When Amanda had first met Caleb, decades before, she’d had one burning question for him.
‘So, your boss is a real arsehole, isn’t he?’
The big man blinked. They’d been stood in silence almost an hour, had never exchanged more than two words, and as a first thing to say it was an attention-grabber.
Amanda stared up at him, daring him to agree.
‘He’s alright,’ Caleb replied.
Amanda snorted and shook her head. She took another drag of her cigarette, tugging at the short skirt she’d been told to wear and trying not to shiver. ‘This is a waste of time.’
It was raining, and the wind made the bus shelter they were huddled beneath next to useless.
The business estate was lit by the occasional street lamp that served to make an already bland cluster of squat industrial buildings look even drabber. Camouflage, Amanda considered, so boring that even the most desperate chancer would overlook them. But if you did your homework…
Straining her ears, she could just about hear the distinctive tink, tink of a chain link fence being cut open. Gillespie & Sons Precious Metals Refinery was now officially under siege.
Caleb cleared his throat, checked over the walkie-talkie their boss, Skelton, had given them before leaving. Back to awkward silence. Neither knew the other well enough to endure a comfortable one, or how to pick a topic.
No knowing how long they’d be out here. While the main team were breaking in, sights set on the refineries heavy vault, they were just lookouts, two of four young hopefuls, working for slim cuts. The police checked up on this area two or three times a night and weren’t so lazy that they’d miss the sight and sound of a vault under a blowtorch.
The distant sound of an approaching car emerged out from under the rumble of the rain.
Caleb stiffened. Amanda looked up, amused, as he moved towards her with a terrified look on his face. His arms came up and out like Frankenstein’s monster, ready to grab her. Amanda didn’t move to reciprocate, legs crossed at the knee, cigarette dangling between her lips.
When the cops came circling, he was to signal the men inside then make like they were two kids necking, waiting on their bus.
She’d never seen a big lad so terrified. He’d even forgotten the signalling part.
Before committing to grabbing her, his eyes trying to plot a course past her folded arms and hot cigarette, he checked back over his shoulder.
A distant flash of head and tail lights flickered past through the trees, some late commuter headed home.
Amanda didn’t know which of them was more relieved.
‘See,’ she said, ‘this is exactly my point. Like two people decided to come to the middle of an industrial estate to get it on. Jesus, we barely know one another. And we look like we barely know one another. Any cop with half an eye open will spot that in a heartbeat. You already got a record?’
Caleb shrugged, staring out across the road and the drenched scrub of empty grass opposite, wringing his large hands.
‘Couple of assaults. A “B and E”.’
‘See? There you go. Some lookouts we’re going to be in fucking handcuffs because your boss can’t plan for shit. Fucking waste of time. Look at me,’ she opened her arms a moment to show off her outfit before hugging herself again. ‘We look like we should be on our way to a club. What’s wrong with this picture?’
‘Why didn’t you say something at the meeting?’
Amanda gave him a look.
The sound of a distant power saw rent the air. Burglar alarm circumnavigated, they were cutting their way in through the roof.
‘Why do you think?’ asked Amanda. ‘He wouldn’t listen to me. I tried talking to him after. Figured he wouldn’t take offence so long as I didn’t call him out in front of you lot. Dickhead still told me to fuck off. Now we’re sat here looking like a couple of idiots because he’s a fucking idiot.’
‘So, let’s hear it.’
‘What?’
‘Your better idea.’
‘Just the one? I can think of two off the top of my head. We either,’ she counted off on her fingers, ‘look like we work around here and we’re waiting for a bus or we hide in those bushes over there. Fuck, at least it’d be drier.’
‘Boss told us to stay here.’
‘Do everything he says, do you?’
‘He treats me alright.’
‘And if he told you to wear a tie just like his would you do it?’
Caleb laughed. ‘That thing’s fucking awful.’
‘There you go,’ she punched him on the arm. ‘Knew you’d warm up. That’s an awful fucking tie. When must he have got it, the seventies? And it probably still made him look shifty, like one of those guys on cop dramas who turn snitch.’
‘If the cops would let it near. Looks radioactive.’
The walkie-talkie under Caleb’s arm crackled and the man snapped out of his mirth to respond. ‘Yeah?’
‘Everything good out there?’ Skelton. ‘Thought I heard a car.’
‘All clear,’ Caleb responded.
‘Good. We’re bringing in the equipment. Couple more hours tops.’
‘Got you. We’ll keep on keeping an eye out.’
‘Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.’
Amanda heard a snigger before it was cut off.
Caleb had the decency to look embarrassed. She liked him for that.
‘They’re doing this to get at me,’ he explained.
‘Yeah, I figured as much.’
‘I mean, I like women and everything—’
‘Look, you don’t have to explain. I get it. Jamison said you guys would ride me for a while. Just how teams do.’
‘Just want to meet the right girl, you know?’
‘Yes. I get it. No complaints here. You’re fine.’
Caleb nodded. She could hear the next topic coming a mile off.
‘So, Jamison. He, like, your father?’
Amanda shuddered at the word, hid her reaction behind another drag of her cigarette. ‘He took care of me when it counted. Helped me get rid of a body. Now he’s getting me work. Learning a trade, he calls it.’
