Does he know about the job? No.’ Stokes spread his hands. ‘He knows there is a job, aye. But he doesn’t know what it is.’
‘He’s expecting his taste, though,’ Cursiter said.
This was why London was better, Paton thought. Nobody ran London. It was too big to run. You had the freedom to work how you liked. You were your own man.
‘Yeah. Well. We’ve been through that.’
They worked on the game-plan. They finalized times. They’d go in at 5.30, long before the staff started to arrive, before the buses started running on Bath Street.
They broke it into pieces, little blocks of narrative. The entry. The watchman. The safe. They went over each piece. The time before, the time after. They went over it again. Leaving the building. The getaway. The idea was that Paton would take the goods – the jewels and any cash – in a toolbox and stow them in the safe house. Only Stokes knew the address of Paton’s safe house; the others just knew it was in Bridgeton.
Paton’s plan was that the string would make off in the van while he strolled down the hill to Central Station and caught a low-level train to Bridgeton.
‘Or you could just use your time-machine,’ Dazzle said.
‘How’s that?’
‘They shut the station at Bridgeton,’ Stokes explained. ‘Few years back. You can’t get a train.’
Paton looked round the faces, nodded. ‘Buses still run?’
‘Last time I looked.’
‘I’ll take the bus, then.’
Cursiter set his bottle down with a thump. ‘You just walk down Hope Street with the gear in your hand and jump on a bus? Quite the thing?’
‘We’ve covered this,’ Paton said. ‘The best getaway is the one that isn’t. The one no one clocks as a getaway. I’m just a guy on his way to work.’
In another half-hour they had done all they could do until Jenny arrived with the plans. Dazzle produced a bottle of Grouse. The others started talking about stuff they would buy. Cars. John Stephen suits. Trips to New York. High-class hoors. Paton thought about time. How much time his share would buy him. How much time before he would have to do another job. Or the time he’d spend inside if they got caught.
Then they heard the hiss of wheels, a car door slam, high-heels mashing through gravel.
Dazzle opened the door.
The first thought Paton had was how far out of Cursiter’s league this woman was. You knew, as soon as you clapped eyes on her, that she had fucked Cursiter as a purely instrumental act, a means of getting her hands on a share of a hundred thousand pounds. She was wearing a red woollen coat, cinched at the waist, belted, black high-heels. Her hair was black, glossy, bobbed.
She stood there enjoying the impression she was making.
‘The age of chivalry is past,’ she said. No one knew what to say to that. Her shoulders slumped theatrically. ‘What’s a girl got to do to get a drink around here?’
‘Sorry!’ Dazzle was on his feet, scuttling over to the cupboard for another glass.
‘Did you bring the plans?’ Paton was put out by the woman’s appearance. He’d expected someone nervous and fretting, a dolly from the typing pool, out of her depth. The woman’s poise and beauty changed the balance in the room. Her beauty seemed to put her in charge.
‘I was about to ask who’s the gaffer here.’ She took the glass from Dazzle and held it high, in front of her face. Her nails were lacquered a vivid red. ‘Think we’ve answered that question.’
‘Our friend here put it together,’ Paton said, nodding at Dazzle. He didn’t know if it was a names thing, if she was supposed to know their names.
‘But now you’re in charge.’
‘I’ve had some experience.’
‘I’ll bet.’
She set her drink down on the table and started working the buttons on her red coat. Cursiter rose and went to stand behind her. As he drew the unbuttoned coat from her shoulders, he leaned in to kiss her on the neck. She flinched away, clapped a palm to her neck as if slapping a mosquito, wiped the fingers down the skin. ‘I think we’ve had enough of that, darling, haven’t we?’ She was wearing a short shift dress in a clingy black fabric.
Cursiter turned away. He tossed her coat on the back of a kitchen chair.
What she drew from her bag, rolled up in a tube and tied with string, were the blueprints from when the building was remodelled as an auctioneer’s. Previously the address had been a private house. The architect had partitioned some of the rooms for offices and knocked others together to form the showroom.
Paton spread the blueprints out on the kitchen table, on top of the map, and the others gathered round.
‘Somebody’s not going to miss these?’ Campbell asked.
‘What’s to miss? They go back where they came from tomorrow.’
The blueprints showed the basement door, the point of entry. The basement floor held storerooms and the nightwatchman’s cubbyhole, down a corridor on the right-hand side. On the ground floor were offices, toilets, a small staff tearoom. The first floor held the big showroom and the manager’s office, where the safe was housed.
‘This comes off,’ Paton said. ‘Even if it doesn’t come off, they’re going to come for you. You know that. They’ll know it’s an inside job.’
She was looking out the window and she raised her arms now in a long, slow stretch, fingers interlaced, her shoulder blades lifting in the clingy fabric. The window was turning glossy in the dusk. Paton could see the glass clouding where she blew out a sigh. She twisted her head to look coolly at Paton. ‘You think I’ll fall apart, break under questioning, blurt it all out?’
‘I think you should be prepared. I think these people can be very persistent.’
‘There’s seventeen people know about this sale. I imagine at least some of them have more interesting backgrounds than mine. Anyway,’ she flashed a smile at Paton; ‘if it comes off, there’s other things we need to decide. Like who’s getting what?’
‘Nothing to decide,’ Paton said brusquely. ‘Six-way split. Equal shares. End of discussion.’ Paton stood up. He could have argued for a larger share of the take – he was the skilled tradesman, after all; the rest were just manual labour – but he knew from experience the trouble this caused. An equal split was clean and straightforward. If the take was big enough you didn’t worry about trying to leverage a bigger share. Make the split, move on, everyone’s happy.
‘You’ll be taken care of,’ Dazzle told her. ‘Same as everyone else. No one’s stiffing anybody.’
She looked at Paton through her fringe. ‘Well, I hope that’s not the case.’
They drove back separately, leaving ten minutes between each car. Paton went last, in Dazzle’s Triumph, the
