Page 5 of The Impossible Fortune
‘Someone would buy a Rolex in a shop,’ says Tia. ‘A jeweller’s in Knightsbridge that we kept an eye on. And then me and my friends would follow them, steal the watch and then sell it.’
‘And?’ says Connie, looking for more. It was annoying when Ibrahim did this, but it wasn’t annoying when she did it. Ibrahim is at a wedding today. He sent her a photo. Connie would love to get married. Perhaps she should do something about that? What she really needs is a Tinder for criminals. Everyone could use their most recent mugshot.
‘And,’ says Tia, ‘we maybe did this fifteen, twenty times. Cycle up there, identify a target, rob them, take the risk, cycle back. Fifteen or twenty different robberies, fifteen or twenty different chances to get caught. Great cardio but high risk.’
‘So you thought?’ Ibrahim’s best mate, Ron, was in the photograph. Connie has promised not to kill him, despite his part in her arrest. We’ll see about that. Connie doesn’t let grudges go lightly. Sometimes she thinks that without the weight of all her grudges she might simply blow away.
Tia finishes off her coconut flapjack. ‘So I thought, well, they’ve all bought these watches from the same shop. So why don’t we just rob the shop instead? Rob all fifteen watches at once. The same reward but only one opportunity to get caught.’
Connie is nodding. There is a lot of rubbish talked about young people, but Tia is a clear and intelligent thinker. She is a doer, a grafter. She still has to make the final step though. Has to work it out for herself.
‘And the downsides to that approach?’ Honestly, sometimes she actually sounds like Ibrahim. She was in a meeting last Tuesday where a cocaine importer had been shot in the leg, and Connie had found herself saying, ‘The pain is temporary, but the lesson the pain teaches you is forever.’She hasn’t told Ibrahim this, because, although he would be proud to be quoted, he still disapproves of her business affairs.
‘More planning to do, better security to beat, a more thorough investigation after you’ve done it,’ says Tia. ‘But I like that. I like the planning. That’s the bit I enjoy.’
‘And it worked? The new plan?’
‘Like a dream,’ says Tia. ‘Until we got caught.’
‘But you would have got caught anyway?’ says Connie. ‘For something. At some point. Occupational hazard. Might as well get caught for something big. So go on. What have you learned? What’s your new plan?’
‘I’ve learned my lesson,’ says Tia. ‘This time, when the alarm goes off, I’ve got two minutes. Not a second more. Doesn’t matter if the crown jewels are in the next case, when the two minutes are up, I go.’
Connie nods. ‘That’s what you’ve learned?’
Tia looks at her, the same way that Connie has looked at Ibrahim countless times. Tia knows it’s a trick question. She knows that she should have learned something else, and she is bright enough to try to work out what.
‘So,’ says Tia, thinking on her feet. Or, actually thinking while sitting on an uncomfortable artisan stool. ‘I used to steal Rolexes one by one.’
‘Mmm hmm,’ says Connie.
‘And then I realized that they were all bought from the same shop, so I could just go to the shop and steal fifteen in one go.’
‘And so?’ A mother pushes a buggy past the window of the café and glances in. What does she see, Conniewonders. A blonde woman in an expensive tracksuit, sitting with a black teenager, both just shooting the breeze. She doesn’t know that Connie is actually changing Tia’s life, right here, right now.
‘And so …’ Tia plays for time.
‘I told you, Tia,’ says Connie, ‘dream your dream. A hundred grand is nothing.’
‘And so …’ says Tia again, her mind scrolling through answers, until, finally, it finds the right one. ‘Where do the shops get their Rolexes from?’
Bingo.
Tia is thinking this through. ‘The shop in Fairhaven I want to rob has fifteen Rolexes. But there’ll be a shop in Lewes with another fifteen. And a shop in Brighton with another fifteen. And they all came from somewhere.’
‘I mean, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ says Connie. She sees why Ibrahim takes such joy in his work. The feeling you have when you make a breakthrough.
Tia is nodding vigorously now, enjoying the work her brain is doing. ‘A warehouse, somewhere near the port – I can find out, I can find out. And we won’t make a hundred grand – we’ll make a million. In one go.’
‘Tough to rob a warehouse though,’ says Connie.
‘Tough to rob anything,’ says Tia. ‘So if you’re going to rob something –’
‘Make it something big,’ says Connie. ‘Okay, count me in.’
Tia beams, and pulls a notepad from her backpack. Connie looks at the backpack. She bets Tia has had it since school. Had taken it to her GCSEs, had swung itcasually while talking to boys at bus stops. And now look at her.
‘First, we need a gang,’ Tia says, writing in her book. ‘People we can trust.’
