To Catch A Storm (4 page)

Meanwhile outside, Carl watched as another car pulled up into the drive. He grabbed for his phone to text Dan but had no signal. He got out of the car, went in the boot for his balaclava and a piece of lead pipe and started toward the house at a brisk walk.

Inside the house, Dan heard the front door go and had no choice now, but to go further into the house into a darkened utility room. There was a gap where a washing machine or dryer should be under a worktop and Dan got into the gap and tucked himself into the corner as far as he possibly could. He didn’t know who was now home, but he was too slight to take the man and his son on, let alone someone else. He had a knife, but really didn’t want to start using that. This was supposed to be low risk. He heard the latest arrival walking into the kitchen and tried to figure what was going on. It sounded like shopping bags being unpacked, accompanied by whistling. It was a woman’s whistling which was the best he could hope for. His ears picked up on a bunch of keys being dropped into something pot, either a bowl or something similar.

He stayed put for now whilst Carl watched (helplessly) from the dark shadows at the side of the house. There was lots of activity in the kitchen now, it sounded like all three were in there chatting and laughing. People were rattling cutlery out of drawers and clanging plates out of cupboards. He would wait for them to go and eat, so he sat tight and hoped that no one would come into the utility room. After a while the kitchen became quiet once more and it sounded like they were all in the living room, they probably wouldn’t be staring at a TV screen and away from the door to the hallway as they had when he came in, but the utility room led outside and there was a key in the door, so he could make his exit here once he had the car keys.

He went back to the kitchen and saw a pot hen on the worktop, something you kept eggs in he guessed. It was pretty much the only thing that could have made the noise he’d heard. He gently lifted the top off and there were several bunches of keys. He took the bunch attached to the Audi key. He was going to be ok after all. He started for the utility door, but was unaware Basil, the family cat, was sat behind him waiting to be fed and his first step was straight onto Basil’s paw. He was a big cat and made a funny noise. Half meow, half screech. Not good. He needed to act quickly. He went for the back door as he heard stirring in the living room. ‘Basil’s fighting again’ the woman said. He pulled the door to the utility room closed behind him to buy a little time. The three people were now in the kitchen with the cat and trying to figure out what the noise was about. They asked if Basil had been fighting again or if he’d hurt himself. Keep your mouth shut Basil, Dan thought as he moved silently toward the back door.

Dan tried desperately to turn the key in the lock but it was really stiff. The utility room lightened and he heard ‘What are you doing?’ from behind him, it was the woman’s voice. The game was up. Before he knew it, the man and teenage son went to grab him as he finally pulled the door open. He jumped outside. Carl was at the door with his lead bar and wearing the balaclava. The man and his son got to the door shouting after Dan and saw Carl holding up the lead bar. Carl, a much more imposing figure, told them calmly to go back into their living room, carry on playing racing and pray they never saw the two of them again. They didn’t need telling twice.

. . .

Even though Joseph considered himself to be the brains of the outfit, he conceded that Charlie was clever on an all together different level when it came to computers and software. Charlie had studied computing specialising in networks and programming. He did well and had had a successful but very brief career as a network manager for a company who made accounting software. He’d had a very wide range of responsibilities at that company and was paid handsomely. They clearly valued him but he didn’t value them. He was bored beyond belief being a salary monkey. It was one of those types of jobs where you set your own agenda. The people he answered to knew very little about what he did and certainly had no idea how long things should take. He occupied himself with extra curricular activities such as writing password breaking programmes, hacking the internal financial systems and stealing data. His skills were too good to be wasted making printers work, setting up mailboxes and telling staff to restart their computers. The company he worked for had three major competitors who all had similar products and all were hit by security breaches care of baby faced Charlie Caines. There was no trace of it back to Charlie, but he was responsible for two of the companies closing down their systems for 12 hours or more as they frantically fought to re-secure their login systems for their tens of thousands of customers. The third company remained unaware that their customers’ data was copied and sold to the highest bidder on a highly illegal website. That particular sale paid for Charlie’s new kitchen and bathroom with enough left over for a new Ducati.

