CHAPTER 83
Ten minutes later, Charlie perched on a Chesterfield sofa, in one of the private rooms above the Slipware Tankard bar. He knew what was coming next. Ibrahim fixed them a couple of whiskys before locking the door and wheeling the dustsheet-covered replica display cabinet from the corner of the room. Arthur Mitchell, the museum caretaker they’d turned, provided details of the company who manufactured the cabinets, and they’d downloaded the design PDF. It had cost two grand to get this made by a local joinery firm.
‘Sink that, and we’ll run through it again.’
With two pints and a triple measure of single malt inside him, Charlie’s nerves finally subsided. ‘Okay,’ he said, entwining his fingers, stretching his arms in front of his chest in preparation.
At this stage, things couldn’t be going better for Ibrahim. The complete sets of gold replicas had arrived at the airport a few days ago, without detection. Mickey Connor played a blinder. He’d spent hours, wearing silicone gloves, scrutinising and comparing them to those in the official Hoard book. He’d even visited the find spot at Ogley Hay near Lichfield and excavated soil, with which the gold was to be dusted to add authentication. To the untrained eye, they would be hard to detect. Although he knew a Hoard specialist would eventually spot the fakes, by that time the lot would be safe with the Collector in the USA.
Ibrahim removed an old, large, framed picture of the town, tapped in a code, and retrieved eight clear plastic boxes from another of his built-in safes. He laid them down on top of the cabinet, put a pair of silicone gloves on, then tossed Charlie another pair.
‘I’ll load it up. Then you have another crack at it.’
‘Our Mickey did the business then; any problems?’ he asked Benzar.
‘Like clockwork. But that doesn’t excuse your cousin from paying what he owes me. Mickey got plenty for his part.’
‘I know that.’
‘But does Darryl? His tills will take a hit after that murder. Punters will be scared to go in there, especially the women. Bad publicity like that can ruin a business.’
‘Of course, you’ll get it all back.’ Charley said waiting patiently. In truth he didn’t know if he would. Maybe he’d have to bail Darryl out from his share of the heist?
‘Bastard cops were nosing around here yesterday, asking questions about it?’
‘Why, what’s this murder got to do with you?’
‘Remember Katrina from the casino the other week?’
‘The fit blond?’
‘Yeah. Her partner’s that arse-hole Carl Bentley who drives for me. Seems he’s a suspect.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I have my sources. Those dumb cops think I don’t know what their game is. We need to be real careful now, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘You don't think they know about the job do you?’ Charlie sounded worried.
‘No, definitely not, but just to be sure I’ve cut Bentley lose; now he’s been arrested. Not that he knows shit all anyway.’
Charlie waited patiently until the pieces were in place, and the cover was locked down. Ibrahim passed him a black rucksack. ‘Your toolkit is in there.’
Then he dragged a side table the same height as the cabinet next to it, rolled out a paper template onto it and fixed it down with blu-tack.
‘You ready?’ Ibrahim asked, setting up the stopwatch on his mobile. ‘Just pretend I’m not here?’
‘Yeah, right.’
Charlie unzipped the bag and rummaged its depths before locating a set of keys, a powerful LED headlamp, a black twelve-inch torch and a small work belt loaded with tools needed to do the job. By this time Ibrahim began to draw the blackout blinds adorning the sash windows.
‘Shit, it’s dark in here.’
‘Good practice. It could be darker in the Museum. No use doing it with the lights on! This will be the last time before the real thing,’ Ibrahim warned him.
Charlie shrugged half-heartedly. ‘Suppose you’re right.’
‘Anyway, like I said, I’m not here.’
Charlie laid the rucksack on the floorboards, switched on the LED headlamp, tilting it downward to his line of vision, clipped on the tool belt, then opened the first lock. Within seven minutes the locks were open and the cover lifted to a forty-five degree angle like a car bonnet. He clicked the torch on and rummaged around in the bag again until he located the ten-inch tablet loaded with images showing the exact position of the pieces. Placing it inside the cabinet, at the top, he switched the tiny bits of gold piece by piece, until the template contained all them.
