“Yes, yes.”

The black cord hissed through Friendly’s hands as Shivers started reeling the wire back in. He watched it creep out across the space between the roofs, counting the strides. Fifteen and Shivers had the other end. They pulled it tight between them, then Friendly looped it through the iron ring they’d bolted to the roof timbers and began to knot it, once, twice, three times.

“Are you entirely sure of that knot?” asked Morveer. “There is no place in the plan for a lengthy drop.”

“Twenty-eight strides,” said Friendly.

“What?”

“The drop.”

A brief pause. “That is not helpful.”

A taut black line linked the two buildings. Friendly knew it was there, and still he could hardly see it in the darkness.

Day gestured towards it, curls stirred by the breeze. “After you.”

Morveer fumbled his way over the balustrade, breathing hard. In truth, the trip across the cord had not been a pleasant excursion by any stretch of the imagination. A chilly wind had blown up halfway and set his heart to hammering. There had been a time, during his apprenticeship to the infamous Moumah-yin-Bek, when he had executed such acrobatic exertions with a feline grace, but he suspected it was dwindling rapidly into his past along with a full head of hair. He took a moment to compose himself, wiped chill sweat from his forehead, then realised Shivers was sitting there, grinning at him.

“Is there some manner of a joke?” demanded Morveer.

“Depends what makes you laugh, I reckon. How long will you be in there?”

“Precisely as long as I need to be.”

“Best move quicker than you did across that rope, then. You might still be climbing in when they open the place tomorrow.” The Northman was still smiling as he slipped over the parapet and back across the cord, swift and sure for all his bulk.

“If there is a God, he has cursed me through my acquaintance.” Morveer gave only the briefest consideration to the notion of cutting the knot while the primitive was halfway across, then crept away down a narrow lead channel between low-pitched slopes of slate towards the centre of the building. The great glass roof glowed ahead of him, faint light glittering through thousands of distorting panes. Friendly squatted beside it, already unwinding a second length of cord from around his waist.

“Ah, the modern age.” Morveer knelt beside Day, pressing his hands gently to the expanse of glass. “What will they think of next?”

“I feel blessed to live in such exciting times.”

“So should we all, my dear.” He carefully peered down into the bank’s interior. “So should we all.” The hallway was barely lit, a single lamp burning at each end, bringing a precious gleam to the gilt frames of the huge paintings but leaving the doorways rich with shadow. “Banks,” he whispered, a ghost of a smile on his face, “always trying to economise.”

He pulled out his glazing tools and began to prise away the lead with pliers, lifting each piece of glass out carefully with blobs of putty. The brilliance of his dexterity was quite undimmed by age, and it took him mere moments to remove nine panes, to snip the lead latticework with pincers and peel it back to leave a diamond-shaped hole ample for his purposes.