One Night (5 page)

The restaurant was small and intimate and empty. As soon as they walked in the door a tiny oriental woman greeted them and took their coats. Joel gripped his bag tightly when she tried to take that. He shook his head and smiled. “It’s okay,” he said, “I’ll hang on to this.”

“That’s fine, sir,” she said and led them to a table by the window.

“I’d prefer one at the back,” said Joel, “if that’s alright.”

The woman nodded. Joel looked around the restaurant and spotted a booth with high sides that meant they’d be hidden from the street if they sat in it. “There,” he said, pointing, and the three of them walked over to it. The precautions were probably unnecessary but he’d rather take them and be able to relax with Eve. He looked at her walking beside him, that long blonde hair resting on her shoulders, the ends of it laying on the curve of her breasts. They had to squeeze closer together as they wove their way between empty tables. The waitress was chattering away in front of them but Joel didn’t hear her. Eve was so close beside him he could feel the heat from her body. He could smell her, a floral scent that rose from her and intoxicated him. He couldn’t tell if it was perfume or just her essence. In the pub he had enjoyed talking to her, had felt himself drawn to her personality. Now with her body so close beside him he wanted her physically, wanted to feel her naked skin against his. He looked at her face and knew in that moment that he couldn’t leave her until he had seen it transformed with pleasure. He wanted to watch her throw back her head and clench her jaw as she climaxed. Wanted to feel her body tense and then relax as that moment of oblivious joy swept over her. At the thought of it he could feel himself stiffening; that warm tingle in his groin so familiar.

The bag at his side collided with a table and swung back against his knee. The surprise of it brought him back to himself. Jesus, he shouldn’t be doing this. Shouldn’t be thinking like this. Every minute he spent with Eve put her in danger. He’d leave after the meal, he told himself, make an excuse and run. She’d be pissed off, hurt maybe, but it would fade.

They reached the booth and he sat quickly, hoping neither Eve nor the waitress noticed the bulge that was still present in his trousers. The bag went on the bench seat next to him.      

They ordered drinks, wine for Eve and a Singha beer for Joel. When the waitress brought them Joel raised his bottle and Eve touched her glass against it. “To this night,” she said. “I wish it could last forever.”

They drank. The beer was cold and crisp.

“Whatever happens we’ll always have Southend,” said Joel and Eve laughed. It lit her face up and made him wish he didn’t have to go.

The waitress came back and they ordered their food.

“Who are you, Joel?” Eve said while they waited for it to come.

“Don’t ask that,” he said. “I’m just a guy passing through.”
“Ships that pass in the night?” she said and it hurt her a little.

“I’m sorry, Eve. It can’t be any other way. I can’t explain it, you’ll just have to trust me.”

“I do, she said. “Trust you. And stop saying sorry, I’ve told you about that.”

“Sorry, miss,” he said and winked at her.

She laughed and playfully punched his arm across the table. He caught her hand and held it.

“It’s for the best,” he said. “I’m not a good person to be around,”

They were both quiet for a minute and then Eve spoke.

“Can you at least tell me what’s in the bag?”

“It’s my last victim,” he said.

“Did you charm her to death?”

He laughed. “Seriously, it’s just my clothes. Like I said I’m passing through.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s turn this around. What will you tell me? Where did you grow up?”

“Tottenham,” said Joel. It was a long time since he’d talked about his childhood.

“Did you have any brothers or sisters?”

“I don’t know.” He took a breath. “I grew up in a children’s home. There and foster homes.”

“Sorry,” she said. “That must have been hard.”

He shrugged “It’s all I know so I can’t really compare it to anything. I survived, that’s the best I can say about it I guess. Oh, and don’t say sorry.”

“You got me,” she laughed.

“I did didn’t I? How about you? Normal childhood?”

“I guess,” she said. “Until I was
ten. Then my dad died.”

“Oh shit that’s tough. I can’t imagine how tough. I never knew mine so I never missed him.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“I guess you’re right,” he said. “I suppose I miss the idea of a dad, but it’s just my idea of what a dad should be. It’s dads from TV and movies and books all rolled into one perfect father. It’s bullshit. Tell me about yours.”

