The Good Thieves

by Katherine Rundell

  The dogs were almost on him. They were German Shepherds, one brown and grey and one solid black, both tall as Arkady’s shoulder and moving fast. The black one was closest, and its teeth were so white and so many that they seemed to precede the dog itself by several inches.

  Arkady swallowed, and for one second his smile faltered, but then he forced it back, determinedly, and stepped towards the dogs, one hand outstretched towards the open jaws. He whispered in Russian as he went.

  The dogs halted. The black dog stood, growling, two paces from Arkady. Its hackles rose along its back. Arkady continued to talk, and he added his whistle – the whistle that could summon a murder of crows out of a neighbouring rooftop. The brown dog whined, and the black dog’s growl became less sure of itself. Arkady stepped closer, palm held upwards.

  Too close. The black dog snapped at it in earnest and gave a sudden volley of barks. Vita closed her eyes in one long, bleak blink of horror.

  ‘Nyet!’ said Arkady sternly. ‘Ya znayu, ty ne takoi. I know you’re better than that.’ And he whistled, again, long and low, and laid one hand on each of the dogs’ noses.

  When Vita opened her eyes, the black dog was lying on its side, and Arkady was kneeling at its head, rubbing it between the ears, while the other tried to lick the inside of his sleeve.

  He looked at the collars. ‘This one’s Viking, and this one’s Hunter. You can come down. Don’t burn your hands on the rope.’

  They crouched, hidden among bushes, looking out at the garden. It was huge, and ornate, though it had run wild now, and there was ivy growing everywhere they looked. Paths stretched in every direction from the back door of the house, some of them small and winding around flower beds, some lined with gravel. A small walled garden lay on the west side of the lawn, an array of rose beds to the east. The last winter roses were still hanging from the bushes, overblown but still a strange, bloody midnight red in the moonlight, intermingled with creepers.

  ‘I can’t see the fountain,’ whispered Silk.

  ‘No,’ said Vita. ‘It’s in the walled garden – over there, see?’

  They crossed over the lawn, Viking following Arkady adoringly and Hunter’s tail wagging against the boy’s leg.

  Silk glanced across the lawn at the back door. ‘Is that the door with the unpickable lock?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ said Vita. She looked at the house, rising up and up into the night sky. ‘They all are. It’s a fortress.’ Vita reached the walled garden ahead of the others. There was a small black wooden door in the wall, just as the plans had shown. She pushed it. It was locked.

  A hand moved her aside.

  ‘Let me,’ whispered Silk. She slipped her length of wire into the lock. ‘It’s not an easy one. Just a second.’

  It took her less than a minute, but each second felt like a week. Silk let out a hiss of relief as the lock clicked open.

  They filed in, Hunter and Viking barging among them, and closed the door behind them.

  Vita’s breath came out in a great wave of relief.

  ‘What now?’ said Arkady.

  Vita gestured at the fountain. It stood dry, but the skeletons of roses grew up high around it. Age had chipped away at its beauty, but had not destroyed it: it was a statue of a laughing boy. The boy looked, Vita thought, a lot like her grandfather might have, once. She pulled her trowel out of the bag. ‘We dig,’ she said.

  They began to dig in earnest. The ground was icy, and soon Vita’s hands were numb. But she shovelled and shovelled, her trowel occasionally clashing against Silk’s, and all of them were soon filthy up to the elbow.

  The hole grew bigger. Six inches deep … a foot deep.

  Vita felt her blood speed faster and faster through her body. Would it work? Would the plan work?

  And then it came. Footsteps, running. The others dropped their trowels and jumped to their feet, but Vita kept hold of hers, and moved to stand, ready, in front of her friends.

  The wooden door in the stone wall flew open, and a man came bursting through, sweating and panting and contorted with anger.

  ‘What the hell’s all this?’ The guard was tall and wide, and there was nothing kind in his face.

  Vita didn’t let herself hesitate. She charged straight at the man, her trowel held out in front of her like a bayonet. She felt his arm catch her across the shoulder, and tripped sideways, spinning to hit out at his chest. She felt both his hands close on her upper arm.

