Читать книгу The Double Eagle - James Twining - Страница 24

Clerkenwell, London

22nd July – 7:42pm

It had been a hat factory when it had first been built in 1876, according to the inscription chiselled into its once proud façade. Then, during the Second World War, production had been given over to the manufacture of buttons for RAF uniforms. By the time Tom had bought it, the building had fallen into disuse, the store and warehouse level empty, the three upper floors carved up into office space in the 1960s.

Tom had chosen the, by comparison, palatial surroundings of the Managing Director’s office as his bedroom. Inexplicably it came complete with its own marbled en suite bathroom, as if the former boss’s managerial mystique would have crumbled had the staff ever suspected that he used the toilet much like the rest of them.

Eventually, Tom’s idea was to have this top floor as a huge open plan living room complete with kitchen and dining area. The second floor would be bedrooms and bathrooms while the first … well he still hadn’t quite decided what to do with the first. More showroom space perhaps?

It didn’t matter. That was all in the future anyway, after the store was up and running. For now, he had to make do with the cracked mirror on the back of the bathroom door as he adjusted his tie, picking his silver cufflinks off the chipped filing cabinet that now doubled as a chest of drawers and deftly threading them through the double cuff of his Hilditch & Key shirt.

‘I’ll see you later,’ he shouted to Dominique as he clattered down the concrete steps, his footsteps echoing back up around the stairwell’s empty carcass.

‘Okay.’ She had appeared at the doorway to the second floor where she had taken up residence amid the tea-stained walls of the former finance department. ‘Have fun.’

Tom stepped out into a cherry sunset, the sun scrolling down through an orange sky, a warm whisper of air shushing through the streets. He liked seeing the city at this time. It was a strange transition period, when one set of users melted away and another appeared.

He soon reached Smithfield, Europe’s oldest meat market, a low slung amalgam of a refurbished cast-iron Victorian market hall and a post-war brick and concrete hangar. It was surrounded on all sides by a crenulated roofline of alternately short and tall warehouses, a jarring convergence of red brick and white stone, of Gothic windows and industrial steel shutters. Five minutes later he was in Hatton Garden, the centre of London’s diamond trade.

It was nearly empty. Gone were the eager shop assistants enticing you to enter, offering you their very best price, suggesting a pair of earrings to go with the necklace. Gone were the courier bikes and the security vans and the anxious soon-to-be-weds, comparing ring prices in gaudy shop windows. Their shutters had been drawn down, their contents safely stowed for the night, their neon lights extinguished.

And yet the street projected a latent energy. Rather than be asleep it was merely resting. A few Hasidim with pale faces and dark suits still stood in doorways, plunged into shops and buildings, swapped anxious glances from under their dark fedoras. Behind the scenes, the work went on, stones were cut, deals were done, hands shaken, money counted.

Perhaps because his own life had been so lacking in order, so devoid of any fixed reference points or rules, Tom was fascinated by this place. As in Smithfield, he drew an almost spiritual reassurance from the continuity of these streets, their daily cycle, the comforting embrace of their familiar routine. In a way, he craved their predictability.

Stepping in off the street, Tom presented his pass to the security guards on duty in the dingy fluorescent lobby of the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd. Sitting behind their barred window they inspected it carefully, flickering screens in front of them covering every angle of the lobby and vault and staining their faces blue. Satisfied, they buzzed him through the first door and then, when that had closed behind him, the second door with metal bars running through it.

The reinforced vault there, at the foot of the dark green linoleum stairs, is about seventeen foot square, its walls lined from floor to ceiling with 950 identically-sized tungsten and steel doors that gleam silver under the lights, each individual box numbered in black. Unusually for that time it was empty. That suited Tom perfectly.

He took a key out of his pocket and indicated to the guard who had followed him into the room which box he wanted opened. They both put their keys into the two separate keyholes and turned them. With a click, the door opened; Tom drew out the long black metal container it concealed and placed it on the metal tray that slid out from between two layers of boxes at about waist height. It was empty apart from another key which he removed. Turning to a second box on the opposite wall, he and the guard again inserted their keys. This time, Tom waited until the guard left the room before opening the black container.

He already knew what was in it but opened the small leather pouch it contained anyway, emptying its contents into his gloved hand. Just over quarter of a million in cut diamonds, his share for the Egg he’d stolen in New York. Much easier to move than cash and, if you knew who to ask, accepted in more places than American Express. He tipped the diamonds back into the pouch.

Reaching into his jacket pocket, he removed the Egg and placed it in the second box. He’d wrapped it in his ski mask, a small symbolic act that he knew wouldn’t be lost on Archie when he came to collect it. He slid the box back into the wall and locked the door. He then dropped the pouch and the key to the second box into the first box, returned it to the wall and again locked it shut.

He passed through the security gates again, nodded at the guards and then stepped out onto the street just in time to see the street lights buzz on.