The Job at Hand
The two men strode purposefully towards the jewellers. Confident in their demeanour, they walked briskly across the road and stepped onto the curb and continued. Their shoes rapped a drum-roll, excitable, leading to some massive crescendo of astounded and utter disbelief.
But on the outside they were cool, composed, two wealthy men. Both wearing beautifully cut suits, one in black pinstripe and the other in grey, both sporting Rolex watches – genuine ones – and both wearing sunglasses.
A couple of wolves masquerading as sheep.
The man in black strode on, counting the strides he had measured twice over the past week. He adjusted his tie as he went and smoothed his hair. His partner walked calmly beside him, looking ahead and smoking a cigarette.
The man in black looked at him.
The man in grey glanced over and back again, then he dropped his cigarette and checked his watch.
You know it's the right time, down to the second, the man in black thought.
The pair walked the last twenty yards, the climax building. Past the entry to the exclusive clothing store that flanked the only building that had existed to him for the past two and a half months.
Straight up to the door. The man in black walked in first, just as they had discussed, opening the door for the man following behind him. Reaching out, grabbing the handle and he was through, propping the door open for a second for the man in the grey suit.
He removed his glasses and squinted momentarily as his eyes adjusted to the light.
Past the security guard standing at the door, dressed in his clichéd black suit and tie. He smiled and nodded as the two gentlemen entered.
The man in the black suit flashed a quick smile in return, trying to exude a false sense of foppish arrogance.
Your day's about to get interesting, fast, he thought, as he passed the guard.
There was a camera staring at the two men from the ceiling. The small, black half-globe that encapsulated the camera looked out of place in its graceful surroundings. Out of place and out of reach.
Gleaming glass everywhere, sparkling in the crystal glare of dozens of twelve-volt halogen lights. It was eight paces to the center of the shop floor and the man in black knew it. Behind him, the man in grey had stopped and was admiring a bracelet of what looked like rubies.
The man could feel the adrenaline start to course through his veins as he gazed around at the lay out of the store. He was unsurprised to see that there was nothing that surprised him; everything was as it should be, right down to the individual salespeople and the guard at the door.
Predictability is a criminal's best friend.
He knew already that it was too late to pull out now. The irresistible pull of the job at hand drove him on. He felt compelled to see what lay at the end of this mad corridor of fate, the door to which he had stepped through as he had entered the jewellery shop.
The shop was practically empty. Apart from the two sales assistants and the guard there was only three other people inside the place. Two were a couple browsing watches; the other was a young man who seemed to be perusing engagement rings over in the corner.
He rolled his neck, glancing up at the frescoed ceiling and the elegant plastering that bordered it. Soft classical music drifted around him, coming from discreet speakers set along the walls. This was why he left bank robbing for jewel heists. Here there were fewer customers in a more confined and, consequently, more controllable space, and less noise. Exclusive jewellery shops like this one were far more intimate and, due to their often celebrity clientele, much more private with little in the way of views into the store. And the colour schemes in these places were always so soothing, with some sort of inoffensive classical music playing quietly in the background. It was a pleasant, relatively stress free environment in which to commit a criminal transgression.
Once, when they had first met, the man in grey had asked him why he robbed banks. Because that's where the money is, he had replied.
However, he had been wrong. Jewellery stores were where the money was because, unlike banks, they were blinded by their own arrogance as to what easy targets they were. They were prepared for robberies, but they weren't really expecting them. It seemed, to the pinstriped man, that they expected their prime city locations and prestigious reputations to shield them from common crime, just as their colossal prices kept common people safely outside on the pavement. The real trick wasn't knocking over a jewellery store; it was getting away with it.
He walked up to the counter, unbuttoning his jacket with a flick of his fingers as he went.
The young woman moved forward expectantly and smiled. 'Can I be of some assistance, sir?'
'Yes, you can,' the man in black said. To his left the man perusing engagement rings straightened up, gave a small smile and a wave and left the shop. 'I need your advice on a delicate matter concerning an engagement ring.' He smiled and raised his eyebrows. 'A lady's opinion would be much appreciated.'
'Of course, sir,' she replied kindly.
'Do you think you could bring your colleague over too, if it's not too much trouble?'
The young woman glanced over at the older lady who was standing at the other end of the counter, having just said farewell to the browsing couple. She was positioned right by the second hidden silent alarm that the man in black knew was there, the button that was a direct line to the nearest police station.
'Margaret? Could you come over here for a second, please? This gentleman requires our help.'
'Thank you very, much, miss..?'
'Katherine. My name is Katherine,' she supplied.
'Katherine,' he copied. 'Thank you, Katherine.'
His smile did not reach his eyes.
The older woman, Margaret, walked over.
'How may we help you, sir?' she asked.
Absolutely clueless, the man in black thought.
'I need both of you to give me your full attention,' he told them, leaning forward conspiratorially.
Both women craned forward expectantly as the man in black reached inside his jacket pocket.
