Here Comes Charlie M

‘Drill it out,’ decided Johnny. ‘Can’t work the same trick as with the door.’

He used the dentist’s drill again, first driving out the rivets and securing screws and then, when there was sufficient looseness in the lock to pull it back, revealing the securing arm, inserted the blade of the electric saw and cut through it.

Johnny pulled the door back and then stood away, for Snare to get to it. Files and documents were neatly stacked on the shelves and at the bottom there was a small cash box.

Snare worked through the documents in complete concentration. Anything he didn’t want he replaced tidily within the file and then put the file back upon the shelf from which he’d removed it.

‘Ah!’

Snare turned, smiling.

‘Here it is.’

The man moved away from the safe with a sheaf of papers.

‘What about the cash box?’

Snare turned to the safebreaker, the pain etched into his face.

‘Let’s leave them their tea money, shall we?’

Johnny trailed the man from the office, face burning with regret at his first mistake. At Snare’s insistence, he relocked the manager’s door, then went back down the stairs, turning off at the first landing towards the barred safety deposit room.

The opening was like a huge safe door, set into metal barriers within the protection of the wall. Johnny felt another jump of excitement. He’d done one before, he recognised. So it wouldn’t be difficult; he’d pass the test.

He used the stethoscope again, more controlled this time, so he didn’t over-adjust the combination control. After the third tumbler, he allowed himself the conceit, counting aloud as each combination clicked home.

‘No alarms,’ declared Snare, bent over another blueprint.

The man hadn’t noticed the expertise, realised Johnny, annoyed. Irritably he pulled open the entrance to the vault.

The gates that formed the secondary barrier were ceiling to floor, protected by a wire alarm system and then by an electrified beam which triggered a signal when it was broken by any interruption between the ‘eyes’. Snare bypassed the first as he had the other wired precautions, then placed immediately in front of the door two wire cages used in hospitals to keep the pressure of bedclothes off patients suffering from broken limbs. Securing holes had been bored in the frames and he quickly bolted them to the floor. The beam played unbroken beneath the cages. To get into the deposit room, they would have to step over but even if their feet hit the protection, the bolts prevented it sliding into the beam.

Johnny stooped before the lock, then shook his head.

‘Have to blow it.’

Snare nodded, accepting the judgment.

From the attache case, Johnny took his favourite, the P-4 plastic and a detonator, pressing it around the lock. Briefly in command now, he sent Snare to an office to get cushions and these he wired around the explosives, legs straddling the invalid hoops.

The explosion, decided Johnny, made up for the mistake over the petty cash box. He’d wedged the door, in case it swung too hard against the cages, but so well had he primed it that the caution wasn’t necessary. The lock blew with a muffled, crackling sound, hardly displacing the cushions.

‘Very good,’ Snare praised him. The department’s detailed training in use and construction of explosive devices would have been more than sufficient, decided Snare. But then, the real purpose of Packer’s involvement came later.

Johnny smiled, grateful for the remark.

Inside the safety deposit room, Johnny worked again from impressions, operating to Snare’s quiet instructions from the list of box holders. They took only cash and jewellery. Documents were replaced and then the boxes locked again. Snare stood in the middle of the room, packing the cash into stiff-sided cases and the jewellery into a leather hold-all.

‘What do you reckon?’ demanded Johnny, unable to control the excited question. ‘How much?’

The other man looked at him, as if he found the query curious.

‘Maybe a million,’ he said, casually.

It wasn’t normal, thought Johnny, for someone to be as calm as this bugger was.

They worked for another hour, the only conversation Snare’s commands to the other man. Suddenly, Snare said: ‘Try 216.’

It took Johnny fifteen minutes to get the key right. He moved the lock, tugging at the deep metal tray as he did so and then stopped in amazement.

‘Jesus!’ he said softly.

Snare made no response, calmly reaching over his shoulder and extracting the dollars, banded together in tight bricks. He abandoned the suitcases, counting the money out on a small table in the corner of the room.

‘Two hundred thousand,’ he announced. ‘And some insurance policies.’

Christ, he was cool, admired Johnny. Still not showing the slightest excitement. His own stomach was in turmoil and he knew he’d have diarrhoea in the morning.

Snare packed the money into a hold-all he kept separate from the containers in which he’d stored the rest of the property.

‘What about the policies?’ asked Johnny.

The other man hesitated, then laughed.

‘Leave the policies,’ he said. ‘The bastard is going to need all the insurance he can get’

There were no incriminating documents anywhere: Charlie Muffin had been too conceited. Always had been. So now there wasn’t a thing he could do to prevent his own destruction.

Johnny frowned.

‘You know him, then?’

Again the hand came up to the disfigurement.

‘Oh yes,’ said the man. ‘I know him.’

It had been worth it, decided Snare. Every gut-churning minute had been worth it.

The Aeroflot freight carrier touched down precisely on schedule and taxied to the north side of London airport, where maximum security could be guaranteed. Ignoring the rain, the diplomats from the Russian embassy insisted on standing next to the ramp, ticking the numbered boxes against the manifest as they were unloaded on to the ground and then into armoured cars.

‘These sort of jobs frighten the piss out of me,’ said a Special Branch inspector, huddled in the doorway for protection.

His sergeant looked at him quizzically.

‘It’s only jewellery,’ he said. ‘And copies at that.’

‘Faberge copies,’ corrected the inspector. ‘Lose sight of one piece of this and our feet won’t touch the bloody ground.’

TWELVE

Because two film actors and an M.P. were named among the victims, a single-column story on the bank robbery was even carried in the Neue Zurcher Zeitung, where Charlie read it first.

From the international news-stand in the foyer of the Dolder Hotel, he managed to buy that day’s Daily Telegraph and The Times. Both led their front pages with it; the Telegraph even had a diagram, showing the thieves’ entry. The work of complete professionals, a police spokesman was quoted as saying. Until all the safe deposit box-holders were contacted, no positive assessment could be made of the value.

‘The bastards,’ said Charlie. ‘The cunning bastards.’

He paused on the Kurhausstrasse outside the hotel. He was trapped, he recognised objectively. In a way he’d