Give The Devil His Due (26 page)

       De Villiers sported a sickly grin. Having experienced Lazarus’ clinical efficiency in the past, he knew it wouldn't be long before the required answers would be forthcoming and appropriate action taken. As he watched Lazarus leave the room something caught De Villiers’ eye.

       A very large-chested girl with
big
brunette hair was performing a cock-hardening routine for a couple of Japanese businessmen. De Villiers waved to Lucian Johnson. Johnson, the manager and co-owner of JoJo's made his way to Charles' table.

       ‘Lucian, I see you have some new stock in.’ De Villiers indicated the brunette with a flick of the head, so cursory it was almost an avian-like movement.

       ‘Yes, she joined us a couple of weeks ago.’

       The girl was now stroking her inner thighs in front of the two oriental onlookers. Then, with sleight of hand that Paul Daniels would have been proud of, she removed her thong and began caressing herself between the legs with it. As De Villiers watched he started to rub himself gently under the table.

       ‘I would like to meet her in one of the private rooms, if you don't mind Lucian.’

       ‘Certainly Charles.’

       Within seconds, Johnson had made eye-contact with the girl. She understood immediately. Bringing her routine to a swift close, she bowed to her admirers and left their table, heading towards Johnson, ready to receive new instructions from her boss. The Japanese guests looked disappointed the girl had finished, perhaps never to return. Johnson quickly assigned another girl to the guests' table. Lisa, a blonde in fishnet stockings and basque, started to gyrate. Their eyes now transfixed on
her
every move.

***

The Rochester Suite was one of six rooms luxuriously appointed for the big-spending customers. Complete with circular bed, champagne buckets, pole and large TV screen, hardcore porn was shown 24/7. There was also a chest of drawers containing all the sex toys anyone could shake a stiff prick at. On the table lay some liveners – lines of freshly-chopped happy powder just waiting to be snorted. As Johnson briefed the girl inside the suite, letting her know exactly what was required of her, Charles De Villiers sat smiling to himself anticipating his imminent pleasure.

       Minutes later Johnson was back at De Villiers’ table. ‘The Rochester Suite has been prepared for you Charles. I trust you will have a pleasant evening.’

       ‘Thank you Lucian.’ De Villiers stood up and made his way to where the suites were located. He entered the Rochester where the girl was standing there in a provocative pose.

       He introduced himself. ‘Hello, I’m Charles.’

       She smiled. She had the look about her of a very sexual being that was just waiting to be unleashed. ‘Please, call me Tara.’ De Villiers mused to himself that Lazarus would soon be all over the hacker. And he, on the other hand, would soon be all over Tara. The evening just got better and better.

Tuesday 3 a.m. Bristol
Brian Lazarus sat inside the car. With his caller ID disabled so that the receiving phone couldn’t trace the source, he’d try the number one more time. As the phone rang, Lazarus watched patiently, noting if any lights went on in the house he had under surveillance.

       Earlier that evening, a pizza delivery had been attempted at the target address. The pizza guy had come, knocked the door several times and gone away, still in possession of the meal. The guy didn’t care that no-one answered the door. After all, there’d be no deduction from his wages. The food had already been paid for over the phone.

       As far as Lazarus was concerned, the cost of a pizza was a small price to pay in return for seeing who, if anyone, came to the door. With no car in the drive and no signs of life at the house since his arrival, Lazarus decided it was time to enter the residence.

       Lazarus opened his car door. The bulb from the interior courtesy light had  been removed earlier so as not to illuminate the vehicle. The street lights didn’t present a problem either. There weren’t any between his car and the target.

       Dressed and gloved in dark clothing, he approached the property. In a frighteningly short time Lazarus was inside. Just to the left of the front door, on a small table, Lazarus spotted an answering machine. He looked at the screen; there were messages galore undeleted. Lazarus played them one by one. As the final message ended, Lazarus smiled. With confirmation the occupant would not be returning that night, the search could be carried out at leisure. Brian Lazarus had time on his hands.

