by Angela Dyson
I was amazed that Flan had talked him into helping us at all, but had clearly underestimated her powers of persuasion. What was it about her that made her still so irresistible to men? I checked myself; my mind was wandering again, which it has a habit of doing when I’m nervous. Right, I told myself, here we go.
Mr. H. stood there, clutching a huge bunch of keys and picklocks. These, he had unearthed from a dusty old suitcase stashed away in his loft, remnants from his working days as a carpenter joiner. “I don’t like to throw things out,” he had told me when I had picked him and Flan up earlier. “You just never know when they might come in handy.” How right he was. Flan at his side was practically dancing up and down on the spot in excitement and typically, had dressed up for the occasion. In an outfit apparently inspired by Honor Blackman in the 1960’s TV show The Avengers, she wore black trousers, a black roll-neck, and a black scarf to keep her hair back.
We were ready. I took one more look around. All was quiet and even though an occasional car drove by, we still had some protection from a squat overgrown hedge that fronted the property.
“Right Mr. H.,” I whispered. “It’s over to you. Are you sure you want to do this?”
He gulped and wiped a nervous hand over his forehead. “I just hope I haven’t lost my touch. A lot of years have gone by since my working days.”
Tentatively he inserted a key into the central security lock. “We have to get through this one first,” he explained wriggling the key back and forth and then gently withdrawing it. “The Yale will be a doddle after that.” He shook his head. “No this one’s no good.” With trembling fingers and muttering quietly to himself, “Steady, George, steady, you can do it,” he painstakingly tried key after key. At intervals Flan patted his arm offering soothing words of encouragement.
Trying desperately to control my impatience, I crept towards the hedge and scanned the street again. There was no one around. So far so good. Turning back to the front door I nearly jumped out of my skin on finding Flan at my elbow.
“This is such a lark Clarry! I’m so glad that you’ve taken up this line of work. It really is great fun,” her voice upped to a dramatic decibel.
“Shut up,” I hissed, shooting an anxious glance at the house next door. “We could get arrested for this and carted off to jail and have to spend the rest of our lives trying to beat off the attentions of…”
My own voice had taken on a distinctly manic edge and at the mention of the word jail Mr. H. promptly lost his nerve and dropped the key bunch.
The noise was appalling. We froze as if some invisible presence had called a sudden halt to a particularly rowdy game of musical chairs. Minutes passed. Nothing happened. Slowly we breathed again. After patting his chest with a weak hand, Mr. H. then stooped down to retrieve his tools and got doggedly back to work. Flan and I waited in chastened silence; until finally after what seemed an age, we were in.
“Thank God,” I breathed as we stumbled in the darkness across the threshold. “Well done Mr. H. you’re a marvel. Now we will just have to risk putting on the lights. I wish I’d thought to bring a torch.”
Sliding my hand across the wall, I groped my way until my fingers found a switch. We all blinked at the sudden brightness. I looked about me. We were in a narrow hallway with a staircase directly ahead of us. “OK,” I said softly, putting my car keys down on a small table behind Simon’s telephone. “We need to be out of here as quick as we can.”
“What’s the hurry dear?” piped up Flan. “You checked with the restaurant and know that their reservation was at eight thirty, so we should have plenty of time.”
I had indeed checked with the Lighthouse restaurant, pretending to be Simon’s secretary, and had timed our spot of breaking and entering for when I hoped he and Laura would be having their first drink and studying their menus. I had decided not to let Laura in on what we were doing, reflecting that she might consider my actions as going just a teeny-weeny bit too far, and who would blame her? I’d been having palpitations all afternoon, at the very thought of it. What I was doing was illegal, morally reprehensible, and just plain outrageous. Not only that, I’d induced a couple of old age pensioners to help me.
“Right, I want to go quickly from room to room and take a good look around.”
“What exactly are we looking for?” asked Mr. H. puffing up his chest like a pigeon, his fears of being arrested having apparently given way to a sense of pride in his dexterity with the picklocks.
