The Ninth Step - John Milton #8 (John Milton Thrillers) (23 page)

Milton followed him into the main room. Frankie Fabian wasn’t here tonight. Marcus and his sister, Lauren, were sat at the same table as before, the remains of a Chinese takeaway set out on the table between them. Vladimir was studying the plans on the wall. Marcus and Lauren turned to him, expressions of distaste very evident on their faces. Vladimir was more circumspect.

“You ready?” Spencer said to him.

“Yes,” Milton said.

Marcus stood. “Before we get going, I want to make one thing clear. You do exactly as you’re told, all right?”

“I understand.”

Marcus walked over to him. “Put your arms out,” he said.

Milton did as he was told. He knew that they wouldn’t trust him, and could hardly blame them for that. He had expected to be frisked, and Marcus was thorough about it as he started at his shoulders and worked all the way down to his ankles.

“He’s clean,” he reported to the others.

“Good,” Spencer said. “Just so you know, Smith, I’ve got this.” He opened his jacket to show a holstered pistol. “If you do anything I don’t like—and I mean anything—I won’t have a problem popping you in the head. We’re clear about how this is going to be happening?”

“Very clear,” Milton said.

Milton wasn’t surprised that they had a weapon. It was possible, maybe even likely, that Marcus was armed, too. Milton had assumed that would be the case.

Marcus turned to his brother, sister and Vladimir. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Lauren said.

“Whenever you are,” Vladimir said.

Spencer nodded.

“Let’s go.”

LAUREN TOOK the wheel of the transit van and drove them into London. The others were in the back and conversation was at a minimum. Milton could diagnose the reason for the silence. It was nervousness. Milton was anxious, too. If they were caught, he wouldn’t be able to count upon his previous connections to extricate him from legal difficulties. He wouldn’t be able to call Control and ask for assistance. Michael Pope, the new Control, would have no choice but to ignore him, regardless of their friendship. Milton would be treated as a criminal, just as the others would be treated as criminals, and his punishment would be identical to theirs.

Marcus reached into a bag and tossed each man a pair of new gloves, the tags still on, and a balaclava.

Milton gazed through the rain-slicked windscreen as they drove into the city. The roads were wet, with standing water pooling out of overflowing drains, and the wheels of the van cast spray across the pavements as they splashed through the puddles. They entered the Square Mile, the tall towers of the office blocks scraping into the angry clouds overhead, myriad squares of light in the windows from offices that were always left illuminated. It was Saturday, and the city emptied out over the weekend, a stark contrast to the teeming throng that populated it throughout the week. Now, though, the pavements were almost empty and the stores and restaurants and cafés that were open were doing a sluggish trade.

Milton’s hands were in his lap and, as he turned his gaze down onto them, he saw that they were clenched into tight fists.

MILTON DIDN’T know how they intended to get onto the roof. He followed the others until they stopped outside the branch of Costa Coffee that was four doors to the north of the vault at number eighty-six. It was a modern concrete building with five floors, each floor equipped with six long, tinted windows. Milton looked up to the top storey. It angled away, with a TV aerial just visible above the edge of the camber.

“Gloves?” Marcus said.

Milton was already wearing the pair that he had been given in the van.

“Balaclavas.”

Milton took the close-fitting knitted cap and pulled it over his head.

Marcus nodded to his brother that they were ready. Spencer took a key from his pocket and looked up and down Hatton Garden. It was quiet, with no traffic and no pedestrians. The late hour, twenty past nine, meant that passing traffic was also at a minimum. Milton looked back to the van. Lauren was staying with it to keep a watch on the street and to warn them if anything required them to take action. That was fine as far as Milton was concerned; one less person to worry about when they were in the vault.

Spencer stepped up to the door, inserted the key and opened it. Milton heard the warning bleep of the alarm, but Spencer went straight to it and input the code. The alarm fell silent. This part of the job, at least, had clearly been facilitated by an insider. Milton wondered what must have happened to make that possible. One of the Fabian family’s connections had infiltrated this business, perhaps, or they had told an existing employee that they were going to hit the shop and offered a percentage of the takings in return for giving them easy access. It didn’t matter. They were inside now.

