Open Sesame (24 page)

‘All right,’ the alarm snarled. ‘But if anybody asks, I never seen you before in my life, right?’

‘Right. I mean,’ John Fingers added, ‘even if I did say something, who the hell’d ever believe me?’

With the alarm off, John Fingers was able to take his time scaling the wall, and he made himself nice and comfortable on the window ledge before he jemmied the stay.

‘By the way,’ he asked the alarm. ‘The CCTV camera.’

‘What about it?’

‘What’s it called? I always think it’s nice being on first name terms in business, don’t you?’

‘Zelda,’ the alarm replied. ‘Don’t be fooled by her big round eye, though. She’s a tough cookie.’

‘Thanks. Be seeing you.’

The alarm, it turned out, was exaggerating.

‘You really like it?’ the camera asked. ‘I mean really. You’re not just saying it to please me?’

‘Would I do a thing like that?’ John Fingers replied. ‘And what’s more, it’s not every camera that could get away with a mounting like that. I mean, black enamel square section tube, unless you’ve got the figure for it, you could look ridiculous. On you, though—’

Cameras can’t smile; but they can open their diaphragms up to f3 and flutter their shutters. ‘Glad to know there’s some people who notice things,’ it said pointedly. ‘Of course, some people are so ignorant they wouldn’t notice if a person turned up for work strapped to a length of four-by-two with red insulating tape.’

As he walked casually past the camera (which was far too busy admiring its reflection in the window to pay any attention to him) he quickly examined the space between the lines for relevant reading matter. Accordingly, when he came to the infra-red beam he was ready for it.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ve got a message for you.’

The beam narrowed suspiciously. ‘You have?’

‘From Zelda,’ John Fingers replied. ‘She said she’s really sorry, she didn’t mean it, and would it be at all possible to start over again?’

‘Zelda said that?’

John Fingers nodded, hoping to hell he’d guessed right. ‘I’m just the messenger,’ he added, ‘so don’t blame me if…’

‘Wow! She really said she was sorry?’

‘That’s right. Is there something between you guys, then?’ he added innocently.

‘There was,’ replied the beam. ‘Until a certain person made certain remarks about another person happening to pass the time of day with the fire extinguisher, even though he was just being polite, that’s all. I mean, what kind of relationship have you got if you haven’t got trust?’

‘Absolutely,’ John Fingers agreed. ‘Anyway, that’s the message, so if you’d just let me past…’

‘What? Oh sure. Hey, you’re positive she said she was sorry?’ ‘On my honour as a bur— I mean, service engineer. Cheers.’

‘So long. And thank you.’

The further into the building he got, the easier it was. The hidden directional microphone (‘Any friend of Zelda’s is a friend of mine’) was no problem at all, and all he had to do with the lock on the strongroom door was creep up to it and say ‘Boo!’, whereupon it curled up into a ball, retracting all its wards and letting the door swing open. As for the safe ‘Hello.’

“Lo.’

‘It must be very boring,’ John Fingers wheedled, ‘being a safe.’

‘You’re not kidding.’ ‘Sitting in this horrible dark stuffy room all day, with the light off.’

‘Yeah.’

‘No one to talk to.’

‘Well, there’s the pressure-pad.’

‘What press — You mean,’ John Fingers corrected himself, ‘the one by the door?’

‘Nah,’ replied the safe, ‘the one under the steel grating, about six inches to the left of where you’re stood.’

John Fingers shuffled unobtrusively to the right. ‘Must be a real drag,’ he said. ‘And having to keep still all the time.’

‘Huh?’

‘With all that horrible dry scratchy money inside you. If I was you I’d be dying for a really good itch all the bloody time.’

You could almost hear the safe thinking. ‘Now you come to mention it,’ the safe said slowly, ‘it’s a right pain. Oooh, God, it’s so itchy.’

‘I bet,’ John Fingers went on, ‘there’s times you just want to throw your door open and have a really good spit.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, then.’

‘Huh?’

‘Don’t mind me.’

Safes are made of huge solid slabs of reinforced laminated sheet steel; or, to put it another way, they’re thick. ‘Yeah,’ it said, ‘why not, eh?’

‘Go for it.’

‘Yeah, right. Only, how do I get myself open?’

‘You mean,’ John Fingers said, shocked, ‘they don’t even let you open yourself? I mean, no time lock or anything?’

‘Those cheapskates? Do me a favour.’

‘We’ll soon see about that. Come on, you tell me the combination and we’ll have you open before you can say Open Sesame.’

