Not that the waiting would be a problem. The three men sat in the van like clones of one another: silent, watchful men in their thirties, dressed in black balaclavas, black overalls. The van belonged to Telecom, stolen an hour earlier in Eltham. If anyone asked questions, Niekirk, Riggs and Mansell were tracking down a cable fault. They also had a stolen Range Rover with tinted windows stashed in Warrandyte. The Range Rover was Riggs’ and Mansell’s way out of the hills. They were wearing dinner suits under their overalls and if anyone stopped them later, they were a couple of winemakers celebrating the start of the festival.
Niekirk had his own way out. He’d be carrying the money and he didn’t want Riggs and Mansell to know where he was taking it. And once he’d made the delivery, Niekirk didn’t know where the money was going. De Lisle, the man who put these jobs together, wanted it that way, and Niekirk was in no position to argue, not when De Lisle could put him in jail for a long time, and especially not when De Lisle controlled the pursestrings. Disappear with the money himself? Forget it. De Lisle would find him in five seconds.
Mansell went tense suddenly. He was in the driver’s seat, a headset clamped to his ears, a police-band radio in his lap. He fine-tuned the radio, listening intently. ‘I’m getting something.’
Neither Riggs nor Niekirk spoke. If they had something to worry about, Mansell would soon tell them. Even so, they relaxed visibly when Mansell grinned. ‘Kid ran his car into a tree near Yarra Junction.’
Niekirk nodded. That was good: a car smash would tie up the local boys in blue for a while. He watched Mansell. Mansell disliked being the driver and radio man. But, as Niekirk continued to point out to him, Riggs was needed to open the safe, himself to oversee the job, leaving Mansell to keep watch.
Niekirk spoke. ‘Here he comes now.’
A man had come through the side door of Radio 3UY. He wore a denim jacket and jeans and his shaved skull gleamed in the moonlight. The three men saw him stretch, yawn, shiver, then climb into a sad-looking VW and clatter down the hill and out of sight.
Niekirk glanced at Mansell. ‘All clear?’
Mansell nodded.
‘Let’s go.’
Riggs and Niekirk slipped into the darkness and across the street to the metre-wide alley that separated the bank from the radio station. The bank’s rear door was flat and implacable, a dark steel mass in the wall. There were two locks, and Riggs knelt before the lower one, took a set of picks from the breast pocket of his overalls, and went to work. Niekirk watched him, training the narrow beam of a pencil torch at the lock.
A half minute later, the lock was open and Riggs started on the upper one. He breathed heavily as he worked, audible sounds of effort and concentration. Then the second lock fell open and he seemed to deflate, the tension draining away from him.
Niekirk folded back a flap of his overalls, where he’d stitched a tiny radio into a pocket above his breastbone. He depressed the transmit button. ‘We’re going in.’
He heard Mansell’s acknowledgement, a crackle of static, and pushed open the steel door. According to the briefing notes, there was minimal security inside the bank. There had never been the need for it-you didn’t get bank raids in these little hill towns, where lives were modest and every road was crippled with S-bends. But Niekirk hadn’t lived as long as he had by accepting the things he was told without checking first. He paused in the doorway and played the torch beam over the interior walls, floor and ceiling. Nothing.
He put his mouth to the radio, said, ‘It’s clear,’ and led the way into the bank.
Behind him Riggs shouldered a canvas bag of tools and closed the door in the rear wall, sealing them off from the cloudy moon.
The briefing notes consisted of floorplans, a description of the security system, external patrol times, notes on staffing levels and the size of the take, and an estimate of the minimum time elapse before cops might be expected to arrive if they happened to trip a hidden alarm. There was also a number to call if they were arrested. As with the other jobs they’d pulled for De Lisle, the groundwork and backup were impressive. Someone had done his homework. But Niekirk didn’t know who the someone was, and that was the big weakness in this job. All he knew from De Lisle was, they had a green light as far as the local armed-holdup squad was concerned.
The vault was in a room adjoining the staff toilets along the far wall of the bank. Veiling the torch beam with his hand, Niekirk led Riggs along the main corridor, past a storeroom and the manager’s office, and across an open area where desks and cabinets squatted like outcrops of granite on a wintry plain.
A heavy steel grille barred the entrance to the vault. The briefing notes hadn’t said anything about that. Niekirk murmured into the radio: ‘There’s a grille we weren’t told about. I’ll keep you posted.’
The radio crackled.
Again Niekirk trained the torch while Riggs probed with his set of picks. The steel grille gave him no more trouble than the door to the bank itself, and a minute later Niekirk was saying into the transmitter: ‘Final stage.’
Riggs unzipped his canvas bag. First he removed a heavy-duty industrial drill and rested it at the base of the vault. He followed that with a weighty metal device shaped like an ungainly handgun. It was an electromagnetic drill-stand and it hit the vinyl tiles of the floor with a thud. Finally he reached in and wordlessly handed Niekirk a small fluorescent camping lantern, two coils of thick black rubber power leads and a double-adaptor.
Niekirk flicked a switch on the lantern. A weak, localised glow illuminated the door of the vault. He searched the walls and skirting board. There was a power point in the corridor outside the grille door. He plugged in the two leads, switched on the power and said softly: ‘Ready.’
Riggs pulled the drill trigger experimentally. The motor whirred, muted and powerful. He rested the drill on the floor again then heaved to his feet, holding the drill-stand in both hands. He eyed the combination lock assessingly for half a minute, then pressed the leading edge of the electromagnet against the vault door. Metal slammed against metal, clamping the drill-stand to the face of the vault like an ugly handle. Finally he fitted the drill with a diamond-studded bit.
Neither man said anything for the next fifteen minutes. While Niekirk watched and listened, Riggs drilled three holes through the Swedish steel door of the vault. Guided by the electromagnetic drill-stand, he was assured of being accurate to within five millimetres of the crucial point in the locking mechanism, just above the tumblers. Metal filings curled to the floor, smoke wisps rose from the hot tip of the drill, and even with wax plugs in their ears the sound seemed to tear each man open.
After fifteen minutes Riggs undamped the drill-stand and rested it on the floor. He glanced at Niekirk, who said into the radio: ‘Anything?’
Mansell’s voice crackled: ‘All clear.’
Riggs fished in his bag for a small tin. It held powdered chalk, which he rubbed into the palms of his hands, the sound dry and satisfied. Then he took out another of his special tools. This was an aptoscope, used by urologists to examine the human bladder. He crouched at the drill holes, positioned the aptoscope, and began to examine the tumblers inside the lock. After a while he breathed, ‘You little fucking beauty,’ and started to poke and probe with a lock pick. Two minutes later, he had the door open.
Niekirk bent his mouth to the radio. ‘We’re in.’
They worked quickly. Riggs repacked his bag while Niekirk stepped into the vault and began to empty it. Their first job, back in February, had involved hitting the safety-deposit boxes of a bank in suburban Brighton, seizing bonds, cash, jewellery; this time the orders were clear-take the money only. The money was in small plastic containers similar to margarine tubs, stacked neatly along a shelf. As Niekirk piled them outside the vault, Riggs carried them away to the rear door of the bank, next to his tools.