  ‘Run!’ called Vita. She turned to the others, who stood straight-backed, clench-fisted, watching.

  ‘I mean it!’ she cried, and a sudden white-hot panic rose in her.

  They had to run.

  ‘What are you doing? You swore you’d run!’

  But they didn’t run.

  And now the guard was gripping her wrist with an agonising grasp and was reaching out to catch Samuel, who stood there, unmoving.

  ‘No!’ said Vita. ‘This isn’t the plan! Run! We had a pact! RUN!’

  A second man appeared and stood in front of the door.

  ‘Stand still,’ he said, and pointed a rifle at Silk’s heart. ‘Don’t move, or there’ll be an accident.’

  They were led in single file up through the garden, across the lawn, through the back door, with the rifle bringing up the rear. The windows were all barred in thick, ugly, black-painted iron.

  The kitchen door was bolted from the inside; the guard went round and unbolted it. Vita saw Silk looking from out of the corner of her eye at the locks.

  Silk shook her head. ‘It really is a fortress,’ she whispered.

  Vita held her bag tight under her coat; nobody had yet demanded it.

  They were led through an empty kitchen, painted a bright cobalt blue, then down a hallway to a wooden door, which opened on to stone steps and a large wine cellar.

  The cellar was open at the bottom of the steps, and then stretched away in aisles of shelves, a library of wine bottles, a few shelves of whisky, one or two of rum. Someone had been tasting them recently, and a few half-drunk bottles stood on a shelf near the stairs.

  Those are my grandfather’s, not Sorrotore’s, thought Vita, and a further surge of anger rose in her. Thief.

  The floor was of stone slabs. There was no light.

  The guard pushed the four children until they were standing with their backs against the wall of the cellar. Then, still pointing the rifle, both men retreated.

  The door closed, and Vita turned to stare at the three faces in front of her. She was breathless, desperate, but they only stood, waiting for her to speak, Arkady smiling slightly.

  ‘Why didn’t you run?’ she asked. The words were strangled; her chest was thumping hard enough to choke her.

  Arkady grinned. ‘You never thought we were actually going to, did you?’ And he laughed.

  Samuel smiled his odd, hidden half-smile. ‘We never actually promised.’

  ‘Think back,’ said Silk, ‘to what we actually said.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Night Before

  Vita had sat on the bed, in her room, high up above New York, and told them the truth. She had spread out the book in front of them.

  ‘There’s one last thing I have to do,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have to get this book to Sorrotore. I have to give him The Plan.’

  Three sets of eyes, aghast, bewildered, stared back at her.

  ‘But then he’ll know where to find the emerald!’

  ‘No,’ said Vita. She sighed so hard her ribs creaked, and the sigh had all the secrets she had been keeping in it. ‘He won’t.’

  ‘He will!’ said Arkady. ‘Look, right here! The book says—’

  Vita looked out across the city, towards the Dakota. ‘The book is a lie.’

  The eyes watching her widened, then narrowed.

  ‘What?’ Silk edged away from Vita. ‘You’ve been lying to us?’

  ‘The emerald isn’t in the fountain,’ said Vita. ‘But I need him
to believe it is. I need him to put all his attention, all his men, all his focus, on that fountain.’

  ‘So where is the emerald?’ said Samuel.

  ‘It’s in the house.’

  ‘But you said the house can’t be—’

  ‘Can’t be broken into,’ said Vita. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘It said so in the newspaper!’ said Arkady.

  ‘I know,’ said Vita.

  ‘So it’s impossible!’ said Silk.

  ‘Impossible doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. What I need to do is get caught.’

  ‘Get caught?’ Silk and Samuel spoke together.

  ‘There are no houses for miles. If I get caught, there’s only one place where they could keep me until the police arrive.’

  Samuel’s mouth formed an ‘O’ of sudden comprehension. ‘In the house?’

  ‘Exactly. I can’t break in – but they can let me in.’

  ‘But the red book!’ said Arkady. ‘It had all the plans in it – all the detail! The blueprint! Everything said it was in the fountain!’

  ‘That’s because I didn’t write it for me. I wrote it for Sorrotore.’