With a small bottle of glass cleaner, he sprayed the cabinet cover and wiped it down, before locking it. He stood back for a moment mentally checking he’d not forgotten anything. To ensure each step was completed efficiently, leaving no trace evidence, they decided he should refer to a simple numbered checklist, printed on a laminated presentation card. As Ibrahim watched, the Collector’s mantra echoed in his head ‘The world’s richest forgers and art thieves weren’t often apprehended, because they planned meticulously for every outcome, including fencing the goods’
‘Finished!’ Charlie said gratifyingly.
‘Forty minutes flat,’ Ibrahim said, tapping his phone, rising from the Chesterfield. ‘You’re forgetting something?’
‘What’s that?’
‘The checklist! You gotta run through it.’ He raised his voice to emphasise the point.
‘Oh, bollocks!’
‘At least it happened now, not on the job. Best to do it before you start and after you finish that way you’re covered.’
Charlie scanned the torch in a large arc around the work area, checking he’d left nothing. ‘All sorted.’
‘What about that spray bottle on the table?’
‘Oh, fucking hell!’
‘Listen, take a break. I’ll fetch you a coffee from the bar before you do it one last time.
‘You’re joking! Do it again?’
CHAPTER 84
Nine days after the break-in at the Furlong Social Club. DC Longsdon received a package delivered by Dennis Miller, the club’s caretaker. On the front of the envelope a sticky note, handwritten in Biro, explained the reason for the delay was that, having not seen the duplicate copies for over twenty years he’d struggled to locate them amongst thousands in his collection. Longsdon tore open the flap of the A4 envelope and emptied its contents onto his desk. A pile of six by four inch photographs documenting five decades of the William Adams & Sons Pottery, spilled out. He separated the black and white from the grainy colour pics, and began to skim through them. Each picture showed employees posing in the department they worked in at the pottery firm.
That was when it hit him. Quickly he isolated five photos and studied them closely. A young Barry Gibson was in each of them… less tattoos, but it was definitely him. The big question was, who were the other young men with him? Whoever they were, the body language implied they were mates, as well as work colleagues. Could one of these men have stolen the photos in an attempt to hide his identity; maybe it was the killer?
He picked up the phone and called DI Blake, who was back in the station, as his mother in-law was now looking after his daughter.
Ten minutes later Blake stood behind Longsdon staring intently at the five photos laid out on his desk. ‘Brilliant work, Longsdon. This is a very significant development in the Barry Gibson murderer case. It shows that whoever stole the copies from the Furlong club is desperately trying to disassociate their links to the victim. As you pointed out over the phone, it means our murderer is one of these men,’ he said staring at the faces of Nathan Dukes, Darryl Connor, Grant Bolton, Dave Millburn and a fella with a red cap, pulled over his face, ‘We need to identify him, which complicates things. I think it’s time we had a serious chat with Connor and Millburn, but first we need to double our efforts in locating Grant Bolton.’
CHAPTER 85
Six hours locked in an artefact’s storeroom, with a dog-eared crime p
aperback, a bottle of water and a pack of sandwiches for company wasn’t his idea of a riveting evening. He was piss bored. Luckily there was a large stainless steel sink with running water. At fifty-four, Charlie Bullard increasingly needed to urinate at regular intervals, far more often than a few years ago. He’d pissed like a race horse since ten o’clock; probably nerves more than water intake being the culprit. The all-important text arrived at midnight on his crypto phone.
Cameras and alarms doctored. You have a four-hour window. I will call later to check progress. If you have any problems, contact me ASAP. Turn phone to silent vibrate mode. Don’t forget session key number.
Charlie donned the forensic suit, boots and silicone gloves, and meticulously doubled-checked the contents of his rucksack, before unlocking the large exhibits storeroom, situated close to the entrance of the Natural History Zone.
