Love You Dead

98 Thursday 12 March

Tooth removed his hat and coat, and the really uncomfortable flat ladies’ shoes, which he had bought, with the rest of the outfit, from a vintage clothing shop. He discarded the walking stick he’d picked up earlier in a charity shop, propping it against a wall, and hobbled, unaided, through to the bathroom, where he leaned on the side of the washbasin and stared at his face in the mirror.

A hideous old lady, with Pan-Cake make-up, stared back.

She reminded him of his mother.

Taking out a face wipe, he rigorously cleaned his face of all the gunk.

Changed back into the clothes he felt comfortable in — navy chinos and a grey T-shirt — Tooth set to work. His first task, as always in a hotel room, was to cover the smoke alarm.

Next, he lifted a corner of the bed’s mattress and saw the coil springs that held the base in place. Removing one of the springs, he took it over to his temporary workbench, the desk. He unwound a few inches of the coiled wire, then cut it off with the pliers. Next, he folded the wire into a U-shape, and pushed it into the end of the heavy-duty insulated wire he had bought earlier.

He programmed the mini relay for thirty seconds and connected it, via the wire, to the mercury tilt switch. Then he angled the switch downward. The mercury inside slid down to complete the circuit to the motion sensor, which in turn would set the timer going. After exactly thirty seconds there was the flash of a spark, and a smell of burned electrics reached his nostrils.

Excellent! It worked fine.

Good, very good. He disconnected the timer.

He plugged in the coffee grinder, filled it with potassium chlorate oxygenating tablets from the aquarium supplies store, and switched the machine on. When they were ground into a small mound of powder, he tipped it out onto the scales, and then into a tumbler from the bathroom. He repeated the process with further tablets until he had the exact amount he required.

Next, he measured out and carefully weighed some of the aluminium powder from the art shop, and tipped it into another tumbler from the bathroom. Then, very carefully, he mixed the two compounds together.

When he was satisfied, he unscrewed one end of the steel tube and poured in the concoction.

Then he pushed in the end of the insulated wire with the bent metal of the coil spring, working it through the mixture until it was completely embedded, and secured it in place with the hot-glue stick. As an extra safety precaution, he carefully wound insulating tape round the two exposed wires at the other end of the cable, then pushed them into the tube, followed by the mercury tilt sensor and the Arduino relay, which fitted snugly. He replaced the screw-cap. It had been some years since he’d last made one of these, but the good thing today, he thought, was if you were unsure about anything you could always look it up on the internet.

He searched around for a suitable hiding place for his bomb and the timer that would detonate it. One secure place presented itself: the air-conditioning grille above the door. He removed his Swiss Army penknife from his suitcase, stood on a chair and undid the four screws holding it in place.

Five minutes later, the grille securely back in place, he climbed down off the chair, and then began to do some exercises on his legs. He had to get everything working again. He was on the mend, but he needed to be in a lot better shape before he attempted to complete his mission. And he knew what he had to do. He checked the temperature of the gel-pack, which he had placed in an ice bucket, wrapped it in a towel then pressed it against the worst bruise on his right leg.

To occupy himself for the ten minutes that he was going to hold it there, he opened his laptop and took a look at what was going on in Jodie Carmichael’s house.