Chapter 1 #2
Fortunately, what the place lacks in ladders it makes up for in trellises.
The trellis leads – with a minimum of breakage and zero footprints in the flower bed – to the first floor, the roof of which slopes up to a lovely slanting skylight.
It’s been left closed, of course, but these things always have a release catch somewhere.
I pull out a few of my favourite tools and get to work.
10.43 a.m. At Gatwick Departures, the automatic check-in is broken – a cyberattack, according to a little paper sign that has been printed on the last working printer in the terminal – and so Mr L joins the queue.
It moves briskly enough, and when he gets to the front of it, he announces his name.
The girl behind the desk asks him for another key bit of information.
He pats his coat pockets. Then he pats his trouser pockets, followed by his coat pockets again, and frowns.
10.47 a.m. Exactly as Mr L is searching his clothes for the third time, I’m dropping the twelve-ish feet from the skylight window onto the floor of the orangery.
(You wouldn’t believe how many houses in my line of work come with an orangery.
I’ve never seen one containing so much as a single orange.) Twelve feet is not a fun distance to drop, but it’s onto a rug thick enough to lose a cat in, and I’m not yet thirty.
Despite that, I fumble the landing. As I’m swivelling with feline grace to hit the ground, bend, roll and recover, I realise I haven’t turned quite far enough.
I crash clumsily onto my ankle, and Christ it hurts.
Find ice goes onto the crowded to-do list. You clown, Al.
Never mind that for the moment, because I’m in. This is the golden half-hour.
I check my watch. I gave myself twenty minutes to get in; it actually took me forty-five.
How discomfiting. Three years ago it would have taken me ten.
This is the third job in a row where I’ve taken longer than I predicted.
I’m either getting too careful, too careless (as my swelling ankle suggests) or too old. None of these options is comforting.
Never mind that right now. Golden half-hour.
11.14 a.m. Phew. Task list completed, comfortably inside the Golden H-H. That means I’ve done the following:
One.
Spotted the exits. In this house there’s the big beech front door, which is definitely not the best option.
There’s also a door out the back of the kitchen, which is a safe bet, some French doors at the back of the living room that I’ve taken the precaution of unlocking, and a big window in the back wall of the orangery which also looks out over the garden, so I’ve slipped the catch of that one, just in case.
That window is actually my best option, rather than the French doors in the living room, because it leads directly onto the flagstone path running down the middle of the garden towards the woodland gate.
Two.
Sorted any damage I caused getting in. No problem here. The orangery skylight is sealed again. I’ve checked the rug for anything I might have dropped, and the room looks as good as it did before I fell through the top of it. Easy.
Three.
Snapped the arrangement of the key rooms, bedside tables, etc.
It might seem like overkill to you, but when you are plotting an orderly departure – in other words, when an interlope has gone according to plan – it really makes a difference to have pictures, so you can get everything back in its rightful place.
If anything goes wrong, of course, you’ll have more to worry about than whether the alarm clock on the bedside table was facing left or right. As you’re about to see.
Four.
Secured a spare set of keys. No need to explain why these will come in handy. Mr L keeps his in a little leather posing-pouch in the hall table.
Five.
Stashed my bag by the nearest exit, the orangery window.
I know, it seems excessive – the man is going to be a thousand miles away for the best part of a month – but keeping your kit near your chief exit is a useful habit.
After all, we’re still in the stage of the job when things are likeliest to go wrong.
I’ll check the flight gets off OK, and once 24 hours have elapsed, I’ll unpack a bit.
Six.
Put the kettle on. The houses I break into – no, that I make my way into; ‘breaking’ only happens one time in three, and I always make good – might all have hi-tech kettles, but the problem is that they almost never have milk. So I’ve brought a pint with me. Easy.
The interior is lovely. A bit much stripped wood for my liking, but I can see what they were going for.
It’s the kind of house a banker might have bought in the nineties, if you know what I mean.
I can see from the wall chart – God bless you for making my life easy, Mr L – that there’s a cleaner coming on Thursday, who I’ll have to watch out for.
