For Those Who Know the Ending (8 page)

He took the gun from the side of his jeans. Hadn’t been a problem having it there so far, but escaping with it would be more of a challenge. He would have a bag of cash to occupy one hand on the way out. Or at least, he should have a bag of cash, if this went as planned, and he would be in much more of a hurry. The thought of running in unfamiliar streets, a bag of stolen cash in one hand and a gun in the other. His mind racing ahead to all of those worst-case scenarios. Focus. Stay in the moment, that was what they said. Stupid thing to say, if he didn’t look ahead, how could he see the trouble looming?

He held the gun in his gloved hand, the barrel pointing back at himself. One last look around before he made his first move. Once he started, there was no stopping until he was finished or flattened. From this moment on, everything had to be done at speed and without error. The intimidating first step, he thumped the butt of the gun against the glass. The glass cracked. Another thud, just as hard, in the same place. Holding the gun carefully. A small break, tiny shards of glass falling inside the two panes. Martin thumping again, breaking a proper hole this time, using the butt of the gun to smash a big enough hole to fit his small hand through. Carefully reaching in and turning the lock on the inside of the door.

Now moving fast. The door open and he was into the dark back corridor, working against the clock. Martin moved with the gun held out in front, the first thing that would be visible to anyone that stumbled across him. Pushing open a door and finding an empty storeroom. Round the corner in the corridor. The manager was bound to have heard that smashing glass, bound to have reacted to it in some way. Maybe calling the man who delivered the money, or grabbing a weapon of his own. Martin needed to get to him before he could.

It was these moments, late at night, that Gregor was starting to hate. He did it every night, alone in the dimmed room, sorting out the books before he went home. Doing it in small bursts like this meant not having to stay deep into the dark hours to do it all at the end of the week. He had more to compute than simply what had come in and what had gone out, he had to make sure there was sufficient leeway within those figures for creative accountants to flush a little dirty money through. Not much, because they were careful, but enough gaps for Jamieson’s money men to fill in.

Sitting in the grim little office where he spent too much of his life. It was a step ahead of working the counter, a job he increasingly hated. If he could pluck up the courage, he would try and find a way to get out, start a new life somewhere else. Gregor didn’t have the guts, and was smart enough to know he never would. Couldn’t even fool himself into thinking there was better to come.

He was sitting at his desk, back to the door, tapping at his laptop and filling in boxes on a spreadsheet. There was a flicker in the back of his mind as he typed, the thought that he’d heard an echo that shouldn’t have been there. He paused, leaning back in the swivel chair, rubbing his eyes. Heard it again, not an echo but a thud, coming from the back of the building. His heart began to sprint, Gregor holding his breath and praying that he wouldn’t hear anything more. A louder thud, and the tinkle of falling glass.

His first instinct was that of a sensible man, the instinct to get up and run. This place wasn’t worth the danger of facing down an attack. Before he’d got to his feet the realization that he might step out of the office and into the arms of the intruders. Then the memory of Nate Colgan, and the fear of what that man would do to Gregor for running. So he went for plan B, grabbing the phone. Colgan’s number was stored on it. Sweating hands grabbing the phone, pressing the button to call him, holding the phone to his ear as he heard movement over broken glass.

‘Hello?’

‘Nate, it’s Donny, they’re here.’ He paused as he heard someone push down the handle of his office door.

Pushing open the first door round the corner and finding a dim light on. A lamp on a desk, the middle-aged man he’d watched over the last week was sitting hunched, a phone in his hand. He wasn’t speaking, had the phone away from his ear and was looking round at the door. Martin moved fast. Three steps to reach the man and one closed fist to punch the phone out of his hand. Picking it up, making sure the line was dead before he dropped the phone on the desk with a clatter. The man looked terrified already.

That wasn’t good.

