Breaking Cover

16

They expected a lot for £9.27 an hour, Kevin Burgess thought as he looked at his watch. When he’d left school it would have seemed like loads of money, but now that he was twenty-five with his own place to pay for, it didn’t seem much at all. It was time for his break, all of twenty minutes – he barely had time to swallow his tea. It usually took him five minutes to get up to the hut where he and the gardeners gathered, and then there was a wait for the kettle to boil, the tea to brew and the mugs to be filled. By the time he’d taken a few sips he’d be watching the clock, knowing that his boss, Reilly, the head of security, would be out soon, making sure no one was skiving when they should be back at work. Reilly was ex-Army (some said ex-SAS), and though he certainly seemed to know his stuff, the man had clearly never readjusted to civilian life.

Of course it all sounded very glamorous – Kevin’s friends and his girlfriend Linda had oohed and aahed when he’d told them about his new assignment from the agency. There were plenty of mansions in the neighbourhood, occupied by football stars and businessmen, but even by the standards of Altrincham’s Golden Triangle, The Gloamings was something special. The job came with its own uniform – today, as always, he wore a blue jacket with Gloaming Security printed on the back. His was a bit tight and he was thinking of asking for a new one. Kevin was a big lad – over six foot tall and more than fifteen stone, though he knew that at least a stone or two of this was excess padding.

It was galling to think that with the money that was being spent just on the grounds – there were four full-time gardeners working there – Kevin and Linda could have bought a mini-mansion for themselves. And inside, with its eleven bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and eight reception rooms, The Gloamings was just as lavishly staffed: there was a housekeeper, two maids to assist her, a cook, two cleaners and a full-time chauffeur.

Not to mention the security staff. Kevin Burgess patrolled the grounds, and there were two others in the team so that the gardens were guarded twenty-four hours a day. Inside there was an office full of CCTV monitors that showed the view from over a dozen cameras, both inside and out. Under Reilly’s command, there were three men on duty in the house – one for the front door, the other a roving presence (though not allowed upstairs) and the third to sit and watch the monitors. Add a Russian goon or two – they seemed to change every few weeks – and you’d find Fort Knox less well protected.

Which made it downright weird that the object of all this protection – Sergei Patricov, number fourteen in the Sunday Times Rich List – was so rarely there. People said his private jet did a million miles a year, which didn’t surprise Kevin. The man certainly travelled in style. One of the gardeners swore Patricov had hired an entire carriage of the train on one occasion when fog meant he couldn’t fly to London. And as for cars, the antique-looking barn (built the year before) was full of them – including a Rolls, a Bentley, a Jag, a Mercedes limo, two Range Rovers, and in case anyone felt like slumming it, a four-door Peugeot saloon.

But mostly the cars sat idle, save for the odd expedition by Patricov’s lady – Nina. Was she his wife? They called her Mrs Patricov, but she didn’t look much like a wife. She was nearly always at the house, though to the likes of Kevin virtually invisible. She spent a lot of her time in the solarium, a sort of conservatory that had been converted into an indoor swimming pool and sun lounge, complete with changing rooms. The staff – including security – were strictly forbidden from intruding on her privacy there.

In fact, though he had been here over two months, Kevin had only seen Nina on a couple of occasions, and then he’d just caught a glimpse of dark sunglasses and blonde hair. By contrast Patricov, despite his many absences, was a big presence when he was at home. He could be found in the orchid house sniffing his exotic flowers, or hitting balls against the backboard of his tennis court, or just sitting on the terrace, drinking a gin and tonic, watching the gardeners weeding the beds and cutting the grass. He was always friendly, happy to say hello to everyone – security guard or important guest – though one of the maids who was going out with a gardener was reported to have said that according to the housekeeper he did have a temper on him.

