Cover of The Impossible Fortune

The Impossible Fortune

by Richard Osman


Genre
Mystery, Crime, Suspense
Year
2025
Pages
369
Contents

Chapter 11

Overview

Tia’s robbery plan becomes far more serious when she reveals that she has already infiltrated the warehouse as a cleaner and placed an ally inside as a fork-lift driver, identifying a narrow pre-vault window for the theft. Connie is impressed enough to commit to a Tuesday job, showing that the younger criminal has moved from theory to action.

The chapter also reinforces Connie’s blend of mentorship and menace: she encourages Tia’s ambition, then immediately threatens a rude café customer with a gun for ignoring basic courtesy. Ibrahim’s arrival links this criminal subplot back to Connie’s ongoing mentoring relationship with the Thursday Murder Club circle.

Summary

In a café, Tia shows Connie a hand-drawn plan of the Rolex warehouse complex and explains the route a delivery lorry takes from the gates to the loading bay and then toward the vault. Connie is repeatedly distracted by a young man nearby blasting videos from his phone, but she keeps Tia focused on the key question: the best point to intercept the watches. Tia explains that once the boxes reach the vault they are untouchable, so the valuable window is the roughly nine minutes between the lorry entering the gates and the stock being secured.

To support the plan, Tia produces pay information for people across the complex and uses it to identify the weakest points in security. Connie learns that the gate guards and lower-level staff are badly paid, and Tia reveals that she has already gone further by taking a job as one of the cleaners while her friend Hassan has become a fork-lift driver. Tia shows Connie her payslip as proof and explains that she deliberately hid cocaine in her pocket during the first search so that staff now see her as a source of drugs and are less likely to search her carefully again.

Connie is impressed by Tia’s initiative and asks practical questions about the operation. Tia says a shipment worth about two hundred thousand pounds is due on Tuesday and asks whether Connie can handle it. Connie agrees, treating Tia’s confidence with amused approval. When Tia begins to describe the next stage, involving smuggling in guns, Ibrahim arrives late for his appointment with Connie because of a sick friend. Connie introduces Tia to Ibrahim, praises Tia’s progress, and arranges to meet Tia at her lock-up the following Tuesday after work.

After leaving the booth, Connie deals with the noisy young man who had ignored her earlier request to use headphones. She sits down beside him, points a gun at his groin under the table, and forces him to switch off his phone. Connie uses the threat to lecture him about his rudeness, and the man is left terrified and humiliated. Connie then calmly rejoins Ibrahim, who has been looking at the meringues, and their mentoring session resumes with Connie telling him that he never misses anything.

Who Appears

  • Connie
    Mentors Tia on the robbery, approves the Tuesday job, and violently silences a rude café customer.
  • Tia
    Young criminal who maps the warehouse, takes a cleaner job inside, and prepares a Rolex heist.
  • Ibrahim Arif
    Arrives late for his session with Connie and briefly meets Tia after her planning discussion.
  • Unnamed young man in the café
    Plays loud videos without headphones and is threatened by Connie into switching them off.
  • Hassan
    Tia’s friend who works as a fork-lift driver inside the warehouse and helps her access the site.
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