Free Then We Take Berlin by John Lawton

front to back. The only way across to the far side was to walk along the parapet—a perilous nine inches, single-brick wide.
    “Do we need to be over there?” Wilderness asked.
    “We do. Or else it’s cut a way in here and risk bringing the whole damn thing down with us.”
    Wilderness understood the risk. The atrium looked shaky, flaking white paint and green moss—in all probability rotten in places.
    “Still we’s’ll manage, eh son?”
    Abner crossed first. Wilderness followed slowly, inclining his head and shoulders inward to offset the weight of the drill, which otherwise threatened to unbalance him in the direction of a four-storey drop.
    Once across Wilderness slung the rope around a chimney, and his grandfather climbed down one floor and slid the catch on a sash window.
    The safe was a Milner List 5. Tall and tough.
    Abner surmised that it dated from circa 1900—knuckle hinges, three triple-stump fantail locks, and a sandwich door with a drill-resistant plate at its core.
    The plate fell to Abner’s touch, to his touch and his Phillips Motor Hammer Impact drill.
    Once or twice they stopped to listen to the dull thump of bombs falling. Wilderness wondered how close they were. It sounded as far off as Hackney, but the volume was rising and the bombs crossing London manors . . . Islington, Highbury, Holloway, closer. Abner pressed on. His shoulder against the back of the drill,
    “Once the all clear sounds Gawd knows who’ll hear the fuckin’ racket we’re makin’.”
    But they had the door open long before the raid was over.
    Wilderness packed up the drill. Abner stuffed his bag with white fivers and chuckled to himself.
    “Easy money, son. Easy money.”
    Back on the roof, Abner handed the bag of money to Wilderness and took the drill off him.
    “Let me. I’m younger than you, Grandad.”
    “Younger don’t mean stronger. The day you can beat me in an arm wrestle . . .”
    Wilderness walked the narrow parapet between the glass atrium and the drop like a man on the high wire. All but dancing. He wore the two handles of Abner’s old canvas bag like shoulder straps. The money and the hand tools centred in his back for balance. He reached the other side and turned to Abner.
    It was the moment before the moment when a voice in Wilderness’s head would have said “home and dry.”
    A voice that came from the roof of the neighbouring house said, “There they are.”
    And the voice in Wilderness’s head said “Who? Me?”
    Abner was crouched down, just hoisting the drill bag onto his shoulder. He turned. A London bobby, pointy hat and all, had appeared on the rooftop and behind him was a bloke in evening dress clutching a 12-bore shotgun.
    “I told you I heard something. Thieves I say, thieves!”
    Wilderness froze as the barrel of the gun levelled on him.
    Abner stood up, the bag now dangling from his right shoulder.
    “Leg it son, he won’t shoot.”
    Wilderness did not move. The copper was saying something about staying where they were and being under arrest. None of it seemed to translate into meaning. It might have been Chinese for all Wilderness knew. All he could see was the gun, and all he could hear was the pulse pounding in his chest.
    Abner set off along the parapet at the same dancing pace Wilderness had used. Younger was not stronger. It was nimbler. It was more agile. Abner’s natural gait, limping slightly, coming down hard on the right foot was nowhere near as light or balanced as Wilderness’s—and the weight of the drill on his shoulder threw him off kilter.
    He was halfway across when the bag slipped to the crook of his elbow. Instinct overtook logic. Instead of letting the drill fall to earth he attempted to right it with a sudden jerk of his shoulder and the shift of weight swung the bag too far to the left, across his chest, his whole body following in a corkscrew twist with the slow inevitability of a pendulum—and tipped him through the glass roof.
    His last word as he