Paul pulled up outside Stronghold Security’s entrance boom. Now on the point of breakdown, the Toyota’s engine shuddered and shook, like a horse that had been forced to run too far and too fast.
He was wearing a white shirt and had knotted a tie around his neck. He hadn’t bothered with any additional disguise. He was still in his jeans and his lace-up running shoes. The guards would have seen through his half-assed cover in a flash, but the guards weren’t there. They were all on the way to Potchefstroom, racing to assist in the rescue of the heli crew and keep the diamonds safe.
The overalled black man who appeared from the guardhouse and approached him with cautious respect looked like he’d just been pulled away from weeding the flowerbeds.
‘Police detective,’ Paul told him, flashing an ID card through the milky plastic window in his wallet. The card was his driver’s license, but it was sufficient to fool this man who’d clearly never driven a car in his life and so probably wouldn’t recognise a license.
Paul’s grey tie and the ordinary car he was driving helped paint the picture of a detective, and although police unmarkeds were generally newer than his old rattletrap, the man at the gate didn’t question his credentials. Paul could probably have told this idiot he was Leonardo DiCaprio and he’d have swallowed it without question.
If not, Paul had been ready to let his gun do the talking.
The overalled man handed him an entrance register and he scribbled down a false name and drove inside. The cash-in-transit vans were parked neatly in the lot. All but two of them. One of those was at the specialised panel beaters and the other was on the way to Potchefstroom with a full complement of guards inside.
He parked close to the office so that his car was shielded from the road, hidden by the row of these bigger vehicles.
Shoving his Colt into its holster, Paul strode through the open security door and into the building. He felt as hyped up as he did when he was on speed. His heart was racing. He was trembling with anticipation and his hands felt unsteady. If he had to use his gun, he hoped to God he’d manage to hit his target.
No receptionist. The front desk was empty. He stood and listened. From upstairs, faintly, he could hear the crackle of radio communication. That meant the control room operator was still here. He’d expected that, but he knew the man would be wearing his headphones and concentrating hard as he directed the Stronghold vehicles to their final destination, close to where the helicopter had made its emergency landing.
Paul heard the click of heels approaching from the upper level of the building. Then Anderson walked out of one of the offices.
She stopped dead when she saw him and stood at the top of the stairs with her hand on the balcony rail.
In one swift movement Paul drew the gun and aimed it at her.
‘Freeze,’ he told her. ‘Do not move. Hands in the air.’
Anderson stared at him for a long moment, her glossy lips parted. Then she let go of the rail and raised her hands slowly above her head.
Paul ascended the stairs, trying to keep his feet as light as possible. He kept the gun’s muzzle trained on her chest. He watched her breasts rise and fall; she was breathing hard.
He was four paces away from her now. Three. Two.
Paul lowered the gun and reached her in a single giant stride. He grabbed her, lifting her off the ground as he held her in a tight embrace, feeling her arms slim and strong around him, breathing in the sweet scent of her perfume. His lips crushed hers as she pressed herself even closer to him, wide-eyed and giggling.
He kissed her again deeply, forcing his tongue into her mouth, and heard her moan. He pushed her against the balcony, holding her tight with his right arm, the barrel of the gun knocking against the steel railing. He worked his other hand up under her short skirt, thrusting his fingers inside her flimsy panties. God, he wanted to have her right then and there, hard and quick, up against the balcony rail of that multimillion-rand office.
Paul knew there wasn’t time.
He withdrew his hand, tugged her skirt down again.
‘Well done,’ he breathed in her ear. ‘You’ve done so bloody well.’
‘An Oscar-winning performance?’ She giggled again.
‘Better. They’ll need to come up with a new award, just for you.’
‘The boss fell for it. He suspected Pretorius all the way, not me.’
Paul smiled. ‘You’re a star. Pretorius did well too. You were both great.’
No reason to tell her Pretorius was dead now, that Paul had given the sergeant an additional bribe to shoot him and the other man as they made their escape.
Paul glanced around. He could see nobody else.
‘I sent the receptionist home early,’ Anderson said. ‘Or rather, I told her Mr Ramsamy said she could go.’
‘Good.’ One less person to kill, he thought. ‘Right, sweetie. We need to get going.’
She nodded. ‘I’ve got all the keys ready. They’re in my office.’