Tuesday 2.15 p.m. Charing Cross Station
I hated driving in London. But we took a group decision that with Vaughan on crutches, it would be far easier on him if he were picked up by car and taken to the boat. This was preferable to the option of forcing him to endure more public transport after his train journey from Kent.

       Returning to Little Venice, I dropped Neil and Vaughan off near the mooring, then parked the car. Phil and Peach had stayed on board while Neil and I went to the station.

       Back at the boat, I climbed aboard. The excited chatter sounded more like a meeting of narrowboat enthusiasts than a meeting of great minds about to discuss the robbery of the century. Phil got the kettle on, I closed the doors and we all settled down. Peach took control, handing out a copy of his plan to each of us.

       ‘I think perhaps the best way to approach this is that you all take some time to read what I’ve prepared. Then we can go through it bit by bit. Vaughan, tell us if you think it’s workable.’

       We all sat there reading Peachy’s masterplan.

       Peach’s plan began with three of us (plus equipment) being dropped by Neil, driving a hired van, somewhere near the north boundary of the Shoreborough Estate. Using two lightweight ladders, ladder one (the ascent ladder) would be propped against the outside face of the boundary wall. The first man would ascend the ladder, then place ladder two (the descent ladder) on the other side of the wall, facing in the opposite direction. Each man would climb ladder one (outside the grounds) and descend ladder two (into them).

        Once the last man was on the top of the descent ladder, he’d have to lift the ascent ladder and pull it up over the wall. While the burglary of the Mansion took place, both ladders would be left near the entry location, flat and out of sight. This would be in readiness for a repeat of this process in the opposite direction to make good our escape once the retrieval had been completed.

       Inside the boundary wall, Peachy, Phil and I would have to make our way across the gardens and disable the security alarm before entering the house, avoiding any guards that might be patrolling the area.

       Peach had visited the estate to do a recce several months earlier. He’d established which security firm had the contract for protecting Shoreborough and where they were based. The company was called Guardian Security Services.

       If the alarm were raised, Peach estimated it would be around fifteen minutes response time for more GSS personnel to reach the site, assuming they were travelling from the company base. Police response times were an absolute unknown because the closest patrol car could literally be anywhere. Peach had also managed to ascertain the exact alarm system that Phil would have to deactivate. Cutting the power would not work, because it would mean the whole house would go into blackout. That in turn would bring out more GSS staff – something to be avoided.

       Instead, Phil would have to input the correct unlock code into a keypad situated on a wall near the east side entrance. I assumed he’d have to get the code right first time, but having watched him trying to hack into De Villiers’ computer and the many attempts he’d made, I had niggling doubts – especially if the keypad code was changed on a regular basis.

       Trev’d discussed this obstacle with Phil while Neil and I were at Charing Cross, and positive assurances had been given. So, taking it for granted Phil was successful and we gained entry, to the best of Peachy’s knowledge there were no indoor electronic security measures to be dealt with. Peach believed that the document would be in one of two places:

       (a) the library on the ground floor of the Mansion, or

       (b) the safe which was located in the basement of the house.

       His plan was to search the library first, if we couldn’t find what we were looking for, then we’d make our way to the basement and tackle the safe. The target of the retrieval was a set of personal journals that Moncourt had written detailing important events in his life. I wasn't sure how Peach had worked out that the document we were after would be contained in the journals.

        I asked him pointedly. ‘Surely if this note is inside the books, someone else would have seen it by now?’

       ‘No, I don't think so. During the recce, I made sure that I saw the journals, picking a time to visit when there was an exhibition on at Shoreborough. The journals are not normally on display, because the trustees of the estate consider them to be too valuable. The books contain Moncourt’s private thoughts on the design of Shoreborough. They are the only account written in his own hand that delineate every developmental step of the entire estate from its inception through to completion.’ Peachy paused, then went on.

