“Why do you want me to steal something from you?”
“Shouldn’t the question be what do you want me to steal?”
I looked round briefly. “Well, Buzz, I’m guessing it won’t be the ’scope. And frankly, I doubt there’s anything else in here that would interest the scabbiest gull on the dump.”
“Incorrect,” he replied, standing and making his way slowly through the paper piles to a small, smothered chest of drawers, and bringing out a small ring box. “I brought something back. When I was there.”
I found myself swallowing as he beckoned me over to a small table. No, I told myself, it couldn’t be, could it? The rumoured moon rock? Here, in a shabby block of South London flats? And yet, the closer I got to the box, the more I wanted to open it.
“Is it…?” I asked.
He nodded, slowly opening the lid to reveal a small grey stone no bigger than the tip of my finger. “Interplanetary contraband. Smuggled just the same way those poor drugs mules do. Mind you, maybe more painfully. You try swallowing a wrapped piece of the moon in a zero-gravity space capsule.”
I smiled at the image. “And they never found out?”
“The folks at mission control?” He shook his head. “Didn’t have a clue. See, after splashdown, each Apollo mission had to spend time in a decompression chamber.”
I nodded, briefly remembering newspaper images of astronauts smiling through thick glass windows.
“I’d imagine conditions inside were pretty similar to your penal experiences. Three men locked up with just some very crude sanitation facilities. And of course, when you’re back here, gravity suddenly exerts itself very forcefully. Those little bits of rock we’d each swallowed became extremely heavy as they worked their way through.”
I winced slightly.
“All we had to do was keep swallowing the rocks when they… reappeared. That, and pray we could withhold them during the debrief and subsequent release to the waiting world’s press. I finally got this fella to myself two days after I’d made it home.” He took the rock out. “Not many of us can say we’ve had a piece of the universe pass right through us three times. Guess he’s made even more of a journey than me. You want to hold it?”
As an offer, he hadn’t sold it that well. “I’ll pass. No pun intended.”
He snapped the lid shut, slowly scratched the side of his head. “You’re thinking I’m insane, of course. That this is nothing more than some little pebble I picked up from the park.”
“No, I’m thinking you’ve called me up here to do a job. I simply want to know what it is.”
He slipped the ring box into a pocket, navigated his way back to the window, and begun turning wheels on the telescope. I watched as the large white barrel moved slowly to the left, still pointing down towards the darkened town many floors below. Satisfied he’d found the right spot, he beckoned me over. I pressed my eye to the soft rubber eyepiece; saw nothing until he flicked the night-vision switch. A green window glowed. A downstairs room, by the look of it, half-drawn curtains failing to obscure opulent trappings inside. I recognized it immediately, a large house less than fifty yards from the place I’d just relieved of its jewellery. Indeed, I’d been past it several times, had already considered its potential for easy pickings.
“You chose to ignore this place,” I heard him say. “Why?”
I kept my eye tight to the rubber, making out more of the room. “The wall-mounted safe. It’s just about visible from the street, if you know what you’re looking for.”
“A standard three-tumbler dial model,” he said. “Surely not a problem for someone like you? And an indication of lucrative spoils inside?”
“Not this one,” I said, taking a longer look at the small metal box mounted between two gilt-framed pictures. “Open the door on that sucker and all you’ll find is a web camera looking right at you, linked direct to the security company. It’s bait. Before you know it, there’re a dozen police cars waiting outside.” I stepped back from the ’scope. “The whole place stinks of wire-traps and alarms. Whatever they’ve got in there, they want to keep hold of it.”
He nodded.
“But you’re not going to tell me, are you?”
He shook his head.
“You just want me to do whatever it is you want?”
Another nod. It was like talking to a mute.
“You’re going to have to try and help me with some words,” I tried. “Even better an explanation.”
“His name is Saunders.”
“The owner?” I asked.
“And not just of that house, either,” he replied. “He owns this whole place.”
“The block?”
“And all its apartments, land and accesses.”
“These flats, they’re all rented?”
He nodded. “Cheques payable to Mr Mark Saunders.” He slumped back down in the ruined armchair. “His father’s company built the place. Joe Saunders – nice fella. Died last year, left the lot to his son, Mark. His house, its contents, and this block.”
I was beginning to get the picture. “And since then, his son’s let the place go to rack and ruin?”
“’S’about it.”
“Let me guess,” I said, thinking of the boarded-up doors and windows. “Now he’s about to sell? Have the place condemned as a liability, eyesore, whatever; then pocket the loot before the demolition teams arrive?”
Buzz nodded. “It’s part of a so-called urban-renewal scheme. They’ll pay him millions to reduce this place to rubble.”
“And you’ll lose your home in the sky?”
He shuffled through some papers at his feet, threw a letter across at me. “Their latest offer.”
Headed “Dear Occupier”, it was an offer to rehouse the old guy in some new housing development. The words “ground-floor retirement apartment” had been angrily underlined – presumably by Buzz himself.
“I ain’t moving,” he said. “Just ain’t.”
“But if this place isn’t safe…?” My eyes drifted to a paragraph detailing the owner’s concerns about the central lifts, how it might be necessary to close them to residents. “It’s going to make getting out of here pretty tough. You could be stranded.”
He jabbed a finger. “What are you saying? That I’m too old to manage a few flights of lousy stairs if I need to? Jeez, I walked on the moon!”
It was getting out of control. “Show me the pictures,” I said.
“Pictures?”
“The ones you took of me earlier tonight,” I replied, pointing at the telescope, the only part of the situation that didn’t fit my theory that the man was simply a lonely delusionist.
“Kick those papers out of the way,” he instructed from his chair. “Underneath, there’s a printer. Push the red button on the left.”
I kneeled, did as he said, watching the linked printer come to life, then begin spitting out a series of shots of me about my earlier business. Green, pin-sharp, night-visioned evidence that I was there; outside and inside. Conclusive.
He chuckled softly. “I guess your big mistake was to take the hat and scarf off when you got inside. But I think I managed to get your good side.”
“So the job is?” I asked, wondering if there was any way to rid the ’scope of the pictures. There had to be some sort of memory attached to it, an internal digital camera, perhaps. But where…?
“Your job,” he said, “is to steal my moon rock, then break into Saunders’s house and place it on the cocktail cabinet at the back of the living room, where I can be sure to see it.”
I frowned. “The reason?”
“Because,” he explained, as if talking to a small child, “when I get back from my weekly Astrological Society meeting tomorrow night and discover my apartment has been burgled, I shall be able to point the blame at Saunders.”
“Just because there’s a pebble on his cocktail cabinet?”
“No!” he snapped back. “Because it’s the thing he covets the most. The moon rock!”