Ruth Rendell - Portobello

'Will you leave a couple of lights on?'

'I really think that only attracts their attention, darling. I mean, if you were a burglar – impossible, I know, but try to imagine – what would you think if on a bright sunny day like this one you passed a house with lights on? You'd either think the householder was mad or they'd gone away, much more likely the latter.'

Somewhere in Sussex, after the South Downs had come into view, he asked her if she had seen Joel Roseman again.

'He's become a patient, a private patient.'

'Is there something wrong with him, then?'

'Well, he has had an operation on his heart,' said Ella. 'Isn't the sunshine lovely, darling? I really think this is the most beautiful time of year, don't you?'

'You mean you mustn't talk to me about your patients' ailments,' said Eugene, laughing. 'Darling, I entirely understand.'

Uncle Gib was as good as his word. He wasn't going to lend Lance a thousand pounds. 'It wouldn't be a loan,' he said, wreathed in smoke at the breakfast table. 'You pass on cash to a bloke what's out of work and it's not a loan, it's a gift. And I don't feel like giving you no gifts.'

Lance didn't argue. He doubted if Uncle Gib had a thousand pounds, though this wasn't the first time they had had this conversation. Lance fell back on it, opening the subject afresh, each time other people refused him. He had tried his parents and they didn't argue either. They laughed. He had to be joking. His mother already owed eight thousand on her Visa card. He tried his grandmother, his mother's mother, who was still several years under sixty, the women in his family giving birth while in their teens. She had a job, managing a launderette, and was looked on by her friends and descendants as practically an intellectual, but if she had a thousand pounds she wasn't lending it to Lance. Nor were her other two daughters, Lance's aunts, or his uncle, the ex-husband of one of them, who had won ten thousand on the lottery. But Uncle Roy came in useful. When he had refused Lance's plea, he gave him the name and address of a receiver of stolen goods in a street just off the Holloway Road.

Robbing the bloke with the white hair was now Lance's last resort and once more it seemed feasible. In spite of all his preliminary work in Chepstow Villas, he had almost given up the idea of actually breaking in because he had nowhere to take the stuff he nicked. Now he had Mr Crown at 35 Poltimore Road, N7.

It was already Saturday, the day on which he had to take the money to Fize. He had been unable to keep away from Gemma's flat and had been back there on two occasions. This would be the third and his plan was to offer her and Fize all his week's benefit on account, accompanying it with the promise that the rest would be in their hands by, say, Tuesday. At any rate, he would get to see her, with luck actually be in the same room with her. But as he came up to the block where she lived, he spotted Fize on her balcony with the baby on his lap, apparently feeding him with something out of a bowl. Fize hadn't seen him but Lance lost his nerve, crossed the street and, putting his hood up and hunching his shoulders, hurriedly walked on down Leamington Road and into Denbigh Road.

Still in hoodie disguise, he saw in the distance White Hair putting stuff into the boot of a car. Lance recognised him with no difficulty. He had a woman with him that he had never seen before, a woman in a trouser suit with dark curly hair. It looked as if they were going away somewhere. More than likely, seeing it was the Bank Holiday weekend. People like them, rich and comfortable and worry-free, people who'd never have a problem finding a thousand pounds, always went away at holiday weekends, while he was stuck for ever in a dump full of smoke and rats.

He hung about on the corner, pretending to read yet another one of those lost cat notices, the stripy one – apparently called William – having gone off somewhere on a jaunt. If they'd been offering a reward he might have looked for the missing cat but they weren't. And maybe not, he thought, remembering his scratched hand. Those two, White Hair and his woman, had disappeared into the house. Lance walked about a bit, sat on a wall, got off again when the person who owned the place came out, went back to the corner where the lost cat notice was. They had come out again. White Hair opened the car door on the passenger side for the woman, then he got in and drove away. Lance let them get out of sight before moving slowly towards the house they had just left. Pity he couldn't go in there now, but it would be better to leave it until after dark. He wasn't going back to Blagrove Road and Uncle Gib. He'd go to his nan's in Kensal. Though she'd refused him a loan, she'd said she never saw him these days and how about coming round to her place, the launderette closing early on account of it was the Bank Holiday weekend, and she'd cook him dinner or, more likely, take him down the Good King Billy for a beer and a Ploughman's. He might get a shower too in her nice clean bathroom.

Pity it got dark so late. Lance could tell his nan wanted rid of him round about six but it was still broad daylight, the sun shining as bright as at midday. She'd told him twice her boyfriend was coming over, and they'd be going to the dogs at Walthamstow and he should be on his way. Lance felt uncomfortable. She'd given him fish and chips in the pub and two pints of Stella, and tea and crisps when they got back home and he knew he was outstaying his welcome – but where to go until it got dark? It was the story of his life, nothing to do for most of the time and nowhere to go. At last, when his nan had got herself up in a miniskirt and white leather jacket and turquoise-blue shades, and Dave arrived, Lance got up and said he'd better be off. They saw him off the premises, all over him now he was on his way.

Though he'd come on the bus, he walked all the way back to Chepstow Villas to save the fare, making his usual detour to pass Gemma's flat. A light was on inside, the door opened a crack and Gemma put her head out. Had Lance been given to that sort of thing, when he saw her come out he might have said to himself, Romeo-fashion though slightly paraphrasing, 'But, soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Gemma is the sun.' However, she didn't appear to have seen him, for she leant against the railing gazing up the road in the opposite direction. He walked on, trying to think about the task ahead. Suppose those two, White Hair and his girlfriend, had only been out for the day? No, you don't take suitcases if you're only going to Richmond or Maidenhead. It was still light but, though he wasn't much for noticing what the sky was doing, he could see from the red glow when he looked behind him that the sun had set. Back to sitting on a wall, then. He'd walked so far he was exhausted, not to mention getting hungry again. A bit more time was used up by his buying a pie, a piece of fruit cake in a see-through pack and a Mars bar, which he ate trailing along Westbourne Grove. Once, when he looked behind him, he saw in the distance a man who reminded him of Fize but, as far as he was concerned, one Asian looked much like another.

At last it was dark and there was no street lamp directly outside White Hair's house. The dense trees in the pavements and the front gardens of Chepstow Villas helped to darken the place. Lance was so certain White Hair would have bolted his side gate after all this time that he was surprised when it yielded as he turned the key. There were lights on in a garden next door, the kind that glow green, half hidden among the bushes, but none here. It was very dark and there was no moon. Lance went up to the french windows and peered at the keyhole. As he had hoped, neither White Hair nor his girlfriend had taken the key out after they had locked the door. He could see the tip of its shaft inside the hole. Poking it through would be a skilful business, best taken slowly, because if it jumped out when he pushed at it with the screwdriver he had brought with him it might easily jump away from the door and land inches away on the carpet. And that would be the end.