Heist: BookShots Page 6

  Slowly, above their heavy breathing, the thieves became aware of the sound of bass and cheers in the distance. Mastering their temptation to run, the trio pushed off at a fast walk. The sound of music and cheering soon grew louder, as did the steady stream of ravers making their way in the direction of the party.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Scowcroft asked a young girl whose face was painted with dots and swirls of neon.

  ‘It’s the Amsterdam Dance Event,’ she told him in accented English that hinted at Italian. ‘It’s a five-day music conference, and party.’

  ‘Outside?’

  ‘Outside, inside – it’s taking over the city.’ She beamed at him.

  Scowcroft smiled his thanks, and turned to his accomplices. ‘How did we not know about this?’ he hissed.

  ‘We came here to sell diamonds, not to go clubbing,’ Charlotte reminded him. ‘Now make friends with that girl. Ask her to paint our faces.’

  Scowcroft hated being told what to do by Charlotte, particularly when she was right, but the incident at the station had shaken him and the chasing man could still be on their heels.

  ‘OK,’ he relented.

  Five minutes later, their faces painted neon and backpacks deposited into waste bins, the diamond thieves pushed their way into a crowd with their new friends, and were swallowed up by the party.

  CHAPTER 21

  ‘THEY GOT AWAY,’ Hill said into his phone. ‘Bollocks!’ he spat, hating to lose.

  He was standing back from the streets that were a riot of noise and colour, the Amsterdam Dance Event in full swing. Hill was the only one present without a smile.

  ‘Tell me you have a bone, boss,’ he pleaded, pressing Vaughn for the reason that he’d called.

  ‘I do,’ Vaughn replied, and Hill could tell from his tone that his superior was becoming as invested in the case as he was. ‘The CCTV images from the stations have come up with a hit on the facial recognition databases.’

  ‘Well, that’s bloody good news!’ Hill beamed.

  ‘Good and bad,’ Vaughn admitted. ‘One of them is Matthew Barrett. He served with the Commandos on three tours of Iraq, including the invasion. Made the rank of corporal, but was discharged for drug abuse a year after his final stint out there.’

  ‘A Commando?’ Hill asked, relishing the challenge. ‘What did he do when he left? Any priors?’

  ‘He’s been living on welfare benefits since they kicked him out. The forces were his last employer.’

  Vaughn paused. When he went on, Hill could hear the conflicting emotions in his voice.

  ‘This was a good lad, before he went bad, Hill. Sounds like he’s got balls enough for ten men, and if he was a Commando, he has the skills to back it up.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, boss.’ Hill grinned, looking out at the sea of partygoers. ‘I know where he’s hiding.’

  CHAPTER 22

  THE STREETS POUNDED with sound and throbbed with the movement of thousands of ravers.

  ‘They’ll never find us in this,’ Scowcroft shouted against the noise. ‘It’s insane,’ he added with a smile, a young man after all.

  ‘Head in the game, mate,’ Barrett warned, attempting to bring Scowcroft back to earth. ‘I’m gonna text the buyer.’

  Scowcroft levelled out at the mention of the anonymous buyer. The search for a prospective customer for the stolen diamonds had been Barrett’s child in the operation, and had involved months of feeling out old military contacts – men who made their living by selling their skills to the wealthy, the greedy and the crooked. To find such a connection took time and trust, but Barrett had finally found their go-between.

  The connection was a former Commando known to Barrett from his deployment during the invasion of Iraq. The veteran – whom Barrett had sworn he would not name to his accomplices, or vice versa – had left the forces for the private sector, and was now bodyguard to an Arab prince. An Arab prince who coveted diamonds no matter their source, so long as the price was good.

  Barrett had agreed to two million pounds for the dozen stones that were valued at three. The money would be enough for Tony, and that was all that mattered. Barrett hadn’t turned to crime for his own benefit.

  Now he took a cheap phone from his pocket and turned it on for the first time. Entering a number from memory, he sent a simple message: ‘SEND.’

  ‘Now what?’ Scowcroft asked, the neon paint on his face doing little to disguise his anxiety.

