety are gonna hear about this.’

The guard tells them to evacuate. They’re supposed to wait for him on the ground floor. Next minute they’re alone, swinging down the stairwell between the landings. Lugging the bags.

They reach the ground floor fire exit. Dessie pushes open the door, looks both ways. A fire engine is blocking the alley. Firemen are jogging towards them.

Dessie and Sami stroll past them, heads down, avoiding the ready-eyes. They turn left and left again, crossing a parking area. Following a railing fence they reach a gate leading up a set of stairs. The gate is locked. They climb over, tossing the bags to each other.

There are more fire engines and police cars in Newgate Street. Dessie holds Sami back. Their blue boilersuits are streaked with plaster and soaked through. Dessie’s hair looks like he’s gone prematurely grey.

Waiting for another police car to pass, they leg it down Newgate Street and duck into Bishops Court and Fleet Passage, avoiding the major roads. Dessie seems to know where he’s going.

‘We got to get out of these clothes,’ he says, peeling off his gloves. Off Fleet Place, they find a narrow alley with industrial bins on wheels.
Commercial waste only
.

Dessie crouches between two bins and begins unbuttoning his sodden boilersuit. He opens the rucksack. Shoves it inside.

‘Why not just ditch it?’ asks Sami.

‘Yeah, and let forensics have a field day.’

Sami copies Dessie. His jeans and shirt are wet, but they’re clean. The boilersuit is packed away. He keeps the cap on his head.

Dessie hoists the rucksack onto his back. Checks the lane. Makes a decision. He jogs round the corner and down some stairs to Old Seacoal Lane and slows to a brisk walk, heading towards Farringdon Street.

Pedestrians give way to traffic. Buses, black cabs, cars and vans are banked up in every direction. Gridlock has choked Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill and Holborn Circus.

Dessie peers left and right, looking for something.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Sinbad isn’t here.’

‘Maybe this is the wrong corner.’

‘I know the fucking corner.’

‘He could be lost.’

‘He’s not lost.’

Dessie turns on his mobile. Calls Sinbad. Sami can only hear one side of their conversation, which mostly consists of cursing and Dessie calling Sinbad a yellow mongrel and a gutless prick.

The gist of their exchange is that a policeman moved Sinbad on, so he drove the van around the block, but each time he came back the rozzer was still standing there. It smelt like fish. Then he heard the explosion and got spooked.

‘Where are you now?’ asks Dessie. ‘What do you mean you’ve gone home? We’re fucking waiting.’

Dessie hurls the mobile onto the concrete shattering it into a dozen pieces.

‘Is he coming?’ asks Sami.

‘No he’s not fucking coming.’

Sami ponders this for a moment. Clearly the criminal code doesn’t have the same ‘never leave a man behind’ philosophy as the SAS.

‘So what do we do?’ he asks.

‘We leg it.’

Two police cars are heading down Farringdon Street towards them, negotiating the traffic by nudging other vehicles aside with duelling sirens. Sami and Dessie are too exposed. They have to stay off the main thoroughfares. Find somewhere to hide. Lie low.

‘We could catch the tube,’ suggests Sami.

‘I don’t catch trains,’ replies Dessie.

‘Why not?’

‘I just don’t.’

‘We’re running a bit low on choices for you to be taking a personal stand.’

Dessie grunts. Sami takes it as a yes.

They cross the road, walking between cars, not making eye contact with the drivers. They duck down St Bride Street and meet Shoe Lane. Dodging puddles and recycling bins, they weave left and right in narrow lanes, not talking, not looking back.

Sami could pass as a backpacker but Dessie looks like a German hiker with his trousers tucked into his boots. He keeps muttering under his breath about Sinbad.

He stops. ‘Will you fucking keep up for fuck’s sake.’

‘This bag is heavy.’

‘Don’t be such a faggot.’

‘I’m carrying the stuff that goes boom. I don’t fancy being pavement art.’

Dessie takes the holdall and slings it over his shoulder. He gives Sami the rucksack with the drugs, the money and the semi-automatic. Happy days.

