Hunted (12 page)

THE THIEF’S GLOVED
fingers beat against the steering wheel, a rhythm as hectic as the young man’s darting eyes.

‘You’re doing it again,’ the woman beside him accused, rubbing at her face to drive home her irritation.

The thief turned in his seat, his wild eyes quickly shifting to an angry focus.

She wouldn’t meet the stare, he knew. She never did, despite the fact that she was five years his senior, and tried to order him about as if she had the rank and privilege of family.

‘Doing what?’ He smiled, his handsome face made ugly by resentment.

The woman didn’t answer. Instead, she rubbed again at her tired eyes. Her name was Charlotte Taylor, and anticipation had robbed her of any sleep the previous night. Instead she had lain awake, thinking of this day. Thinking of how failure would condemn the man she loved.

Charlotte tried again to hold the gaze of the man beside her, but she couldn’t meet his eyes – she saw the past in them.

And what did he see when he looked at her? That a once pretty girl was now cracked from stress and sorrow? That her shoulders stooped like a woman of sixty, not thirty? Charlotte did not want to feel that scrutiny. That obnoxious charity she had suffered from family and strangers for nine years.

‘It’s OK if you’re scared,’ she baited the thief, knowing that aggression would be one way to distract her from her niggling thoughts.

‘Me? I’m excited,’ the younger man shot back.

And he was.

Today was the day. Today was the day when years of talking, months of planning and weeks of practice would pay off.

Lives were going to change, and it would all start here.

‘I’m excited,’ the thief said again, but this time with a smile.

His name was Alex Scowcroft, an unemployed twenty-five-year-old from north-west England’s impoverished coast. Today the thief was far from home, his white panelled rental van parked up beneath a blue October sky on Hatton Garden, the street that was the heart of London’s diamond trade.

Charlotte was not excited. In truth, she was sick to her stomach. She had never broken the law – not in any meaningful way, anyway – and the thought of being caught and convicted turned her guts into knots. And yet, the thought of failure was infinitely worse.

As she always did when she needed comfort, Charlotte pulled a blue envelope from the inside pocket of her worn leather jacket. The letter was grimy from oily fingers, and teardrops had smudged
the ink. The blue paper was the mark of military correspondence, given to soldiers at war so they could write to their loved ones.

Hoping to take strength from the words, Charlotte looked over the faded letter.

Catching sight of the ‘bluey’, Scowcroft stopped his fidgeting. ‘Was that –’

‘His last one.’

‘He never wrote me any letters.’ Scowcroft smiled. ‘Knew I couldn’t write one back.’

Charlotte folded the letter away, replacing it into the pocket that would keep it closest to her heart.

‘You’re his brother, Alex. You two don’t need to put words on paper to know how you feel about each other.’

Uncomfortable at the sincerity in her words, Scowcroft could only manage a violent nod before turning his gaze back out of the window, his chest sagging with relief as he saw a man approaching.

‘Baz is back.’

Gaunt-faced and stick thin, Matthew Barrett entered the van through its sliding door and pushed his bony skull into the space between Charlotte and Scowcroft.

‘Same as it’s been every day,’ he told them in a voice made harsh by smoking only the cheapest cigarettes. ‘The shops are opening. No sign of any extra security. If he sticks to the same pattern again today, our man should be here in ten.’

Scowcroft exhaled hard with anticipation. ‘Get your gear on.’

Behind him, Barrett changed from the street clothes of his reconnaissance into a similar style of assault boot and biker jacket
worn by his two accomplices. Finally, he pulled a baseball cap tight onto his head, and brought up the thin black mask that would obscure his features. Eyeing himself in the mirror, Barrett thought aloud: ‘Assume that we’ve been spotted as soon as we pull off. Don’t try to be stealthy. Maximum violence. We get out. We shock. We grab. We extract.’

‘I know the plan,’ Scowcroft grunted.

‘I know you do, mate,’ Barrett told him with the patience of a mentor. ‘But there’s no such thing as going over it too many times. Five minutes,’ he concluded, looking at the van’s dashboard clock.

Scowcroft turned the ignition, and four minutes passed with nothing but the throb of the van’s diesel engine for distraction. It was Charlotte who broke the silence.

‘If they get me, but you two pull this off, I don’t want Tony to see me in prison. I don’t want him to see me like that.’