  ‘We wait, mate,’ Barrett told him. ‘Come on. Let’s go find some food.’ He led the trio into the narrow alleyways that ran from the densely packed streets.

  ‘You want Charlie? Ecstasy?’ they were asked by shady men in hoodies.

  Scowcroft was wary of the criminals. ‘They could be cops out to sting,’ he whispered.

  ‘Look at his eyes, mate,’ Barrett schooled him. ‘He’s off his face.’

  Partygoers came and went in the alleyways that fed the main party, but away from the crowds the group’s camouflage was diminished.

  ‘I’ll keep a look up the street,’ Charlotte volunteered, and Barrett led Scowcroft into a kebab shop with Arabic lettering on its sign.

  ‘Marhaba,’ Barrett greeted the greying owner, before going on to order the meals in the man’s native language.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Scowcroft said with admiration. ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’

  Barrett shrugged. ‘After the invasion, it wasn’t a bad place for a while. We’d patrol around, get some food and some tea. It was all right, like,’ he said, casually dismissing some of the most momentous times of his life.

  ‘So why my brother?’ Scowcroft asked, after a pause to catch his nerve.

  It was longer still before Barrett replied.

  ‘It all went to shit, Alex. Don’t ask me the how and why, but it went to shit.’

  The conversation was uncharted territory for the two men. Scowcroft had always yearned to know more about his brother’s service, but the thought of Tony in his younger years, strong and vital, caused the younger man much pain to reflect on it.

  As for Barrett, he had kept the memories of those days pushed down in his mind, weighted there by drugs, but the memory of his best friend would never let him be.

  Perhaps it was seeing his brother’s salvation at hand that let Scowcroft finally ask the questions that had burned inside him for almost a decade.

  ‘Did he like it?’ He pushed carefully. ‘My bro. Did he like Iraq?’

  ‘He loved it.’ Barrett smiled. ‘But he missed you. And he missed her,’ he added with a nod towards the door. ‘He never shut up about the pair of you.’

  Their conversation was cut short as the restaurant owner placed their trays of food on the counter.

  ‘Was he happy?’ Scowcroft finally asked, taking great interest in the salt shaker. ‘The day it happened. Was he happy?’

  Scowcroft stole a glance out of the corner of his eye, and saw the older man’s jaw twitch before he answered.

  ‘Right up until that last moment.’ The phone buzzed in his hand. ‘Must be my guy.’

  The message was from a Dutch number that Barrett had never seen before, doubtless bought to send that single text before it would be discarded: ‘Get drinks with my British friend Pete at midnight. Table to the left of the DJ booth. Club Liquid.’

  ‘We got our place,’ Barrett said, taking his food from the counter and turning towards the door and Charlotte.

  He was stopped by Scowcroft’s hand.

  The veteran met the young man’s eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ Scowcroft told him.

  ‘It’s just a kebab, mate.’ Barrett attempted to laugh, uncomfortable with the admiration.

  Then, as he turned away from the young man, Barrett wondered how Scowcroft would have thanked him had he known the truth.

  That every day since the insurgent’s bomb had blown their vehicle apart, Barrett had hated himself for saving the life of Tony Scowcroft.

  CHAPTER 23

  �
�DETECTIVE INSPECTOR HILL?’ Hill was asked by a Dutch giant of a man.

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Sergeant Corsten. Please follow me and I’ll show you to the control room.’

  Hill followed behind the Dutchman’s huge strides. They were in a mobile operations centre set up at a city-centre police station, the building providing a control point for the policing of the Amsterdam Dance Event.

  ‘My chief tells me that you are here to see if there is something you can learn for the policing of festivals in London this summer?’ Corsten asked, repeating the fabricated story that Vaughn and Hill had concocted.

  ‘That’s right, Sergeant. They get bigger every year, and the police force gets smaller.’

  ‘Maybe that is why they send a detective to observe?’ Corsten questioned with a knowing look.

  Seeing that the sergeant had spotted the visit as a charade, Hill was content to smile and let him know he’d scored a point.

  ‘Here is our CCTV room,’ Corsten told him, pointing to banks of TV screens monitored by a mixture of police and private security personnel. From the look of a hard bearded man in the corner, even the Dutch special forces had their eyes on the event.

