as we discussed. Let’s assume we need to use the big key.” It lay at Drake and Shelley’s feet. The words “knock knock” had been painted on it in white. “Leave that to Gurney.”
The driver chuckled. “I’m an old hand at it.”
“Remember what we said,” warned Shelley, telling the whole van but keeping a close eye on Drake, unnerved by what he’d just heard. “Nobody gets hurt. Damage is limited to computers and cameras.”
“Roger that,” said Bennett, and as Shelley rolled down his balaclava, adjusted the eye holes, watching Drake do the same, he wondered if he should be concerned that neither Drake nor Gurney had replied.
And then they arrived.
Shelley heard the sound of the front doors opening, boots hitting the tarmac of the car park. Then the back doors were flung wide and a masked Gurney reached in for the big key. A security light had flared on, sodium dazzle picking them out, but otherwise there was no sign of alarm, no cameras fixed to walls peering down on them as they crowded around the doorway.
To one side stood Drake, holding his bat, hefting it like a proper slugger, fingers anxious on the grip. Shelley tried to find his eyes to send signals: Calm, Guy, calm, but Drake was watching Gurney, who was lifting the big key, ready to slam it into the door. Close by, as though deliberately positioned in order to keep their employer safe from harm, was Bennett.
And now the big key swung back, a medieval battering ram in miniature, Gurney grunting as it came forward and smashed into the door with an almighty wallop. If those inside hadn’t known of their presence, they did now. And if they didn’t know now, they soon would. Gurney did it again.
Bang! The door splintered.
Bang! Third time lucky. The lock separated and Gurney shouldered the door open, bursting into the building with a warrior cry.
Earlier, they’d used the words “shock and awe.” “Noise,” they said. “Make lots of it,” the idea being to terrify the occupants, even those who were innocent. So it proved as Bennett raced inside with Drake and Gurney not far behind, the three of them making so much ruckus that at least it relieved Shelley of any obligation to do the same.
And now they were in a corridor, rooms on either side. Ahead of Shelley, Gurney kicked open a door, waved his bat, screaming, “Get out, get out, get out!”—a demented mantra as he battered the door frame side to side with the bat, like a quartermaster calling dinner with a gong, adding to the sudden, horrifying cacophony.
To the workers in the cam studio it must have seemed as if the world was ending. Wearing just a bra and panties, dark circles under her eyes and her face pale, the first girl came pelting out of the room. She ducked past Gurney as though terrified he was about to use the bat on her, and then, at the sight of Shelley, screamed again and stumbled cowering against the wall.
He reached to her. “Wait,” he said. “You’ll freeze out there. Get some clothes, get your stuff.”
From ahead came the crunch of Gurney laying waste to equipment and the girl flinched again, but said, “Really?” in an uncertain voice. Polish, he thought.
“Yeah, really. I won’t hurt you.”
His eyes flicked to further up the passage where Gurney was kicking open another door and charging inside—get out, get out, scream, bish, bash, bosh—“I won’t let him hurt you, either,” he said more loudly, over the din of cameras being smashed and screaming.
There was no sign of either Drake or Bennett save for a door swinging open at the far end of the hallway. Gurney had moved on to a third room, wielding the bat like Jack Nicholson with his ax in The Shining. Further up, two more doors were flung open and women appeared, adding to the noise with shouts of surprise, fear, anger, defiance.
Shelley yelled at Gurney, “Oi, let them get their stuff, all right?” receiving a look in return that was impossible to decipher under the balaclava.
Still trying to impose authority on a situation that had been careering out of control virtually from the moment they arrived, Shelley moved forward, glanced into a room, and saw the first girl he’d encountered pulling her things from the floor, dancing as she dragged on a pair of jeans. He saw the smashed camera. A laptop almost staved in half. Another woman dashed past with a bundle of clothes in