“Like I said, twenty-six guards,” she said quietly, inspecting the single name at the top of the newly revealed sheet with a grim look on her face.
“I don’t understand,” Viggiano spluttered.
“I guess the ink must have stuck them together.” She knew that if their roles had been reversed, Viggiano would have come down on her hard for that sort of oversight, but that wasn’t her style. They both knew he had screwed up and as far as she was concerned that was that. There was certainly no point in rubbing his nose in it. What was important was seeing whether this new piece of information led them somewhere.
“Tony Short,” she read from the piece of paper. “DOB March eighteenth, 1965. Deceased.”
“Deceased? So he’s irrelevant,” said Viggiano with relief.
“He had access to the vault.”
“But he’s dead.”
“Only just.” She laid the sheet on the table and pushed it over to Viggiano so he could read what it said for himself. “Four days ago.”
“A coincidence.” Viggiano sounded like he was trying to convince himself as well as her.
“Maybe. But he’s the only one we haven’t checked out. What do we know about him?” Viggiano turned to the laptop to his left and typed in the name. A file flashed up a few seconds later.
“Ex-NYPD. Medal of Honor. Transferred to the Mint Police five years ago. Married with kids. Usual boy scout shit. It’s all here. Deceased*.” He looked up. “What’s the asterisk for?”
“Suicide,” Jennifer replied. “The asterisk means suicide.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It had been a hat factory when it had first been built in 1876, according to the inscription chiseled 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 former 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 large 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 inhabitants 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 postwar brick-and-concrete hangar. It was surrounded on all sides by a crenellated roofline of alternately short and tall warehouses, a jarring convergence of redbrick and white stone, of gothic windows and industrial steel shutters. Five minutes later and he was in Hatton Garden, the center 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, was about seventeen foot square, its walls lined from floor to ceiling with 950 identically sized tungsten and steel doors that gleamed 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 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 a quarter of a million in cut diamonds, his share for the Fabergé 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 streetlights buzz on.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jennifer had always believed that there were no such things as coincidences, just different perspectives. From one perspective, a series of individual events could appear totally random with nothing binding them together other than their actual existence. A coincidence.