by Adam Maxwell
Katie held in her hand what looked for all the world like a length of stiff black wire. She carefully zipped the backpack closed once more before handing the snake camera to Violet, who nodded in acknowledgement.
Violet did as Zoe had shown her, plugging the lead directly into the base of the phone before opening the app and…
1% Battery Remaining
Violet flipped past the warning and activated the app. The screen turned black. For a moment, she thought the phone had let her down. Violet gave the phone a slap and still the screen remained resolutely black.
The pit of her stomach fell but as she moved the end of the wire the light from the room below at last appeared on the screen. Violet realised that she had been holding her breath and tried to breathe normally again. She blinked once, twice and her composure returned. With enormous care, she fed the camera through the hatch and the room below appeared on the phone. The bright light of the screen cast furious shadows on her face as she turned the wire, to rotate the camera, to see the whole of the room.
There was no-one by the closed door. No-one on the plush, velvet seats arranged next to the bookcase.
And then, there was no-one at all. The screen faded, the image of the room collapsing in on itself into a line a single pixel wide and then into darkness once more. Violet took an impatient breath and retracted the camera from the hatch. She held the button on the top of her phone down, knowing as she did it that the damn thing was as dead as they would be if there was someone sitting at the desk in the room.
Violet looked up to Katie, whose head was cocked judgementally to one side.
“Well I don’t suppose you brought yours, did you?” she whispered.
Katie gave a small shake of the head.
“Plan B,” said Violet. “We do this the old-fashioned way.”
Katie flipped her the bird.
Violet ignored her and leaned forward, her head resting on the rough wood of the hatch’s frame.
She could see the door to the room was still closed. Her field of vision, limited though it was, remained mercifully free of any living, breathing person. She looked up at Katie, her face barely visible in the darkness, and nodded. She saw the up-down movement of the nod in return.
Changing her grip on the loft hatch, Violet held it open with her right hand, her left held splayed in the air above her head.
Five
Her eyes adjusted and she could see Katie’s expression of concentration.
Four
Violet was counting down on her fingers, Katie nodding in time with each digit she dropped.
Three
Eyes fixed on the tiny sliver of the room below, Violet knew if they were discovered too early this would all have been a spectacular waste of time. And a waste of time that could cost her her life.
Two
No turning back now.
One
Violet whipped the loft hatch off completely and, in the same instant, Katie dropped down through it and into the relative unknown of the room below.
nine
There had been no sound from the room beneath Violet for at least a minute. She began to gradually move back towards the open loft hatch.
“Katie?” Violet breathed.
No noise came from the room below.
“Katie?” Violet moved closer still, unable to see her friend through the hatch.
“Katie?” she said, louder this time.
There was no reply. This was not a huge surprise, given that Katie was mute, but there was something else about the silence. Something Violet didn’t like. She should have been able to hear her friend moving. Nonetheless, she couldn’t wait any longer. If her friend was in danger then she had to face the threat head on.
Head on and upside down in this case.
Violet lowered herself into the room so that her hair entered first, hanging below her inverted face. She whipped her head around, taking in the whole room from the door and bookcase she had already seen to the wall opposite, where a well-stocked drinks cabinet sat under a portrait of a man who appeared to be Napoleon. Looking past the uniform and focussing on the face Violet smirked, realising that Elias Croft had had himself painted in place of the little man. She turned her attention to Croft’s desk. The wide, mahogany monstrosity was inlaid with red leather and sat in front of a wall made entirely of glass. A huge, dark red leather chair sat behind the desk and, leaning back in it with her legs crossed, feet perched on the inlaid red leather of the desk, nudging a metal pen jutting from a holder attached to it, was Katie. And she was reading a book.
“What the hell are you doing?” Violet spat the words.
Katie ignored her, preferring to make an exaggerated motion of licking her thumb and turning the page.
Violet dumped her backpack on the desk, lowered herself down and surveyed the room from a right-side-up perspective. There was a fireplace along one wall and above it was a huge oil painting of the film star Bruno Zenker in his signature role as Gino Lombardi from the movie ‘I Am The Mob’. Lombardi was a particularly vicious Italian-American gangster, primarily because he was a bit of a short-arse.
“He’s very fond of Zenker, isn’t he?” asked Violet.
Katie didn’t respond.
“He was from Kilchester, you know? Back then he was called Wilbur Wimberley,” said Violet. “I read one of his biographies. You wouldn’t keep a name like that, would you? Wilbur Wimberley.”
Katie tapped the page of the book she was reading, but Violet carried on unperturbed as she walked around the office, getting a feel for the room. “I mean there was no shaking Kilchester’s stink from her favourite son but Zenker seemed to embrace the infatuations the idiots from this city had with him and, sort of, played with it.”
Violet looked along the spines of the books on one of the shelves, then pulled one out.
“This is the biography, if you’d like to read it?” she asked.
Katie gave a slight shake of her head and made a show of turning another page in her own book.
“Like so many actors, he always mentioned his home town when he was interviewed,” said Violet, flicking through the book. “But he made sure he never came back here unless there was absolutely, unequivocally no alternative.”
