“Hello sir, how may I help you?”
The junior manager in the grass-green suit smiled up at Doc, slightly glassy-eyed but keeping a game professional face on.
Imp smiled back at her, then discreetly poked Doc in the ribs. Doc startled.
“Uh,” he said.
“The box,” Imp reminded him. Doc cast him an aggrieved look and Imp chilled. They were well inside the lobby and there were three short queues forming.
“Getting there.” Doc glowered at him, then turned back to the woman, who was fighting off an embryonic frown. “I have a safe deposit box,” Doc told her. “I need to check the contents: there’s a bearer bond that may have expired and the bloody computer’s eaten my scan—”
“Yes sir, if you’d care to take a seat over there?” She gestured at an unoccupied desk. “Someone will be with you shortly. And your—”
“Husband,” Doc said with a straight face.
“Please.”
Imp smiled at her, tucked Doc’s hand under his arm, and led him to the waiting area.
“What was that about?” Imp murmured between motionless lips as he sat down.
“Overloading her with meaningless trivia—” Doc patted him on the back of the wrist—“dear.”
“Really.” Imp paused. “You remembered to bring the account details and the ID, didn’t you?”
“Of course.”
They’d agreed that Doc, with his penchant for highly regrettable suits, would be better at masquerading as the Bernard bloke. Imp could camp it up as his usual flamboyantly louche self, and provide top cover for Doc if it became necessary to bullshit their way out of a sticky wicket. The forged driving license and wallet padding—Bernard’s bank card, PIN, inside leg measurement, and other details—had come via Imp’s sister.
Imp’s plan was quite simple: they weren’t going to rob the bank at all. They needed to go through the contents of the deposit box and photograph the paper contents, but if the security drones wanted to cavity-search them at any point in the process then that was totes copacetic, at least as far as Imp was concerned. (Doc’s opinion of cavity searches had not been solicited during the formulation of this plan. In Imp’s opinion, it was best not to invite a negative reaction.)
Both of them had smartphones. Del, lurking nearby in her posh ride, was on speed dial. Either of them could sweet-talk their way out of any trouble short of a shoot-out with a bit of skull sweat. The plan didn’t call for any risk-taking at all: What could possibly go wrong?
Fuck fuck fuck … “Look!” Wendy stared at the CCTV feed, transfixed.
“What?” Mr. Granger frowned at her. “What is it?”
“Look! It’s them!” She stabbed her finger at the desktop monitor, then pointed back at the tablet, freezing the replay on it.
“I don’t see—”
Wendy had pored over the footage of the original robbery enough times that the faces leapt out at her. “It’s them!” Hat Guy and Bad Suit, as large as life and twice as ugly, holding hands and sitting at a desk in the open-plan area. They made a surprisingly cute couple, she thought. “It’s them!” She bounced up and down unconsciously. “They’re two of the transhumans behind the robbery, right there!” She pulled out her phone and began to text Gibson immediately: Suspects returned to SOC, send backup stat.
“They’re not in costume—”
“No, of course not! These are the planners, the brains behind it! They’re probably casing you for a follow-up job right now!”
Mr. Granger’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he narrowly avoided swallowing his tongue. “I should call the—”
“No, stop and listen, this is very important.” Wendy turned her best officer-of-the-law expression on him: “We have a chance to catch them red-handed right now, but we need to separate them from their accomplices, who won’t be far away at all. We also need evidence of what they’re up to. CCTV on its own won’t be quite enough to convict them—neither of them laid a finger on the proceeds of the robbery: they could legitimately claim to just be bystanders and it’s all a coincidence. So I want you to find out what they want, and give it to them, while I sit here and watch. Once we know what they’re doing, we can either grab them or set up a sting later. It’s all perfectly safe. Just remember: I’ll be watching you from back here. If you think there’s trouble and you want me to drop the hammer, tug your left ear, like this.” Wendy demonstrated.
Granger’s face turned a very interesting shade of green. “But, but, what if you’re wrong and they’re armed? You can’t protect me on your own!”
Wendy grinned like a maniac. “Did you ever see that movie, Kill Bill: Volume One?” she asked. Granger looked confused. “I can do this,” she said, pulling her riot baton out of thin air with a flourish and pointing it at the camera, “and if they’re packing heat, I can do this.” The baton vanished, replaced by something sharper. “And that’s just for starters…”
Imp was bored enough to already be fidgeting and plotting mischief when a door at the back of the bank finally opened. A middle-aged, balding bloke in a suit with a tie in the bank’s colors came out and made eye contact with Doc. His approach to the desk was almost furtive: Imp would have been genuinely concerned that they might have been rumbled if the guy didn’t have the pinch-faced demeanor of a complete prat.
The manager extended a hand and Doc rose to shake it: “Good morning, I’m Mr. Granger. You are…?”
“Bernard Harris,” Doc said easily, pumping the Granger dude’s hand. Granger twitched it away and wiped it on his leg as he sat down. Imp instantly took a dislike to him. Something about Granger struck him as being as phoney as a thirteen-pound note. “I’d like to check my deposit box,” Doc said