Spencer went through the café to a door in the rear wall, opened it and started up the stairs beyond. The others followed, each carrying his assigned bag of equipment. Milton’s bag contained a ten-pound industrial angle grinder, and the blunt edges dug into his spine as the bag bounced on his back. The others carried the rest of the equipment that they would need, including the component parts of a powerful core drill and a wide selection of tools.

The stairwell led all the way up the middle of the building to the roof. It took them a minute to make their way to the top. There was a door there. Spencer took out another key, unlocked it, and pushed it open. Milton waited his turn to go through. He stepped out, a damp breeze whipping around him as he turned and gazed out over the tops of the nearby buildings. He could see the crenelated towers of the Barbican, glowing yellow from the lights within. He could see the taller spire of the Shard, the tapered finger of Tower 42, and the spectral cranes that told of the city’s renewed prosperity.

This particular rooftop was bare and empty. There was a rail to guard the drop from the edge, but, save the aerial on a raised bracket, there was nothing else of note.

“Come on,” Marcus called out in a quiet, tight voice. “Move.”

They hurried back to the south. The building immediately adjacent was another modern construction, this one in red brick rather than plain concrete. The end of the roof that they were on was demarked by a raised concrete lip, but it was no more than four feet high. Milton anchored his hands on the top and pushed himself up, his boots sliding against the face of the wall until they found enough traction for him to shove himself up and over the edge.

The next building was flush against its neighbour, with a narrow path formed by an unguarded drop to the left and a recessed seventh storey on the right. They hurried across it. The next building was the one that they wanted, the building with the vault in the basement. There was a U-shaped gap between the two buildings. Milton reached the edge and stood next to Spencer as they both looked down. It was a drop of eight or nine feet. If they descended into the drop, crossed to the facing wall and then started up again from there, there would be a climb of fourteen or fifteen feet to get to the roof of the next building, with nothing for their feet to purchase.

Spencer unslung his rucksack, reached inside and withdrew a rope with a small grapnel fixed to one end. He took a moment to aim and then, after composing himself, sent the grapnel up and over the gap. The metal implement clanged noisily and then the teeth scraped as he carefully drew it back. The teeth fastened against the lip of the adjacent roof, secure enough to withstand a firm jerk. Spencer tied the other end around the chimney stack behind them, grabbed the rope, and, after taking off his pack, he hauled himself across. Milton removed his own pack and followed. The rope was fibrous and rough, but his gloves were thick enough that he couldn’t really feel it. He reached the other side of the narrow gap, swung his leg over the edge and rolled onto the roof.

Milton waited to help Marcus and then they both helped as Vladimir secured the packs to a second rope so that they could be hauled across. Vladimir came over last of all, and they assembled at the skylight.

“Ready?”

“What about the alarm?”

“It’s down. We took it out half an hour ago. That okay with you?”

Milton was not in a position to question him, and so he gave a nod. The others did, too.

Marcus took a large pair of bolt cutters and fixed the jaws around the padlock that fastened the security grate over the skylight. He pushed the jaws together and the clasp of the padlock was sheared right through. It dropped onto the roof. The grate was on hinges. Marcus put the bolt cutters aside, crouched down, and lifted the grate up and pushed it away. The skylight was installed on top of a short curb that was attached to the roof trusses. The inside of the skylight was a box constructed of plywood sheathing which was attached to the inside of the curb at the top and the ceiling joists at the bottom. Spencer knelt next to his brother and used a drill to unscrew the unit, removing each long screw and then carefully lifting the unit away, revealing the bare trusses and the opening that looked down into the top-floor office.

Spencer nodded. “Do it.”

