Sweet Talking Money

by Harry Bingham

  A shame.

  Unseen by anyone, the rhythm of Cameron’s fingers began to change. Right hand, ring finger, up and depress. Index finger, left hand, up and depress. Thumb. Left hand, middle finger, depress. Right hand, ring finger, up and depress. Thumb. Right hand, middle finger, up and depress. Repeated again, and again, and again. Or do I, or do 1, or do I?

  4

  Back to the safe, and Cameron’s six buff folders.

  They had brought with them a high-resolution digital camera with a tripod designed for document work, but Bryn decided the copier would run faster. He was probably right, but even so the copier took fifteen minutes to warm up (Dai’s comment: ‘Bloody hell, even I used to warm up faster than that’) then it was low on toner, then out of paper. Bryn found the stationery cupboard and searched for what he needed. Stacked on the floor was a heap of old marketing junk, ancient history. On the shelves above there was everything they needed. Bryn took the toner, took the paper, fed the copier, set Dai to work copying. (‘Bloody hell, Bryn, I thought you wanted me as a burglar, not a bloody secretary.’)

  When Bryn got back to Cameron, he found her on the floor, lighting the remaining documents with a torch hooded by her black silk headscarf. With her long booted legs stretched out around the torchlight, and her eyes absorbed with scientific papers of incomprehensible density and subtlety, she looked dangerous and intelligent, Catwoman meets Einstein. She was frowning.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Bryn’s voice was taut and strained, not from the tension of the break-in but from the bottomless nightmare of the three words he’d watched her type.

  She answered coolly. ‘No problem.’ She tugged a strand of hair across her face and began to play with it, a familiar gesture in the old days, but now only a sign of deep thought. Eventually, she looked up with a smile. ‘I’m just beginning to wish I’d spent more time in the past studying respiratory disease. Like a lot more time.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll be able to …?’

  ‘In thirty days?’

  ‘Twenty-nine days, more like.’

  She shook her head, and her eyes travelled back to the papers in front of her. ‘I don’t know, Bryn … I’ll do my best, of course, but, I gotta say, I don’t know …’

  As she spoke, she was interrupted by footsteps coming down the corridor outside. Acting on instinct, Bryn bundled Cameron behind a green metal filing cabinet, and extinguished her torch. He crouched on the floor by the door, ready to burst upwards with a punch if the need arose. The phone in his pocket bleeped once, ignored.

  The moment passed. Dai and Degsy came in, Dai carrying his cargo the way a groom carries a bride over the threshold. On his lap, Degsy held a pile of photocopies, still warm from the machine.

  ‘I don’t know how much it’s going to help you though, love,’ said Dai to Cameron, passing them over. ‘It’s mostly letters and numbers.’

  Cameron smiled. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘That’s just the way I like it.’

  ‘Let’s move out,’ said Bryn.

  The papers which had come out of the safe went back inside. The safe door swung shut, and locked. So far, the job had been clean and swift.

  The raiding party moved quickly downstairs to the loading bay. Exposed to the night air, which was now beginning to freeze hard, Cameron grew chilly, and Bryn rubbed her back and hands in an effort to keep her warm. But he rubbed too hard and she pushed him away. Meantime, Dai had begun to unwrap Degsy’s bindings, when movement outside made everyone stop. A torchbeam prodded the lawn, then swung back to the building.

  ‘Shit, Don Jackson,’ hissed Degsy. ‘Mobile security. How come we weren’t warned?’

  Too late, Bryn remembered the warning sent him by the phone a few minutes earlier: there had been just one ring, a message that the car had passed Meg or Kati, but not both. Simultaneously, Bryn and Cameron leaped behind a pillar, the same one, about two and a half feet wide. With his back against it, Bryn took up all the available width and there was nowhere secure for Cameron except pressed up against him. He held her with one hand against her belly, one against her chest. He could feel her heartrate increase, but not astronomically. She was alert but not terrified, ready for action but never impulsive. She was also tall, slim, beautiful, wonderful. Bryn wanted her so badly his knees went weak.