Easing open the fire exit doors leading to the room, he stealthily moved forward into the darkness of the cavernous space. Like Aladdin exploring the genie’s cave, he swept his torch in an arc. It was a taxidermist’s paradise, full of stuffed animals, fossils and birds from in and around the Stoke-on-Trent area, each one behind glass screens or in Perspex display boxes.
His torch beam shone upon a large raven, its eyes reflected back at him, creepily suggestive, as if watching him. Moving on, past the section laid out to represent the Staffordshire Moorlands, complete with dry stone wall and winter skyline, a large stag surrounded by pheasants took centre place; its haunting glass eyes glared as an even bigger raven straddled a dead rabbit, entrails hanging from its beak.
Eerily the whole room seemed to come alive. Walking through the Woodland Trail, and into the Bronze Age displays, he kept his head down. On entering the ‘Death and Burial throughout the ages’ section, he illuminated the classic Benjamin Franklin quote:
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
How bloody true, he thought. Stepping backwards something sharp nudged him in the lower back and startled him. Nervously turning around, half expecting a security guard, he shone the torch across a late nineteenth-century, two-wheeled coffin bearer, surrounded by display cabinets full of Victorian death and mourning artefacts. This place was giving him the creeps. Every display took on a new sinister meaning in torchlight.
Turning the corner he bumped into a large Perspex cabinet; a flash of the torch revealed the Arnold Bennett Zone. The cabinet contained several items which belonged to the famous local writer, including his Gladstone bag, a pair of shabby leather slippers and his book on watercolours.
Regaining his composure, he entered his favourite part of the museum: the local history zone, an L-shaped corridor divided into a series of rooms from the early nineteen hundreds, all containing original fixtures and fittings. First up on the left was the bar of a local pub, complete with Edwardian drinkers accompanied by Harry Hewitt’s Billy; a legendary local greyhound that won dozens of races before the First World War. Next to that was a complete pharmacy from around the same period; its carved mahogany shop front and counter had been beautifully preserved. He almost dropped the torch as it illuminated a female mannequin clad in a black ankle-length Edwardian dress. Her ghostly white face glared at him as she sat rocking a lifeless baby in the chair next to a cast-iron range.
Taking a deep breath, he paused before finally reaching his destination, slightly disturbed at his night at the museum. All the artefacts seemed to be alive.
On entering the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia the ominous sight of eight large display cabinets confronted him, strategically laid out at the entrance to exhibit the Hoard to the visiting public. Each cabinet had two alarmed locks securing the glass frontage.
Removing the rucksack, he retrieved a large folded plastic sheet, draped it over the cabinet on the far left, before laying his sterilised tool kit, including the cabinet keys onto it. Hopefully this would stop any trace evidence being transferred onto the glass. The Collector stressed the importance of using unopened high-grade forensic equipment for a delicate job such as this. It was much harder to trace.
Lastly, he placed the ten-inch tablet containing a series of numbered HD photographs Ibrahim’s cousin had taken. Recreating the original positioning was vital. Pointless replacing everything with the replica pieces, only for them to be discovered as fakes because the positioning was wrong. The Dad’s Army security guards were on a rota, watching over the gold, and everyone would notice if the pieces were in the wrong order.
Turning on his headlight to illuminate the work area, he dropped to his knees, inserted the barrel key into the first lock and turned it anticlockwise. Repeating the same for the next lock, they opened like a dream. Early days yet but, so far so good, he thought, trying to keep a lid on his nerves. He carefully leaned the tablet showing picture number two against the hinged glass of the open cabinet, double-checking it was the right one before removing the first piece of delicate gold with a pair of sterile blue tweezers. This extremely delicate operation needed executing with maximum efficiency and finesse. The replicas sat inside tiny compartmentalised boxes, each box, and each piece of gold, meticulously numbered to avoid error. Thankfully each cabinet only contained about a hundred pieces. The other two thousand two hundred were kept in a safe in the artefacts storeroom. Lucky for them, the caretaker had told them these were only checked every couple of weeks.