He drew out the handgun with all the innocence of a child pulling out a packet of sweets. Behind him the man in the grey suit did the same. By the time his own gun was levelled perfectly between the two women's face, the security guard was sitting slumped against a wall with blood dripping from his temple, courtesy of the grey suited man.
The man in grey dragged the stunned man into a corner, out of sight of the doorway, and quickly and efficiently bound his hands and ankles with plastic flex-cuffs.
This little episode was over so quickly that the two women behind the counter barely had time to raise their eyebrows. The man in black looked into their eyes and saw one thing, they were terrified.
'Ladies, hands on top of the counter,' he commanded politely.
Both women spread their hands on the glass countertop.
'Keep them there until I have explained the situation,' the man in the pinstripes continued. 'We don't have a lot of time and we'd like to spend as little of it as possible worrying about you. Katherine,' he said, his eyes flicking between the two women, 'please go and take a seat over there with my associate. Keep your hands up as you go, there's a good girl.'
The younger woman, who had gone grey with fear and whose saucer sized eyes were brimming with tears, tripped forward and made her way around the end of the counter. The man in grey followed her with his weapon.
'Don't cry, if you'd be so kind, Katherine,' the pinstripe crook said without looking at her.
'You,' the man in black said to the older woman, his own gun pointing rudely into her pale and shocked face, 'you will do the packing. I've found that the younger ones,' he nodded over to Katherine who had just sat down at the feet of his partner, 'well, they tend to be very prone to heroics and misguided notions that they may be able to stop what we came here to do, a recipe for disaster where live firearms are concerned,' he leaned forward as if to share a secret and whispered, 'I think it's too many movies.'
Unsurprisingly the lady did not smile.
'You and I are both aware that all this jewellery is insured, and anyway, we both know that you think we aren't going to get away with this.'
The lady said nothing. It seemed absurd to her that outside the traffic droned on, ridiculously unaware of the nightmare that was unfolding in her shop.
'We do not want to hurt you in any way, shape or form, but I'm afraid saying that, we have gone to the trouble of acquiring these weapons and we will use them if you do not make this as easy as possible for all concerned. Don't be selfish and you'll both walk out of here with a hell of a story to tell. Do you understand me?'
The older woman nodded.
'Katherine?' he asked over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off the older saleswoman for a second.
'I understand,' the younger girl whimpered from behind him.
His face unreadable, the man in black gestured with a nod of his head to the glass counter. I'd like you to disable the silent alarm, please, the keypad for which is located behind you. Don't be tempted to deceive me, Margaret.'
The lady looked at the gun in the man's hand, the gaping barrel following her like the eye of the Devil. She knew, somehow, that this man knew exactly what he was doing. There was no bravado, no macho blustering and posturing. She looked quickly into his eyes and saw absolutely nothing.
That scared her more than the gun.
Almost.
No matter how many times she had seen them in the movies or on the news, the man in black knew that this lady's first close-up experience with a handgun was something that she could not have prepared herself for in a million years. There was something so familiar and yet so alien about a gun, especially when it was pointed in your face. It was an object that she would have seen every day in newspapers, films, music videos, television programs and advertisements, and yet none of these conveyed the brutal sense of immediate death that she would be feeling right at this moment.
The subtle way that the lights of the shop caressed the flawless barrel, flickering across the ejection port and gilding the trigger-guard. The offensive and abrupt way that the barrel ended, terminating in a small sight. The fascination of the muzzle, the small abyss in which one could lose themselves if they did not play by the rules.
You don't fuck with wolves. You respect them. Wolves holding shiny guns in steady hands, they are the ones that you don't even think about fucking with.
Especially if you are a sheep.
He knew that she would be considering and evaluating the fact that, if he chose, he could end her life with one quick flex of his forefinger. In a second turning her from an "is" into a "was".
The man in black watched the older woman turn slowly and type in the disabling-code. He knew what it was himself, but he wanted to see what kind of person he was dealing with. He hoped, in a detached way, that he would not have to spray her brains across the wall. However, thankfully she obliged and entered the correct digits.
'Thanks very much, love. Now, lay everything on top of the counter. Move from left to right and be as quick as you can, please.'
The man in the grey suit had not moved an inch, his gun levelled at the bloodied security officer and woman at his feet.
Time was slipping away.
The man in black risked a quick glance at his watch.
The car was due to pull up in ninety seconds.
'Right, the watch display behind you now,' he said briskly as the older woman removed the last item, a splendid and shiny looking emerald and diamond bracelet set in platinum, from the last cabinet.
She quickly complied. After this the man in black directed her to a little display holding two necklaces, one a confection of white and pink diamonds, and four elaborate rings.
When everything was out on top of the counter, the man in black motioned for the older to woman to put her hands up.
'Thank you for being so cooperative,' he said to her. 'Would you be so kind as to bag that?'