Eve’s strongest memory of her dad was of him making a house for her Barbie. One of her friends at school had one and Eve had craved it so much it hurt. The Malibu Barbie beach house with a Malibu Barbie and Ken and Jazzie and Stacie and all the accessories. Eve just had the one Barbie, a hand me down from her cousin. She tore the page with the beach house on it out of the Argos catalogue and stuck it on her wall. When her birthday was a month away she started dropping hints. She didn’t think she’d get it, she never got anything she really wanted, but she hoped. There was a package waiting for her on her birthday. Her dad held it out to her with a smile on his face that made her heart leap with excitement. This was it. The beach house. She ripped off the cheap thin plain paper, cut from a massive roll bought by her parents because it would just about work for anyone’s birthday. The first tear revealed that inside was a brown cardboard box. Her heart sank a little but the hope remained, maybe the proper box was inside it. She tore more of the paper off and saw that her dad had drawn the Barbie logo on the box with her felt tips. By the time she opened the box she was almost crying. Inside it was a house her dad had made. Even as a child she could tell it must have taken him hours. It was almost exactly the same as the real one, he had obviously copied it from a picture and he had done it well. But it wasn’t the real one. It was just something her dad had made. She burst into tears and ran from the room with the irrational fury of a ten year old girl. The last things she saw was the look of pain on father’s face. It was only a few years after he died that she started hating herself for hurting him so much that day.

“He was a good man,” she said, “and I loved him.”

“What happened?” said Joel. His voice was quiet, tentative. He could tell that this hurt her but also that she wanted to tell him. That saying it would help her.

“They didn’t have much money, mum and dad. Enough to live but never enough for anything nice. Dad was a carpenter but I guess it was a time when people decided they didn’t really need carpenters. He loved his work, loved working with his hands, but
in the end he gave it up and went to work for his brother. That was why he died.”

Joel didn’t say anything, just held her hand and let her speak.

“My uncle was, is, involved in a lot of dodgy things. I don’t know exactly what happened. I think he and dad went to collect a debt. There was some trouble. He came back, dad didn’t. He was hit. Just the once but that was enough.”

Joel saw that she was crying. Not loudly or dramatically but he could see the tears running down her cheeks. 

He gripped her hand. “I guess we’re both a bit broken,” he said.

The two men were sat in the car outside the restaurant. The phone rang and the passenger answered. “Okay,” the voice at the end said. “I’ve thought about it. Just grab them both and bring them here with the bag. Billy and the others are on their way to help you. If I think for one fucking second that you’ve looked in the bag I’ll kick you into next week.”

“Okay, got it,” said the passenger. “No peaking.”

“Don’t take the piss,”
said the voice. “One more thing. If there is even one scratch on my niece I’ll fucking gut you alive.”

Walking back to the house with Danny, Joel remembered the last time he had worked with Reynolds.

It had been five months ago but he remembered it like it was yesterday. The target was a fancy watch place on Old Bond Street. What made the job even sweeter was the fact that one of their reps was visiting the shop that day. Danny told Joel that a source had tipped the backer of the job off to the fact that the rep would have some particularly expensive watches with him that. One of the watches, Danny said, was a limited edition platinum Rolex Daytona which was on special order for a customer. That watch on its own was worth almost £100,000.

The real beauty of it was that the rep would have stock on him for all th
e shops he was due to visit, not just the one that they were hitting. If it went to plan they’d net the stock from the shop plus any cash they had on the premises on top of whatever the rep had. It was the need for the rep to be in the shop when they hit it that meant that the timing had to be spot on. It also introduced an additional risk. If they had just been targeting the store they could have waited until it was empty of customers before they went in. Because they needed the rep to be in there they had no control over who else might be present. That made Joel nervous.

When it came to his personal life Joel let his emotions guide him. He did what he felt like when he felt like it. Work was another matter. Control was everything there.

Apart from that one wild card the plan was solid though. The place had the normal security. Alarms, a controlled entry system, a guard, safes out back where all the stock was kept. The plan covered everything.

Joel, Reynolds and a Swedish guy called Johansson would wait in a car near the shop. Johansson was a driver, the best one Joel had seen this side of Formula One. Some other guy was following the rep on a motorbike. Joel didn’t know him but Danny said he was good.