Everybody was saying that he wanted to buy United, and you could see him in the role – backslapping his favourite players, cheering from the directors’ box at Old Trafford, soaking up the attention while showing himself to be a regular bloke. As if! Regular blokes didn’t own their own planes and helicopters, or spend more money every week on staff than most people earned in a lifetime. Still, Kevin thought it would be great if Patricov bought the team. They’d have an owner so rich he could buy all the best talent, and one who not only lived in the same country – unlike the Glazers – but actually nearby.

When Patricov was away, his sidekick was in charge – a Russian called Karpis. He didn’t actually live in the house but you wouldn’t have known that from the way he popped up at the oddest times. He was a nasty piece of work, thought Kevin; where the boss was outgoing and jolly, Karpis was dour and aloof. He was a tall well-built man who wore dark suits and sometimes a black leather jacket; the effect was oddly menacing. His deep voice fitted the film villain of Kevin’s imagination, though his English was excellent and only slightly accented. Even Reilly, despite his tough-guy air, showed Karpis respect, and it was interesting that when Patricov spoke to the Russian he seemed to do so as to an equal rather than a subordinate.

It looked as if it was going to rain soon, so Kevin headed quickly for the shelter of the gardeners’ hut. He had just taken a first sip of tea when his intercom went off. Damn! He put down his mug and looked at the little device. It was flashing, showing the number 11 over and over again. He sighed. This meant the small back gate at the far end of the grounds, where a sensor covered the entrance, along with a monitor and entry phone and a CCTV camera secreted in the branches of a beech tree. Lately the sensor had taken to going off unpredictably. The first time Kevin had raced down there, certain he would find an intruder. But after a dozen repetitions he had learned to take his time, knowing he would find the gate – which could be opened only by a numeric keypad – undisturbed, sitting there virtually smirking at him as he confirmed yet again it had not been touched.

Still, he had no choice but to take this seriously. Orders were orders, and it would be his job on the line if he ignored the signal; Reilly had more than once made that clear. So Kevin put down his mug and went outside, where he cursed again; it had started to rain, not hard but steadily. By the time he had made his way to the gate, he could feel the downpour soaking through his clothes.

He came round the slight bend in the walk, ready to re-set the sensor and enter the code on his pager that would tell the security man inside the house – sitting warm and dry in front of a bank of monitors – that it was just another false alarm. But Kevin saw to his surprise that the gate was open. Ajar rather than wide open, but enough to trigger the sensor and set off the alarm that had in turn sent a signal to his pager.

He was still not suspicious; someone had probably failed to close the gate properly. But who would that be? Patricov was away, Nina never ventured anywhere this far from the house, and the iceman Karpis would never pick a chilly, wet day for a stroll outside. That left the gardeners, who were all working in the rose garden today, and security – which meant Kevin and his colleagues on the earlier shifts. Yet they were the one group certain not to open or close the gate, since their job was to stay inside it, making sure no one else came in.

He was puzzled, but not yet alarmed. Then in the mud on the inner side of the gate he saw some odd holes. They looked like the plugs of earth extracted from golf greens to aerate them. He closed the gate and looked at the plug holes again – they went up the path towards the house and he followed them, occasionally losing the trail where the grass was still firmly in place, then finding it again in the odd patch of exposed mud.

As he was getting closer to the house itself, the trail of odd marks suddenly veered off, heading towards the solarium. Now they were easy to follow and took him to the door at one end of the long low structure. Unusually it was open; he had never seen it anything but shut.

Kevin paused, wondering what to do. Entry into the solarium was strictly forbidden; he had never seen even a maid enter the sanctum. But it looked as if this intruder had gone in – why else was the door open? He should probably raise the alarm and call for back-up from the house, but if he paged the security office or rang Reilly on his mobile phone and it turned out no one was there (except for privacy-loving Nina), Kevin would be in deep trouble. On the one occasion he had alerted the house it had been a false alarm and Reilly had exploded, accusing him of panicking and scaring the wits out of everyone for no reason.

So he wouldn’t alert anyone, but should he go inside? Kevin wanted to do a proper job. It was what he was paid to do, and what he was good at. What if right now somebody was attacking Nina, or stealing her bag, or vandalising the swimming pool?

