One Night by Oliver Clarke Read Free Book Online Page A

she could tell it must have taken him hours. It was almost exactly the same as the real one, he had obviously copied it from a picture and he had done it well. But it wasn’t the real one. It was just something her dad had made. She burst into tears and ran from the room with the irrational fury of a ten year old girl. The last things she saw was the look of pain on father’s face. It was only a few years after he died that she started hating herself for hurting him so much that day.
    “He was a good man,” she said, “and I loved him.”
    “What happened?” said Joel. His voice was quiet, tentative. He could tell that this hurt her but also that she wanted to tell him. That saying it would help her.
    “They didn’t have much money, mum and dad. Enough to live but never enough for anything nice. Dad was a carpenter but I guess it was a time when people decided they didn’t really need carpenters. He loved his work, loved working with his hands, but in the end he gave it up and went to work for his brother. That was why he died.”
    Joel didn’t say anything, just held her hand and let her speak.
    “My uncle was, is, involved in a lot of dodgy things. I don’t know exactly what happened. I think he and dad went to collect a debt. There was some trouble. He came back, dad didn’t. He was hit. Just the once but that was enough.”
    Joel saw that she was crying. Not loudly or dramatically but he could see the tears running down her cheeks. 
    He gripped her hand. “I guess we’re both a bit broken,” he said.
     
    The two men were sat in the car outside the restaurant. The phone rang and the passenger answered. “Okay,” the voice at the end said. “I’ve thought about it. Just grab them both and bring them here with the bag. Billy and the others are on their way to help you. If I think for one fucking second that you’ve looked in the bag I’ll kick you into next week.”
    “Okay, got it,” said the passenger. “No peaking.”
    “Don’t take the piss,” said the voice. “One more thing. If there is even one scratch on my niece I’ll fucking gut you alive.”
     
     

Chapter Ten
     
    Walking back to the house with Danny, Joel remembered the last time he had worked with Reynolds.
    It had been five months ago but he remembered it like it was yesterday. The target was a fancy watch place on Old Bond Street. What made the job even sweeter was the fact that one of their reps was visiting the shop that day. Danny told Joel that a source had tipped the backer of the job off to the fact that the rep would have some particularly expensive watches with him that. One of the watches, Danny said, was a limited edition platinum Rolex Daytona which was on special order for a customer. That watch on its own was worth almost £100,000.
    The real beauty of it was that the rep would have stock on him for all th e shops he was due to visit, not just the one that they were hitting. If it went to plan they’d net the stock from the shop plus any cash they had on the premises on top of whatever the rep had. It was the need for the rep to be in the shop when they hit it that meant that the timing had to be spot on. It also introduced an additional risk. If they had just been targeting the store they could have waited until it was empty of customers before they went in. Because they needed the rep to be in there they had no control over who else might be present. That made Joel nervous.
    When it came to his personal life Joel let his emotions guide him. He did what he felt like when he felt like it. Work was another matter. Control was everything there.
    Apart from that one wild card the plan was solid though. The place had the normal security. Alarms, a controlled entry system, a guard, safes out back where all the stock was kept. The plan covered everything.
    Joel, Reynolds and a Swedish guy called Johansson would wait in a car near the shop. Johansson was a driver, the best one Joel had seen this side of Formula One.