James said, as Wheels crammed the laptop and jewellery inside a Nike backpack, then aimed the gun at the lady.
‘I don’t see your purse,’ Wheels yelled. ‘Where is it?’
The woman sat with a luxurious satin pillow in her lap to shield her breasts. ‘Find it yourself,’ she spat, her body language indicating that she wasn’t too impressed by her husband’s meek surrender.
‘This says Patek Philippe,’ James said, as he picked up the man’s watch. ‘Never heard of it.’
Wheels laughed. ‘That’s because you can’t afford it. They’re dearer and more exclusive than a Rolex. Trouble is that makes ’em buggers to fence.’
James reached over and dropped the watch into a backpack as Wheels searched around for the purse. Finally, he lost patience and smashed the barrel of his gun into the woman’s face.
As she howled and sobbed, her husband pointed towards a yellow handbag resting in the gap between the mattress and the bedside table.
‘No,’ the woman gasped. ‘My grandmother’s brooch is in there. Please don’t take it.’
‘Your granny’s brooch,’ Wheels sneered. ‘Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn.’
The woman sniffled as Wheels ripped her purse from the bag and began inspecting her collection of plastic cards.
‘Very impressive,’ Wheels snorted. ‘Do you know, this card comes with a twenty-four-hour concierge service? That’s gonna come in handy for replacing all this stuff we’re stealing.’
‘You’ve got what you came for,’ the man said firmly. ‘Now why don’t you leave?’
Wheels broke into a nasty laugh as he ripped the hotel telephone out of the wall socket. ‘I’m afraid that we’re only just starting. What’s the registration of your car?’
‘Why do you need it?’ he asked.
Wheels looked at the woman. ‘Do you want me to smash her one?’
‘Seven one, D E F, two five nine.’
‘Right,’ Wheels said. ‘And is it parked down in the basement?’
The man nodded.
‘Valet or self-park?’
‘Self-park, basement level three outside the elevator.’
Wheels snapped the cord from the base of the handset and threw the length of telephone cord at James before pointing at the woman. ‘Tie her up.’
‘What are you doing?’ the man demanded.
‘It’s very simple,’ Wheels grinned. ‘You’re going to tell me the PIN numbers for all of your lovely cards. Once we’ve tied you up, I’m going downstairs to take your car. Then I’m gonna drive around London, stopping off at cash machines and drawing two-fifty or five hundred quid on every one of them. It should only take an hour or so, and my little pal will wait here pointing this gun at you. If you make a fuss or try to escape, or if it turns out that you told fibs when you gave me your PIN numbers, he’s gonna put bullets through both of your heads.’
James felt bad about tying the woman’s wrists together as Wheels made the man write a list of his own and his wife’s PIN numbers on Ambassador Hotel stationery.
‘Turn on to your stomach,’ James ordered, as the woman sobbed desperately.
James knotted flex around her ankles before trussing the wrists and ankles together and cramming one of her husband’s handkerchiefs in her mouth. The man scowled at James when he moved in to repeat the exercise, but gave in when Wheels squished the tip of his nose with the gun.
‘Any noise, any lies, any fuss and you’re both dead,’ Wheels grunted while James finished tying the couple up. Then he handed the gun to James. ‘You feeling OK?’
The Glock was heavy and James felt awful about the sobbing woman. But he nodded.
‘Don’t sweat it, I’ll call in about an hour and meet you back where we parked,’ Wheels said.
As Wheels walked out of the room James settled into an armchair and kept one eye on the couple as he tried to work out how much they’d stolen: the laptop was worth a few hundred, the watches, the woman’s jewellery, cufflinks plus the money Wheels was collecting from the cash machines and whatever the new Lexus was worth to a stolen car syndicate. All told it had to be the best part of ten grand and Wheels had promised James a share.
But crime didn’t look so good from the perspective of the woman trussed up on the bed with tears streaking down her face. James grabbed the remote and flicked the television from 24-hour news to VH1, but even when he turned the sound up he couldn’t not think about the two desperate humans less than three metres away from him.
Getting involved with Sasha’s crew was an essential part of the mission and there