Sami makes another suggestion. ‘We should think about splitting up. They’ll be looking for two of us. We’ll be less conspicuous if we travel alone.’

Dessie looks at him dubiously. ‘I’m not taking my eyes off you, dickweed.’

‘At least let’s walk on opposite sides of the street.’

Dessie agrees. Sami crosses over and jogs past an Oxfam shop, a wine warehouse and a travel agency with billboards propped on the pavement. For thirty-eight quid he could fly to Milan. Five hundred gets him a week in Barbados. That’s where he wants to be now - sipping pina coladas in the Caribbean while some island lovely who looks like Beyoncé rubs coconut oil into his chest with her breasts.

Moving at a half-jog, Sami weaves through Plough Place, Fetter Lane, and Norwich Street. Dessie is close. Puffing hard. His head looks like a turtle’s popping out of its shell.

Many of the buildings have brass plaques announcing law offices and legal chambers. Sami’s brief had a place around here. He was a QC. Mr Quick Cash.

The red, blue and white Underground sign is ahead, just visible above the roof of a flower barrow. Chancery Lane Station. They disappear down the stairs into the cool and dark. It’s a hole to hide in. It’s a way out.

21

Bones McGee is staring at the debris. The exhibits room at the Old Bailey has been demolished. The roof has partially collapsed and a sink from the bathroom above is lying in the middle of sodden plasterboard and broken ceiling panels.

Water has done most of the damage. It’s still leaking down the walls and dripping from twisted pipes.

His stomach is churning. He let Tony Murphy call in one favour and look at the result. Murphy promised him a surgical strike. Quick. Clean. Nothing left behind. Instead some moron blew out every window on the fifth floor and brought down half the ceiling.

CID is calling it a terrorist bombing. Al Qaeda has been mentioned. Three Pakistani brothers are due to go on trial next week for plotting to bring down a British Airways flight out of Qatar. All the evidence was in the strong room.

Bones picks his way through the wreckage and finds a quiet corner. He calls Tony Murphy.

‘What the fuck did you do?’

‘Calm down, Bones, what’s wrong?’

‘You said you had an expert.’

‘I did.’

‘Well, I’m looking at a fucking bomb site.’

‘You know what they say about making an omelette, Bones.’

‘Yeah, well your boy just blew up the egg factory.’

Sami and Dessie are standing on the westbound platform of the Central line. The next train to Ealing Broadway is four minutes away. Commuters are milling at the edge of the platform, glancing at the electronic display.

‘What’s Ray Garza got to do with this?’ Sami asks.

Dessie talks out the side of his mouth like he’s in a prison yard. ‘His boy got picked up with a shooter and eight kilos of charlie. He took a pot shot at one of the rozzers. They want to charge him with attempted murder.’

Sami pauses to let the information sink in. The entire robbery was about perverting the course of justice. How many years do you get for that, he wonders.

Dessie is looking up and down the platform. His wet hair is stuck to his scalp like duck’s feathers.

‘Hey, how’s this for an idea?’ asks Sami. ‘Since I did my bit - opening the strong room and stuff - how about I split and you can deliver the gear to Mr Murphy.’

‘Job’s not over.’

‘Yeah, but a deal’s a deal. You got your stuff. Mission accomplished. Now Murphy can let Nadia go.’

‘We started together, we finish together.’

Two transport policemen wander onto the platform, glancing up and down, trying to look like real bobbies instead of rejects from the Met. They’re heading towards Dessie and Sami, who move further along, trying to be inconspicuous.

A train comes roaring through the tunnel, pushing air and rubbish ahead of it. The doors opened. Dessie tells Sami to take a different carriage.

‘If the transport cops get on, keep moving toward the back. And don’t talk to a fucking soul.’

This is the Underground, thinks Sami. Nobody talks to anyone unless they’re deranged or like talking to themselves. If he did strike up a conversation, what would he say?

‘I’m the unwitting pawn in an evil conspiracy, which is why I have eight kilos of cocaine and a semi-automatic in my rucksack, along with a house-brick of money. And you see that guy in the next carriage? He’s a complete psycho and he’s carrying a can of explosives in his bag.’

That should liven up their Sunday afternoon in London.