The Heist Read online

  “What do you think?” He peered at Caleb.

  “Will there be more treasure inside?”

  Kurt shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps it’ll be full of treasure. Pirate treasure.” He cleared his throat and continued talking in what he guessed was his best pirate voice. “Aye me hearties, treasure from me ship. But beware, it be cursed I tell ye.”

  “Since when do pirates talk with a Welsh accent?” Emma asked.

  “That’s not Welsh. It’s pirate talk.”

  Emma and Caleb shared a smile. “Sounded Welsh to me.”

  “Or just stupid,” Caleb said.

  “I’ll have you know I’m the most feared pirate this side of the Atlantic.”

  Emma tutted. “Well you’re certainly the most feared Welsh pirate I know. But that’s only because I don’t know any other Welsh pirates.”

  “Oh, and I suppose you know lots of other pirates?”

  “Oh arrr.”

  “And you called my impression bad!” Kurt laughed. “So what do you say, Caleb, shall we go on?”

  “Well you won’t be able to find it on your own.” Caleb dodged his Dad’s feigned punch.

  They finished eating their lunch, then trekked back the way they had come until they reached the spot where Caleb said he had seen the statue, and sure enough, there it was, peeking out above the trees. Judging by its height, the statue stood on top of a tall column, but from a distance Kurt couldn’t tell what the figure actually was.

  A rough path wound its way from a stile in the hedge, and they followed the trail across the field towards the woods. Ferns carpeted the ground, and a mixture of trees stood sentinel, their leaves offering protection from the rain that had started to fall more heavily.

  A startled bird took flight as they traipsed past a bush, and up ahead a rabbit sat back on its haunches, nose twitching, before hopping away, disappearing in a couple of bounds.

  Kurt loved getting back to nature. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the fresh smell of the trees and ferns. This sure beat being stuck at work, and it gave him time to relax, especially since work had been so stressful as of late.

  Although he couldn’t see the statue from underneath the trees, he followed the well-worn path headed in the direction they needed to go. He heard the rain spattering the leaves above, growing more insistent.

  They continued heading up a slight incline until they reached the top where the trees opened out to reveal a grassy plateau, at the centre of which stood a tall tower with a statue of a man on top. A doorway at the bottom revealed steps inside leading up.

  Caleb ran on ahead, oblivious to the rain as he started searching around the base of the tower. Kurt pulled the hood of his waterproof jacket up and joined him. Emma followed close behind. They spent five minutes searching everywhere close by on the ground, for anything looking out-of-place, such as bricks and sticks, but didn’t find anything.

  “The paper said at the statue’s feet,” Caleb said as he peered up, shielding his eyes from the rain.

  Kurt nodded. “Okay, let’s go up and check.”

  “I’ll wait here,” Emma said.

  Kurt knew she didn’t have a head for heights. “We won’t be long.”

  Caleb bounded up the steps like a gazelle. Kurt followed, feeling an ache in his thighs as he started to climb.

  The well-worn stone steps wound up in a tight spiral making Kurt a little dizzy after a while, and he was grateful for the iron handrail fastened to the thick, brick walls. When he reached the top, he stepped out on a balcony surrounded by a metal railing. The wind literally took his breath away. He stared out across the trees, taking in the vista. In the distance he spied a low cliff stretched across the landscape like the spine of a gigantic beast breaking out of the ground. Further afield he spotted a factory, white smoke drifting lazily from a tall chimney before dissolving into the grey sky.

  Further still he could just make out the coast, some forty or so miles away. In another direction he recognized a village which was probably about ten miles away. At the edge of the railing, he peeked down, suddenly light-headed as he waved at Emma. She waved back and he quickly stepped away from the edge, the statues plinth offering security.

  “Can you see anything, Dad?”

  Kurt stood on his tiptoes and reached up to search with his hand around the base of the statue. After a moment, he felt something, which turned out to be a plastic container of the type used to hold a 35mm camera film.

  “Let me open it,” Caleb said as he bounced up and down.

  Kurt passed the container across. “Be careful you don’t drop it when you open it.”

  Caleb attempted to prise the lid off, tongue poking from the side of his mouth as he struggled. After a moment, the lid popped off and he pulled out a piece of paper and turned the container upside down and shook. The disappointed look on his face told Kurt there was nothing else inside.

  “So what does this note say?” he asked.

  Caleb unfolded the paper. “Just a bunch of numbers.”

  As he took the slip from his son, Kurt realised it was another code he recognised as latitude and longitude coordinates, with missing numbers for the seconds which were required to find the location address. Underneath this were two rows of numbers:

  843024306308430782883

  434448

  Kurt stared at them for a moment, and then, stepping back into the doorway to shelter from the rain, he took out his pen and paper and copied them down. Because there wasn’t anything to sign to show they had been there, he ripped a sheet of paper out of his notebook and signed it with their name and the date before putting the slip in the container with the code and putting the whole thing back at the statue’s feet.

  He returned to the doorway and sat on the top step as he started going through different permutations of the alphabet and the numbers. Caleb stood at the railing, waving down at his mum. While he had inherited her looks, he hadn’t inherited her vertigo.