Martin needed Gregor to be useful, needed him to have his head screwed on, to work quickly and calmly if this was going to be the fast job intended. The fact he was sweating and panting before they’d even started didn’t bode well. Martin made sure he could see the gun, but was careful not to point it directly at him, that would invite further panic. The man was sitting down at his desk, a few folders, a bundle of newspapers and a laptop in front of him. Martin reached out and closed the laptop, killing the glow from the screen and the possibility of a webcam. He looked around the office, no security camera visible. A few steps to the office door and he closed it. All done in silence.

It had occurred to him, many times, that the silence was almost as incriminating as talking. If he had a local accent then he would surely talk, blab out instructions without fear that his voice would give him away. Which meant the people investigating this would realize that he wasn’t local. Of course, if he talked, they’d be able to narrow their search down much more. Still, silence wasn’t a perfect solution.

And it wasn’t the police he was worried about; their forensic minds had no part to play in this. They would never even find out that this robbery had taken place. There would be no crime reported, he was sure of that much. Even in his worst moment of panic Gregor wasn’t going to do his civilian duty and call the police to report a crime. He would have been using that phone to try to call the people who worked for the Jamieson organization. They would send their toughest round to try and find out what had happened. These would be brutal men, men determined to send a message to any potential future robber by visibly annihilating this one. Martin had seen the sort before. Had seen, and delivered, the sort of punishments that this crime would inspire. These were punishments to fear.

He and Gregor were alone in the office, the door closed, the world reduced to the shape of the walls around them. Martin stood, looking down at the sitting Gregor, trying to judge the prospect of this man doing something very stupid. The bookie had his mouth open, one elbow on the table with his hand reaching up to his forehead, his other hand on his lap. That was the one Martin needed to watch for trouble. The hand on the forehead was the purposefully visible distraction; the hand on the lap was the one most likely to make a grab for something sharp or heavy.

Martin stood right in front of him, closer than was really decent. Time to establish power, quickly, if he could. He reached down and grabbed Gregor by the collar of his shirt and forced him to stand up. It would be wrong to say Martin lifted him, Gregor weighed significantly more than the younger man, but he got him up. Ran a hand down each side, checked his pockets and his trouser legs. There was nothing there that posed any threat. Martin shoved him back down into the seat, using more force than he needed to because he wanted Gregor to realize that this was a man casual in his approach to violence. Make the person understand that the default setting is aggressive, so if they step out of line they can expect a severe reaction.

Now it was time for the note, the simple instruction he had written out on Joanne’s laptop and printed. He had read it again and again, making sure that it was acceptable. Martin was painfully aware that his sentences were shaped differently to those of a local person. Without realizing, he might misplace a word or emphasize something that nobody speaking English as a first language would. That’s why he had kept it so simple, why he had been so careful with the wording.

OPEN SAFE. TODAY’S MONEY FROM JAMIESON.

That was it. That was all it said, all it should need. It seemed simple and clear to him, seemed like the sort of thing a local might write to get their point across with the least fuss. Close enough to a good effort that it wouldn’t identify him, anyway. He took the note from his pocket and passed it down to Gregor.

Donny Gregor sat there, in his chair, note in hand, looking up at Martin. Didn’t react, didn’t move, didn’t even read the note at first. Sat there with his mouth still slightly open, apparently frozen in time by the shock of the event. It might have been fear, that can do silly things to smart people, but Martin suspected otherwise. His instinct told him that this was a man deliberately killing time. He needed to understand that he was killing something that didn’t belong to him.

Martin swung the gun lightly, last thing he wanted to do was knock the man out before he’d opened the safe. He caught him, just solidly enough, on the lower jaw. Gregor went into full stuntman mode, rolling off the chair and onto the floor, clutching his mouth and groaning like a train had just ploughed through the office and into his face. Martin groaned in disgust, just a little. Not because of the inconvenience, you don’t expect your victim to bend over backward for you when you’re trying to rob him blind. He groaned because of what this told him. Gregor was wasting time because he knew someone was coming. There was an ugly little plan lurking in the wings of this pantomime. The line on the phone might have been dead by the time Martin got to it, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been life in it a few seconds before.