  Dai meanwhile was desperately trying to tear away the duct tape from Degsy’s taut body. In doing so, he must have made enough noise to alert Jackson. The torchbeam jabbed inside the loading bay, searching between the pillars. With his foot, Bryn drew Cameron’s booted legs together, drawing her further into the triangle of shadow, bringing her more closely than ever against him. His own heartrate increased, fear of capture melting into joy at Cameron’s closeness.

  ‘Is that you, Mr Jackson?’ yelled Degsy, all of a sudden.

  ‘Jesus, son, there’s still a job to finish here,’ said Dai, sotto voce, or at least sotto voce for Dai.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Degsy, Mr Jackson. Degsy Parlour.’

  Jackson was invisible to the four people hiding from his gaze, but his torchbeam flashed at ever more obtuse angles now, indicating that its owner was coming closer.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Dai. Still ripping at the tape with his penknife, he picked up Degsy and held him flat against the pillar, at an angle to the vertical, so the young man’s belly was jammed against the concrete, his face poking out into the torchlight. His arms were free at the elbow but still joined at the wrist. His legs were trussed and pinioned like a hospital crash victim.

  ‘Evening, Mr Jackson.’

  ‘Good evening, Parlour. Any incidents?’

  ‘No, nothing. Thought I heard some noises down here, but must have been you I was hearing.’

  ‘Are you alright?’

  To Jackson’s eyes, Degsy must have appeared at an unnatural angle, arms bizarrely rigid and out of sight. ‘Got it,’ muttered Dai as the wrists came free. With one massive hand still rammed against Degsy’s bottom, he set to work on the lower half, no longer aiming for gentleness, just speed. Degsy moved a hand up to shield his eyes from the torchbeam, the first natural-seeming gesture he’d made. The vibrations still running through his body from the knife-work below and the sudden jolts in his position as Dai’s hand slipped must have appeared less natural.

  ‘Absolutely fine, Mr Jackson.’ A wodge of duct tape flapped from Degsy’s wrist. He pulled it off with a high-pitched laugh. ‘There’s a lot of mess down here. Might be worth mentioning in the morning. Could be a fire hazard.’

  ‘Got you, you bastard.’

  Dai spoke to the last of the duct tape. He moved his hand from Degsy’s bum, and the young man dropped with a jerk, painful feeling flooding back into his legs. Dai was on all fours ripping tape from Degsy’s trousers, while all Degsy wanted to do was roll over on to his side and weep as his blood rediscovered some much-loved major arteries.

  Jackson’s torchbeam poked into a pile of packaging material.

  ‘You’re right. This lot should have been cleared away. Who’s the fire officer?’

  Degsy limped to the front of the pillar, still leaning against it, knees and ankles still no match for gravity. His trousers were in fairly good condition except where the tape had passed, where they were massively crumpled and creased. They looked like a pair of trousers which had just spent a couple of hours being tied up …

  ‘Fire officer, Mr Jackson?’ Degsy was gasping. His legs had been numb in their bandages, but he wanted to scream now that he was released. ‘Fire … I’ll look into it.’

  ‘You OK, son?’ Degsy managed a light-hearted wave, with an elbow which still didn’t bend. ‘Yeah, fine. You want coffee or anything?’

  The torchbeam disappeared for an instant while Jackson must have consulted his watch.

  ‘I’ll go on with my rounds. You get that packaging seen to.’

  ‘Yes, sir, Mr Jackson,’ cried Degsy, weeping in painful relief.

  The torchbeam flashed back for a moment
in surprise, then moved away, more and more distant until it was gone.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Dai.

  Degsy said something worse. Cameron stepped forward, away from Bryn, leaving him to ache with loneliness. She picked up her papers from the ground, calmly, as though she always spent her Sunday nights in a black catsuit thieving information from beneath the noses of security guards.

  ‘Dammit,’ said Bryn. ‘Fire hazard. I should have thought of it sooner.’

  Without a further word, he dashed off into the building, returning in a few minutes with the bundles of papers from the bottom of the stationery cupboard.

  ‘What’ve you got there?’ asked Cameron.

  ‘Lot of old junk,’ said Bryn. ‘Causing a fire hazard. Best moved.’

  No further explanation came, not then, anyway. From the front of the bay, Degsy checked the path of Jackson’s torchbeam.

