The Guilty Couple(55)

Dani had almost made up her mind to give it a go anyway when Kelly Smith turned up. She deliberated about calling her over to the car, but what would that achieve? If Smith really didn’t know when Dominic was leaving then talking to her in person wouldn’t make a difference and she’d probably alert Olivia to the fact Dani was sitting in her car outside. She’d wait it out, she decided. When Smith left she’d go up and talk to Olivia. But then the redhead and the trilby turned up and they’re still stuffing their faces with cheese and wine.

Sighing, she reaches for her phone. She turned off the notifications during a meeting at work and she’s missed a text from her mum.

Dani, I’m really sorry. Casey tricked me into unlocking her door, and now she’s gone.

Dani closes her eyes and pulls the cold, car-scented air deep into her lungs. She holds her breath then exhales, opens her eyes and starts the engine.

‘Fuck my fucking life,’ she mutters as she drives off.





Chapter 38


OLIVIA


It’s the day of the heist – Lee’s term not mine – and, other than the day of my trial, I’ve never felt more scared. I didn’t get more than two or three hours’ sleep last night and, when I woke up, I made a coffee and went over the plan, reading it again and again to check there wasn’t a massive great flaw I’d missed. The security at The Radcliffe Building is watertight. It’s a stone’s throw from Borough Market where eight people lost their lives during a terror attack in 2017. Any shiny sixteen-floor skyscraper in London employs fortress-like precautions against bombings and attacks.

Lee, Ayesha, Nancy and Smithy won’t be able to get past the foyer without a pass. But as a cleaner, I can. All I need to do is sign in at reception as normal and touch my pass to the gates. My plan, should anyone stop me, is to say a clean-up is needed on floor five. And if they don’t buy that? That’s where Nancy and Lee come in.

They’ll enter the building shortly before me, and, as I approach the reception desk to sign in, they’ll launch into a loud and very public argument. With the receptionists and security guards distracted I’ll scribble something unintelligible in the sign-in book and then swipe my pass through the gates.

The lift will take me to the fifth floor and, at 11 a.m. exactly, I’ll send a text to Dom. I’ll use Smithy’s phone so he doesn’t recognise the number. The text:

There are a lot of secrets in your safe.

should freak him out so much he’ll open it to check that everything is still inside.

At 11.02 a.m. Ayesha will ring Dominic on her phone and pretend to be a member of office staff from Grace’s school. She’ll tell him that Grace has had an accident – a broken arm during a game of netball – and an ambulance has taken her to the Royal Free Hospital. She’ll ask him to go straight to the hospital and, with any luck, he’ll rush out of his office, forgetting to lock the safe. Then all I need to do is get in there, grab the evidence, run down the stairs so I don’t bump into Dom by the lifts, then sneak out of the building. Smithy will be waiting outside and she’ll take the evidence back to her flat. I was going to keep it with me but the others thought it would be safer to give it to Smithy, just in case I’m arrested later. Once I’ve given her the evidence I’ll jump in a taxi and meet Ayesha at a restaurant near the Southbank – a public, if slightly shaky, alibi if Dominic reports the theft to the police. He’ll realise the call from the school was a hoax fairly quickly once he arrives at the hospital but that won’t matter as long as I’ve got whatever is in the safe.

Yesterday, as I pieced the plan together with Lee and Smithy, it seemed foolproof. Now, as the tube draws closer to London Bridge station, I’m obsessed with what could go wrong. And there are a lot of things that could. I messaged Grace before I left Ayesha’s flat, to tell her I loved her. If I get caught it might be the last text I send her before I find myself back in prison. But it’s not going to go wrong. It can’t.

As the train pulls into the station I move closer to the doors, fighting the urge to scratch my scalp. My head is hot and irritated beneath a black baseball cap and Ayesha’s shoulder-length auburn wig. I’ve got my plain black hoodie over my C&C Cleaning polo shirt and a cheap messenger bag slung across my body. There’s CCTV monitoring every part of the tube station and I keep my head down and my eyes to the floor as I exit the train. Once I’m outside I take the escalator up to The Radcliffe Building. I’m so jittery that I nearly jump out of my skin when a man overtakes me and his shoulder brushes mine. When I step off the escalator I spot Smithy on a nearby bench, hugging a Costa coffee cup with her hands. There’s no coffee inside. It’s watered-down vegetable soup, so it looks like sick.

Smithy ignores me as I approach and take a seat on the adjacent bench. I try to steady myself, to push down the fear that’s been building since I left Ayesha’s flat an hour ago, but my feet betray me. The toes of my trainers tap-tap-tap on the concrete as The Radcliffe Building looms over us like a monolith. There’s so much that could go wrong. If Dom sees me, I’m screwed.

‘Liv, keep your bloody feet still,’ Smithy hisses.

‘I can’t.’ I press my palms to my jumping thighs and my feet into the ground. There are people everywhere, spilling out of the train station behind us, popping up from the escalator and strolling out of the tube exit that’s just feet from the entrance to The Radcliffe Building. Busy is good. We decided on this time of day for a reason; I’ve got more of an opportunity to blend in and Dominic should be in his office to open the safe. Should being the operative word. When we were together his work schedule was always the same; he’d carry out his surveys in the afternoon and the next morning he’d write them up.