Barrett reached out and placed a gloved hand on her shoulder. ‘Since when does anyone tell Tony what to do? He loves you, Char, and when he’s back to us, he’d be seeing you on Mars if that’s what it took.’

Charlotte eased at the words and rolled down her balaclava, her piercing blue eyes afire with righteous determination.

‘For Tony, then.’

‘For Tony,’ the two men echoed, voices thick with grit and love.

Barrett looked again at the van’s dashboard. ‘Five minutes is up.’

In the driver’s seat, Scowcroft’s fingers began to beat against the steering wheel once more.

‘He’s here,’ he told them, and put the van into gear, pulling out into the lazy traffic of a Friday mid-morning.

A few pedestrians, mostly window-shoppers, ambled along the pavements, but Scowcroft’s eyes were focused solely on a burly skinhead who looked as if he’d been plucked from a prison cell and clad in Armani. More precisely, Scowcroft focused on what was in the man’s hand – a leather holdall. A leather holdall that would change their lives.

The big man’s stride was slow and deliberate. Scowcroft reduced the van’s speed to a running pace and glided close to the kerb.

The moment had come.

‘Go!’ he shouted, overcome by excitement.

Then, as they had practised dozens of times, Charlotte threw open the heavy passenger door so that the metal slammed into the big man’s back, the leather holdall flying free as he collapsed onto the pavement.

‘He’s dropped it, Baz! Go!’ Scowcroft shouted again as he stood on the brakes. Barrett threw himself from the van’s sliding door, his eyes scanning for the bag and finding it beneath a parked car.

‘I see it!’ Barrett announced from outside, but Scowcroft’s eyes were elsewhere. And widening in alarm.

‘Shit,’ he cursed.

He’d expected to see pedestrians flee the scene. He’d expected to see a brave one try to interfere. But what Scowcroft had not expected to see was two motorcycles coming at them along the pavement, the riders hidden ominously behind black visors.
With gut instinct, Scowcroft knew that the bikers were coming for the contents of the bag.

‘Shit!’ he repeated, then spat, because years of talking, months of planning and weeks of practice were about to come undone.

So Alex Scowcroft formulated a new plan. One which any Scowcroft would have made.

He reached beneath his seat and pulled his older brother’s commando dagger from its sheath. Charlotte saw the blade the moment before she saw the incoming bikers, and grasped the implications. She looked to Scowcroft for leadership.

‘Would you die for my brother?’ he asked her.

She nodded, swallowing the fear in her throat.

‘Would you kill for him?’

Her eyes told him that she would.

‘Then get out and fight.’

SCOWCROFT AND CHARLOTTE
flew from the van’s doors like fury, adrenaline coursing through their veins.

‘Baz!’ Scowcroft shouted. ‘Leave the bag where it is and get over here! We’ve got a problem!’

‘Leave the bag?’ Charlotte questioned aghast, a ball hammer in her shaking hands.

‘They’ll snatch it and go. We need them off those bikes.’

With no sign of the holdall, the black-helmeted riders slowed their pace. Scowcroft could feel their gaze now falling on him and his two accomplices from behind the tinted visors.

Barrett came running up beside the others.

‘The bag’s by the front-left wheel arch. I can grab it quick, but what about them?’ he asked, then took in the sight of Scowcroft’s commando dagger. For a moment, Scowcroft thought Barrett would tell him to put the weapon away. Instead, Barrett drew an identical blade from a sheath on his lower leg.

‘Just remember, drive the blade, don’t slice,’ Barrett encouraged the younger man, brandishing his own dagger in an attempt to scare off the riders and avoid bloodshed.

It didn’t work.

The bikers had their own weapons – five hundred pounds of metal, and that metal could reach sixty miles per hour in the time it took to close the gap to Scowcroft and his companions.

The bikes revved hard, leaving rubber on the pavement. Side by side, they came forward in a cavalry charge of steel.

Barrett and Charlotte darted left and pressed themselves into the cover of a shallow doorway, but Scowcroft dived for the holdall beneath the wheel arch, the bikers aiming for the easy target of his exposed body. They saw the chance to cripple the man as he grasped for his prize, and engines roared louder as throttles were held open.

Then, as his accomplices waited for the dreadful moment of impact, Scowcroft pressed his body down into the tarmac, squeezing himself beneath the car, and flung the holdall into the face of the closest rider.