A look crossed Caleb’s face, unable to decide whether or not she was messing with him. ‘So, is it true? About your dad being—’
‘Yup,’ she cut him off before he could get any further. ‘Every word.’ She nodded back toward the building. The loading bay doors would be open now, their truck backing up to unload the vault cutting equipment and, after that, start loading on the gold. ‘Your boss was one of my dad’s mates. Another reason for him not to listen to me. None of them give me the time of day. They reckon it’s like I cheated or something. But they all knew what he… what he used to… fuckers.’
Caleb nodded, looking away to give her a moment. She tried to pull herself together. Dad was five years at the bottom of the Thames now and she still hadn’t shaken the old bastard’s ghost. She was wondering if she ever would.
She could hear the question coming long before it arrived. She could hear it working its way up Caleb’s throat as he shifted in his seat. ‘So how did you—’
‘You want to get rich, Caleb?’
Nothing derails a person’s thoughts faster than money.
‘You got a job?’
‘Sure do.’ Amanda smiled. ‘This one. Arranged it with Jamison himself and he got the nod from Henderson. Way it went was, I said I reckoned Skelton was going to fail tonight but we manage it,’ she wagged a finger between the two of them, ‘we should get a bigger cut. So Jamison, he’s all “Skelton is the best in the business. I pulled all these strings so you could…” but I stuck at him until he agreed. Skelton fails tonight, we get a crack tomorrow. Come Monday, we’ll be walking away with more money than you’d know what to do with.’
She watched this sink in.
‘Look, I know he’s your boss and everything. You’ve got to respect him. But aren’t you doing that so one day it’s you at the top and everyone’s got to respect you? How about, here’s another idea: fuck that. You help me, we skip to that last part. Starting tomorrow.’
Was that the trace of a smile on those lips? Caleb leaned against the bus shelter wall, facing her.
‘Why do you think I was giving them the idea to do this on a bank holiday?’ she asked, leaning back, pleased with herself. ‘Gives us an extra day, doesn’t it?’
‘I’m not saying yes,’ said Caleb, ‘but suppose he doesn’t come out with that gold—’
‘He won’t. That inside man he had? He was an idiot. Missed out one important detail and it’s fucked them. I guarantee you, we’re going to be stuck out here all night and they’re going to come out empty-handed, talking about how they got fucked. They won’t regroup in time. Tuesday comes round, staff find they’ve been broken into, police everywhere, bang, job’s gone.’
‘But you’ve figured it out.’
‘I did some actual research. Know every detail. You’d think that would be common sense to these people but…’ she shrugged.
‘So you going to tell me or knacker yourself wanking off?’
She laughed, shocked and impressed at the balls on him. Felt good to laugh like that, she hadn’t in years. If ever.
‘It’s the vault,’ she explained. ‘More accurately it’s the cutter they brought. Not hot enough, see? They think they’re just cutting through stainless steel. But this one’s modified, security’s wise to it. They’ve put this layer of copper, see, between the plates like a sandwich.’ She demonstrated with her hands, holding the palms flat and peering through the gap between them. ‘See they melt away the steel, the copper melts faster and reseals the door quicker than they can cut.’
Caleb blinked like the news was a blow to the face. He was impressed. ‘So, what do we do that’s different?’
‘We come back in tomorrow. Won’t need as many men because we already know the burglar alarms are kaput, but we bring a burning bar. Magnesium flame. Cut through anything. Makes a lot of smoke, we’ll have to cut the smoke detectors but that’s not a problem. We load the lot in our van and away we go. We make a bit of money, a lot of respect and Skelton can be the one making out at the bus stop in his awful tie next time.’
‘And where we going to get a burning bar from? And a van?’
‘See that one parked over there?’
He looked. There was a lone van in the car park over the other side of the grass.
‘Don’t know if it’ll be here tomorrow,’ he mused.
‘I do. Because it’s mine. Equipment’s already loaded.’
‘Fucking hell.’
‘So, you in?’
‘Not planning on fucking me over are you?’
‘Not until I can figure out a way to get my hands round your throat. Shake on it?’ She held out a hand. Caleb took it. ‘Good. Now all that’s left is to sit back and watch these arseholes fail.’
‘You!’ Skelton was red in the face, one thick digit pointing as he stormed into Henderson’s office, huffing and snorting like a rhinoceros.
Amanda and Caleb leapt to their feet, adjusted their new clothes.
Caleb had just been adjusting to being there as they waited for Henderson to show, the first time he’d made it through the doors of the nightclub let alone been allowed up into the VIP area. Now he was looking like a chastised little boy.
‘You fucking fucked me.’
‘Skelton?’ Jamison called after him, running to catch up before anything could happen. ‘Skelton.’
The old man wasn’t going to reach them in time to intervene. Skelton was too angry to listen anyhow. Amanda prepared herself, trying to plan in her head what she’d do when he started swinging. She was never good at violence. It made her freeze up, filled her head with static.
Caleb took one smart step forward, fist already moving, unstoppable as a freight train. It caught Skelton straight in the face.
The man’s legs wobbled a moment before he fell backwards, blood streaming from his nose, eyes glassy looking for the brick wall he’d just run into.
The big man shook some life back into his fist. ‘Arsehole.’
Amanda grinned. She’d made a friend for life it seemed.
Who knew that in twenty-five years she’d be standing over his body?