He went on into the building, leaving the door open, thinking that would provide some excuse for his actions. He found himself in a little atrium. There was a glass door on one side and he could see the pool through it: about twenty metres long, four lanes wide, with water the colour of aquamarine. There was no sign of Nina. There were a couple of other doors leading from the atrium – changing rooms, one marked with a shadowed silhouette of a man, the other of a woman.

He was about to enter the men’s room when he heard noises coming from behind the other door. It sounded like a woman’s voice. He hesitated, wondering if he should go in there. What if Nina was being assaulted? What if the intruder was robbing her, or even worse? Kevin unhooked the little cosh from his belt, and felt for the can of Mace he had been given by Reilly on his first day. But then he realised that the woman didn’t sound scared and a moment later heard the low bass tones of a man. With a start he recognised the voice – it was Karpis’s. Kevin immediately wanted to get out of there. But it couldn’t have been Karpis who had come up from the gate. So where was the intruder? Whatever Nina and Karpis were up to wasn’t Kevin’s business but he couldn’t leave without making sure that no one else was here.

And then he heard a different kind of noise, coming from the men’s room this time. It was a sort of shuffling and clicking as if someone was walking around in hard-soled shoes. He took a deep breath, tensed, and pushed open the door. He had the Mace out and his cosh in his hand, and the first thing he saw was a holster hanging from a hook next to a black leather jacket. In the holster was a snub-nosed .38, an automatic.

There was another scuffing noise and Kevin swung round. It was then he saw the intruder, a good foot or so below his eye line. It was a young boy, maybe ten years old, and five feet tall at most, wearing jeans and a hooded fleece. On his feet were football boots – they had made the strange plug-like marks. The boy turned to face Kevin, with a look on his face that was at once curious and frightened.

‘What are you doing here?’ Kevin whispered. He was putting the cosh back in his belt, and feeling very stupid.

‘Are you Mr Cough?’

‘What?’

‘You know… Mr Patrick Cough.’

Patricov. Kevin sighed with relief. ‘Come with me,’ he said in a whisper, and led the boy out of the room then back through the atrium until they were by the entrance to the building. ‘I’m not Mr Patricov,’ he told the boy. ‘What did you want with him anyway?’

The boy reached inside his fleece and for a moment Kevin tensed again. But it was harmless – just a shirt. A football jersey, in fact, in the colours of Man United: red and white.

The boy said, ‘My dad said he was going to buy United. I want him to sign the shirt for me.’

Kevin nodded, but he was mystified. ‘How did you get into the grounds?’ he asked.

The boy shrugged. ‘I came through the gate at the back.’

‘But you need a code for that. You know, numbers you punch to get in.’

‘I didn’t. The gate was open.’

Kevin thought for a moment. He couldn’t see any point in reporting this, or worse still taking the boy to the house. Reilly would have a fit; the boy would get in trouble, and Kevin would probably get the sack.

‘You’d better come with me,’ he said, and the boy’s eyes widened. But gradually he relaxed as they walked down past the tennis court and along by the lime trees. He told Kevin that his name was Brian, he supported Man United (surprise, surprise) and his dad had pointed out the house of ‘Patrick Cough’. The kid added that his bike was hidden in some bushes down the path and that he lived on an estate less than a mile away.

As soon as Kevin opened the gate, the boy shot off. Kevin watched him disappear into the woods, feeling perplexed. It was bad enough that the kid had got in so easily, though that seemed innocent enough. Karpis’s presence in the pool house, however, didn’t seem innocent at all – Kevin remembered the clothes in the men’s changing room and the sound of talking coming from the women’s. And he also remembered the holster and gun, slung on a hook next to the clothes. Did Karpis have a special licence from the Home Office to carry it? Kevin thought it improbable. Possessing a handgun in the UK would get him arrested. What was he so frightened of that he would take the risk?