The bikers had taken the bait, and now they paid the price. Travelling at sixty miles per hour, the rider was hit by the light leather bag as if by a baseball bat, whipping his neck and sending both bike and rider skidding across the pavement. With great skill, the fallen rider’s partner was able to avoid entanglement, but it brought him to a stop.

‘On him!’ Scowcroft shouted, rushing to collect the bag.

Charlotte and Barrett broke from the refuge of the doorway and sprinted towards the second biker. The rider tried to twist on his seat, reaching down for a blade concealed in his boot, but Barrett was quicker and hit the rider with a rugby tackle, his own dagger flying free in the collision. The two men and the bike crashed
to the floor, Barrett crying out in pain as his leg became pinned beneath the hot metal of the engine, and grunting in agony again as the rider headbutted him with his helmet. As the pouring blood soaked his balaclava, Barrett was forced to remove his mask.

‘Charlotte!’ he gasped. ‘My dagger!’

Charlotte looked around desperately for the blade, but when she saw where it was, the discovery caused her to go rigid with panic.

The blade was in the hand of the bag’s courier. Recovered from the initial ambush, the big man was on his knees, aggressively turning the van’s tyres into husks of useless rubber.

Without thinking of her own safety, Charlotte charged towards him, but Scowcroft beat her to it and drove his blade into the man’s shoulder. The big man roared in agony and tried to turn his captured dagger towards Scowcroft, but the wound had severed muscle and the arm hung limp and useless by his side. Scowcroft kicked the blade from the man’s hand and followed by planting his steel toecap into the man’s jaw. Barely conscious, the burly man slumped backwards against the van, leaving a smear of blood against the white panelling.

Pinned beneath the bike, Barrett and the rider continued their own struggle, the helmet crashing again into Barrett’s broken nose.

Scowcroft and Charlotte arrived to haul the bike off the pair. Then Barrett pulled himself clear as Charlotte threw herself at the rider, her furious punches wasted against the protection of his helmet and thick jacket.

‘Get off him!’ Scowcroft called out. Barrett gritted his teeth and dragged Charlotte back by her shoulders, leaving Scowcroft free to push the bike back on top of the sprawling rider.

‘I’ve got the bag,’ he panted. ‘But the van’s done.’

Barrett looked over his shoulder, blood bubbling from his shattered nose. A few curious heads were poking out of windows, but most of Hatton Garden’s diamond traders had bolted their doors at the first sign of trouble.

‘Get the backpacks out the van,’ Scowcroft told them. ‘Come on, let’s go!’

‘There’s no sirens,’ Barrett observed as Charlotte handed out the small backpacks, each one unique in design and colour. ‘Where the hell are the coppers?’

‘Who cares?’ Scowcroft countered. ‘We got what we came for. Let’s get out of here!’

Without waiting for agreement, Scowcroft made for the nearest alleyway. Charlotte and Barrett followed in his wake, leaving three groaning bodies on the pavement.

Not one of them saw the pinstripe-suited gentleman in the window of Swiss Excellence, a specialist diamond jeweller. If they had, perhaps they would have noticed that the man’s manicured hand was shaking as it picked up a telephone from its cradle. Perhaps they would have assumed that the pinstripe-suited gentleman was finally calling the police.

They’d have been wrong.

‘Hello, sir,’ the jeweller began, with deference born of fear. ‘I’m afraid . . .’ He swallowed. ‘I’m afraid that someone has stolen your diamonds.’

The line clicked dead.

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR ANDREW
Hill was sitting behind his desk in Scotland Yard.

‘Well, technically I’m FaceTiming you from the office,’ he told his wife of three weeks. ‘It’s bloody purgatory, Deb. I’ve got no cases. All my paperwork is done. I’m like the ghost of a young girl who was murdered in a Victorian manor. My soul can’t find peace, and all I have to look forward to is jumping out on you when you use the bathroom.’

‘I told you I’d stab you if you do that again.’ Deb laughed on the phone’s screen. ‘Now stop being a melodramatic arse and find something to do. Get working on the business.’

‘I’m not allowed to work a second job until I get the redundancy,’ Hill grumbled.

‘Yes you are.’

‘Well, OK, yeah, but it’s frowned upon. I don’t want to rub anyone up the wrong way before I leave. You never know who’s going to be useful for business,’ the detective protested through a smile.

‘I’m just hearing a lot of gas. Anyway, some of us do have to work. I’ll see you tonight, babe. Love you.’