Switching the first seven cabinets went better than he could have imagined. With those locked down and cleaned, he moved on to the final treasure chest, repeating in his head, I am calm and relaxed, I am calm and relaxed, an Emotional Freedom technique mantra he’d discovered via YouTube. He found this simple, self-hypnosis very calming.
A glance at his watch revealed it was four a.m. Still plenty of time left, he reassured himself. As before, he lifted the cabinet lid with caution, but there was a horrible creaking noise. The kind old rusty door hinges made when they needed lubricating. ‘Bollocks!’ he uttered under his breath. His heart skipped a beat, and, nervous, he spun around, instinctively looking to see if anyone else had overheard, before remembering he was alone in the deathly silence of the Kingdom of Mercia.
It was 4.10 a.m. and there was no time to dwell. He’d got this far, without hiccups. There was no way he’d let himself falter at the last hurdle. Tapping his temples he repeated the mantra. Nerves composed, he continued. Within the next half an hour the switch would be complete. All that remained was to lock down, clean-sweep the work area and get back to the storeroom to empty the safe containing the rest of the Hoard. He’d then get his head down until the caretaker let him out at 6.30 a.m.
Pulling the cabinet cover revealed it was stuck. He took a deep breath and pulled harder. Still it wouldn’t budge so he pushed it from the side, but still no joy.
‘Oh fuck!’ he groaned anxiously. It was jammed solid. Taking another deep breath, he stepped back and wiped beads of sweat from his brow. The bloody forensic suit was making him sweatier than a dervish’s jockstrap. With the hum of air conditioning in the background he pondered what to do next. A horrible thought entered his head. ‘What if this bastard cover won’t go down? I’ll be well and truly fucked.’
Without hesitation, he fished the crypto phone from the rucksack and called Ibrahim.
‘Session code?’ Ibrahim asked bluntly.
Charlie could barely see the screen. Wiping the sweat from his eyes, he said, ‘Four, three, seven, eight.’
‘What’s up?’
‘There’s a problem,’ he whispered, looking around the room, paranoid.
‘What fucking problem?’
‘The last cabinet won’t shut.’
‘Have you sprayed the hinges?’
‘Not yet.’
Ibrahim demanded immediate action. ‘Do it now!’
‘OK.’
‘Stay on the line.’
After a minutes silence Charlie spoke again. ‘Given ’em a good blast, just waiting for it to soak in.’
‘Care
ful you don’t break anything,’ Ibrahim said, trying to remain calm, realising Charlie could lose the plot if he abused him at this crucial stage.
‘It’s no good, still won’t budge.’
‘Hold on a minute while Leonard looks for a solution online.’
Charlie felt nauseous like a heavy rock had dropped in the pit of his stomach. A sudden noise overhead startled him. The silence from the other end of the phone only increased his irrational fears. He yanked the water bottle from the bag and nervously gulped down the last few drops.
‘Charl, you there? It’s Leonard.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Listen, according to this quick fix, you need to lift the lid gently, then rock it up and down carefully before trying to close it. Spray again as well?’
‘OK, giving it a go now,’ he said with the slightest glimmer of hope in his voice.
CHAPTER 86
The rider sat on a stolen scooter, opposite the side exit of the Museum, in a black crash helmet, visor up, with a thin breathable scarf hiding the lower half of his face. According to that ginger geek Leonard Vale, Charlie Bullard was due to leave the building around 6.30 a.m. Because of CCTV he hadn’t arrived too early, and planned to follow Bullard until he could take the rucksack where there were no cameras.
Like clockwork Bullard slowly exited the building, giving a cautious look around. He noticed the man on a bike but didn’t appear wary of him. To be sure the rider waited until Bullard had turned left and headed towards the traffic lights crossing over the ring road. Slowly the rider exited the street and eased down the road keeping his target in full view. They must be doing the switch in Shelton.
The Killer Shadow Thieves (DI Tom Blake, #1) Page 28