  ‘Better wait a while,’ said Degsy. ‘He’s checking the Manor before heading out.’

  ‘Thanks again, Degsy,’ said Bryn. ‘You’ll let us know – or let Meg know, anyway – if you get any grief over this?’

  ‘Lose my job, you mean? That’d be a tragedy and a half.’

  Bryn smiled. ‘You’re still welcome to work for me.’

  ‘Now you know how honest and trustworthy I am.’

  ‘If you turn me down, Meg’s going to want to know the reason why.’

  ‘Meg, now there’s a girl …’ Degsy tailed off in love-lorn silence.

  They waited till the coast was clear, then moved off into the night.

  5

  The night stretched peacefully across the silver lawns and dense black woods. Somewhere in the silence there were three dogs, two guards and their next target.

  Gathering themselves for the run, Bryn, Dai and Cameron sprinted across the lawn, hastening for the shadows where they were less immediately vulnerable. Panting and breathless beneath the twisting rhododendrons, they checked back the way they had come. Degsy, lost in the depths of the loading bay, was invisible. The remaining guards and dogs betrayed no sign of having seen them, if they had.

  They dumped their winnings so far over the wall in black bin liners, and a call to Meg brought her car rolling quietly down the road to collect them. Whatever happened from now on, the principal prize had been secured and, with luck, should pass without detection.

  ‘Now the sheds,’ said Bryn, sniffing as a sudden breeze brought a foul smell to their nostrils.

  It was hard work beating through the bushes. The rhododendrons formed a dense black screen overhead and little light filtered down to the ground beneath. What made the journey twice as hard were the twisting trunks and branches. Just as you thought you’d identified where one bush rose from the ground and moved to avoid it, another branch would smack you in the face, bruising and freezing at the same time. Silence remained golden, but Dai’s version was a stream of swearing, given forth in a loud mutter. Cameron was silent, but occasional grunts told Bryn that she was finding the going as hard as the two brothers.

  Eventually, they arrived. At a clearing in the bushes, the moonlight suddenly bright on their night-accustomed eyes, they found what they’d come for. Four sheds of galvanised metal, each one maybe forty yards long by ten wide. A pair of forklift trucks stood like gawky sentries in a dirt-turning circle, which was frozen solid now but which would turn to mud as soon as the cold released its grip. The smell was intense, strong and choking, as though the stink was enough to drive all oxygen from the air. Dai gave his opinion of the standard of animal care in a couple of well-chosen words.

  The door of the first shed was closed with a crude hasp and padlock, Bryn noting the signs of Altmeyer’s miserliness which had been invisible in the main building. Dai applied bolt-cutters to the lock until the metal pinged and clattered in surrender. Bryn swung the door open. Inside the shed, the building was formidably smelly. It took a few moments of careful breathing to reassure them that life was still possible under these conditions. Cameron found a lightswitch and turned it on.

  A string of dim bulbs brought a ghastly picture into view. Animals, kept for research, hunkered in tiny cages, squatting in their own shit. A thousand eyes flashed in the gloom. Despite the crowded life all round, not a sound emerged. Depression, apathy and fear lay as dense as fog over everything.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Cameron. Although a scientist and a biologist, her work had never inured her to the suffering of animals and she was instantly horrified by what she saw.

  ‘Bloody hell. Bloody sodding hell,’ said Dai, shock robbing him of imagination.

  More than the others, Bryn had known what to expect, but even he was appalled and horrified. The cages were ranged along two aisles running the length of the unheated building. There were trays of mice and rats, the commonest species by far. Rats are intelligent creatures, who love confinement about as much as humans do. The crowding was incredible. Some of the trays were just six inches high and almost half full of the beleaguered animals. Many were missing tails, their fur was weak and patchy, and scabs and open sores bore witness to the savagery that this cruel treatment engendered in its victims.

  Beyond the rodents, larger cages, stacked one on top of another, held larger prisoners. Cats mewed and hissed in their tiny cells. The poor ruined things, stinking with their own faeces, stared from the bars with lamp-like eyes, shrinking back if anyone approached, and still the awful silence continued.