  ‘But if the house is impossible to break into, it’s impossible to break out of! So we’ll all be stuck there!’ said Arkady.

  ‘No!’ said Vita. ‘No – twice no! It’s not impossible to break out of. And no, you won’t be stuck there – because you’ll run. You won’t be there.’

  ‘No we won’t!’ said Arkady.

  ‘You will. You have to promise you will. You’ll run out and away. I need you to help me get as far as the walled garden, and I might need you to help me start the hole, so it looks real – but then I need you to run. You can get the cab to wait and take you back to the station, and be home in time for breakfast. And I’ll search the house alone.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us this before?’ said Silk. Her eyes were still and wary.

  ‘I was afraid to,’ said Vita, and she could feel her eyes burning. ‘I thought … I thought, once I said it out loud, it would be over. I thought you might all say it’s ridiculous. Too difficult – too stupid – too dangerous.’ Then she drew a breath, and told them the shameful, selfish truth. ‘I thought if I told you right away, you’d say no.’

  Arkady let out a snort of indignation. ‘I would never say something’s too dangerous!’

  ‘I know,’ said Vita. It was an effort to speak. ‘I didn’t know you then. I do now.’

  ‘So all of it – you’ve had this planned, all along?’

  She nodded. ‘Planning – watching, thinking – it’s what I do.’

  Samuel looked at Vita; at the longing written in her hands and feet, at her frown.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m still in, if the others are.’

  Silk took one slow, hard look at Vita. Then she nodded. ‘It was always crazy. It’s still crazy. I’m still in.’

  ‘So you’ll run, when the guards come? You swear you’ll run?’ said Vita. ‘Like Samuel said – when one of us says run, we have to run. It’s the pact.’

  And they had all nodded.

  ‘I’ll get some more cocoa,’ said Vita, and set out towards the kitchen.

  Arkady looked at Silk, and Silk looked at Samuel.

  Arkady held out his left hand: the fingers were crossed. ‘I’m not running,’ he said.

  Samuel nodded. He took his hands out of his pockets. All of his fingers were crossed. He smiled his half-smile. The two boys turned to Silk.

  ‘I didn’t cross my fingers,’ she said, and grinned. ‘I just lied. I’m not running anywhere.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The cellar was icy and dark, but when Vita shivered it was not with cold. She reached into her bag and pulled out the torch – the battery was very low now, and so it cast only a faint glow, but it was better than nothing – and the two half-burned candles she had stowed there. She flicked a match with her thumbnail – a trick her grandfather had taught her – and, for once, it lit. She looked at the faces in front of her.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t going to run?’ she said.

  ‘Would you have brought us with you, if we told you?’ said Samuel.

  ‘No,’ said Vita. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Silk.

  ‘We’re a troupe now,’ said Arkady. ‘We fought together; we ate together. We’re a crew.’

  Vita felt the warmth of it spread up her stomach to her face. But before she could speak, the lock on the door crunched, and the door opened a crack. ‘Don’t be doing anything stupid. Sorrotore said to say he’s in the motorboat. He’ll be here soon enough.’

  Vita’s heart jolted. ‘What motorboat?’ she whispered.

  But the door slammed shut. Four faces stared at each other.

  ‘Sorrotore can’t come here!’ said Vita. ‘That’s not the plan! He was just supposed to tell the men where to dig! So they’d be distracted, and I could search the house. And that’s why we came by the last train – so he can’t follow! It would take hours and hours longer to drive.’ Her voice was very small. ‘I didn’t think of a motorboat.’

  The dark house, in the middle of the dark lake, she could face. The shotgun, she could face. But Sorrotore – his smile, and his eyes, and the power that he wore like cloth laid across his shoulders – she had not counted on that. All the remaining strength in her leg gave way, and she sat down on the floor.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do about it now,’ said Silk. She reached inside her white swan-feather cloak and drew out a small cloth bag. She dumped it open, and a flash of bright cloth, silk and wool, came tumbling out.

  ‘Here. If we’re going to do this – and, Vita, we are, and you can’t stop us – I thought we should be dressed in the way that makes sense to us. I packed your clothes while you were washing this morning.’

  ‘My sweater!’ said Arkady.