Charlie knew Joseph from the local boozer they shared. Neither were full on loners, but didn’t have many friends. They’d both been talked into playing for the pub’s Sunday league football team and ended up chatting in the pub after a game. Joseph needed someone who knew their way around computers and email systems. He asked Charlie if he could ‘intercept someone’s email’? ‘Tell me more’ had been Charlie’s exact words manoeuvring Joseph to a quieter area of the pub. He said he had a job for him where he needed to intercept some very important emails about a very expensive item and that he could earn enough to pay off his mortgage with a few months work. Joseph pointed out that with any job where this type of money was involved, there was risk. A lot of risk.

Charlie gained access to the auction houses’ internal systems in around 3 days. Their fatal flaw was not only the simplicity of their passwords but more the guess-ability of them.
M0n3t123
and
P0llc0k321
were pretty simple even for someone like Charlie who knew few artists. Since he’d got in, he had been tracking emails which were being received by the auction house from CST Couriers and knew exactly when the painting was to be picked up. He had a copy of the paper work from a PDF which had been emailed. He had also created an exact copy-cat email template and was able to send emails that looked exactly like CST’s emails. The emails Charlie sent came from cstcouriers.co as opposed to the emails and actual website of CST Couriers which originated from cstcouriers.com.

Charlie had been beavering away with some off line activities as well. He had bought a second hand and high mileage Mercedes Van and had it vinyl wrapped in bright red with the CST logo emblazoned across both sides and the back, split in two by the doors. He had also bought work wear which matched exactly with the CSTs employees - blue cargo pants and red short-sleeved cotton shirts with the logo on the left chest pocket. The look was smart, but hard wearing.

The big difference between their fake Warhol being picked up and what the auction house had requested was the artwork would have the additional security of police motorcycle outriders. An additional cost of several thousand pounds which the new owner was happy to pay for on the strong advice of the auction house. Again, Charlie had been very busy in this area. He had bought two secondhand BMW R1200RT motorcycles. The bikes had been stripped back and painted white and looked like new. Charlie set about having the bikes made into police motorbikes with the help of his friend who worked for a vinyl wrapping company. The bikes and the van were done after business hours and cost Charlie materials plus two and a half grand for no questions to be asked. By the time he was done, they all looked brilliantly authentic. The final link were the two police outrider uniforms which came from a TV props and fancy dress company. These were hired for a film which was being shot in Manchester with the working title of ‘Man Down’. The whole set-up came in at a few quid under £32k. It would be cash well spent.

Joseph went through the plan with the group in minute detail with timing down to the last second. He omitted the part where he would screw the five of them over and leave them with nothing.

. . .

The auction house took the security of multi million pound artworks extremely seriously as well they should, or so their waffly website said. In fact the whole operation of getting the artwork to its new owner was meticulously planned down to the last dotted i and crossed t. The auction house was an especially secure building into which Joseph had no wish to attempt to break. The art would be transported by CST Couriers who prided themselves on their secure transport and storage of valuable art and jewellery. Obviously, they would not be armed as that wasn’t allowed in the UK, but their men were well trained in the art of defensive driving, they carried mace and batons. Additionally, their guards could all handle themselves. The website marketing called the CST guards ‘sentries’. CST did take training deadly seriously. Their sentries took part in training exercises and team building on a quarterly basis and were encouraged to actively compete in combat sports such as boxing, Taekwondo and Judo. Training and success was taken into account in their work assessments. Joseph knew all this and knew he would need to minimise any contact with their sentries during the operation.

Joseph would be the one of the drivers for the job. He had a good background as he’d raced cars in the past. Carl would drive the van and Jim and Charlie would be the two guards. Dan and Kyle would be on the bikes.

Dylan Feather, the contact at the auction house dealing with the Rothko had received an email from CST Couriers (AKA Charlie) to say that as part of their risk assessments, they had seen that there was to be a protest march through London that morning. Even though it was to start later in the morning, people would be gathering and roads would be blocked off and therefore, they wished to pick up slightly earlier to ensure smooth transit to the airport. With the benefit of Charlie seeing all the other emails from CST, he was able to match previous emails from the formal way of writing to placement of logo and signature. He asked Dylan to reply and confirm receipt. Dylan duly did this.

