Chapter Forty-Six
The gallery went dark. That was the signal. Otto had hand-picked Clem’s entire lighting crew. A quick trip to London with Aster and a few phone calls and Otto had begun to pull in a few favours from around the old gang. Some were inevitably dead, others were in jail, yet more had disappeared, whether or not through their own volition was unclear. But this was a murky world. Happily, it was one that Paul ‘the lights’ Turner had navigated to a sedate retirement in a rather smart area in Chelsea. His children had decided to turn a blind eye to various events in their childhood, and his grandchildren didn’t have a clue where the money came from. Whenever they asked what Grandad had done for a living, the family would mutter about working with the legal services and change the subject.
Although a locksmith rather than an electrician by trade, Paul was known as the lights for his love of offal. A silly play on words that always made him laugh. Despite his retired life of gentility, he still kept in touch with the old crowd, and once a month they’d catch up for a pie and a pint.
When Otto had explained to Paul what she wanted to do, he’d roared with laughter.
‘So this isn’t a heist, it’s a return?’
The idea so tickled his fancy that he immediately said he was on board and began to assemble a crew for Otto.
His team were working alongside the VA’s security team and were being properly respectful of all the concerns and provisos.
The swap was audacious. As the lights went out, one of the lighting crew was also going to kill the electricity supply by “accident” leaving only the feed for the music. In the tiny window before the emergency power kicked in, Otto would remove the painting from the wall and replace it with the original.
She would then stow the copy in her satchel, hidden under her large cloak. And mingle with the guests at the afterparty. Paul had provided her with a smart little gadget that would demobilise any security tag that the painting might have on the back of its frame.
As the lights went out, Otto moved from her position, standing with the stagehands, and moved quickly to the painting, swinging her bag around her body and pulling out the night vision goggles.
Standing in front of the painting, she removed it from the hanging and only realised she had been holding her breath when the alarms remained silent.
This was only the first hurdle; the next would be to hope and pray that it wasn’t fitted with an RFID tag. A state-of-the-art motion detector sensor. Some would alarm immediately, others when the item passed through a security gate. She wouldn’t know if she had been successful until she was standing outdoors in the fresh air.
Quickly, she replaced her old copy with the original, made sure it was hanging straight and then put the copy in the bag and hid it behind her cloak again. Even as she did this the lights in the room had begun to lift and everyone was clapping wildly as the graceful, pregnant bride walked barefoot down the runway. Clem’s voice was talking through the Tannoy about the cornucopia of life and how a community pulled together, like a family, to make life worth living.
Otto thought it sounded like a lot of hogwash but the moment of drama and spectacle had kept all eyes firmly on the stage.
Or so she thought.