TURKISH DELIGHT Barry Faulkner (i love reading txt) 📖

refurbishing collectors’ vintage guns so they could shoot again, and selling or renting to the criminals who used them on robberies or worse. The top twelve inches from the barrels of double-barrelled shotguns were often removed in Gilbert’s workshop to produce a handy sawn-off version that would probably be pushed into the face of some petrified bank or post office employee. A leopard doesn’t change its spots, so I had no doubt Gilbert was still active in that business behind the facade of his posh shop.

I had written down what I wanted; people like Gilbert are always under some sort of surveillance. The Organised Crime Squad know as well as I do that Gilbert’s skills are more in demand today than ever before, and will often slip a hidden microphone into premises in the dead of night. I’ve done it myself. So you never know who’s listening.

Gilbert took the list I passed over and read it. ‘I think we can accommodate you, sir,’ he said with a big smile. ‘Please take a seat whilst I check the stock room.’ He pointed to a pair of fake antique chairs at the back of the shop. I sat down on one and he disappeared into the back room, returning five minutes later carrying a shoebox-size box printed with his fake Gilbert Charles family monogram which he slid into a ‘Gilbert Charles Country Sports’ bag and handed to me over the counter. ‘I’m happy to say we had your requirements in stock, sir.’

I pulled out a small wad of twenty pound notes, five hundred pounds total. Gilbert counted out three hundred and gave me back the rest. ‘I’ll put it on your account, sir,’ he said loudly; he’d cottoned on to my reservations about a bug. ‘Thank you so much, I do hope you find everything satisfactory.’

We smiled at each other and I left the shop.

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Gold was already there when I took the service lift down to the car park at midnight carrying Gilbert’s box. She slipped out of her Lexus and into my Honda CRV. She was in dark mode, black jeans and sweater – so was I. She carried her Burberry shoulder bag; no doubt it held a variety of tools we might need.

Twenty minutes later we were parked in a dark back alley beside the city office block where Reynolds’s dealing room took up all the top floor. The whole building was in darkness. I knew there was no night security – strange really seeing that most of the offices in the block were company dealing rooms and full of computers and IT hard and soft ware, all very much in demand in both the honest and not so honest secondhand market. One raid with a large van and a dodgy trader could keep himself going on eBay for a year.

Gold rummaged in her Burberry and gave me a head torch, earpiece and clip-on microphone. She would stay put and keep watch for any security patrols whilst I was inside; the City of London streets can be very busy at night with security companies doing their rounds, and if any of the other tenants of Reynolds’s building had a contract with one I didn’t want to bump into them inside.

Entering was easy; on my first visit to do a bug sweep Reynolds had given me the keypad numbers to the staff side door. I took the stairs up, my Gilbert Charles monogrammed box under my arm; lifts make a noise and maybe somebody was working late in one of the other floor’s dealing rooms playing the markets in a different time zone – you can’t be too careful.

When I got to the top floor I checked carefully through the double glass door just in case; it was empty, all in darkness – no computers flashing stock movements and currency trades; their screens were asleep, their pixels waiting for the surge of electricity that would wake them up for another day of frenetic work. It was a large open plan room the size of a tennis court arranged in four long rows of joined desks; each had computers and plasma screens of all sizes stacked on them with banks of telephones sitting in front. Reynolds’s glass office was positioned off the back of it, set a couple of feet above the dealing floor level with three wide steps up to it. He could see everybody was working hard from his desk in there.

I used my key, went inside and stood for a moment, sizing up my options. The suspended ceiling was a favourite; I knew from working on the security sweeps that the light polystyrene tiles slid out of their metal frames easily to give access to the original roof above. The cavity between was about four feet high. I opened the Gilbert Charles box on the nearest desk to me and took out a dozen split second LED timers, then very carefully pulled out a block of C4 plastic explosive. I like C4 as you can mould it and chuck it about a bit without it exploding – it needs an electric charge sent through it to set it off; it’s the demolition man’s choice of weapon. I pulled off pieces and rolled them into twelve six-inch sausages, then putting them and the timers back in the box I walked through the dealing room and into Reynolds’s office. Standing on his large desk shifted a ceiling tile aside. I set a timer for 7.10 a.m., pushed it into a C4 sausage which I wrapped around one of the metal ties that strung the suspended ceiling framework up to the original concrete ceiling and roof above  it and then put the tile back in place. I repeated the operation another eleven times in the dealing room moving along on top of a row of desks, one sausage with timer above every sixth tile in a row towards the double