He had me well, well sussed.
I scanned them and realised things were not looking sweet.
I had expected the offices to be light weight affairs. The sheets in front of me told me that the buildings were serious about their purpose. They really were banks and banks were a completely different game. I may have been good at safes in my time but cracking a bank took a team and money — I had neither.
I sipped my coffee and flicked through the sheets.
‘Not easy,’ said David.
I nodded.
He reached under the table, pulled up an envelope and flicked it onto the table. I grabbed it and opened it. Inside was a blurry picture of a girl sitting at a restaurant table and scribbled below a number and a name. Her name was Maria.
‘She works in the Inca branch. I think she has money problems.’
It was all he had to say about her. She was pretty although the photo wasn’t good enough to make out any real detail. I took another slug of coffee. Between the plans and the girl there might just be another way to do this.
We chatted about nothing for a while and parted. I had some planning to do.
At one o’clock I was standing across from the Mallorca Security building watching the comings and goings.
The notice on the office said it was closed from half past one to five thirty — siesta time. At just after one thirty Maria emerged, locked up and headed away from me. I crossed the road and tried to keep her in sight. There was no need to play the super spy role, as she had no reason to suspect someone was watching her.
She nearly had me lost in the maze of back streets that make up the centre of the town but, at last, she stopped at a front door, took out a set of keys and then she was gone. I did a walk by. There were six flats in the block. I checked the names and there was a M Lopez Tavez. None of the rest had an M for first name. She was on the second floor.
I spent the afternoon wandering. There was nothing else to do. I hung around for an hour to see if Maria emerged but this was a non-commercial area and there were no cafes or shops to hide in. All I was doing was making myself look suspicious so I left.
At just before five I was back at Maria’s door. Fifteen minutes later she emerged and I followed her back to Mallorca Security. Maria took out keys and opened up. I crossed the street and watched her through the window as she entered a code into an alarm box.
I could try and lift her keys but, from what I had seen on the blueprints, this wouldn’t get me half way to where I needed to be. Anyway without the alarm code I was stuffed — given the set up it would most definitely be linked to the police — or worse.
There was no one else in the shop so I entered. I was conscious of the CCTV camera but if I was going to get Dupree I needed to take a few risks. I approached the counter and Maria smiled at me. Not half pretty.
I enquired after a security box and she responded in perfect English before handing me a small A5 flyer. It detailed the prices and the security precautions. I signed up for a box at twenty Euros a week.
To my left there was a door and I knew, from the blueprints, that both the safe and the security boxes sat behind it. On the wall next to the door was a keypad. Maria told me that when I visited I simply punch in the key number from my receipt and that would let me in to the room. She took me in to have a look.
This was way beyond the credit union set up back in Glasgow.
She entered a number on the door keypad and the door clicked. She pushed it open and we entered a room with three curtained booths. Beyond this was a second door and another keypad. She tapped in another code and led me through the door.
There was yet another door on my left and I knew that led to the safe. On my right was a bank of boxes of varying sizes. I chose one of the smaller boxes, sitting on the second row up from the ground near the far wall.
Each box had a keypad and a small handle. I was required to choose my own five digit code and set the box. I looked at my receipt and noted that my account number had five digits. Maybe the 13214 from Spencer’s original sheet was both the account number and the access code — it would certainly be an easy way to remember it. Stupid but easy.
Maria stood in the room as I extracted my box. She escorted me back to the room with the booths, and told me to press the red button when I was ready to go back into the box room. She left me alone.
I took the box in to the nearest cubicle and dropped in a five euro note, closed it and pressed the red button. Maria appeared and escorted me into the box room and watched me replace the box. There was no opportunity to check out the other boxes.
Back in the main office I smiled at her.
I left and waited until she closed up at eight o’clock. No one else came to help. She seemed to run the late shift on her own. I followed her back to her flat and then I headed back to my hotel.
Chapter 51
Sunday August 3 ^rd 2008
Today was a dead day. The shop was closed and Maria was nowhere to be seen. In frustration I drove to Palma to look at the other Mallorca Security shop.
If anything it looks a harder nut to crack. It sits in the shadow of Palma ’s cathedral or as it’s known ‘La Seo’; a building that had its foundation stone laid in 1229, was not finished until 1601 and was still undergoing alterations as late as 1904. I have known a few builders like that in my time.
The Mallorca Security building lies on the Paseo de Born — a street dominated by a central walkway. The store is wedged between a fashion boutique and a bank. I tried to get round to the rear but as far as I could tell there seems to be no back entrance.
The day was proving to be a washout and, even though I had only been on the island three days, I was getting nervous. My flight was on Friday and come hell or high water I had to be on it.
I retired to a cafe and was making my nerves worse with more coffee when I caught sight of a man walking down the centre of the street. Well dressed, he had a tall slim woman hanging from his arm.
It was really the woman who caught my attention. I’m sure in Spain six feet women, dressed to kill, are the norm but even so she was a stunner. What was more intriguing was that that I knew those legs well. I caught a glimpse of the man as he turned his head to say something to her. The coffee cup in my hand froze mid air. I knew him!
I jumped up, threw a pile of Euros on the table, sprinted across the road and onto the walkway. I dropped in behind the couple and followed them as they wandered across the road and up towards the cathedral.
The stairs up to the cathedral were busy with tourists coming and going and I had to sprint the last dozen or so as my quarry turned right and out of sight. I rounded the corner into a short street that led to a square that fronted the main entrance to the cathedral. The couple jumped into one of the many horse drawn buggies that queued up outside the entrance catching the tourist euro.
I assumed they would return at some point.
The man’s face played in my head. I knew it well. He was one of the two that I thought I had known from the photo back in Inca and I now knew who he was. As soon as I saw him with the long limbed beauty, two and two made four.
I had met him before and not in Spain.
On my wanderings from the hostel in Glasgow I often took a turn past a Spanish tapas bar that sat on Renfield Street. There was no way I could afford to eat there but the pair of legs that had just walked away from me in Palma, belonged to one of the waitresses in the tapas bar. It was the main reason I tortured myself with the smell of good food. I had nicknamed her Eleven — as in legs eleven — for lack of anything more imaginative.
After I moved in with Martin I discovered that the bar was one of his regular haunts. I asked if he knew Eleven. He said vaguely. That surprised me. You could hardly see those legs and vaguely remember them — not