Before I could respond, Flan answered, in a loud stage whisper, “Clues, George darling, clues!” and strode off down the hall flinging open the nearest door and bustling into Simon’s sitting room.
We followed. Almost impossibly neat and ordered, it was hard to believe that someone actually lived here. It looked more like a particularly unimaginative stage-set or a show home, with its spotless cream walls, an oversized black leather sofa, groupings of architectural prints in black frames on the wall and a state-of-the-art plasma TV. On a low glass table in the centre of the room, GQ magazine, Men’s Health and copies of The Estates Gazette were fanned out in perfect symmetry. His DVDs and CDs, stacked in a glass fronted shelving unit that took up most of one wall, were arranged in alphabetical order. There wasn’t a thing out of place, not a cushion, not a furled-up newspaper, nor an empty coffee mug. It was all so unwelcoming; everything about it screamed uptight control freak. Once again, I seriously wondered what Laura saw in him. Stepping across to a pale wood sideboard to the left of a tiled fireplace, I opened a drawer. In it I found a pile of brown linen napkins, which looked like they had never been used and a box of after-dinner mints (unopened). Flan joined me as I stooped to open the base cupboards and whistled appreciatively at the sight of Simon’s well-stocked drinks cabinet. She gazed longingly at the nearly full bottle of Bombay Sapphire and gave Mr. H. an exaggerated wink. I shook my head warningly. That was all I needed, a couple of inebriated septuagenarians on my hands in a house where we had absolutely no business to be in the first place. Leaving George looking through Simon’s very limited bookcase of mostly thrillers, Flan and I explored the kitchen.
Now that I’d seen his sitting room, the kitchen came as no surprise. A display of shiny steel pans on clean white surfaces, it had all the warmth and charm of a surgical operating room. By the look of the hob, it was quite clear that no one ever cooked here. Raking through his cupboards we found tins of low salt this and low-sugar that, and every vitamin tablet from ginseng to zinc. Where was the ketchup? Where was the Marmite? And it was the same story with the fridge. No cold beers, no wine, just Flora and skimmed milk and bottled water.
As we opened and closed cupboard doors and drawers I realised that I hadn’t answered Mr. Huxton’s question for a very good reason: I had no idea myself what we were looking for. What was I expecting to find? A file marked Alwyn Road – Top Secret?
“Flan, you keep a look out down here and I’ll have a go at the bedrooms.”
The usual Edwardian layout: master bedroom, guest bedroom, box room, and bathroom all off a square landing. I whizzed through the guest room first and quickly dismissed it. All it revealed was that Simon probably never had a guest to stay. His bedroom disclosed little more. Just like the sitting room it was neat and uncluttered, even the bed had been made which may just mean that he was planning to skip desert at the Lighthouse to come back and enjoy Laura under his navy checked duvet but still, there was something so sterile about the room.
A couple of mounted photos loomed down from the wall above the bed showing Simon in various sporting poses; on a golf course leaning self-consciously on his club and in another brandishing a badminton racket. That was it for photographs and I realised belatedly that there hadn’t been any downstairs: none of his parents or friends, not even of a boozed up stag or rugby weekend. Nothing that gave any clue to his personality or, now I came to think of it… his life.
The pine dressing tabl
e yielded several pairs of expensive looking cufflinks, a gold tie-pin, a hairbrush, and bottles of aftershave. Raking through a large pine wardrobe I found suits: lots of. Shirts: racks of and ties: a multitude of. Obviously, a bit of a peacock in that department, he favoured pale silks made by Armani and Yves Saint Laurent. Everything looked sleek, even his casual clothes were not exactly what I’d call causal. Did this guy ever relax and just slob out? Apparently not.
I turned to the bedside cabinet. Surely there, if nowhere else, I’d find something that truly revealed the man. There could be porn but probably he’d just look at it online. I allowed myself a few seconds to speculate on what his thing might be and decided that if I had to guess it would be… spanking. Uptight men are so often into being punished, I’m told. Not my thing at all. If a guy wants me to whack him, wallop him, or whip him, I’m out of there. But that’s just me. Perhaps Laura was different?