Violet ran her fingers lightly along the mantelpiece. The wood looked like it could be ebony and black tiles ran along the wall under the painting. She paused to look at a single, rectangular, plastic tile that was embedded into the wood. The perfectly presented fire was just a pile of neatly chopped logs in a hearth that looked like it had never been lit. Next to it was a stand with cast iron tools for stoking and cleaning the fire, none of which showed signs of scorching or dirt.
“He won an Oscar for that,” said Violet, then snapped the book shut and put it back on the shelf. She’d hoped to startle Katie. Instead, Katie closed her own book and nodded towards the painting of Zenker.
“Yes,” said Violet, with mounting irritation. “That’s him.”
Katie made a turning gesture with her fingers.
“Nah,” replied Violet, lifting the painting slightly to look behind. “Nothing there — it’ll be behind the other one.”
Katie raised her eyebrows, but no emotion was visible in her expression.
“After the Oscar there was the inevitable drink and drug decline,” said Violet as she walked her fingers around the frame of the fake Napoleon, carefully checking for any obvious alarm triggers, and then lifted the painting down from the wall.
“Ta da!” Violet did a little curtsey as she pointed to the safe.
Katie gave a light round of applause and leaned further back in her chair.
Violet examined the safe more closely as Katie went back to her book.
“He went,” she continued, as she examined every millimetre of the safe, “from award-winning must-have to washed-up has-been in less than a decade.”
The safe was perhaps a metre along each side and inset into the wall so that the electronic keypad didn’t
stand proud. Beneath the numbers of the keypad was a large handle which Violet tugged. It didn’t budge.
“And then along came Bunny,” said Violet.
She thought for a moment, then unzipped her hoodie, searching hidden compartments until she pulled out an eight inch strip of thin metal. It looked like a metal ruler, but as Violet worked it, it became apparent that it had some, but not much, flexibility. She bent one end slightly, inspecting it and working it some more until she was satisfied with the angle. Then she forced it through the tiny gap between the edge of the safe and its door.
“You know,” said Violet, her words stilted by her efforts with the safe, “you’re supposed… to be the muscle… you could… y’know… act like it… be on guard or… something.”
Katie turned another page.
“Fine,” said Violet as she pushed the piece of metal further and further into the safe. “Bunny was twenty-five years his junior. Yes, she was a blonde. Yes, she exuded stupidity from every pore, but scratch the surface and the opposite was true.” Violet kept working the ruler into the safe, millimetre by millimetre. “Bunny single-handedly put him back on the map. Networked. Got him noticed by the coolest kids on the block and he ended up in some fantastic films. Did you see ‘Angry Monday’?”
Katie looked up from her book long enough to shake her head.
“Of course you didn’t,” muttered Violet. “Probably in the gym. Well, it was good.”
Katie shrugged.
“Zenker was prone to self-destruction though. Went into what I like to call the ‘racist grandad’ period of his career.” Violet stopped working the metal ruler in, satisfied with the progress she’d made shoving it into the safe, and instead moved it up and down, feeling for something. “He broke up with Bunny and moved in with his plastic surgeon.”
As her hands worked, Violet’s eyes stared almost blankly at the ceiling, picturing the inside of the safe in her head as she spoke.
“That plastic surgeon was a woman of singular determination. She seemed hell-bent on nipping and tucking him until his facial skin was so tight he could barely blink.”
Violet’s movements were getting smaller, as if she was closing in on whatever it was she was trying to reach.
“He cut Bunny out of his will… mostly,” she said. “But in an almost certainly drug-related twist of fate, Zenker left her three things: his poodle, which was also called Bunny, his Oscar statuette and, for reasons that never became clear, his ashes.”
Katie placed the book on the desk once more, apparently finally interested by what Violet was saying.
“She had the dog put down,” said Violet.
Katie made a face like she’d just tasted bitter lemon.
“She sold the Oscar and his ashes to the highest bidder. And those bids were pretty high because Zenker was the darling of the criminal fraternity.”
Katie looked bemused.
“Must be a male thing,” said Violet. “Not exactly the darling of the criminal sorority. Is that a thing? That should be a thing.”
Katie nodded.
“And then we stole it. The urn with the ashes, I mean,” she said, a smile forming on her face. “Anyway, watch…”
Katie steepled her fingers, all dutiful obedience. Violet put pressure on the metal strip before typing a sequence of numbers into the safe’s keypad.
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6
There was a beep and a green light flashed. Violet turned the handle, and the door swung open.
Katie looked mightily unimpressed.
“No!” protested Violet, a little too loudly. “That wasn’t the code.”
Katie’s brow furrowed and she stood up.
“You see,” said Violet, throwing open the door as wide as it would go. “There’s a button here.” She pointed to the rim of the door.
Katie wasn’t watching. She stalked from behind the desk, past Violet, to the office door.
“And when you hold the button down,” said Violet, but the enthusiasm drained from her voice with every word until she reached a deliberate robotic monotone, “you can reset the passcode. But I did it with the door closed.”
