Aggressor Read online

  Charlie had to nudge the satchel ahead of him before he got to move himself. He finally got his head level with the three tiled steps leading up to the front door, and stopped dead, checking for any sign of a motion detector inside the porch. We hadn’t seen one through the binos, but we’d had to plan on the assumption that there was one.

  He lay there for another fifteen seconds or so, then started to slide the bag forwards again. Slowly, and with infinite care, he and the satchel moved up the steps and out of my line of sight. All I could hear was his laboured breathing, punctuated from time to time by the click of high heels and the occasional peal of laughter heading in the direction of the club. Didn’t anyone sleep in this place?

  I sucked in a lungful of air, lifted myself on my toes and elbows, and moved forward another four inches. I breathed out as my wet jeans and thighs made contact with the concrete once more.

  There was a burst of applause at the Primorski as the band performed the closing bars of the Georgian version of ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, and in the momentary silence that followed I sensed rather than heard another sound, like something being dragged, from much closer by.

  It felt as if it had come from the window above me, but I didn’t dare move my head to check. I held my breath, mouth open to cut down any internal body noise, and listened.

  I raised my eyes as far as I could towards the porch. There was no sign of Charlie. He would have been doing the same: stopping, listening, tuning in.

  Whatever it had been, it didn’t happen again. The only sounds now were distant laughter and the music of the night.

  I breathed out, breathed in, kept my mouth open, and strained to pick up even the slightest vibration. Still nothing. Had it come from the window? Impossible to tell.

  I waited another thirty seconds or so. If someone upstairs had spotted us, surely they would have done something by now.

  I started to edge forward. We had no option but to treat this like an advance to contact. If you stopped every time you heard a gunshot, you’d never close in on the enemy. If there was someone in the house, or we’d been seen, we’d know about it soon enough.

  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 fucker, 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. Fuck 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 fuck 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.

  3

  I waited for the full fifteen, but by the end of it Charlie had defeated the bottom lock. Still on all fours, he packed the picks and wrenches away before easing the door open a few inches, so it didn’t creak or bang tight against a security chain. He waited a moment to see if any alarms kicked off, then poked his head through the gap to have a quick look and a listen.

  It was time for me to get my boots off, ready to do my bit. The ski mask was clammy round my mouth, the back of my neck was soaked with sweat, and the rest of me didn’t feel much tastier, but fuck it, we’d be done with this by first light, and knocking back a couple of beers on the plane by midday.

  I shoved my boots down the front of my bomber jacket and zipped them in, then liberated my Maglite and the CO2 canister.

  Charlie crawled back to where I’d been sitting. He’d get his own boots off, prepare the camcorder and wipe the porch dry with one of the towels I’d nicked from the hotel. When Baz got home, there mustn’t be the slightest trace of our visit. The subconscious takes in everything; when the mat isn’t at exactly the same angle, when the dust on the table has been inexplicably disturbed, little alarm bells start to ring. Most of us d
on’t hear them because we’re not smart enough to listen to all the things our brains are trying to tell us. But some people do, and Baz might just be one of them.

  I peered round the door. The place reeked like every auntie’s house I’d ever gone into as a kid, of over-stewed tea, old newspapers and stale margarine.

  I held my breath, opened my mouth, and cocked my ear. The only sound was the gentle ticking of a clock, off to my right. The opening of a door at night changes the atmospheric pressure in a house ever so slightly, but sometimes just enough for even a sleeping person’s senses to pick up.

  I let go of the door and, keeping control of it with my left shoulder, stepped inside. I hooded the lens of the Maglite with my fingers, leaving just enough light to see there was a staircase rising steeply along the external wall to my left and a longish hallway dead ahead with two doors on either side of it.

  A strip of flowery carpet ran down the centre of what looked like a parquet floor. The parquet was the first piece of good news I’d had since we made it through the front gate; it wouldn’t creak. The walls were bare, apart from a couple of framed pictures above a wooden chair with some coats thrown over it.

  Baz didn’t seem like much of a homemaker, at first glance, but he was certainly keen on security. As I flicked the Maglite to my right, a floor-to-ceiling, steel-barred gate glinted in the beam, hinged to swing across the main entrance but opened flush against the wall. There were two receptors each side of the door and flat bars lying on the floor with a pair of padlocks.

  I checked Baby-G. It was 2.28. We still had to find the safe, let alone defeat it. At this rate, we might be here for hours – and we only had about four and a bit left until first light.

  Charlie made only the faintest of sounds as he shouldered the satchel and came in behind me. I was going to be in charge of the next phase, the room clearing; he would keep control of the noisemaker, the bag.

  I covered the torch lens with a finger so that just enough light came out for us to move, leaned back and spoke softly into his ear. ‘Let’s just check for another exit. We need to concentrate on finding the safe.’

  Charlie thought for a second, glanced at his watch, then nodded. I moved off, keeping to the nine-inch-wide strip of parquet at the right-hand edge of the carpet, so as not to disturb the pile, and trying to avoid rubbing against the walls.

  I took two paces and stopped to give Charlie room to come in. He was already taking IR film with the camcorder, but handed me two rubber doorstops as he went past. Thank fuck his brain hadn’t been in ‘Oh I forgot’ mode when he wrote down his kit list.

  I closed the door softly behind me, and shoved one immediately below each of the two lever locks. If Baz came back unexpectedly, they would buy us a bit of time to play burglar. If he was already upstairs asleep and tried to do a runner, they would help make sure he didn’t get outside in a hurry, and start shouting for help.

  Charlie switched the camcorder to standby. The plan was to record the layout of the place wherever we went, then check it on the way out to make sure we’d left everything exactly as we’d found it.

