‘Where are you living now?’
‘I’m staying with Shelley Hogan, she’s a mate from Cairnloch. Has a flat. She’s looking after Christopher.’
Synnott gave Dixie a lift to Shelley’s place. He paid her a visit a week later and made admiring remarks about the baby and after she made him a cup of coffee he said, ‘You could help me, Dixie, maybe help yourself at the same time. It’s not like there’s a big budget, but—’
She looked him in the eye.
He said, ‘Nothing formal. Just, you know, you see something, hear something. The kind of people you know.’
‘I’m not a tout.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to be. It’s just, if there’s something – look, I’ll leave a number.’
‘No point.’
It was almost a year before she called him the first time.
‘Please, Mr Synnott.’
The bastard was looking at her like she was something in a test tube.
‘You embarrassed me, Dixie.’ His voice was soft. ‘Organising a raid, it involves other people. I end up with egg on my face. OK, I know you didn’t mean that, but all the same – you give me nothing and I do you favours, pretty soon that’s all we have. All take, no give.’
‘Please.’
‘I’ll sort out the bail arrangements – it’s the best I can do.’
‘The three hundred – could you—’
‘We’ve been through that.’
‘Just two hundred—’
Synnott was on his feet. ‘Take care, Dixie.’
‘Fuck you!’
At the door he said, ‘I know you don’t mean that.’ And he was gone.
18
Joshua Boyce went into the jewellery shop with a baseball hat on his head, a big false moustache on his face and an empty holdall over one shoulder. When he took a nine-millimetre Sig-Sauer P226 automatic out of his anorak pocket the jeweller and his assistant looked for a moment as though they might be about to run somewhere, then they thought better of it. The assistant was a guy about twenty-two, short dyed blond hair gelled into thorny shapes like something designed by an unemployable architect. He won the race to put his hands up.
‘I’m not going to scream at you,’ Joshua Boyce said in a casual voice. ‘I won’t threaten you. But you should know that I’ll do what I have to do to get what I want done. Is that understood?’
Neither of the two said anything.
‘Good,’ Boyce said. ‘If we all know the rules, let’s get started.’ He walked straight over to the assistant and hit him on the nose with the butt of the Sig-Sauer.
Boyce stood back as the blood spurted down the guy’s front. Nothing like a bloody nose to subdue the civilians. The young guy held his face and tried not to blubber, the blood splashed all down his dazzling white shirt.
Boyce turned to the jeweller. ‘You can have some of that.’
‘Please, no.’
The jeweller was a ball of putty. Small guy, young, maybe thirty, fat, thin lips and a tremor in his voice. Having seen what had happened to his assistant just for cooperating, he put a lot of effort into avoiding eye contact with the gunman. He kept his face averted, showing that he didn’t want to even guess what the guy looked like behind the big fake moustache. He immediately offered Joshua Boyce a heavy ring of keys.
Boyce shook his head. ‘Lock the front door, then we go inside,’ he said, gesturing towards the back room. ‘The safe first.’
When they got into the back room the jeweller offered the keys again. ‘Take what you want.’
Boyce threw the holdall at the jeweller’s feet.
‘
You
do it.’
The bag was a lot heavier when he got it back. Boyce checked the safe and found a leather folder with a thick wad of banknotes inside. He put it into the holdall, turned and found the jeweller taking a step back, one hand clutching the front of his shirt. ‘Do anything like that again’, Boyce said, ‘and I tie you up and set fire to the place when I go.’
The assistant was making moaning sounds. He tried to say something but the words were muffled. Joshua Boyce went to him and examined his face. ‘Broken nose. Not to worry, son. It’ll add a little mystery to your image.’
There were tears brimming in the assistant’s eyes. Joshua Boyce waved his gun.
‘Let’s go out front.’ Again he threw the bag at the jeweller’s feet and this time it gave a prosperous rattle. ‘Fill it up from the display cases. Just the merchandise, dump the trays and the packaging.’
In the front of the shop, the assistant picked up a black cloth from behind the counter and tentatively held it to his nose.
‘No,’ Boyce said. The assistant dropped the cloth. The blood was still dripping onto his white shirt. Amazing how a nose dripping blood takes the pep out of someone who might otherwise give in to the prompting of his testosterone and do something stupid.
Boyce pointed at the display cases. ‘There, there, and that one, first. No shit, no trinkets.’
It took the jeweller little more than a minute to empty the selected display cases. Then Boyce pointed out several more, directing the jeweller mostly to the display cases behind the counter.
‘Go, please.’ The jeweller was holding out the holdall.
Joshua Boyce looked around, then gestured with his gun hand towards a long narrow display case on the far wall. ‘Be generous.’
After the jeweller spent another couple of minutes filling the bag Boyce said, ‘That’ll do.’ He gestured towards the back room. ‘Inside.’
Watching them shuffle through the doorway, Boyce was looking forward to this part. Once inside, he waited, let a few seconds pass with them just standing there. Then he watched the jeweller’s face when he said, ‘Now we’ll do the floor safe.’
The man’s mouth opened, his eyes flared and died and Boyce could hear him breathing from across the room. He could see the man was about to say something stupid about there not being any other safe, so Boyce used the gun to gesture at the assistant and said, ‘Take up the carpet, that’s a good boy.’
The assistant held the back of one hand to his nose while he bent and used his other hand to pull up one of the flecked grey carpet tiles, revealing a small circular metal door set in the floor, about nine inches in diameter. By the time the assistant stood up the jeweller was moving like he’d abandoned any hope. He knelt and tapped in the combination. There was just one thing in the floor safe, a black velvet bag, not big but heavy. The jeweller clasped the bag in both hands, holding it against his chest like he was hoping there might be something he could do to hold on to it. Boyce threw the holdall on the floor. ‘In there.’
