He gripped his fork, a better weapon than a knife when it came to cutlery, his broad expanse of hangover and greasy spoon filling the doorway. He heard shouting inside the jewellers, and out of the corner of his eye spied an arm with a black, leather gloved hand at its end sweeping a shelf clear of shiny stuff. Remnant stared at the alien and spat out the sausage he’d been nervously chewing on for too long like a cowboy might spit out a wad of tobacco. The robber shouted expletives in an unexceptional south London accent that didn’t suit his face. Like a one man wall, Remnant stood in the path of the confused alien in the jeweller’s doorway.
The mother grabbed her protesting daughter and dashed inside the café, which the proprietor swiftly declared ‘Closed’ with the deft flick of a wrist on the door sign. Remnant pointed to a warty-faced, green-skinned, one-eyed alien clutching a holdall (that wasn’t quite holding all the gems he wanted to steal) emerging steel toe-capped boot first from the jewellery store. She resented the interruption, pointing to her phone. The sound of smashing glass in the jewellers was Remnant’s cue to grab his fork and leap to his feet, deliberately scraping his chair on the pavement as he stood to attract the mother’s attention. Merely something to dream and chat about in between gulps down at The Old Mitre. Most men who lived around here had something similar. Remnant had a few plans of his own tucked away in a drawer in his council flat over the road. Straight in the front door, bold as brass bracelets, middle of the day.
His first thoughts were for the audacity of the raid. He looked up to see the girl’s mother pointing out the bits of blueberry muffin her daughter should be eating while berating an absent father on her mobile phone.Ī yell from within the jewellers and the sprinkle of a necklace falling on concrete diverted Remnant’s fragile attention. What to say, what to say about her? ‘This is the proudest day of my life.’ That was a good start, but was that a word, proudest? Edgar would know. It was a trick he’d perfected while trying to entertain his own little girl some twenty years before.Īfter another performance, he looked down at a sheet of paper that had held his attention periodically for the past week. In between glances down Greville Street to the junction with Hatton Garden, Remnant demonstrated his disappearing napkin trick, much to the girl’s fascination and her mother’s consternation. Who was he? What was with his old face and his streaky grey hair? Where were all his friends and why was he pushing his food around his plate like her mother told her not to? She was determined not to take her eyes off him, staring like he was an outcast here in his own neighbourhood. During that time, he’d been forced to shoot several smiles at the little girl sitting with legs swinging at the next table. He had been sitting at the table for nearly two hours, catching the autumnal sun rays that managed to beam between some of central London’s lowest high rises. But he was acutely aware of their fumbling presence in the jewellers next door to the café outside of which he was toying with a late fried breakfast, feeling every one of his forty-six years following another evening wasted getting wasted. What the diamond robbers lacked in equipment and experience, they made up for with their desperation and determination.