Picture You Dead

52

Friday, 1 November

Archie Goff drove slowly up the steep residential street of Mackie Crescent in Patcham. It was, coincidentally, just half a mile or so from where he’d been handed the painting last night. As he passed a row of tennis courts to his right, the Kiplings’ house appeared on his left, on a street corner, and he clocked that the driveway was empty, apart from Harry Kipling’s pick-up. Neither Harry’s Volvo estate nor Freya’s Fiat 500 were there. Good.

From the daily surveillance he had carried out this week, he had established that Harry Kipling left for work at 7.30 a.m., pretty much on the nose, every morning, and Freya Kipling around twenty minutes later. She always returned around 4.30 p.m., with their droopy-looking son with his headphones. Yesterday she had gone out again, twenty minutes later, dressed like she was going to some kind of fitness class. And yesterday, instead of 5 p.m., her husband returned closer to 5.30 p.m. and unloaded a bunch of groceries from his car.

The only time Harry had come back in the morning had been on Monday, when he shot home around midday to pick up some building supplies.

Turning left in front of the house and heading up the hill, with small houses and bungalows on either side of the road, Archie found a parking space between two cars. They were outside the yellow-line zone here, so he didn’t need to worry about the car getting ticketed and logged.

He climbed out, wearing a hi-vis jacket, black trousers, trainers and a baseball cap. Then he lifted the bubble-wrapped painting, now in a layer of brown paper, from the rear seat, along with a clipboard, locked the car, then walked casually away, parcel and clipboard under his arm, and back down towards the Kiplings’ house.

It was a tip an old lag in prison had given him many years ago, that if you didn’t want to arouse curiosity in a neighbourhood, then wear a yellow hi-vis jacket and carry a clipboard, it would make you pretty much invisible.

Mackie Crescent was deserted, apart from a tubby elderly woman on a mobility scooter, heading away from him, down the hill on the pavement on the far side of the road, along by the tennis courts. Heading to the shops in the village, he guessed, patting his jacket pocket for the copy of the back door key he’d had cut from the wax impression he’d taken when he’d broken into the house last Saturday night, although he guessed it might not be of any use now. He was still annoyed at himself for breaking that rear windowpane. He’d intended to simply cut it out, reach in and unlock the security chain in place on the back door, then re-putty the glass back. But he’d not been expecting the pane to be rotten – certainly not in a builder’s home – and it had fallen out, taking him by surprise.

He was pretty sure that the locks would now have been changed on all the doors, but no problem. In another pocket he carried a few pieces of kit, one a tool for picking just about any commercially available door or window lock, the other items for removing security chains.

As he walked down he slowed his pace, taking in all his surroundings, while pretending to make the occasional note on his clipboard. As he did so, he glanced surreptitiously for any signs of anyone watching him, especially any twitching curtains, but saw none. Urban burglaries had never been his thing, at least not since the first time he’d been nicked. But hey, this was the deal, and it was a sweet one. And it enabled him to be out of prison and home with his beloved Isabella.

Just this morning to get through.

Adjusting his cap so the peak was low over his face, and pulling on dark glasses, he clutched the parcel and the clipboard, trying to look every inch that he was here on business, strode up to the front door, keeping his face low, out of sight of the cameras, rang the bell and then rapped the brass leprechaun door knocker, with his cover story – that he was in the wrong street – at the ready in case anyone surprised him by appearing.

Silence.

He rang and knocked again.

Still silence.

Nice.

Still acting all casual in case a nosy neighbour was observing, he walked around to the side of the house, negotiated the bins and round to the rear, clocking the garden with its small pond, and a shed framed with tall leylandii trees. The last time he had been here it was in darkness, and now he was pleased to see the garden shrubbery and the trees at the far end gave it total privacy from the neighbours.

He tried his new key in the back door, but as he had suspected, the lock had been changed. Not a problem. It took him less than a minute of working his slender metal picks for the lock to click open. Pushing the door, it only moved a few inches before resisting. A security chain.

In less than a further minute, using a flat, plastic schoolboy ruler and a strong elastic band, he popped that open, too.

Inside the house, which he’d only previously seen by torchlight, he hurried through to the lounge, which was at the front. He checked the street, through the windows. All clear. Then out of habit he glanced around the room to see if there was anything small of value he could nick that might not be missed. The coffee table between a sofa and two armchairs had a glass top, making it into a display cabinet. It contained dozens of tiny silver spoons – mustard spoons, salt spoons, some shiny, some tarnished and in need of polishing. Worth a few bob. Maybe he’d come back for them one day, he thought. But it would only be small pickings.