Katie was staring at the closed door, listening to something outside.
“Which is really impressive,” Violet muttered to no-one in particular. “Because most safes don’t have that.”
Katie snapped her fingers and pointed urgently to the door.
Violet nodded, snapping back into job-mode. She reached into the safe and grabbed an armful of the contents, dumping them on the desk before repeating the process two more times. Meanwhile, Katie left her post guarding the door and grabbed Violet’s backpack. Reaching into it, she took out a bundle of twenty pound notes wrapped with a money band. She flicked through the thousand-pound wad and threw it into the safe.
Shoving her hand into the backpack, she pulled out another fistful of the thousand-pound bundles. She paused, her eyes darting to Violet’s back.
“I’m perfectly aware that you don’t think this is a very good idea,” said Violet.
Katie pursed her lips in irritation.
“Have I ever let you down?” asked Violet, a little more softly but somehow managing to inject a little menace into the question.
Katie resumed shoving fistfuls of thousand-pound bundles into the safe.
There was a sound at the door. Both women snapped their heads around to look. Someone was out there.
“You ready?” asked Violet.
Katie shrugged.
“Oh, piss off,” said Violet, loudly this time so the people on the other side of the door could hear.
Katie grinned and the door swung open.
The look on Elias Croft’s face when he walked through bore scant resemblance to his Napoleonic portrait. Poise and battlefield composure was replaced with a hang-jawed double-take.
Violet and Katie stood still. Elias stood still. They stared. He gawped. And then, like air rushing into a vacuum, his wits returned to him and all hell broke loose.
ten
The lift wasn’t as big as Roach had thought it would be. The upper-halves were mirrored on every side, creating an infinite crowd of doppelgangers, all standing uncomfortably close and looking more than a little guilty for the actions which had brought them into possession of a staff key card. As the doors slid quietly closed, Roach pressed the button for the top floor. A living cliché like Croft would have the penthouse office, there was no doubt in the detective’s mind.
Roach didn’t yet have a plan for when the doors opened. Still, there was plenty of time to come up with one. A minute. Maybe two.
Roach’s mobile vibrated in his pocket, snapping him out of his reverie. He slid it out and suppressed a groan as the name of his partner flashed up on the screen. He swiped and answered.
“Addison?” Roach said.
“Where are you?” asked Scarfe.
“Same place I was before,” tried Roach.
“And where’s that?” Scarfe persisted.
“On the scene. Same place I was before, like I said. What did you want? I’m sort of in the middle of something.”
“So you’re not in Croft’s building?”
Roach’s shoulder dropped and he closed his eyes in frustration. How did they always know?
“There was a report. I’m investigating,” he said, his voice belying the irritation churning through his bloodstream.
“Investigating something is a two-man job,” said Scarfe. It was a statement. It was always a statement.
“I’m en route to his office,” said Roach, stabbing at the button for the top floor once more in the vain hope it would speed the lift. “I’ll meet you there.” He hung up, checked his phone and then spoke to the black mirror in his hand, “Like you would know the first thing about investigating, you corrupt fuck.”
Roach shelved his irritation as the lift jerked to a halt and the doors slid open. If money had been spent downstairs, it had been melted down and splattered across the walls up here. The corri
dor was wide and long, with only a handful of doors leading off it. The floor felt like it could be sprung, the dark wood parquet polished to a reflective sheen. The doors on the left and right each had brass plaques to the side but the door at the end of the corridor was unlabelled. And open.
Roach could see Elias and two black-suited men entering that far room. Pacing down the corridor, the bounce in his step increased with each stride. He pushed aside the urge to throw in a couple of ill-advised dance steps. Keep your eye on the target.
Which was exactly what he did, his eye firmly planted on his quarry as the two bodyguards and Croft closed the heavy door behind them.
But Roach didn’t have to rush. He slowed his steps and tapped his pocket reassuringly. In there was a warrant card. And if that didn’t work there was the access card. He paused a few feet from the door, composing himself and ordering his thoughts. The door was significantly larger, in both width and height, than any of the others. Almost as if Croft had something to prove with every part of the building that he could not with his own anatomy.
Deciding that the warrant card would go ignored from the outset, Roach plucked the access card from his pocket and ran it through the black plastic receptacle near the door handle. There was no light. No red, no green, nothing.
He rubbed the magnetic strip with his thumb and ran it through a second time. Again there wasn’t even a flicker of recognition.
He turned the card upside down and swiped it again. A green light flashed twice and then a solid red light. The door didn’t unlock.
The detective gave the card one last swipe, but again the solid red light mocked him and the door remained resolutely locked.
Oh well, he thought, time to do this the old-fashioned way. He raised his clenched fist and rapped on the door.
And then something odd happened. All hell broke loose inside the room. For a moment, Roach imagined that he had caught them in the middle of something nefarious, and that they were so scared of him that his knock alone had sent them into a panic. He soon realised, however, that the panic and the shouting was nothing to do with him. Something else was happening in the room. He needed to find out what it was, so he placed his ear against the flat of the door and listened.