‘Ta. Right, it’s nine six four seven …’

Ten minutes later, John Fingers II hurled two black bin-liners full of currency notes into the back of the van, turned the key, thanked the engine for starting (politeness costs nothing, after all) and drove off hell for leather in the general direction of Bournemouth. He didn’t even stop for red lights; all you had to do, he’d found, was shout, ‘I’m a friend of Simon’s,’ and they turned green instantly. He had no idea how it worked, but so what? The same was true of gravity and he had every confidence in that.

In the Bank, meanwhile, the safe yawned. With its seventymillimetre-thick door hanging wide open, it had no choice in the matter, and it didn’t actually care. It was thinking.

When it comes to the operation of their thought processes, safes are a bit like whales, elephants, trees and other huge, long-living, slow-moving creatures. They think slow, but they also think deep. And they remember.

The safe remembered. Something the human had said, some throwaway combination of words, meaningless unless you knew the background.

Open something …

Open…

It was on the tip of its tumbler…

Whatever the phrase was, it had heard it before - a very long time ago, in another place, ever so far away. The safe’s steel mind mumbled away at the problem, like a toothless but invincibly patient man chewing toffee. Sooner or later, it would remember; and then it’d know.

Open …

For some reason, oil came into it somewhere, so the safe thought about oil for a while. Oil; yum. On a hot day, you can’t beat a nice long drink of three-in-one, with maybe a sprinkling of Teflon to refresh the parts other lubricants can’t reach. In the middle of winter, however, there’s nothing to touch a good thick multigrade to keep the wet out and the rust away.

Open…

Thieves. Whatever the riddle was, it was something to do with thieves. The thought made the safe quiver slightly. Thieves do horrible things to safes; they drill holes in them and blow them up. Hate thieves.

And then it remembered.

Every alarm in the building suddenly went off.

‘Hey!’ Scheherezade looked up. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Is something wrong?’

The Godfather nodded. ‘What you think you’re doing?’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘What is all this, a goddamn comedy?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Scheherezade replied. ‘It’s not supposed to be.’

The Godfather stood up. ‘You don’t think so,’ he mimicked unpleasantly. ‘Then I ask you again, what you think you’re doing? You gone crazy or something?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Scheherezade said, ‘I’m just turning the story round, that’s all. Ali Baba is now Akram, and Akram is Ali Baba. What’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing,’ replied the Godfather impatiently. ‘But all this sitting round playing games, it’s not right. A man kidnaps your daughter, you hunt him down and you kill him. You don’t go home and go to bed.’

Scheherezade shrugged. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I mean, he’s in no fit state to go hunting people down at this time of night. With a good night’s sleep and a nice cooked breakfast inside him, he’ll make a much better job of it.’

‘But …’ The Godfather waved his cigar in the air. ‘And besides,’ he added, ‘what’s all this with Akram and the girl playing Racing Genie till all hours? Where’s it say in the story they do that? It’s nonsense. How can the heroine be playing Racing Genie with the villain? Be reasonable.’

‘But he’s not the villain,’ Scheherezade replied. ‘He’s the hero.’

‘He is?’ The Godfather scowled. ‘Then who’s the goddamn villain?’

‘Ali Baba. I suppose,’ Scheherezade added, frowning. ‘Actually, I’m not sure. No, he can’t be, can he? Except…’

‘Well?’

Scheherezade realised that she was feeling cold, except that it was hot beside the fire. ‘Let’s just think about this,’ she said, doing a marvellous job of keeping the panic out of her voice. ‘We’ve turned the story round, okay? Akram is now Ali Baba, and he’s found out the secret that makes him able to turn the tables on Ali Baba …’

‘Who’s now Akram, yes?’

‘Just a minute, you’ll get me all confused. He’s turned the tables on Ali Baba and got hold of what Ali Baba values most in all the world—’

‘You mean the girl.’

‘Presumably,’ said Scheherezade doubtfully. ‘After all, she is his daughter. So what happens next is, Ali Baba tries to sneak up on Akram, and he hides in something - something like an oil-jar, let’s say a packing-case or a milk-churn - and Akram realises what’s going on and pours boiling water on him, and that’s that. Freed from the threat of Ali Baba’s vengeance, he lives happily ever after with the girl - that must be what’s meant to happen, or else why are they getting on like a house on fire? Look—’

(‘And fifteen for a back treble makes forty-three, which means I can have another bazaar on Cairo. Your go.’

‘Hey, double four! Oh damn, go to jail.’

‘You could use your Lamp.’

‘I don’t want to use my Lamp. It’s your go.’)

