The Bank Job by Alex Gray

 
    ‘Get down! Everyone on the floor!’
    Kevin Patterson’s mouth opened but no sound came from his lips.
    As the tall man brandishing a sawn-off shotgun came rushing towards him, customers and bank staff threw themselves onto the ground in sudden panic. A second man was standing in the middle of the room, his weapon describing an arc of menace over bodies lying stiff with terror.
    ‘You! Put your hands up where I can see them. No funny business,’ the gunman added in a hoarse voice.
    Kevin stared at the figure and felt his hands begin to tremble.
    Was it so obvious that his fingers had been drawn towards the panic button on his desk?
    The man came closer, watching the teller, his blue eyes like chips of coloured glass behind the black balaclava.
    Kevin froze. Even as he stared back he knew these eyes would be the stuff of nightmares for months to come.
    ‘
You
. Get me the money. All of it.’ The man jabbed Kevin with the tip of the gun, making him whimper.
    ‘Now!’ The shout came like a bullet from the open mouth, causing one of the women on the floor to cry out in alarm.
    Kevin had been told often enough what the drill should be in such an event. Press the panic button and fall to the floor behind his desk. But nothing in his experience had prepared the fifty-year-old for this sudden rush by a masked gunman. Or for the threat in those mesmerizing blue eyes.
    The teller gazed at the snarling mouth, terror-stricken.
Move
, his brain was insisting,
do what he says
, yet when he tried to stand his legs seemed to have turned to jelly. Another look at the barrel of that weapon coming towards his face and Kevin was scrambling to the door behind his desk. His hands shook with fear as he attempted to tap out the code on the security keypad, aware every second of the gunman breathing down his neck.
Don’t make a mistake, don’t hit the wrong numbers
, he thought, watching his quivering fingers.
    How had they known when the delivery of money came into the bank in central Glasgow? And who had told them that it lay in the vault right behind
his
desk until the following morning when the bags of notes would be sorted by the cashiers and distributed among the rest of the tellers?
    He felt the cold metal against his back, propelling him into the tiny room.
    ‘Get it out of there! You know what to do!’
    Kevin fell to his knees in front of the safe, a band of pain circling his skull.
Don’t take one of your dizzy spells
, he told himself, hands fumbling with the combination.
How did they know that I was in charge of this money?
    His fingers felt like lead weights as he pulled out the bundles of banknotes, those eyes boring into him, the gun now pointing at his chest. Trickles of perspiration coursed down his forehead, a sudden heat suffusing his whole body.
    Was he going to die? Would that gun be fired into his heart? Would his life (the life he’d grumbled about to his wife over breakfast) suddenly be finished?
    He jumped at the sound of an old canvas sports bag flung down by his side.
    ‘In there! Get a move on,’ the gunman growled.
    He shoved the money into the empty bag, glancing at the serial numbers. Would these notes be traceable?
    Suddenly, as if at a signal, the gunman snatched up the holdall.
    ‘Down on the floor!’
    Kevin cringed as he lay on the dusty carpet, waiting for the crack of a rifle butt against his balding head.
    He screwed his eyes shut but all he heard was the sound of running feet, then . . . silence.
    As swiftly as they had burst into the premises, the gunmen were gone, leaving the bank teller to crawl back into his chair, white-faced and shaking, his fingers almost lacking the strength to press the panic button at last.
    William Lorimer whistled as he crossed Union Street and headed for work with the steady stream of commuters from Glasgow Central station. There was something satisfying to the student about being part of this crowd of folk who spilled out of the concourse and were intent on