  ‘Terrorism,’ Corsten explained, catching Hill’s gaze. ‘But it makes our job easier, in a way. We wouldn’t have half the number of these cameras and equipment if it wasn’t for the terrorism budget. If you want to see the number of crimes prevented or responded to today, I can bring you the papers.’

  ‘Sure.’ Hill smiled, playing along. ‘Until then, you mind if I take a seat? Oh, and do you have a Wi-Fi connection I can use?’

  ‘Of course,’ Corsten replied, and wrote out the memorised network and passcode for the detective before taking his leave. Hill didn’t expect to see any paperwork. Corsten knew that Hill’s familiarisation was a sham, but police officer to police officer, he was happy enough to look the other way.

  Hill quickly cast his eyes over the TV monitors, seeing the same thing repeated over and over – DJs and revellers bouncing to a beat lost to the soundproofed control room. He knew that looking for individual faces in the sea of ravers without some direction was a pointless task. As he had on the train, Hill put his faith in the fact that the thieves would slip up, but this time Hill would not be denied his prize.

  Connected to the Internet, Hill now opened up his phone’s web browser and began to dig the thieves out from hiding with the one connection he had – the name of Matthew Barrett, and his service as a Royal Marine.

  It was only moments before Hill had his first result. It was a BBC News article from 2008, listing Barrett as being awarded the Military Cross for his actions in Iraq the previous year. Further searches led to local news websites, where Barrett was lauded as a hero for saving the life of his hometown friend Tony Scowcroft, who’d been crippled in an explosion.

  Now Hill had a second name, and he entered it into the search engine.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered, seeing a long list of results. All of them were fund-raising campaigns aimed at getting Tony the medical support he needed not only to recover, but to survive – his body was intact, but Tony was brain-damaged, seemingly beyond repair.

  Scanning through the web pages, Hill saw that the latest plea had been posted on justgiving.com only three months ago, and aimed to raise the $2 million it would take for Tony to be accepted into a groundbreaking medical trial in America. If successful, it would give the man back his life.

  But the campaign had raised barely $50,000.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Hill breathed, sitting back in his chair, because the reason behind the diamond heist had become abundantly clear, and the consequence of the thieves failing caused his stomach to turn.

  ‘If I catch them, he’s dead,’ he whispered, and dropped his head into his hands.

  CHAPTER 24

  DEPOSITING THE LEFTOVERS of their takeaway meal into an alleyway bin, Scowcroft pressed Barrett for information on the buyer’s location.

  ‘He’s told you twice already, Alex,’ Charlotte cut in, her patience thin, but Barrett calmed her with a look and gestured to his smartphone.

  ‘It says on here that it’s a high-end club about a mile away, mate,’ he told Scowcroft.

  ‘What’s high-end?’

  ‘It means it’s expensive,’ Charlotte answered. ‘It means we can’t go in there dressed like this.’ She gestured at their neon faces, jeans and trainers.

  ‘Well, the bags are gone, and we’re all out of clothes, so how the hell are we going to get into a place like that?’

  ‘I’ll look and see if there’s a twenty-four-hour supermarket,’ Charlotte proposed, taking out her phone. ‘Are we expected at this guy’s table?’ she asked Barrett, who shrugged. ‘It would help getting in if we are,’ Charlotte told him.

  ‘You seem to know a lot about this kind of club,’ Scowcroft muttered, knowing that Blackpool’s drinking and club culture was anything but high-end.

  ‘I did have a life before your brother,’ Charlotte replied without thinking, instantly regretting her words. ‘I didn’t mean it like—’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Scowcroft said, his voice flat and cold.

  ‘I . . .’ Charlotte tried to backtrack, but Scowcroft’s eyes simmered with anger, and she knew it would be useless. Instead she concentrated on her phone.

  ‘Here,’ she pointed, her voice a shadow of its usual strength. ‘We can get the clothes from there.’

  Barrett knew Charlotte’s words hadn’t been meant literally, but even he was subdued at the implication in them.

  ‘OK,’ he finally uttered.