  The doors off the corridor were all open, and I headed for the first one on my right. It was a living room, and by the look of it, Baz’s answer to Mrs Mop hadn’t been too energetic with her feather duster recently, though she had remembered to wind the grandfather clock. The dark wooden furniture and faded wallpaper somehow matched the smell.

  Black-and-white pictures of a couple on the mantelpiece. His parents, maybe. Pictures of him as a little lad. Magazines littered across the floor, some quite recent ones in Russian, some in Paperclip.

  The first phase of a house search is always a quick once-over. It would be pointless doing a detailed inspection of every room in sequence, only to find what you’re looking for smack in the middle of the very last room, three hours later. It’s on phase two that you start moving sofas, lifting carpets, looking up the chimney.

  The two picture frames in the hallway held large, sepia photographs of the house during happier times. There were no bars on the windows, no other buildings in sight, and no wall, just a three-foot-high fence to keep the horses from munching the grass that had predated the courtyard.

  We reached the door at the far end. It was hinged inwards on the left and open about an inch. I shone the torch round the frame to check for telltales. I couldn’t see anything. I signalled to Charlie and he filmed the gap.

  I nudged it open with the end of the canister. It didn’t take long to realize this was the kitchen. The smell of margarine and old papers was so strong here it nearly made me gag, even through the ski mask. More old furniture; a wooden table and a couple of chairs. The cooker looked like Stalin might have done his baked beans on it. Had Whitewall pointed us at the wrong place?

  I opened the door fully and found myself facing the external wall. Set into it, directly ahead of me, was what would have been the back door – if it hadn’t been covered completely by a large steel plate, bolted firmly into place.

  I turned to Charlie and nodded. We were in the right house.

  4

  I shone the torch around the kitchen from the doorway, picking out dented old aluminium pots and pans hanging from hooks over the cooker, and a half-drunk bottle of red wine on the table next to an open newspaper. A fly-screen in the corner seemed to lead to some kind of larder. Jars and cans glinted behind the mesh.

  I stood and listened for another three or four seconds, but the only noise was the ponderous ticking of the clock. I turned back up the hallway, tapped Charlie on the shoulder, and aimed the torch at the door to our right, about three paces ahead. The small red LED on the camcorder began blinking again.

  It was only just ajar. I checked for telltales round the frame, then gave it a gentle push. There was a window opposite, protected by an external grille, but completely filled by the perimeter wall.

  It looked like I was in somebody’s sewing room. A Singer treadle sat in the far corner, next to a wooden bench top, but there were no half-made clothes or swatches of material. There were no cupboards. Swirly carpet covered most of the wooden floor, apart from a couple of feet around the edges. The fireplace looked like it hadn’t been used for years, not since the last time the pictures hanging either side of it had got within reach of a duster.

  I walked round the edge of the carpet and checked the pictures for telltales, intentional or otherwise. The one on the left was of a bunch of flowers in a vase. There was nothing behind it except a paler square of wallpaper. There was no safe under the one of a mountain, either.

  I made my way back into the hallway and signalled to the door opposite; Charlie was right behind me, recording.

  This was much more promising. It was obviously Baz’s office; what looked like Bill Gates’s very first prototype was sitting on a desk in front of the window. Files and newspaper cuttings were strewn all round it, and on the floor as well. The shelf along the wall to my right had bowed under the weight of too many books. There was a cupboard in the far corner – a light oak veneer, flat-pack job, rather than somewhere Uncle Joe might have hung his uniforms.

  I moved out of the way to let Charlie past. He panned the camera left to right before we started moving stuff around. Using the torch to make sure I didn’t step on any of the paper on the floor, I headed first for the desk, in case there was a number on the phone. There wasn’t.

  We had better luck with the cupboard.

  Having checked for telltales, I pulled open the door and bingo, we’d found what we’d come for.

  I stepped back to let Charlie see the prize. He filmed the whole thing inch by inch, every bit of chipped grey paint, every word of Russian Cyrillic, no doubt proudly announcing its manufacture by royal appointment to the Tsar. It was about two foot square, and solid. The door was hinged on the right, with a well-worn chrome handle on the left, then a large keyway, and a combination cylinder dead centre. Once Charlie had the position of each on film, he handed me the camcorder, tested the handle, sh
rugged, and fished inside his bag.

  I shoved the canister back up my sleeve and let him get on with it.

  He brought out a towel and laid it in front of the safe. The bag was wet and he didn’t want to leave sign.

  5

  Charlie knelt on the towel in front of the safe, the bag to his right, and carefully unrolled the fibre-optic viewing device from a strip of hotel towel. Every item in the bag had been wrapped to prevent noise or damage.

  I fired up the camcorder and went over to Baz’s desk, filming everything on the top first, then the positions of individual drawers. There were about ten of them each side, designed to hold a thin file or a selection of pens. Some were slightly open, some closed; some pushed further in than they should have been.

  I lifted the telephone, but there was nothing taped underneath. There was a small wooden box beside it, loaded with pens, pencils, elastic bands and paper clips. No joy there, either.

  I checked for telltales on each drawer, and went through them one by one. I found sheet after sheet of paper in Paperclip and Russian, but no key to the safe, or anything scribbled down that resembled a combination.

  I looked over at Charlie. Torch clenched between his ski-mask-clad teeth, fibre optic inside the keyway, he was manipulating the controls like a surgeon performing arthroscopy – except that he was doing it on his hands and knees, with his arse in the air. He was attacking the day lock first, in case it was the only one being used.

  It was decision time. Nothing had turned up on this sweep, and I could spend all night searching this place for the key or any hint of a combination, and the more I looked, the more I would disrupt the area. I called it a day and went and knelt down on the towel, waiting until Charlie was ready to speak to me.