Picture You Dead

13

Tuesday, 24 September

Hope Manor, a handsome Georgian pile five miles outside his home city of Brighton and Hove, was occupied by a couple, Martin and Juliet Fry. Their money had come from a chain of betting shops.

Archie had been tipped off by a bent antiques dealer during his last stay in prison, four years ago, that the couple spent their money on high-value antique silver objects. And that they also kept large quantities of cash in the house.

Archie had been watching the Frys’ isolated residence, just beyond these woods, for the past three weeks and reckoned he knew the movements of the elderly occupants – both even older than himself – intimately.

Their guard dog, a German Shepherd, even more ancient in canine years than the Frys were in human ones, had been put down a few weeks ago and they hadn’t yet replaced it. The gods were truly smiling on him, Archie thought. It was meant to be!

If all went to plan, tonight could net him all he needed – and more – from his fence, Ricky Sharp, who always paid him well, and from the cash – if he could find it. Enough tonight, perhaps, so he would never need to work again. He’d have a happy, successful daughter, his one kid who still talked to him, and a beautiful partner to share whatever years he still had ahead of him. And money for them to enjoy.

Finally, he’d be living the dream.

Just tonight to get through.

Sunset would be on his side. The moon was also waning – it was just a thin sliver, giving him near-perfect darkness – and he’d lucked out on the weather. No rain.

Dressed all in black, tool belt around his waist, he deposited the trap in the boot of his beat-up old Astra, concealed a couple of hundred yards away in a convenient picnic spot, then stood on the edge of those dark, deep woods, close to the wrought-iron gates of Hope Manor. They were flanked by pillars topped with stone pineapples, and he hoped – pun not intended – that Martin Fry and his wife, Juliet, would keep to their routine. And they didn’t look like they were going to disappoint. Pretty much on the dot of 7 p.m. the taxi pulled up at the fancy entrance, the driver getting out and pressing the intercom button.

As the gates opened and the taxi drove through, Archie waited a few seconds, then slipped in, unseen, behind it, instantly secreting himself behind a dense bush in the rhododendron-lined driveway. The gates, needing oiling, creaked shut.

In!

Adrenaline surged as it always did, even though he now had a long wait. But he was used to that. Fishing was one of his hobbies and there was a lot of waiting in that.

A few minutes later, he watched the taxi returning. The silhouettes of the elderly Fry couple in the back. Off to their regular Tuesday night dinner at their usual table, no doubt, at English’s restaurant in Brighton. Oh yes, Archie did his research on every job. A pro through and through, he had his sources. He even knew what they would be eating and drinking. Martin, six oysters followed by lobster thermidor. Juliet, prawn cocktail followed by Dover sole. A glass of champagne each, on the house, then a bottle of Chablis.

It would be three hours until they returned at 10 p.m. He resisted the temptation to go for it during this gap, because that would be folly with the house’s alarm system. Patience.

Removing the rucksack from his back, Archie made himself comfortable on a broad tree stump, took out the thermos flask and plastic picnic box he had packed, containing sandwiches and an apple, and munched on his supper, listening to the sound of the crow, more active now, flapping around inside its box. When he had finished, he popped in earbuds and resumed listening to his audiobook. It was a novel called The Catcher in the Rye. It was on a list he’d found called, ‘One Hundred Books to Read Before You Die’.

Archie had left school at fifteen and, oftentimes since, regretted he’d had so little education. He was aware that his daughter, Kayleigh, thought he was a better person than he really was. So, albeit late in the day, he was trying to improve himself, as he wryly told his few friends, to try to cushion her eventual disappointment.

A handful of vehicles drove along the lane over the next three hours. Then, finally, he heard the sound of one stopping. Headlights on the gates, which creaked back open. He stiffened. Stopped the audio, pocketed the earbuds and stood up, heaving the rucksack, heavy with his safecracking kit, onto his back, and lifting up the sack containing the crow and brick.

The taxi passed by, heading up the drive towards the mansion a few hundred yards along, at the end of it.

Archie stepped out and strode up the drive, confident he was invisible to the driver’s rear-view mirrors, then ducked back into the bushes as the couple climbed out, paid the man, then went in through the front door, leaving it open.

As the taxi headed away, crunching the gravel on the circular driveway, Archie heard the pip-pip-pip of the burglar alarm. Moments later it was silenced as, presumably, one of the Frys punched in the code.

The front door slammed shut.

A minute or so later, the downstairs lights went off and another came on in the upstairs bow window to the right. The master bedroom, he knew, from the plans of the house he’d viewed online and saved on his phone.

Another hour or so and he’d be good to go. Adrenaline coursed through him again. He was ready. He clicked his torch on and off quickly. Just to test it.

All good.