  Charlotte moved to put her phone away, but an alert flashed onto its screen with a loud ping.

  ‘It’s the BBC News update,’ she told them as she opened the app. And then she wished she hadn’t.

  Because Barrett’s face was spread across her screen.

  CHAPTER 25

  IN THE POLICE control centre’s CCTV room, Detective Inspector Hill’s guts churned as he watched over the monitors.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Sergeant Corsten asked, noticing Hill’s hand on his stomach.

  Hill told him he wasn’t and moved the hand away. In truth he was sick. Sick at the implications that his own success would have on a man who’d been crippled and brain-damaged while serving his country.

  He rubbed at his eyes and tried to visualise a future where his decisions would concern buying a new piece of gym equipment, and not the life-and-death struggle of a brave man.

  The detective’s phone buzzed, and he saw the message from Vaughn: ‘BBC just ran Barrett’s picture.’

  Hill opened the BBC News app, seeing that the newly released story was one of the top trending items on the site. He scanned the short article, which simply stated that Matthew Barrett, a former Royal Marine, was wanted in connection with a violent crime, and that his nose was badly broken. Above the text, the proud photograph from Barrett’s military record sat alongside the grainy image from London’s Underground.

  The article was light on detail, but that was how Hill had wanted it. The news report was the beater that would flush Barrett and his friends into the open, he was sure of it.

  ‘Look at this.’ Hill heard Corsten address him on the second attempt, the Dutchman pointing a finger towards the room’s CCTV screens.

  Hill stood and let out a deep breath to clear his mind.

  ‘Here,’ Corsten jabbed with his index finger. ‘And here.’

  Hill followed the finger and saw what the eagle-eyed Dutchman had seen.

  Something wasn’t right in the colourful pictures of ravers. Two men – no, three – were combing their way through one of the stage’s crowds, their thick shoulders and shaven heads marking them out as obviously as a tractor cutting through a field of hay.

  ‘They are not there for the party,’ Corsten observed, and Hill found himself nodding in agreement.

  ‘You mind if I use your bathroom?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course.’ The Dutchman smiled, kn
owing that Hill would not be coming back.

  CHAPTER 26

  BARRETT LOOKED INTO the faces of Scowcroft and Charlotte. Their wide eyes reminded him of his battle-shocked comrades in Iraq.

  ‘You can’t go,’ Scowcroft finally murmured.

  ‘Of course I can.’ His mentor smiled. ‘I’m not charging an enemy machine gun, mate, I’m just going to draw the police away from you two. Just remember, the buyer doesn’t know you, or your names. You may have to win him over. Show him the news article. Here, give me one of your phones.’

  Charlotte handed him hers, and Barrett flipped the phone’s camera so that the screen showed himself and his two sullen accomplices. ‘These two are with me, mate. You don’t need to know who they are, and they don’t know who you are. Deal with them. Out.’

  ‘Pete’s not his real name?’ Scowcroft mumbled.

  ‘No real names.’ Barrett shook his head.

  ‘Where will you go?’ Charlotte asked, beginning to accept the inevitable.

  ‘Your meet with the buyer is at the top end of the city centre. It’s mostly waterways to the east, so I’ll go south or west. I’ll find a way of letting them see me, but keep enough cover that they can’t catch me.’

  ‘Baz,’ Scowcroft pleaded, ‘you’ll go to prison.’

  A genuine smile broke across the veteran’s features. He couldn’t tell his partners how his mind had been imprisoned and tormented since the moment he’d seen Tony’s mangled body by an Iraqi roadside. He couldn’t tell them that the four walls of a cell would be heaven to him, if only he knew that his best friend was restored.

  ‘Since they kicked me out of the Marines, I’ve been living in shitholes worse than I ever did in Iraq,’ he told them instead. ‘I’ll have a roof over my head, and food. I’ll even have a gym.’ Barrett smiled.

  ‘We can’t let you go,’ Scowcroft insisted.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Alex. I’ll probably even run into some of the old unit inside. God knows they’re in and out of the system enough. Just think of it as me being back in the barracks at Taunton, but no marching, and no pay.’