Forty seconds later, two posh looking gift bags were sitting on top of the counter. Outside the traffic continued to rumble past quite unconcernedly. In contrast to the hustle and bustle out on the road, the inside of the shop was an emotional cemetery, no one moving, the three hostages all seated on the ground against the wall, all looking straight ahead, stony and silent.
The man in black picked up one of the bags and handed it to his partner who had backed up, his sleek, silver semi-automatic pistol still pointed at the dejected pair on the floor, its muzzle gaping obscenely.
Both men were carrying mobile phones. At the exact same moment the pair felt them vibrate in their jacket pockets. Clocking off time.
'You've responded admirably,' the man in black said, as his partner went for the door. 'Now, Katherine, you'll be walking with me to the car. This is simply to ensure that your colleagues here don't sound the alarm. You will get in the car with us and we will drop you off two city blocks from here. We will not hurt you in any way, you are simply our insurance. Alright?'
It must have been the brief efficiency in his voice that made her rise straight to her feet. She was biting her lip - the man in the black noticed she had very nice lips - whether through resolve or shear blind terror, he couldn't be certain.
The security guard was sitting in the corner of the room, hugging his knees as well as he was able with his bound hands. The man in black thought, So, you're one of those "security guards". Well you can pump all the iron you like, sweetheart, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter how big your muscles are if you're still a scared schoolboy having a gun pointed in your face.
The girl in front of him, walking towards the front door of the shop, held her back straight. There weren't even any tears in her eyes anymore.
He admired her for that.
The car was waiting. Of course it was. The black Audi sat idling at the curb, its two-litre turbo humming under the sleek bonnet.
Nice car, thought the man in black, the poor bastard that owns it is probably going ape-shit.
It was a nice choice by the Driver. No one was going to remember a black Audi in this part of London. There were far too many unimaginative, pretentious pricks in this town for that.
The man in grey stepped into the weak sunshine first and slipped on his sunglasses. With his gun tucked safely back under his jacket, he looked left and right. Almost imperceptibly he nodded his head.
The man in black placed a hand in the small of Katherine's back and nudged her forward. She half-turned, her eyes wide and pleading, as the man behind her replaced his own sunglasses. He smiled encouragingly and placed a hand on her shoulder.
'After you, Katherine.'
He could feel her trembling under his touch and knew she must hate him.
Just please hold it together for a few moments more, love, he thought fervently.
They walked towards the car, no more than ten paces away. The man in grey had opened the back door and was striding around the back of the vehicle. He pulled out a cigarette as he went, paused for a moment at the front passenger door to light it up, glanced around once more and got in.
The taste of freedom and success was on the tip of the man in black's tongue. He reached for the door handle, and in his haste the bag in his hand slipped from his grasp. He snatched down, intent on catching the bag of valuables that was set to secure his financial freedom and retirement plans. As he lunged his jacket billowed open, and his gun slid irresistibly from his unfastened shoulder holster.
In the next heartbeat it went skittering across the pavement, right into the path of an advancing troupe of middle-aged women, clearly in the middle of a credit card dissolving shopping spree. For a second the man in black froze, the rescued bag of jewellery suspended from his fingertips. He watched, and the strangest urge to burst out laughing came over him, as the women stopped abruptly in their tracks like a pack of huskies pulled short on their leashes. They regarded the gun, then him, the gun, and then him again.
Slowly – or so it seemed at the time – he watched a scream form in the corner of one of the lady's mouths. It was fascinating, he thought detachedly. He could almost hear the air being sucked into her lungs.
Fuck.
The woman's shriek shattered the spell that seemed to have taken hold of him.
'He's got a gun!'
Katherine whirled around just as she took hold of the car door. Seeing her captor bent double with his gun out of reach, the sound of the woman's cry acted as a stimulant. She spun away from the man in black and raced off down the road, kicking off her heels as she went, screaming at the top of her lungs.
The man in black cursed again. He threw the bag into the backseat, snatched his fallen weapon from the pavement and looked up the street.
Just in time to see Katherine the saleswoman run smack-dab into a female police officer.
Perfect, he thought to himself, the Old Bill.
Clearly the terrified woman was an expert at instant communication because in a second the police officer was charging down the pavement.
'Stop! Stop exactly where you are. You in the suit stop!' she yelled.
Might as well make a bit of a show of it now, the man in black grimly thought.
He raised his gun and fired two shots over the advancing officer's head. Without hesitation she threw herself sideways behind another parked car.
The effect of the gunfire on the surrounding pedestrians was instantaneous and animalistic. As one, the herd of shoppers, walkers and workers ducked reflexively, some screeching, while others emitted low, loud moans of surprise and shock, as if in response to a surprise predatory ambush. It was the definition of a reflex action, almost the entire street getting as low as they could as quickly as they could in response to the gunshots. An instinctive and genetic response to danger.
The man in black launched himself into the back seat of the car and slammed the door behind him.
Without a word the Driver – he was the Driver, known only as the Driver and surprisingly good at driving believe it or not – punched the accelerator and the car roared out into the road.