Royal Heist by Lynda La Plante Read Free Book Online Page A

could explain his financial predicament to Liz. He’d have to get rid of the girlfriend, sell the flat he’d provided her with. He reckoned he’d have to sell off property fast, including his villa in Spain. He returned to the bedroom. Thinking about the life of crime he used to lead made the adrenaline pump into his tired veins.
    Liz woke to her husband stroking her breasts, and suddenly he was on top of her, like a man possessed. He went for her with a passion that made her climax with a scream.
    “Well, that must have been some phone call,” she said, wide awake and smiling. “Whoever it was, you get him to call you just once a week. I couldn’t take this every night! Tony? Was it good news?”
    He closed his eyes. “Yes. And now I’m knackered.” He turned over and fell almost immediately into a deep sleep.
    Liz had no notion of her husband’s life before their marriage. None of his business associates had an air of being less than 100 percent legitimate. If anyone had hinted to Liz that her husband had been involved with some of the most daring robberies ever committed in England she would have laughed. Not her Tony. Tony had a fixation on honesty; he’d even had arguments with his accountant over a few offshore tax-dodging schemes the man had suggested. He was paranoid if they were late paying the milkman. She loved and trusted him totally and had never been unfaithful, though recently she’d been fantasizing about her new personal trainer, Kevin. Just like Christina, Liz had been cosseted and adored but kept in ignorance of her husband’s past activities. The three men had agreed: the less anyone knew about their past, the safer they would be. So their secrets were buried deep and covered with well-rehearsed lies. Liz had never heard her husband mention Edward de Jersey, just as Christina knew nothing about Tony Driscoll or James Wilcox.
    The snowcapped mountains with the mellow light of sunrise streaming across their peaks made a wonderful sight. Aspen was not just great skiing country; its scenery was breathtaking. It also offered a fantastic social life, which was why James Wilcox and his present girlfriend, Rika, had booked their Christmas break there for two years in a row.
    Rika had been the nanny. She’d arrived from the Ukraine hardly able to speak two words of English, a raw-boned, handsome blonde with a voluptuous figure. After six months, she moved into the master bedroom. Rika knew a good catch when she saw one, and born into poverty, she was determined to become Wilcox’s wife number five.
    At fifty-nine, Wilcox was slender and muscular from his daily workouts. He ran about fifty miles every week, cycled, and played tennis in the summer. He was still handsome and had only recently taken on the slight puffiness associated with age and high living. Rika was only twenty-eight. He could hardly ever understand what she said as her English was still appalling, but he had no desire for meaningful conversations. She was a great fuck, kept the kids in order and his homes clean.
    Wilcox had stupendous energy and required only five hours’ sleep a night. He practically rattled with the vitamin pills he swallowed in handfuls every morning. He ate sparingly, drank little, and smoked only the occasional cigar. His one vice was cocaine; he snorted mountains of it and depended on it to kick him into gear every day.
    Wilcox was not as wealthy as Driscoll or de Jersey, but through wise deals in the car trade he had turned his earnings from the robberies into a lucrative business. At one time he had owned restaurants and garages, but he had recently liquidated the majority of his holdings in favor of a semiretirement plan: he planned to pack up and live abroad. He had stayed on in England all these years only to educate his six kids. Since all of the older teenagers now either boarded at school or were heading for university, and only the twins still lived at home, it would be simple now to send them to