Free A Criminal to Remember (A Monty Haaviko Thriller) by Michael Van Rooy

stuff, coarse and uneven and quite discoloured. And the ink was odd too, a faded green that lay strangely on the page. Claire looked closely at it and then leaned back, stumped. “There are two almost cuts on the sides of each line of each letter with less ink between them.”
    She took the box in hand and shook it gently to hear something weighty shift within. She handed it to me and I looked it over but seemed like a normal box. Cardboard and heavy but just a little gift box like you’d buy from a bargain store.
    “So,” Claire said, “what’s in it?”
    I was paranoid but that was okay, former professional criminals have many good reasons to be paranoid. I opened the package slowly, feeling for resistance that would hint at a trigger wire or a friction fuse. I also listened for any clicks or buzzes that might indicate a firing pin being engaged. And while I did that I used my nose and sniffed for any interesting chemicals like nitrates, acids or petroleum products.
    Eventually though the box was opened safely and Claire and I ended up admiring the contents, a massy gold bracelet irregularly studded with a variety of small stones, lying on a bed of white cotton. I looked closely at the stones and saw white ones and reddish ones, grey ones and dark blue ones. They were arranged in no pattern I could recognize and the effect was quite beautiful.
    Claire picked it up. “Look at the gold; it’s made into mesh links.”
    “Like chain mail armour?”
    “Yes. Like the gloves my dad used.” Her dad had been a butcher and I remembered the gauntlets he’d worn, but I was thinking more of knights and dragons. Claire looked closely. “I think that,” she touched the dark blue stone, “is lapis lazuli.”
    “Really?”
    She shrugged and her breasts moved under her shirt. I never got tired of that. “I think. I never dealt with that stone much. The best comes from Afghanistan and Siberia.”
    Claire was running a curio and relic shop when I met her. I’d been shooting an ex-partner at the time and it had been love at first sight for me. As for Claire, she’d hated me but had gotten over it. After a few years.
    Okay. After many years.
    Anyhow, she’d had lots of experience with semi-precious stones, fossils and other strange items. So I believed her when she named a stone I had only heard about yet never seen.
    I touched the grey stone and felt a slightly greasy surface.
    “That’s an uncut diamond … I think.”
    “You’re not sure?” she said dryly.
    “It’s been a while,” I admitted. “I stole a half tray of them in Vancouver ten, maybe eleven years ago.”
    My mind drifted. I remembered the chaos of that day in the Chinatown shop. I remembered the smell of cordite as I dumped two rounds of #6 shot into the ceiling to get everyone’s attention. I remembered the howls of the customers and staff and the shrilling of the alarms.
    It had been a messy robbery but we’d gotten away with two trays of unset stones—diamonds, rubies and some emeralds. Also sixty grams of gold in tiny bars and a double handful of Bulova watches. I remembered the whole experience in snapshots. There was Jimmy Brunswick standing tall and walking the manager into the back room, he moving fast because of the long-barrelled .22 in his ear. And in the corner there was Jarrod Black cracking display cases with a roofing hammer and picking through the debris with inhuman precision.
    Two minutes later we were all in the car with Sally Leiter driving the speed limit. Behind us four army surplus smoke bombs spewed orange and filled the road with even more chaos and then we were gone. As we travelled Sally passed me a Steyr Mannlicher Classic carbine in .222 and I worked the bolt to put the first of four rounds into the breech and flicked the safety off. Sally laughed like a bell and I hoped and prayed that no cop would show and that no citizen would decide to play hero.
    Because if anyone did, I’d have to kill them, because I was the only