2
My head eventually drew level with the bottom step. I resisted the temptation to take a shortcut and rush the last few feet. That’s always the time you get caught.
Charlie was on my right, the side the door opened. He’d pulled up enough of his mask to be able to press his ear against the wood.
I finally made it inside the porch, and sat against the rotting brickwork. I didn’t know which felt worse: the sweat on my back or the residue of rain-soaked concrete on my front. Charlie’s left knee was on the doormat. He would have checked underneath it for a key – well, you never knew your luck – and that it didn’t conceal a pressure pad. He moved his knee off the mat, pointed down at it as he kept listening.
I pulled the rubber up and saw that one of the four-inch-square tiles had no cement around it. I lifted it, and it appeared Baz had scraped out enough concrete to hide a set of keys very nicely. But of course they weren’t there. Maybe Baz had switched on a bit since coming up with that one. Why do people think no-one else would ever think of looking just by the door?
I slid the CO2 canister from my bomber-jacket pocket and slipped it up my left sleeve. The elastic cuff would hold it in place. Having it up the right sleeve, ready to drop into your hand when required, was just film stuff. You rarely got a good grip on the thing, even if it did fall conveniently through your fingers.
The two keyholes were a third of the way down the door, and a third of the way up it. The handle in the middle wasn’t attached to either of them.
There was no need for any discussion about what came next; we’d both done this enough times, from Northern Ireland to Waco. Charlie shone his key-ring torch inside the lower of the two locks and had a good look at what he was up against. I hoped his hands had calmed down. I didn’t want to have to take over again.
I pulled his mask back down over his ear, then leaned over above him and pushed slowly but firmly against the top of the door to test for give. If it didn’t budge, chances were it was bolted, and that would be a nightmare because we wouldn’t be able to make entry covertly. Worse still, it would mean that Baz was inside, or that he’d left by another exit, and we would have to run the gauntlet of the motion detectors to find it.
It gave. No problem.
Charlie turned his attention to the top lock, and I gave the bottom of the door the same treatment. It, too, yielded. That wasn’t to say there wasn’t a bolt midway, but we’d find out soon enough.
A helicopter rattled across the sky on the far side of the river and the band sparked up with a jazz number to send it happily on its way. Charlie pointed to the top lock and gave me the non-disco-dancing version of the thumbs-up. That was a bonus. Then he pointed at the lower one and did the thumbs-down, and got busy with the wrench.
I left him to it and sat back, knees against my chest, wet denim stinging my thighs and sweat going cold on my back. It was always better for the one working on a lock to do everything himself. If I held the torch, I’d be throwing shadows in all the wrong places, and we’d just get in each other’s way.
The only problem was, it gave me a little bit too much time to think. Why did Baz use just one of the locks? Had he decided to have a quiet night in? Had he just nipped out for a swift half at the Primorski? Or was he just a lazy f*cker, and in a rush? It wouldn’t be the first time. I’d carried out CTRs on houses and factories protected by some of the most sophisticated alarm systems in existence – or they would have been if anyone had bothered to switch them on. Whatever, the quarry tiles were starting to numb my arse. Charlie was taking far too long.
I leaned forward. Even in the gloom, I could see his fingers were going nineteen to the dozen. F*ck that. I slipped across and put my hands over his, to stop him going any further.
Charlie held the tools out like chopsticks to try and convince me everything was fine. I took the torch and shone it on his right hand. It was trembling like an alcoholic with the DTs.
He sat wearily back against the wall and put five fingers in the torch beam, opening and closing them twice.
I nodded. I’d give him ten minutes, maybe fifteen. He wanted to do this, he had to; not just because it was what he was being paid to do, but because we both knew it was his very last time out of the paddock.
I understood that, but we didn’t have that much time to f*ck about. It would be first light just after 6.30, and we needed to have filled the DLB by then.
I decided to make the most of it. At least it gave us a chance to listen out for anything that might be happening the other side of the door.
Time well spent tuning in, I kept telling myself. It didn’t sound any more convincing this time than it had the first.