I slid open the drawer expectantly and peered in: an opened packet of condoms with only one remaining (disappointing for Laura), some headache pills, and a Nick Hornby novel. That was it. So much for the secrets of his sexual psyche.
I sighed and moved on. Just one more room to try and I hoped it would be a home office. It was. The tiny box room housed an unmade up single bed and a small metal desk and chair. I settled myself down in front of his computer and powered it up. The screen came to life and demanded a username and password. Swearing softly but imaginatively under my breath, I instantly shut it down. No way was I going to muck about trying to guess what the password could be. There was probably some security device installed that would cut in and he would know that someone had tried to access his files.
I turned my attention to the contents of his desk where there was a copy of today’s Telegraph opened to the crossword and besides it an old-fashioned fountain pen. I gazed thoughtfully at the pen, remembering the tie-pin. There was something incongruous about them. But maybe he was what’s called a Young-Fogey or perhaps they were simply presents from his parents?
I lifted a pile of papers from the corner of the desk and, being very careful not to get them out of order, I inspected each one in turn. There were a few utility bills all on direct debit, a reminder from his dentist that his six-monthly check-up was due, and a letter about his pension plan. Well it certainly looked like he had a secure retirement to look forward to. If the annual figure he expected could be relied upon, he’d have no worries about his old age. Continuing to rake through, I came across an invitation to someone called Isobel’s housewarming party on the 21st and notification of a gala dinner at his golf club at the end of the month.
Then, finally I found something that caught my interest. A letter from a company called Lehman Black Investments detailing his first year’s dividend from his initial investment of £200,000. That’s a lot of money. Hunting on the desk for some paper and finding a Dunstan and Stead message pad, I jotted down the company’s name, tore off the page, and stuffed it in my breast pocket.
Getting up from the desk I realised that I’d missed something. On the floor near the bed was a leather-bound Filofax. Again, old fashioned. Did I have time to go through it? I looked at my watch, Christ! It was nearly eleven o’clock.
I ran out on to the landing and hailed Flan and Mr. H. who were having a nice little sit down at the bottom of the stairs. “I’ll only be two more minutes. Make sure we’ve left everything as we found it, doors, lights, everything.”
I dashed back and picked up the Filofax. I started with the address section but there was nothing listed under B for Baddie or C for Criminal, which I found disappointing. I did learn however, that he knew a lot of people with names like Roland and Felix. I flipped to the diary part and looked up the entry for yesterday – “The Falcon” 7pm but he hadn’t written in a name, which meant that for me, “The Suit” was still anonymous. I flicked through the pages; his dinner date tonight with Laura was there, he was having a squash game tomorrow night with Barney and on Thursday night he was going to somewhere called “The Vine” in Camberwell at six thirty and again, there was no name. Camberwell – that was twice in one week. Was it with “The Suit” again?
No time to think about it now. Hastily I ran down the stairs to find that Mr. H. had the front door open a crack and was peering anxiously out.
“Coast looks clear,” he whispered.
Killing the hall light Flan and I followed him out of the house and then took cover behind the hedge, whilst he fumbled with the locks again. We were just in time. As we made our way briskly down the street and around the corner towards the main road where I’d left the Renault, we heard a black cab ticking its way slowly up the opposite side of the street. I nudged Flan and dropped swiftly down on to one knee as if to tie my shoelace making sure to keep my face averted. As the cab bowled past I risked a glance up and could distinctly make out Simon’s profile. He was alone. Strange, where was Laura? Perhaps they’d had a row? I made a mental note to call her tomorrow.
As the taxi disappeared around the bend, I straightened up grinning triumphantly, “We did it!” Laughing and exultant, we linked arms, all the pent-up tension of the last few hours spilling out so that we’re talking over each other in wild relief.
“Fan-bloody-tastic!” Flan enthused. “I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in years.”