‘Bring them here. We’ll need the strongroom keys as well as the special access keys for the cashboxes. And don’t forget the scanner, OK?’
Anderson rolled her eyes at him. Her face was glowing and her lipstick was smudged. Stray locks of hair had escaped from her tidy French plait.
‘I know, I know.’
She hurried off to fetch them.
Paul waited until she’d returned with the keys and he watched her head across the courtyard to the strongroom. He was sure it would take her a little while to get inside and identify which cashboxes were which, using the scanner. Thanks to the accident they’d staged earlier on, and the crisis with the helicopter, there was a far bigger haul than usual in the strongroom that day, because three of the vehicles hadn’t had the chance to make a second trip to the bank.
She’d told him what the day’s pickup timetable was, and he’d told her exactly which boxes he wanted. He’d need to supervise her just to be sure, but there was something else he had to do first.
Paul waited until Anderson was safely inside the strongroom, and then he ran back to his car.
People were so stupid, he thought. Get a load of diamonds involved and it was all they could think about, all they could focus on. The diamonds had to be safe. The diamonds, the diamonds, the diamonds. It was like they’d all gone mad.
As if Paul would have a chance in hell of selling any of those cold hard stones without having his cover instantly blown and his ass thrown into prison for the rest of his life. To sell any stone like that, it would have to be identified and graded, and anybody with the skills and knowledge to identify and grade one of those big fancies would shit their pants as soon as they took a look through the microscope and realised what was staring back at them.
Hawking them in Hillbrow for a hundred bucks a shot would be the only safe way of selling stones like those, and a hundred bucks a shot wasn’t very lucrative.
Cash was king, Paul thought, as he fumbled to open the catch of the boot. The diamonds were the perfect distraction, but they weren’t what he was after. He’d never intended the explosives planted by Pretorius to blow. He’d simply needed the helicopter to make an emergency landing with the crew alive and well. There would be no reason for Anderson to send every available guard away from Stronghold’s premises to look after a load of dead bodies.
He wanted cash. Dirty fistfuls of money that could be used and spent and gambled without incurring any additional risk along the way.
While the whole of Stronghold Security was worrying themselves sick about the diamonds, Paul was going to grab the cash.
He twisted the key in the lock again. God, this car was crap. It failed him at every turn. Now that he was in the biggest hurry of his life, not even the damn boot would cooperate.
He felt the acid burn of anger grow inside him and only managed to suppress it after considerable effort. He took the key out of the lock and breathed deeply, slowly, calming himself. He wiped it on his shirt and carefully inserted it again, trying not to notice that his hands were shaking as badly as when he’d been a teenager about to have sex with his first girl.
He needed to do this before Anderson saw. She had taken a lot of his crap in her stride, approved of it, enjoyed it, even. But there were certain things – quite a few of them, now that he thought about it – that he was sure she wouldn’t be prepared to ignore. The contents of the boot were one of those. It didn’t matter, because he had a plan. Get the contents into the office, behind the reception desk. Then go back to the strongroom and make sure Anderson was emptying the right boxes. He’d do what he needed to with the other ones, the ones that Stronghold Security had picked up from Rhythm Town after he’d specially prepared them earlier on.
After that he’d get the cash into the boot and finally, while Anderson was distracted, move the original contents of the boot into the strongroom.
Paul smiled. Just one more phone call to make, and it wouldn’t be long before his brother Nick arrived here. That would give him the chance to tidy up the very last of the operation’s loose ends.
Finally he felt the key catch in the lock. What the hell had been wrong with it, he wondered.
Paul lifted the stubborn lid. Inside, he’d stashed his two prisoners from the old premises, both trussed and gagged. He’d had to knock the woman out to subdue her, because she’d struggled so hard when he’d tried to put her in. Her little black companion – he must be over eighteen, Paul knew, but he was as small and slight as a boy – had already seemed comatose, a dead weight, limp and acquiescent.
Now, staring at the sunlit interior of the boot, Paul felt a familiar rage erupt inside him. Pure, blind fury. Had he been jinxed? Could nothing in his goddamn miserable life go right?
The woman blinked up at him in confusion, wincing with pain, dark strands of hair plastered to the bloody welt on her temple where he’d hit her with one of the smaller chunks of concrete lying outside the building.
But the boy …
Paul’s fists bunched. He was still unable to believe what he was seeing.
The boy was gone.