He took their mobiles, ripped the phone line out of the wall, and told them that anyone coming out of the shop in the next fifteen minutes could count on being shot.
*
The street was as it always was, nothing worrying going on. Turning right, heading towards the car park of the twenty-four-hour shop, Boyce maintained a natural unhurried stride.
Nothing offbeat so no one gets excited
. If the jeweller or the assistant got a dose of heroics and came barrelling out after him he’d have to speed things up, but the smashed nose and the dripping blood had almost certainly taken care of that.
Nice and easy does it.
The stolen getaway car was a blue Honda Accord. Joshua Boyce was twenty feet away from it, with the key in one hand and the holdall of stolen jewellery in the other, when someone shouted, ‘Stop, thief!’
Jesus, fuck.
Boyce stopped, stood, and for a moment he couldn’t imagine who it was. Then it dawned on him who the fool had to be. He turned and saw the lanky, shaven-headed security man from the building society next door to the jewellery shop.
Had to be him.
Had to be a clown who imagines himself a tough guy – had to be, to brace someone with a gun.
Not a cop, none of them that dumb. ERU, maybe, waving their Uzis, but if it was that lot Boyce would be dead by now.
Had to be the tall bald Dumbo in the uniform.
He’d been lounging as usual in front of the building society when Boyce came out of the jewellery shop. Boyce had paid him no more attention than he’d paid the nearest lamp-post. Maybe Boyce had missed something. Maybe Dumbo had heard something during the robbery. Maybe, once they’d given Boyce time enough to get a good distance from the shop, the jeweller or his assistant had run out, looking for help.
Whatever it was, Dumbo got to play the scene he’d fantasised about since the first time he’d put on his pale blue uniform.
‘Stop, thief!’
The guy’s not for real.
Joshua showed him the gun. Didn’t point it at him, just let him see it. Looked him in the eye.
The gobshite kept coming, the twist in his lips displaying contempt, his large shoulders flexing under his blue uniform.
Joshua raised his gun and Dumbo stopped.
He kept his hands down by his sides and straightened his back and Boyce knew what he was about to say and then he said it.
‘Big man,’ Dumbo said. ‘Wouldn’t be such a big man if you didn’t have that fucking thing.’
Boyce turned and walked quickly towards the car. When he looked back Dumbo hadn’t moved. Boyce got the door open, threw the holdall inside. He could hear running footsteps and he turned and pointed the gun at Dumbo’s chest and this time Dumbo didn’t stop. Boyce raised the gun to fire over Dumbo’s head but that was no good. At that angle, a shot might hit any one of half a dozen second-floor windows of the building at the other side of the car park.
And then it didn’t matter, because Dumbo was running right through Joshua Boyce, clutching at his shoulders, and they were both bouncing off the Accord and going down onto the tarmac.
Boyce swung his body so that Dumbo landed first and when Boyce came down on him Dumbo made a whooshing noise that ended in a squeak.
Dumbo was stupid, but he was as strong as he looked. He had one hand curling up around Boyce’s shoulder as the other gripped the elbow of Boyce’s gun arm.
Stupid, maybe, but Dumbo was getting to be a problem. Enough passers-by around for at least one of them to be reaching for a mobile.
Boyce let his gun arm give in to Dumbo’s pull, letting it move towards the fool, holding back just enough so that Dumbo thought it was all his own doing. Then Boyce let the arm go slack, then immediately jerked it forward, breaking Dumbo’s grip.
Dumbo made an excited grunting noise and Boyce rolled over and got one foot flat on the ground, the knee angled for leverage, keeping his gun arm out of Dumbo’s reach.
Dumbo’s free hand didn’t go for the gun – it wrapped around Boyce’s neck, and it felt like a metal restraint locking into place. Then Boyce lost his tentative footing and he was coming down on his side, both Dumbo’s arms holding him from behind.
Boyce rocked his body from side to side, testing the firmness of Dumbo’s grip. There wasn’t much give. Dumbo had fastened himself onto Boyce’s back like he was a steel trap.
Boyce raised one foot and lashed back. Dumbo grunted again as Boyce’s heel connected with his shin. It was a glancing blow, and next time Boyce lashed out there was nothing there – Dumbo was holding his legs back out of harm’s way.
It stays like this, it’s all over.
If Boyce wasn’t well away from here in the next minute or two, chances were he’d still be held down like a struggling bug when the police showed up.
Boyce reached down with his gun hand, feeling his way until the gun was resting against the side of Dumbo’s thigh.
‘Let go.’
‘Fuck off !’
‘Right now,’ Boyce said, ‘and we both walk away.’
Dumbo’s voice came in ragged bursts. ‘Not such a – big fucking man – now, are ya?’
Boyce stretched both his legs forward as far as he could. They were out of the firing line but you could never tell, once a gun went off, what it might hit and where the bullet might go afterwards.
Dumbo made an aggressive noise through clenched teeth and when Boyce squeezed the trigger the noise turned to a high-pitched scream.
As the security man’s grip slackened, Boyce rolled clear and stood up, stepping away from Dumbo, who was rolling, clutching his leg above the knee, making a muted gasping noise now. Boyce opened the door of the Accord and climbed in. He started the engine and closed the door but saw there was no way of driving off without running over Dumbo.
Boyce got out of the car and got behind Dumbo. He bent and held him under the arms and backed away, pulling him towards the side of the car park.
Dumbo screamed, ‘You bastard!’ Then he began making threats, his squeak rising in pitch. One of his shoes had come off. He was wearing yellow socks decorated with some kind of cartoon character
Boyce dropped Dumbo and got back into the Accord. No sound of sirens. As he gunned the motor, he saw half a dozen people across the road, looking his way. Two of them were talking into mobiles.