Cold Steal Read Online Free PDF Page A

face and a smudge of flour on the end of her nose. The silver went into one pile, the gold into another, and then into bags. One thing he had put into his bag without looking at it closely was a heavy bag of stiff, old paper that crackled between his fingers as he spilled its contents onto the bench. He fingered the eight heavy gold clasps and let the long chain coil itself into a pile. He scooped it into his palm and weighed the chain in his hand, hundreds of finely wrought links that flowed like water through his fingers with a single gold cylinder at one end, and a single decorated gold tube as big as his thumb and which clunked as it landed heavily on the bench.
    Orri knew what it was and for the first time ever he wondered if he should not have taken something. His grandmother had owned a similar collection, the clasps and chain from the ornate bodice of a set of national dress of the kind worn by a well-to-do lady of maybe a century ago, while the heavy gold tube would have formed part of the long tassel of the black cap that would have topped the ensemble. The clasps were a little worn and the rich gold gleamed dully under the single harsh overhead light in his storeroom. Someone had treasured this and kept it carefully, just as his grandmother had done, keeping hers for her own daughter in the vain hope that the girl’s inheritance would not be sold at the first opportunity and converted into a weekend’s solid partying or the down payment on a car.
    Running the gold chain through his fingers and arranging the clasps in their two rows on the rough timber bench, he wondered who had owned the set. It was something he had never done before. Gold was money, and money in the bank was, supposedly, security. He cursed briefly. Laptops, fancy mobile phones and iPods had none of the patina of age and affection that the old woman’s gold had, and he decided involuntarily that this was not something for the Baltic boys to melt down.
    He sighed, disturbed at his own thoughts. Orri put the clasps and chain back in the paper bag and placed it at the back of the drawer under the bench. It was certainly not something to hold on to, so he would have to find a buyer for it somewhere; someone local. Conscious that a risk accompanied this, he knew that at least this way it would probably find its way onto a set of national dress. Plus it would fetch more than it would for scrap. He had no use for the thing himself, although Lísa would admire it if she ever got to see it, knowing that she had a set of national dress that she occasionally brought out for weddings and suchlike events that he preferred to steer clear of. But then, Lísa had a proper family made up of ordinary people she got on well with, not like the untrustworthy crowd of drunks and shysters that made up his motley group of relatives.
     
    As always, Valmira drove. Natalia sat by the window and smoked in direct contravention of company rules, her head half out of the window. Emilija sat in the middle seat of the van and wrinkled her nose as each blast of smoke-laden air wafted into the cab.
    ‘Do you have to?’ she demanded. ‘Can’t you wait ten minutes until you get home?’
    ‘Hey, don’t be like that. Just because you gave up’s no reason to stop me having one.’
    ‘She’s right,’ Valmira said from behind the wheel. ‘You always smoke in the van and I wish you wouldn’t. It stinks.’
    Natalia threw her half-smoked cigarette away and wound the window closed, trapping the poisoned air inside while Valmira drove in silence and Natalia stared sulkily at the pavements and shop windows. She got out by the shop near her flat in Breidholt without a word and stalked away, lighting another cigarette as she walked, as if to prove a point.
    ‘We’ve upset her now,’ Emilija said with a sly smile.
    ‘Yeah. And it wouldn’t be the first time. I hope she turns up in the morning. I don’t want to see her lose her job.’
    ‘That’s not going to happen, is it?