As soon as the rep got to the shop the biker would call the Swede who would drive there and drop Reynolds and Joel off. This was where it got a bit trickier. A fourth man would get to the door of the shop just before they got out of the car. His job was to get them in. He would pose as a customer, buzzing the entry system to get the door open. He’d actually visit the shop in the run up to the hit, trying on different watches and pretending he couldn’t make up his mind. As soon as the door was open Joel and Reynolds would barrel out of the car, faces hidden behind fancy dress masks. They’d push their way in behind the fourth member of the team who from then on would play the part of an innocent bystander. Once they were in, the boxer would take care of the security guard and get the bag off the rep. Joel would take care of the safes in the back and get as much out of them as he could before they had to run. That was his area, his talent as Danny called it. There wasn’t a lock he couldn’t pick, a safe he couldn’t crack. He’d learned the skills growing up, when getting into places he was told he shouldn’t be in was an addictive game. As a teenager he’d started using his talent to get things he wanted but didn’t have the money for. Back then that had been most things. As an adult he’d refined his abilities further and made them into something he could sell to others. Business was good too. With Danny’s help he’d made a name for himself in the London criminal underworld as someone who not only did good work but could be trusted to keep his mouth shut. When Danny had contacted him about this job he’d said yes straight away. It ticked all his boxes. A strong plan, a good crew to carry it out and a risk/reward ratio that made him smile. He’d make £10,000 for an hour’s work with someone else taking care of all the planning and the fencing of the watches afterwards. All Joel had to do was turn up on the day and work his magic. They’d only have five minutes from the moment they walked in the door but with Joel’s skills that should be enough.  

Joel had felt fine about it when he got up on the morning of the raid. He’d
woken a few times in the night like he usually did on the eve of a hit but when his alarm clock went off he put the worries out of his head, there was no point stressing about the details that close to a job. If he didn’t have absolute confidence in the plan he would have backed out already.

When he was waiting in the car he was just as calm. Johansson was chewing gum and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in time to some tune in his head. Reynolds had his eyes shut and his head against the passenger side window. Joel was in the back reading a paperback, glancing up every so often and seeing the boxer’s thick neck in front of him. He’d worked with him once before and that job had gone fine. Reynolds was a good man to have along for when a little force was needed. His sheer size meant he was often able to get what he wanted by intimidation rather than actually having to get violent. His ability to put the frighteners on people was in as much demand as Joel’s safe cracking ability. The problem with him was that he also had
the uncontrollable temper that had earned him the Red Rag nickname. Joel had seen that rage in Reynolds when he’d been fighting but never outside the ring. He hoped he never did. 

The job
went like clockwork until the end. The call came from the biker and Johansson put his foot down, driving quickly and efficiently to Old Bond Street. He had a knack for getting places fast but without drawing attention to himself. Partly, Joel thought, it was because he drove so smoothly. Some drivers handled their cars like they were fighting them. With Johansson you felt he was seducing it. They passed a motorcyclist on the way. Joel didn’t know if it was their guy or not. He supposed it didn’t matter

When they pulled up outside the shop the fourth man was about ten feet away. He walked calmly to the door and pushed the buzzer, smiling and waving at the people inside. By the time he pushed the door open Joel and Reynolds were behind him. Both had realistic latex masks over their faces and flesh coloured surgical gloves on their hands. Only amateurs wore balaclavas, they were a sure fire way to get anyone within fifty feet to dial 999.

Inside the shop the rep was there as expected, a steel briefcase in his hand. The fourth man was doing an excellent impression of a civilian in danger of shitting his pants. In spite of Joel’s worries there were no legitimate customers there, just two salesmen and a security guard who looked like he wished he’d called in sick. Reynolds targeted him immediately, crossing the showroom in three long strides and knocking him flying with a punch that made Joel wince. The guard slammed against a display cabinet, his head snapped back, hitting the glass and shattering it. He collapsed unconscious at the foot of it, glittering fragments showering around him. Joel almost felt sorry for him but then this was what the guy had signed up for. At least he’d have a story to tell his mates in the pub, albeit he might want to gloss over the fact he’d gone down within seconds of the crooks getting in there.

Joel ran to one of the terrified salesmen
. ”Do as you’re told and you’ll be okay,” he said as he pulled the security card from around the man’s neck and the ring of keys from his belt.

In contrast to the gleaming Swiss timepieces on display Joel was wearing a Casio G-Shock and he’d started a five minute countdown on it when he’d climbed
out of the car. He glanced at the chunky plastic digital watch as he ran through the secure door that led to the back of the shop and saw that he had four minutes and five seconds left.

The door automatically closed behind him
and he set to work.

There were four safes. Three opened with keys, one had a combination lock. Joel knew that the combination safe was the one where the most valuable stock would be. Keys could be taken easily, combinations were another matter. That was why he hadn’t even bothered asking either of the assistants. It was quicker for him to crack the safe himself than to waste time getting led down blind alleys.

He had it open in two minutes and swept the watches into the open mouth of the holdall he’d placed on the floor in front of it. The key safes were next, each of them quickly and easily yielding their contents. He was feeling good as he walked to the door that led to the front of the shop. They had a minute left according to the G-Shock and all he and Reynolds had to do was walk out of the front door and get in the car.

The door opened and
immediately he could smell it, the blood.