  Nothing Kurt tried seemed to work. First he assigned a letter to the numbers, starting with the eighth number being the eighth letter of the alphabet, and so on, giving him h,d, and c for the first three numbers, which didn’t make any sense whatsoever.

  He tried other permutations, but none of them seemed to work.

  His phone suddenly beeped and he took it out of his pocket to find a text message from Emma. He opened it and read: How much longer are you going to be?

  Not long, he typed before pressing send.

  He was about to put his phone away when a thought occurred to him and he opened up his messages and went to compose a message. He typed in the numbers and, like magic, the predictive text transformed them into words:

  The age of the statue

  Height

  Kurt smiled. “Come on mate, there was an information plaque at the bottom. That’s what we need to find the treasure.”

  He bounced down the steps faster than he had ascended, and when he reached the bottom, he walked across to a stone plinth with an information plaque screwed on the top, which contained all the information about the statue.

  “So what did you find?” Emma asked.

  “Another clue. Ironically, you helped me crack the code when you sent me that text message, as this one was based on predictive text. I needed the seconds for the latitude and longitude, and to find them I needed the age of the statue and its height.”

  “Aren’t you clever?” Emma said with more than a trace of irony in her voice.

  “But not as cleverer as me,” Caleb said.

  Emma nodded and smiled as she ruffled her son’s hair.

  Ignoring them, Kurt entered the coordinates into the GPS. “It’s less than a mile away, over there.” He indicated where the arrow pointed.

  “So are we going to find it?” Caleb asked.

  “Of course we are. We’re treasure hunters, remember.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “How can you tell someone’s been here?” Rogers asked.

  Conner
held up the film canister. “This thing’s waterproof, but the paper’s wet inside, which means it’s been opened recently.” He held up another sheet of paper that read: KuEmCa. TFTC 18/7. “Whoever it was, they were here today.”

  Rogers shook his head. “This is all bollocks. Why’s Armstrong sending us on this fuckin’ wild goose chase? All he had to do was tell us where he’d hidden the bloody money. Nine fuckin’ months it’s taken him to contact us. Nine fuckin’ months of sitting around waiting to get our hands on the cash.” He leaned against the railing circling the top of the tower and stared out across the trees. “And now you’re telling me someone else is after the money too.”

  “Perhaps they don’t know what they’re after.”

  “How can they not know?”

  “Armstrong put the clue in a geocaching box, so they probably think it’s just another cache to find. It’s just sod’s law someone else found the clue before us and decided to track it down.”

  “Or is it?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Armstrong’s a prick. It’s just like him to do something like this to fuck us up.”

  Conner sighed. Rogers had a point. Armstrong was all about the melodrama, as he demonstrated when he blew up the rollercoaster. Eighty seven people died that day, including thirty kids, and hundreds more were injured. The explosion occurred as the rollercoaster started its decent, ripping the structure apart. The cars careered into the people queuing underneath. Hemmed in by the zigzag barriers herding them to the entrance, they had no escape. The nightmares still plagued Conner and he often woke bathed in sweat, the screams of the injured ringing in his ears.

  After the attack, the police conducted one of the biggest manhunts in history, but so far they hadn’t gotten any leads. Armstrong and his accomplices were like ghosts.

  “What’s taking so long?” Williams shouted up.

  Rogers leaned over the railing and waved to show he had heard. “Let’s get down from here. I’m freezing my nuts off in this wind.”

  They descended the tower and once at the bottom, Conner explained the situation to Williams.

  “Then we’d better find the money before they do,” Williams said.

  “First we need to crack this code.” Conner held the piece of paper out.

  Williams frowned. “I hate puzzles.”

  “Well we can’t find the money unless we crack the code.”

  “Why don’t we ring Armstrong and ask him where the money is?” Williams asked.

  “He’s not answering his phone.”

  “Well text him and tell him someone else is after the money. He might do something then.”

  With no better ideas, Conner did as Williams suggested.

  “How do we know anyone else cracked this code?” Rogers asked.

  Conner shrugged. “We don’t. But do you want to take the risk?”

  Rogers pulled a pistol from the holster around his chest. “What do you think?”

  “Then let’s get cracking.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “How much further?” Caleb asked.

  Kurt glanced at the GPS device in his hand. “Not far. Two hundred yards.”

  Up ahead a bridge spanned a river. The bridge was a metal structure just wide enough for two people to walk across side by side. With nothing else in the vicinity, he guessed that would be the location they were looking for.

  A steady wash of rain drew a curtain across the landscape, lowering visibility. Kurt was glad they had brought along their waterproofs.

  When they reached the bridge, they started looking around. About ten minutes later Emma said, “What’s this?”

  She indicated a plastic tube attached to the underside of the bridge with zip ties. About twelve inches long and an inch in diameter, the tube had been painted to look the same rusty colour as the bridge. She unscrewed the cap and peeked inside.

  “Empty,” she said, expression dropping in disappointment.

  Kurt scuttled down the bank to join her and helped Caleb down.

  “I want to see,” Caleb said.

  “Isn’t anything to see,” Emma replied.

  Kurt stared at the tube. It did seem strange, attached as it was.