‘Hey.’ The Godfather took a long pull on his cigar. ‘Akram kills this girl’s father, and you expect them to live happily ever after? You crazy or something?’

‘Well… Perhaps he doesn’t actually kill him, then. After all, he is the hero …’

‘Precisely. And the hero kills the villain. What kinda mess you making of my story?’

Scheherezade bit her lip. ‘It’s all because of it being on the other side of the Line,’ she said. ‘It makes them all so difficult to control. They do things without me telling them to.’

‘And another thing,’ the Godfather snarled. ‘You can’t have a villain getting killed saving his only daughter from a kidnapper. That’s crazy. That’s hero stuff, except a hero wouldn’t get killed. And that’s not all,’ he added, his scowl thickening. ‘He ain’t even trying to save the goddamn broad. Look—’

(‘All right, Sharon, who’s first?’

‘Well, Mr B, you’ve got Mr Peasemarsh for eight-fifteen, but Mrs Kidd’s in the waiting room on spec, that abscess’s flared up again, can you fit her in?’

‘Hurting, is it?’

‘Yes, Mr B.’

‘Right, send her in and tell Mr Peasemarsh I won’t be a jiffy.’)

‘You call that rescuing daughters,’ sneered the Godfather, “cos I don’t.’

Scheherezade thought for a moment. ‘I see what’s happening,’ she said. ‘He’s a hero, right?’

‘But I thought you said—’

‘Yes, but deep down he’s a hero. And that’s what heroes do. They sacrifice themselves for the good of others, because of duty and stuff. And because he’s a doctor—’

‘Dentist.’

‘Okay, dentist, but the principle’s the same. His first duty’s to his patients, and because he’s truly heroic …’

‘It stinks,’ the Godfather grunted. ‘You let the whole goddamn thing get outa hand. It’s all turning —’ He paused, carefully selected the rudest word he could think of, and spat it at her. ‘Real. I mean, what about Akram’s shadow? What the hell does it think it’s playing at?’

‘He’s turned the lights down,’ Scheherezade pointed out. ‘Clever,’ she added. ‘Makes his shadow too faint to be able to intervene.’

The Godfather leaned over, until his face was almost touching hers. ‘Get it sorted out,’ he growled, ‘or you’re dead. You understand me?’

After he had gone, Scheherezade sat quietly for a while, shivering a little and trying to get her mind clear. On the one hand, she recognised, he was absolutely right; the story was getting away from her, to such an extent that it had almost stopped being a story. It was frightening how easily it had happened. It had to be stopped, she could see that, or where would it all end? Next thing you’d know, they’d all be at it:

(‘Look! It fits!’

‘Of course it fits, you idiot, it’s a standard size four, D fitting. But that’s not her. For God’s sake, man, do you think I’d spend all evening dancing with something that looks like that?’

‘But it fits, Your Majesty. And Your Majesty did say…’)

Unthinkable. But, on the other hand, the story felt right. She didn’t know why. She hadn’t known why for some time, but that hadn’t worried her too much. After all, she didn’t know why the sun rose or why the rain fell, but she had a shrewd idea that they were supposed to do it.

On a notional third hand, if she didn’t get it all back under control and doing what it was supposed to do, she was going to die.

She thought about it. She scribbled notes on the back of her hand. She drew little diagrams. She muttered things to herself such as ‘Suppose this soap-dish here is Akram, and this hairbrush is the girl…’

It didn’t help.

Just when she was on the point of giving the whole thing up as a bad job (and after all, why postpone the inevitable? Death and happiness ever after aren’t so very different) it came to her, like the apple falling on Sir Isaac Newton’s head.

Except; instead of an apple, suppose it had been a tiny scale model of a bomb?

And instead of Sir Isaac Newton, suppose it had been the Wright brothers?

John Fingers sat down on the floor of his lock-up garage and listened. No distant sirens. No slamming of car doors, no clattering of big clumping police boots. Silence.

It had worked. Yippee!

A big, silly grin spread over his face like an oil slick as he opened his big canvas holdall and pulled out big handfuls of lovely crisp banknotes. Lovely, lovely money; tens, no, hundreds of thousands of pounds. It was hard to believe that there was this much money in the whole wide world.

Tradition demanded that he should heap it all up on the floor, roll on it, scoop up great handfuls of the stuff and pour it over his head like snow. Bugger tradition; he’d only get it dirty and leave traces of oil and dust on the notes which the forensic boys would use to put him in prison. Instead, he stacked it neatly in piles of ten thousand pounds each. It took a long, long time.