       ‘Although they were in a display case, I was allowed to view them outside of it, mainly as a professional courtesy to the Archives. I didn't ask for unsupervised access, because I didn't want to arouse suspicion for obvious reasons. The journals are still in their original binding.

       ‘Inside the books are very specific instructions to the Moncourt trustees, those instructions being that the set must never leave Shoreborough.’

       ‘So where's the document then?’ I asked.

       ‘Well I think it's sewn into the binding,’ Peachy answered.

       Neil thought for a moment. ‘If it’s sewn into the binding won't it be stuck together having been sandwiched in there for a couple of hundred years?’

       ‘That was one of the reasons why it was pointless my asking to have unsupervised access. Any extraction would have to be done under laboratory conditions, which means not at Shoreborough. And don’t forget, the journals will probably end up severely damaged, perhaps beyond repair. That’d be a difficult one to explain to the trustees.’

       ‘What if you've got it wrong and the document isn't there?’

       ‘That, as they say, would be game-over. We'd all go back to our boring little lives and dream of what might have been.’

       I knew he was right. This had to come up trumps, otherwise I’d certainly spend the rest of my life feeling like a
Bullseye
loser, constantly hearing Jim Bowen’s voice say: ‘look at what you could have won’ and it most definitely wouldn’t be ‘Super, smashing, great!’. I guessed for Peter Steadman it’d be ten times worse because his share of the fortune was that much larger than ours.

       What's more, everything about the burglary made sense now. The only way the books could be properly examined would be if we were to steal them.

       As Peach said, it was also highly likely that once he’d got the binding off the journals, it would be very difficult if not impossible to get them back to their original condition. So ‘borrowing’ them and then trying to replace them afterwards without anyone noticing that they’d been tampered with was totally out of the question. A successful sortie, as Vaughan would put it, was the only solution.

       The latter part of the plan contained the finite detail: a map of the grounds, estimated timings, a brief description of the journals’ appearance (although not needed because Peach knew what they looked like and would be involved at the sharp end of things). Additionally, it included Neil’s instructions on where to go while the robbery took place and where to meet us once the retrieval was complete.

       I’d never thought about what it would take to execute such a serious robbery and was quite in awe at the detail Peach had produced for the masterplan. If I had to be honest I thought it was a work of genius. I was sure Vaughan would be blown away by it.

       After about quarter of an hour when everyone had read it, the room was quiet. Neil was the last to put his down on the table. It was time for Peachy to address us again.

       ‘So, what do you think?’

       Nobody said anything – we were all looking at Vaughan who pulled a pipe and a tobacco pouch out of his pocket. ‘Do you mind if I smoke a bowl? I find it does assist the old cerebral process somewhat.’ He looked around the room, but his gaze came to rest in Peachy’s direction – acknowledging his status as master of the vessel.

       ‘No, go ahead.’ Peach said. Vaughan smiled at him and nodded gently in gratitude. As he began to fill the pipe bowl with tobacco, we all waited patiently, wondering what the voice of experience would have to say. In what was probably not more than half a minute, but seemed like forever, Vaughan had completed the task of preparing his pipe and began to light it. We all looked at him. The suspense was too much for Peach, he had to say something.

       ‘Do you think it’s workable Vaughan?’

       ‘Well dear boy, I don’t want to burst your bubble, but in a word – no.’

       Bum! – that didn’t go down too well. I could see Peachy getting a little hot under the collar. ‘What’s the matter with it then?’

       ‘Mmm, unfortunately I think the main problem is that if you decide to go through with this you will all end up having a holiday at Her Majesty’s pleasure.’

       Peachy stared at him. I was starting to feel a little uncomfortable. Vaughan began to give his reasons. ‘Trevor, first I must commend you on a sterling effort. I am impressed, but there are some things that you may have overlooked. Have you ever heard of the Golden Rule of Safecracking?’