  “Perhaps someone else found the clue and didn’t put it back,” he said.

  Emma passed him the cap.

  Kurt frowned when he found the lid weighed more than he expected. “It’s made of metal.”

  “And that’s important because?”

  “Well it seems a little strange to have a heavy metal cap on a plastic container.”

  He crouched down and peered into the tube. Empty, just as Emma said. He tried removing the tube, but the zip ties held it tight. The other end was sealed. “Appears to have put a stop to the search.” He stood up straight, his voice showing his disappointment.

  “Aw, what about the treasure?” Caleb asked.

  “It’ll have to remain buried.” He passed Caleb the lid. “Here, you can screw the top back on.”

  As Caleb took the lid, Kurt stretched.

  “Perhaps it’s an instrument,” Caleb said as he started banging the lid against the tube.

  Emma laughed. “Trust you to find some way to make a noise.”

  Caleb suddenly stopped. “It’s sticky.”

  “What is?” Kurt asked.

  “The tube. The lid keeps sticking to the tube. Watch.” He released the lid but it remained stuck to the tube.

  Kurt crouched back down and pulled the lid off, then put it back on again. “The lid’s a magnet.”

  “So the tube’s made of metal,” Emma said.

  Kurt tapped the container with his finger. “No, definitely plastic.” He peered back into the tube and slid the lid towards himself before chuckling. “Clever. Very clever.”

  “What?” Emma asked.

  Before Kurt could reply, he reached the end of the tube and a small tub slipped out and attached itself to the magnet. “This metal container was hidden at the bottom, disguised to look like part of the inside.”

  He pulled the tub from the magnet and unscrewed the lid to find a piece of paper inside. Then they started deciphering the clue:

  CHAPTER 5

  “These puzzles are doing my head in,” Rogers said as he traipsed along the path.

  “Well at least we cracked the code,” Conner replied.

  Williams snorted. “No help from Rogers.”

  “Well excuse me, Mr Einstein, if I couldn’t work out the answer was based on a fucking phone pad.”

  “I hope we aren’t too far behind whoever else is trying to find the stash, because God help anyone who steals my money.” Williams checked the coordinates for the GPS on his iPhone, and continued leading the way, the pistol in the shoulder holster making his jacket bulge across his chest like he had one pec bigger than the other.

  The rain drummed down, getting faster and harder. Droplets stung Conner’s cheeks and dripped from his short brown hair. The grey sky suited his current demeanour and finding the money was the only thing guaranteed to lift his mood.

  When they reached the coordinates at the bridge, they started searching. Eventually, after much shouting and swearing, Williams found the tube.

  “Empty,” he said after he unscrewed the cap.

  “It can’t be,” Rogers said as he barged past and peered inside. “Bastard,” he roared. “They’ve stolen the fucking clue. Now how the fuck are we supposed to find the bloody money? You’ll have to try ringing Armstrong again.” He pulled a knife from a sheath on his belt and cut the zip ties. “Got to be something else to this.”As he lifted the tube, the hidden container fell onto the ground.

  Conner crouched down and picked the tub up. He popped open the lid and pulled out the paper inside. “Well Rogers, it seems you found the clue through dumb luck.”

  Rogers put his knife away. “Worked didn’t it? So what’s the paper say?”

  “It’s just gibberish pictures,” Williams said.

  “They may look gibberish,
but there’s a purpose to them,” Conner replied.

  Rogers spat on the ground. “So what’s the purpose?”

  “Well it’s another clue.”

  “I’ve seen those pictures before,” Williams said. “On my computer. They’re a font style.”

  Conner nodded. “Of course. Wingdings.”

  Conner pulled out his phone and logged onto the internet. He did a search for wingding’s until he found a picture showing the relevant fonts so he could decipher the code:

  hill to the west

  by a babbling brook

  bridge the gap

  They ascertained which direction west was, then started off along the trail, with Williams leading the way again. Conner brought up the rear. He felt certain they were getting closer. Armstrong wouldn’t make them traipse around for hours, surely. Not unless he was being more sadistic than usual. He was one of those sorts of men it was best not to question too much, as unpredictable as a mad dog, but with a far more vicious bite. Perhaps he would make them slog around just for the fun of it.

  CHAPTER 6

  It didn’t take Emma long to find the next geocache hidden underneath a rock next to a small bridge across the brook. She pulled the lid off the plastic container as Kurt and Caleb ran across.

  “What’s inside? Let me look.” Caleb jumped up and down to try to see.

  “A sheet of paper.”

  Caleb kicked his toes into the ground and stomped away to throw twigs and stones in the brook.

  Emma read the note slowly to herself, and Kurt watched the colour drain from her cheeks like the mercury in a thermometer.

  “What?” he asked.

  Emma started shaking and she bit her bottom lip.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Emma passed Kurt the paper and he read:

  Kurt Vaughn, the men you’ve been hunting for the Woolen Start Theme Park bombing and robbery are on your tail, following the same clues. Your mobile phone will be useless where you are at the moment, as I chose this spot for its lack of signal. The money is hidden and my associates are searching for the stash. You and your family now hold the final clue. If I were you, I’d run.