Martin knelt down beside Gregor and shoved the gun at his face. He wanted to get it in Gregor’s mouth; nothing scared a person more than tasting the gun that might just kill them. He missed the mouth; Gregor seeing what Martin was trying to do and quickly getting back up to his feet, hands raised slightly. All thoughts of procrastination swept aside. The reminder that the gun existed had him scared enough to cooperate, he’d done all he reasonably could to waste time. Cooperation wasn’t enough for Martin now; the bookie had to be taught that you don’t piss off the guy with the gun.

With his free hand, Martin grabbed a fist full of Gregor’s dark grey hair and shoved him towards the desk. He wanted to run his face into it, but he didn’t have the strength to force him down in one movement. He settled for shoving him against it and reaching down for the note that Gregor had oh-so-deliberately dropped. Martin picked it up and slapped it onto the desk in front of Gregor, made him look at it.

‘Yes, the safe. Yeah, I will, okay, I will.’

This was overdue, the victim trying to strike up a conversation, trying to coax Martin into saying something. Anything at all would be a start, because Gregor understood that he would need to give details to his employers. Get him to say something and then try and get him to say something incriminating, some hint of identity. Possible with most robbers because most weren’t all that bright, but not going to happen tonight.

Gregor moved around the side of the desk and knelt down beside the heavy safe that was bolted to the floor. He worked slowly, looking up at Martin.

‘The thing is, I don’t, uh . . .’

He stopped when Martin took a step towards him, pointing the gun directly at his head. Any attempt to pretend that he didn’t know how to open the safe would be met with a bloody reaction, he had to understand that.

‘No, okay,’ Gregor said, his hands shaking as he turned back to it. ‘It’s just that, uh, I don’t, you see, I don’t know what money is from Jamieson and what isn’t. See, I don’t know. It’s all just money, isn’t it? If it’s Jamieson’s money you’re after and not mine. I don’t know.’

This was rambling bullshit and didn’t concern Martin much anyway. If they couldn’t work out what was Jamieson’s and what was Gregor’s then Martin would quite happily take it all. Simple problems usually had simple solutions. The idea of taking only Jamieson’s cash was to make sure that every penny stolen was unreportable to the police. But money was money, and the fact that this was a Jamieson business should be enough to make sure the police were never alerted.

‘It’s, uh, dangerous, as well,’ Gregor said. ‘You know, stealing from here. You’re, you’re taking a hell of a risk, I’ll tell you that for nothing. A hell of a risk. Wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when they come looking for you.’

Martin was fed up with him using repetitive mumbling to strangle more time. He reached out a boot and gave Gregor a kick in the small of the back. Enough to make Gregor jump, to make him screech like a small animal. He leaned in close to the safe and worked at it silently until the door opened. He stood up straight, stepped back away from it, watching Martin.

He had his hands up now, aware that they had reached the part in the process where he couldn’t protect the money any more. Gregor had done as much as his employers had any right to expect of him. He had called in a warning; he had wasted time to the point that it provoked violence against him and could have gotten him killed. They had no business expecting any more of him. Now he would play sensible with this gunman. He would stand with his hands up, he would keep his mouth shut, he would do as he was told and he would make sure he didn’t get shot.

Martin pulled the plastic bag from his pocket and kneeled down beside the safe. He had his back slightly to Gregor, which was a risk he was willing to take. He wouldn’t have done this with a brave man, but it seemed Gregor had now abandoned that pretence. There was cash in the safe, wads of it exposed and wrapped in elastic bands. That was the takings, the money of the gullible, rather than the money of the guilty. There were two packages, well wrapped, just the right size to be stuffed with wads of cash. Could have been something else in there that he didn’t want. Drugs, maybe. Something valuable to Jamieson and useless to Martin, but that was unlikely; it had to be the excess cash. Had to be. Martin opened the plastic bag and shoved the two packages inside.

He stood up and looked back at Gregor, thinking briefly about tying him up. No, don’t make it any worse for either of you. Tying him up gives the bookie something else to complain about and would give Martin more work. Remember how much time has already been wasted and get the hell out.