  ‘There, puss. There, there, pusscat,’ said Cameron, poking a finger through the bars.

  The cat she spoke to was a tabby, with bare patches on her skin where she had rubbed herself away against the bars of her prison. The cat shrank back, then, in terror, lashed out, slashing Cameron across her fingertips. Blood dripped on to steel bars, an image encapsulating the whole barbarian place. ‘Poor puss, poor cat,’ said Cameron, licking her fingers. She was white-faced now, with a silent, burning determination to avenge the wrong.

  Worse was to come.

  In the largest cages at the end, black shapes squatted in fear. Strong arms cradled frightened heads, a hundred dark forms crouched in the foetus position. Monkeys, chosen by science for their similarity to humans, awaited their tortures in cages no jungle had ever prepared them for. Rhesus monkeys, macaques, chimps: the wider human family gathered in bestial reunion.

  There was no need for Bryn to give orders. The plan was clear and no one needed further incentive. Bryn took the video camera and began to film. He filmed the rats, their tiny cages, the terrible state of their coats. He filmed the cats, the soiling, the desperation, the crowding. He filmed the monkeys, terrified and defeated, cages piled on top of each other, awaiting the forklift trucks which would one day come for them, to transport them to the next nightmare chapter in their unhappy lives. Bryn wondered if any human hand would ever comfort them, or if the next touch they felt would be the experimenter’s hand, jabbing the needle, watching to see if the noxious substance inside killed or spared.

  He made his film coldly and carefully, sparing nothing, collecting every detail. Only when he was completely done did he rush to help the others. The cages were closed by simple catches operable only from the outside. Since Altmeyer expected his grounds to be secure, there was no need of further security inside the sheds. Cameron was already taking trays of rodents and spilling them out on to the floor. They tumbled out in shades of grey and white, falling two or three thick over her booted feet. Uncertainty was the strongest emotion visible from the rats’ behaviour as they found their footing on the chill concrete. All their lives, a couple of crowded footsteps had taken them to the walls of their world. Now, all of a sudden, those walls had fallen away, and decisions were required. Some of the rats found the walls of the cages stacked along the floor and shouldered up against them, feeling comfort in the security of familiar bars. Others, more active, darted forwards, only to turn and turn again, unable to believe in the possibility of freedom. But others, the smallest proportion, found immediate release, as thoug
h they’d been dreaming of just such a possibility for years. They ran for the smell of clean air coming in from the door, disappearing one after the other into the winter night.

  ‘Go on, you lot. Shoo,’ said Cameron, stirring the wriggling heap beneath her with her feet.

  ‘This’ll get them moving,’ said Dai, opening the doors of the cats’ cages.

  At first the cats shrank back, lashing out at any attempt to remove them. But Dai was unlikely to be put off by any number of cats and, wearing protective gloves, he reached in and dug them out, one by one, dropping them on the floor. Cats, mice and rats, all at large, remembering their primaeval selves.

  A skin-and-bone ginger cat was the first to move. Surprising itself, it made a pounce, catching one of the innumerable rodents between its paws. The rat wriggled and the cat let it escape. But the pounce was like the princess’s kiss, the gesture that broke the spell. The cats began to behave like cats, the rats and mice like rodents. The surge towards the door was faster now, spurred on by new hunting attempts by the ginger cat. And – more wonderful yet – the horrid silence ended. A mewing, whining, chattering sound filled the room: sounds of distress from a thousand throats, horrible to hear, yet many times more welcome than the dreadful silence which had preceded it.

  Bryn, Cameron and Dai were all now slipping catches, shaking out the reluctant animals. Only the cats and rodents had a real chance of escape into a normal life, but the raiders reckoned that the monkeys would be better for a taste of freedom, however brief. Bryn and Dai between them hauled the chimps out into the shed, as Cameron teased the smaller monkeys from their perches.

  The releases proceeded in silence until Bryn, checking his watch, told the others that he would go and film in the other sheds. He left them to continue, and by now there was a steady stream of animal life moving out of the door, into the woods, Noah’s ark in reverse. Wishing to get outside, Bryn found his way blocked by a chimp that had gambolled quickly to the doorway, then stood stuck on the threshold.