‘Just don’t worry,’ he advised the other man.
It was ten minutes before they went back into the air conditioning system and this time Johnny led, hauling the light with him. There was a hole about three feet in diameter cut into the bank wall. Careful to avoid the clamped arms, Johnny eased through, wedging the light on top of a filing cabinet.
‘Storeroom,’ Snare identified it, a fresh set of plans in his hand now. He felt out for a switch and the neon light flickered into life. Filing cabinets lined the walls and in one corner files were heaped, one on top of the other.
They went out of the room, Johnny still in front.
‘Manager’s office first,’ instructed Snare.
The door at the top of the steps was secured from the far side, but by squinting through Johnny saw the key was still in the lock.
‘Easy,’ he smiled, looking for some reaction. Snare gazed back, unimpressed.
From the attaché case, new like everything else, Johnny took the long-spined dentist’s pliers, poked through to grip the key shank and unlocked the door.
On the main floor of the bank they relied upon shielded torches, moving slowly between furniture towards the office which Snare had designated. That, too, was locked and this time the key was missing. Johnny smeared thick grease on to a sliver of plastic, pushed it into the lock and then gently twisted, as if it were a key. He withdrew it and the tumbler edges were imprinted clearly into the grease. He lay the coated plastic along a matching piece of metal, plugged a dentist’s electric drill into a table lamp socket and within five minutes had cut the basic shape of the key from the impression he had made. It took a further ten minutes to file away the mistakes and open the door. As he moved to do so, Snare touched his shoulder, pushing the light around the surround. The alarm breaker was near the top of the jamb. They used another bypass, magnetised this time, putting wedges either side of the door so that it wouldn’t swing and pull the wire free.
‘The first safe,’ said Snare.
‘Standard Chubb.’
‘Difficult?’
‘Course it’s difficult’
‘But not impossible?’
‘Not impossible,’ said Johnny.
He worked with a stethoscope, hearing the tumblers into place. Twice, in his nervousness, he over-adjusted, missing the combination.
‘What about the key?’ asked Snare, reaching out to the second lock.
‘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 attaché 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’