There wasn’t much else of any real value in the room, from what he could see. A few family photos in nice frames, some vases filled with flowers, a large television, a pair of tall Sonos speakers. Then he focused on the painting hanging on the wall, which he’d photographed in detail, front and back, on Saturday night. Not his kind of thing, a bit chocolate-boxy in his opinion – he liked old Brighton prints, and some pictures that local modern artists painted of the broken West Pier and the beach huts along in Hove – a few of which he’d bought on the rare occasions when he’d had spare cash. Isabella really liked them, too, and that pleased him.

He worked quickly, lifting the painting off the wall and setting it down on the floor. Unwrapping the copy, he had to admit he was impressed by just how good a job the artist had done, even down to the detail on the back, and the identical thin string looped between two hooks. He’d have struggled to tell the difference, he reckoned.

Then he heard a car approaching outside and slowing down.

He held his breath, his brain momentarily paralysed.

Shit, no no no.

He saw the blue and yellow Battenberg markings of the front of the police car crawling down the hill and fell to his knees and out of sight, his heart knocking seven bells out of his chest.

Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.

He cursed his stupidity in breaking his own golden rule of never entering a building without having a planned exit route. At the rear of the house was a garden, with a high fence around, which he wouldn’t be able to climb. His only way out would be through the front door or around the side of the house. Straight into the arms of the Plod.

He crawled close to the window on his hands and knees and risked a peep. There were two uniformed officers in the car, a bulky male in the passenger seat, the female driving, both peering at the house. The male was saying something, whether to his colleague or into the radio Archie couldn’t tell.

Shit.

He ducked down. Had they seen him? Had someone reported him? Had he triggered a concealed alarm?

You idiot. You idiot.

God, if they nicked him it would be goodbye to his dream, to everything. He’d be straight back in the big house, without passing GO. It would be goodbye to Isabella. And it would be goodbye to the £50,000 bail that his benefactor had put up – and would doubtless want back.

Shit, shit, shit.

He heard the rattle of the car’s engine. Listened for the sound of a door opening, his entire body throbbing. So much to lose, he was thinking. Isabella had taken next week off work and he’d booked a room for two nights in a lovely-looking hotel in the New Forest. He figured he could just make it work between his appearances at Brighton police station that were part of his bail conditions. Tomorrow he had planned to nip into the town centre and buy a ring and surprise her by proposing to her over dinner on their first night in the hotel. He’d had a lot of false starts in his life, he knew, he hadn’t been so clever in his previous choices of partners, but Isabella was the one. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, no question in his mind at all.

And no question in his mind at all that if he got done for burglary while he was out on bail, she wouldn’t be giving him any more second chances. He’d already used his last one up.

Then, to his immense relief, he heard the car drive on. Risking another peep over the windowsill, he saw the rear of the patrol car disappear down the street.

He hung the replacement up, all the time checking through the window. Then clumsily, in his hurry to get out of there, he pulled the bubble wrap around the original, securing it with the roll of gaffer tape he had brought along, followed by the brown paper, into a right mess of a parcel.

Checking he had hung the copy straight, he slipped out the back door, using the ruler and elastic band to replace the safety chain and then his tools to re-lock the door.

As he strode back up the hill, with his seemingly undelivered parcel, he was smiling. The Kiplings would never know. Job done!

All he had to do now was the handover in the pub car park at 8 p.m. tonight and he’d get the balance of the payment. Plenty enough to buy Isabella a nice ring, and to pay for a glorious week ahead in their New Forest love nest, loads of drinks, nice meals and wild sex.

And just maybe, his brief reckoned, because he hadn’t actually nicked anything at Hope Manor, and because prisons were overcrowded, he might get away with a suspended sentence when his trial came up in three months’ time.

Whatever. He planned to get that ring onto Isabella’s finger as quickly as possible. And a registry office wedding as soon after that as they could.

The future sorted. Well almost. He still needed one big job, the one that Hope Manor would have been, to pay for his daughter through veterinary college. Just that one final big one, and he had a list of houses to choose from. But for the next ten days, he didn’t need to worry about a thing.

He climbed back into the car with a big smile on his face. Happy days!