  There was scuffling in the dark.

  Arkady’s sweater glowed deep scarlet in the candlelight. Samuel flexed his arms in his black singlet, his black cotton trousers skimming the ground. Both boys were barefoot despite the cold. Silk wore a green dress that came down to her knees, fraying at the hem. The sleeves ended above her wrist, leaving her hands clear and free.

  Vita felt by candlelight for her clothes. She pulled on her grandma’s liquid-soft silk shirt, and her bright red skirt, falling full to the knee, perfect for running. She retied the laces on her boots. From her own bag she took a square of oil cloth and shoved it in her back pocket, added a stub of candle, then double-checked her penknife. She flicked it open and tested the edge of the blade with her thumb. It was sharp.

  Her hands were shaking. ‘Ready?’ She turned her collar up, and smelt the dry sweetness of her grandmother’s perfume.

  ‘Let’s go treasure-hunting,’ said Arkady.

  They waited while Silk knelt at the door, her lock-pick in hand.

  ‘What were you going to do if we had run off? How were you going to get out?’ she asked Vita.

  ‘I’ve been learning,’ said Vita. She pulled out a length of wire from her pocket and showed Silk. ‘I reckoned it might take me an hour or two, but I’d get there in the end.’

  A smile twitched – unwillingly, fleetingly – at Silk’s lip. ‘Well,’ she said, and the lock clicked under her hand, ‘that didn’t take an hour.’

  Vita peered under the door, looking for feet, or any trace of a guard. ‘They should both be outside. I think they’ll be digging.’ Adrenaline was starting to fizz through her blood, and she felt her whole body quickening.

  She pushed open the door. The corridor was lit by a single gas lamp on the wall.

  ‘Nobody,’ she said, and the four children edged into the hall.

  ‘Which way?’ whispered Samuel.

  ‘Grandpa said it’s in the old hiding place. That almost certainly means the safe. The safe is in the drawing room,’ said Vita. ‘This way.’

  ‘But if it’s there, in the safe, won’t Sorrotore have a
lready found it?’ asked Silk.

  Vita shook her head. ‘It’s not an obvious safe. It’s not behind one of the paintings, or anything like that. It’s hidden.’

  They tiptoed down the passageway, and came out in the kitchen, then passed through a swinging door into the entrance hall.

  The hall was as huge as it was dirty, but the moonlight cast the blue walls into navy. The flagstoned floor was cold even through her shoes, and the vast crystal chandelier still hung from a rope of chains above, dusty and candle-less.

  She leaned against the old grandfather clock, closed her eyes, and summoned up the blueprint in her mind. She could see it clearly – every room, labelled in neat block capitals.

  ‘The drawing room is through here,’ she said. A marble-paved corridor led off the hall. ‘Second door to the left.’ They darted in, and Vita closed the door soundlessly behind them.

  Four pent-up breaths were released, and then, as Vita’s torchlight cast across the room, Arkady gasped. Most of the furniture had been sold by Grandpa and Grandma, but the few sofas and armchairs which remained had been torn open in the back and seat, and the stuffing lay in piles on the floor of the room. The stuffed polar bear head lay cut open on the floor.

  ‘He’s been searching,’ said Arkady.

  ‘Someone should guard the door,’ said Vita.

  Silk nodded. ‘I’ll watch through the keyhole.’

  ‘Where’s the safe?’ asked Samuel.

  Vita gestured at the vast fireplace. ‘In there.’

  ‘Under the floor?’

  ‘No. It’s inside the chimney. Grandpa said it meant you got covered in soot every time you opened it, but it’d never be found.’

  Vita crossed to the fireplace. It was as large as a wardrobe, and the chimney was vast, wide enough to fit a filing cabinet inside. ‘I can’t see … Wait, no, I can! I see it – but it’s at least halfway up the chimney!’

  ‘Do you know the code?’ asked Samuel.

  Vita nodded. ‘It’s my birthday.’

  Samuel came to join her, and looked up the chimney. ‘Do you want me to go?’ he said quietly.

  Her foot was screaming yes, but Vita shook her head. This was the final stage: it had to be her. ‘I’ve got to do it.’