9.27am

The CST Couriers’ van along with their two police motorcycles drove down the utility road behind the auction house. They pulled up at the trade entrance. Jim and Kyle stayed sat on their bikes though they lifted their visors so they were able to make light conversation with one another. They looked relaxed. They weren’t.

9.30am

Wearing their CST outfits, Dan and Charlie knocked on the trade entrance door of the auction on the rear utility road in Mayfair. They looked immaculate. Their shirts washed a few times so they didn’t look brand new, but at the same time, they looked clean. Their red CST peak caps serving dual purposes. Firstly, they made the men look smart, finishing the uniforms off. More importantly, in public places, so long as the men kept their heads tilted downwards, their faces were hidden from the vast amount of CCTV cameras dotted around. They looked like they took real pride in their work. They did. They entered and made friendly chat about the weather with Dylan and his assistant Bryan. It was a lovely bright day. They had spent time improvising this conversation. It was rehearsed but they came across exactly as they wished - friendly and professional.

Charlie asked Dylan to confirm the collection reference for security. He told him it was on all previous communications. Dylan turned to his assistant expectantly. Bryan pulled a colour printout of the PDF from his clipboard. The collection reference was highlighted in fluorescent orange. Charlie produced a tablet and stylus for Dylan. He brought up the admin page on the website which had their collection reference. Charlie asked Dylan to sign to confirm they matched. With that he handed over ownership of the artwork to CST Couriers. Charlie clicked a submit button below the signature box. The web page was set up to automatically fire off an email to Dylan with his signature on the document.

Charlie told Dylan and Bryan they would be able to track the artwork to its delivery address (a private collector in Houston) from a link in an email that they would receive shortly. Dylan and Bryan knew this to be standard procedure when using CST Couriers. The men lifted the packed artwork carefully and carried it to the van where it was loaded and secured against the inside side wall. Charlie shook hands with Dylan and bid him farewell. Dylan thanked Charlie for their efficient service. Charlie shook Bryan’s hand as a slight afterthought. The tradesmen’s door closed and bolted shut once more as the van set off toward its next stop which would not be a Virgin jumbo jet heading for US soil. An email did turn up in Dylan’s email. He took no notice of it. He had other things to do that morning. Several paintings were being shipped out after the recent sale.

10.00am

A CST Courier van turned up at their utility road entrance. The CST Couriers knocked on the door. After a little confusion, Dylan at first accused them of being incompetent for sending two vans and wasting their time, CST Couriers ignored Dylan and his rude attitude and immediately called 999 from a company mobile. Police arrived shortly after. It would be 11.00am by the time detectives started to investigate the emails and the originating website. The website, database and mailboxes were all deleted remotely by Charlie by then. Only printed emails and PDFs existed as evidence by that time. Payments for the website hosting and domain would eventually be traced back to a card stolen from a middle aged lady in Cheshire. She didn’t have a computer and had never been online.

10.15am

Carl reversed the van up to the rear of the Audi and Charlie and Dan carefully transferred the packed painting to its open rear hatch. Once it was laid flat in the Audi, they then pulled a ramp from the van up which they rolled the two bikes. The bikes weren’t secured, but simply thrown on their sides. They shut the door of the van and drove away. The transfer took less than 90 seconds. Apart from Joseph reminding them to be careful as they ‘had seventeen million quid in their hands’, no other words were spoken. Carl, Charlie and Dan drove the van to a scrapyard near Edgware. The CST van and bikes would be a small block of crushed metal, rubber and plastic within the hour. Two of the men at the scrapyard would earn themselves £1k each for their speedy and discreet service. As they left the scrapyard in their Mercedes, they stripped out of their CST uniforms into their own clothes. They would make their separate ways to Edinburgh before meeting back up at the lock up.