That’s the trouble with living in a climate where we only get snow for about ten days a year. Not even serious villains bother to invest in white camouflage. Neither Dennis’s lock-up nor my wardrobe had offered much that wouldn’t blend in with your average dark alley. I slunk off round the edge of the shrubbery and down the drive of the old people’s home. I nipped across the road and on to the golf course, where I waded through knee-high snow until I was opposite the double-fronted detached house we were
I checked my watch. A couple of minutes before, Dennis would have rung the house and explained that there had been a break-in at the administrative core of NPTV and that the police wanted Mr. Turpin to come down right away to assess the damage. A quick call to Gloria had already established that he was divorced and as far as she knew, unattached. We were taking a gamble that Turpin was alone. As I watched, the front door swung open and he appeared, shrugging into a heavy leather coat over suit trousers and a heavy knit sweater. On the still night air, I could hear the high-pitched whine of an alarm system setting itself. He pulled the door to behind himself, not bothering to double lock it, and walked briskly to his car. A security light snapped on, casting the drive into extremes of light and shade.
Ignition, headlights bouncing off the garage door, reversing lights, then the big Lexus crunched down the icy drive and swung into the road. I watched the tail lights as far as the junction, then scrambled over the banking, across the road and up Turpin’s drive, dodging in and out of shadow and blinding light. The porch was brighter than my kitchen. I’d never broken the law in quite so exposed a way before. I fumbled under my jacket and fleece, fingers chill in latex probing the money belt I was wearing until they closed around my lock-picks. At least I’d be able to see what I was doing.
Oddly enough, it didn’t really speed up the process. Picking a lock successfully was all about feel, not sight, and my fingers were still clumsy from the cold. Dennis was hovering impatiently by my shoulder by the time I got the right combination of metal probes, muttering, “Come on, Kate,” in a puff of white breath.
The door opened and he was past me, running down the hall to the alarm panel, tapping in the code to stop the warning siren joining forces with the klaxon that would deafen us and, in an area like this, have the police on the doorstep within ten minutes. I let him get on with it and checked out the downstairs rooms. A living room on one side of the hall, a dining table on the other. Kitchen at the
Luckily, Turpin’s study overlooked the back garden, so I felt safe enough to switch on the desk lamp. I took a quick look around. There was one wall of books, mostly military history and management texts. On the opposite wall, shelves held file boxes, stacks of bound reports and fat binders for various trade magazines. A PC squatted on the desk and I switched it on. While it booted up, I started on the drawers. None of them were locked. Either Turpin thought himself invincible here or we were doing the wrong burglary.
Suddenly, Dennis was standing next to me. “Do you want me to do the drawers while you raid the computer?” he asked.
“I’d rather you kept an eye out the front,” I said. “I know it should take Turpin an hour to get to NPTV and back, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
“You’re probably right,” Dennis said. He went out as silently as he’d come in. At least now I didn’t have to worry about being caught red-handed. I checked out the computer. It looked as if Turpin used Word for all his documents, which suited me perfectly. I took a CD-ROM out of my money belt and swapped it for the encyclopedia currently residing in the drive. It had taken all my powers of persuasion to get Gizmo to lend me this disk and I hoped it had been worth it. It was a clever little piece of software that searched all Word files for particular combinations of words. I typed “Doreen Satterthwaite,” and set the program running.
Meanwhile, I started on the desk. Not surprisingly, Turpin was an orderly man. I flicked through folders of electricity bills, gas bills, council-tax bills until I found the phone bills I was looking for. Domestic and mobile were in the same file. A quick glance around revealed that I wasn’t going to have to steal them. Turpin had one of those all-singing, all-dancing printers that also act as a computer scanner and a photocopier. I extracted the itemized bills for the last six months and fed them through the photocopier.
When the phone rang, I jumped. After three rings, the answering machine kicked in. A woman’s voice floated eerily up from the hall. “Hi, Johnny. It’s Deirdre. I find myself unexpectedly at a loose end after all. If you get this message at a reasonable time, come over for a nightcap. And if I’m not enough to tempt you, I’ve got sausages from Clitheroe for breakfast. Call me.” Bleep.
I glanced at the screen and discovered that there were two files containing “Doreen Satterthwaite.” I was about to access them when Dennis’s yell made my heart jolt in my chest. “Fuck!” he shouted. “We’re burned, Brannigan!”
Chapter 22
MARS IN LEO IN THE 4TH HOUSE
She has combative strength and brings her ambitious plans to fruition. She is honorable and takes responsibility for her actions. She has a temper, acts with audacity and is often prone to involvement in incidents that embrace violence. She has a powerful sense of drama that can verge on the melodramatic. Generous, she hates small-mindedness.
From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson
The adrenaline surge was like being plugged into the mains. Dennis was almost screaming. “Switch off. Spare room. Now!” No time to exit properly from Windows. I stabbed my finger at the computer power button. I grabbed the photocopies and stuffed the originals back into their folder, thrusting them into the drawer without checking I was returning them to the right place. I leapt to my feet, switching off the desk lamp.
Three paces across the room, I heard the wail of the alarm siren as Dennis reset it. I dived across the hall and into a spare room bathed with light from the security lamps outside. I skidded round the door to stand against the wall. Seconds later I heard Dennis pounding up the stairs. Then he was beside me, his chest heaving with the effort of silent breathing. “There’s a sensor in the corner,” he said. “Under the bed. Quick!”
I dropped to the floor and rolled, aware of him following me. As I hit the bedside table on the far side of the bed the alarm finished setting itself and silence fell once more. I heard the slam of a car door. Then the front door opened and the warning siren went off again. By now, every nerve in my body was jangling, and I suspected Dennis was no better. I was going to wake up sweating to the nightmare sound of that burglar alarm for months
“Worst comes to worst, we wait till he goes to sleep. Just relax. But not too much. Don’t want you snoring,” Dennis muttered, clutching my hand in a tightly comforting grip. We endured a few more seconds of aural hell, then blessed silence apart from the thudding of two hearts under John Turpin’s spare bed. If he’d had parquet floors instead of carpet, we wouldn’t have stood a chance. Then a click, a bleep and a replay of Deirdre’s attempt at sultry seductiveness, thankfully muffled. I heard the clatter of a handset being picked up and the electronic stutter of a number being keyed in. Amazing how certain sounds travel and others don’t. At first all I could hear of Turpin’s voice was a low rumble. Then, as he mounted the stairs and walked into his bedroom, I could hear every word.