Marcus fed a line of rope through the loops of his kit bag and lowered it into the building. Milton took the other end of the rope and fastened it around a large brick chimney. He tugged on it to check that it was secure, and then gave Marcus the thumbs-up. Marcus grabbed the rope and slid down it, disappearing into the darkness below. A flashlight clicked on, the light shielded, the beam carefully directed around the room. Marcus unfastened the end from the bag and hissed that they could draw it back up again. Spencer secured the rope to the second bag, a black fabric sheath that contained the industrial drill that they were going to use when they got down to the vault. It was a heavy piece of equipment—Milton estimated thirty or forty kilograms—and they lowered it slowly until Marcus hissed up to them that he had it. Spencer slid down the rope, then Vladimir. Milton took one final look at the rooftops and chimneys of the buildings around him, crossed his fingers that he wasn’t about to do something inherently stupid, and came down last of all.

THE FIFTH AND SIXTH FLOORS of the building were open-plan offices occupied by a diamond-trading firm. There were twelve desks on the sixth floor, each with a chair behind it. Each desk had a screen and a keyboard, and then the usual tangle of junk—photographs, pen holders, stacks of paper—that the employee who sat at the desk had collected. Milton had studied the floor plan for the building and knew the rough layout: there was a small kitchen over there, on the north side of the building, male and female toilets next to that, and two screened-off offices where management would sit. They had no interest in this floor save for the opportunity it would afford them to descend into the building.

They paused to equip themselves from the bag that Vladimir was carrying. They each had a workman’s belt with a selection of clips and hooks attached around the circumference. Milton put his on. He took a shielded flashlight from the bag and secured it to his belt, then collected a headband that was fitted with a lamp. He put it on his head, leaving the torch unlit. The lamps were unshielded, and they would only use them once they were in the lift shaft.

Marcus led the way, walking between the desks until he reached the lobby area. The others followed. There was a reception desk, an old sofa and a coffee table, and a sign on the wall that advertised the name of the business. Marcus summoned the lift while his brother located the breaker box. The lift arrived and Spencer shut off the power, stranding the elevator car at the top of the shaft.

Milton opened the door to the stairs and led the way down to the fifth floor. He emerged into the lobby and, shining his flashlight carefully, checked the rest of the floor. It was similar to the one above it: desks, a break-out area, a separate conference room formed by glass partition walls. It was empty, too.

It would have been much easier if they could have taken the stairs to the first floor, but, as Fabian had noted, the way down was blocked with sturdy doors on every floor, and so they had decided that it would be quicker and simpler to use the shaft.

Marcus was already working on the elevator doors. There was a small hole in the metal, barely larger than a penny. Milton knew what it was. An elevator usually had two sets of doors. The first set was on each lobby and the second was in the car itself. Both opened to allow access to the interior. Marcus took out a small drop key, inserted it into the door, and turned it. The lobby doors parted, revealing the empty shaft below.

It was pitch black. Tripping the breakers on the sixth floor had also killed the power to the emergency lights in the shaft, leaving it just an inky black hole that swallowed their torch light before it had shone down more than six metres. Vladimir dropped his bag on the floor and Milton collected the harness, ropes and other abseiling equipment that had been stored inside. He used a double fisherman’s knot to anchor the rope to the handle of a door, slipped into his harness and tested that everything was secure. He slid the empty bag beneath the ropes to protect them from friction against the sharp edge of the floor, reached up for the lamp fitted to his helmet, flicked it on and looked into the shaft. There were pipes and bundles of electrical cables, junction boxes and components that were necessary for the safe functioning of the lift.

He leaned back into his cradle and kicked out, letting out enough rope to descend two metres beneath the lip of the fifth-floor door. Most of the stress on the anchor was exerted during the first few metres of descent, so Milton lowered himself carefully. He looked down, shining his headlamp on the wall beneath him to identify any hazards, and then kicked again. It was dark and dusty and he suddenly felt very vulnerable. Each floor was around three metres from floor to ceiling, and then there was the basement. He was halfway between the fourth and fifth floors; that meant there was a void that was at least fifteen metres deep beneath him. If the Fabians decided that they had second thoughts and wanted to get rid of him, it would have been a simple thing to untie or sever the rope and leave him to plummet to the bottom. The impact would either kill him outright or break his legs; either way, he would be finished.