I might just pop out for the morning, give her lots of time.
You have to do a double clear-out when the cleaners come – no sense in filling the bins up and creating difficult questions – but that’s a small price to pay, because if they do their job right they destroy a lot of evidence that you were ever there.
11.26 a.m. This, in case you were wondering when we’d get to it, is the part where I made my big mistake. We haven’t heard from Mr L for a while, have we?
I’m on the corner sofa, which runs to about two acres of plush dark green velvet.
I’ve got my tea made: optimistic WORLD’S BEST DADDY mug, clearly being kept as proof.
I’ve popped some frozen peas on my ankle.
I’ve even – and this is one of the small touches on which I pride myself – got a coaster out from the central stack.
Lighthouses of the North is the theme. I know he’s technically one of my ‘victims’ (hate that word), but I’m beginning to like Mr L.
The sofa I’m in faces away from the window. I’m not going to sit in the uncomfortable chair opposite me just to keep eyes on the front of the property. That decision will prove to have been a bit stupid.
And then, I hear it. The faint noise of an engine in the lane outside.
The problem is, the windows are triple-glazed, so it’s extremely quiet, and honestly, I’ve had a busy few days scoping this place out, getting out of my last place, and it simply doesn’t occur to me that anything untoward could have happened.
All of this is sloppy. I do appreciate that.
As I sit there – like a fool, not even twisting around to look – I finally notice the only other object on the table.
Sitting before me, quiet and demure, is a passport, an old-school post-Brexit dark blue set of Her Britannic Majesties.
This feels relevant.
Our two timelines – which I was really hoping would remain parallel – are about to converge.
11.27 a.m. Even as I turn, the gate to the drive is swinging open and I can see the car waiting on the lane. In the driver’s seat sits Dev, who has clearly been subjected to some uranium-tipped swearing on the way back from the airport.
Stepping through the gate in an incredibly bad mood is Paul Lethbridge, who has managed over the last forty minutes of illegally fast driving to blame anyone but himself for the stupidity he has shown this morning.
Mr L, all I can say is that I know exactly how you feel.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
OK. So now you’re about to see what I call a ‘crash exit’. Despite how amateur I’m sure I appear right now, I haven’t actually had to do one of these for eighteen months. They’re not a lot of fun at the best of times. And right now, I’ve got a cup of tea in my hand and a twist in my ankle.
Pick up the tea and the peas. Move to the orangery.
The good news is that there’s a wall between the orangery and the front hall – his footsteps are coming closer across the gravel and they sound seriously pissed off – so assuming he remembers where he left his passport (living room, left off the hall), I’ll be fine.
Of course, there’s a risk he’ll go right, to the kitchen, and then pass through the orangery as he runs around the ground floor looking for it.
So: time to leave.
I take two agonised steps into the kitchen, jam the pedal bin open, shove the peas in, hobble back into the orangery.
Next, I ease the window open – do the noisy bits first, before he gets in – and then, as I hear his key in the front door, I drop my single kitbag outside, scramble out after it, and stick my head back in to listen.
God, it’s exposed here. Once he’s in the hall, he’ll have only a few strides before he’s overlooking the garden.
It’s twenty metres to the far end. And I won’t have time to get to the fence without him seeing me.
Wait. I can’t move without working out which way he’s going.
If I know he’s going to his left (living room), then I can run to the right of the house, around past the kitchen window, and he won’t see me there.
Or if he goes right to the kitchen first, I can run left, and take shelter in the green of the garden.
I’ll be camouflaged enough. Glad I’m not wearing my hi-vis today.
(Must tweak Rule 34: Hi-vis jackets help you blend in.)
Actually, hang on, Mr L is only going to be in the house thirty seconds with any luck, and then I’ll be back in possession.
He’s going to run in, grab his passport, run out again.
OK. This can work. I haven’t left anything behind he’s likely to look at – no debris in the hall, nothing but the milk in the fridge.
My bag’s by my side out here. OK. Breathe, Al.