“Didn’t think my old ticker would take it at one point,” chortled Mr. H. “But I have to say that I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. What an exciting life you do lead young lady.”
“Not usually,” I confessed beaming happily at him. “This is rather a departure for me but thank you, thank you both.” Turning to hug Flan, I said, “I couldn’t have done it without either of you.”
We continued to make for the car, swapping notes and congratulating ourselves on our cleverness.
“And you George darling,” purred Flan. “You are simply the best, the most marvellous man in the…” But her voice trailed off as she realised that I’d come to an abrupt halt in front of the Renault. “What is it Clarry? What on earth’s the matter?”
I didn’t answer, only shook my head. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t get the words out. My legs buckled as fear gripped and threatened to swallow me completely. Flan and Mr. H. gazed on in agonised silence as frantically I began to pat myself down, desperately turning out my pockets, but it was useless, I knew they weren’t there. I did not have my keys – my bloody fucking car keys. I knew exactly where they were and I could see them quite clearly in my mind’s eye. They were just where I’d left them… behind the phone on Simon’s hall table.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I looked at Flan. “What on earth are we going to do?” My voice came out cracked and hoarse.
“We’ve got to think, Clarry, think!”
“I am bloody thinking!”
Mr. H. had turned very pale and was leaning back against the bonnet of the car. I felt a stab of guilt as I thought of the ordeal I’d put him through and tried furiously to steady my nerves and clear the crippling fog of panic from my brain. “OK. Right,” I gulped. “Uh… the thing to do… is… we’ve just got to…”
I broke off my pointless ramblings as Flan squared her shoulders and said slowly and deliberately, “There’s only one thing for it. We have got to get back inside.”
“How?” I cried. “Simon’s in there. I can’t just march up to his house, knock on the door and say, ‘Hi, it’s me. I was just burglarising your house and appear to have forgotten my keys, silly of me I know, very careless. Would you be a real sweetie and get them for me?’” My words spiralled out into the night but Flan held her ground.
“He doesn’t recognise me. I’ll get them.”
It was Mr. H.’s turn to cut in, his voice thick with anxiety. “But how Flan? How? Whatever excuse could you come up with?”
She laughed, with some of her old spirit returning, and immediately I felt hope revive. “Leave it to me darlings, just leav
e it to me.” And with that she pulled off her scarf so that her hair fell in a soft cloud about her face. Mr. H. and I looked on in wonder as she then wiped off her red lipstick onto the back of her hand. Suddenly she looked years older. “No time for explanations,” she commanded. “Follow me but be sure to stay well back when I get near the house.”
Mutely, Mr. H. and I did as we were told and ducked behind a parked car on the opposite side of the road. We couldn’t see much as the presence of the hedge that had distinctly worked to our advantage earlier that evening, now effectively blocked our view, but we watched as Flan slumped her shoulders, stooped a little at the waist, and disappeared through the front gate, her left leg limping a little. Straining, we could hear the echo of voices and the sound of the front door closing.
“She’s in, she’s in,” breathed Mr. H. who had been clutching my arm so tightly I was beginning to lose all feeling in it. The wait was excruciating as we crouched in the shadows. Poor Mr. H. kept shifting his weight from leg to leg muttering ruefully, “My knees aren’t what they were you know.”
Five minutes passed, then ten. What was going on in there? And whatever it was why was it taking so bloody long? It was no good; I was going to have to do something, but what? I started to get to my feet, no clear idea in my mind of what to do when we heard Simon’s front door open again. Instantly I bobbed back down, scuttling crab-like in besides Mr. H. We looked at each other and held our breath. Flan was coming down the path, this time with her right leg limping, calling over her shoulder in a frail weak voice, totally unlike her own.
“No thank you, I’ll be fine now. Yes, I’m quite sure. Thanks again for your great kindness. I feel so much better now. Bye Bye.” She waved, repeating her thanks and made her way slowly towards the main road.
We let her go a few yards, and then as soon as I was sure that Simon was back in the house and not watching from a window, I sprinted after her with Mr. H. following a close second.
