Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

‘Don’t tell them that. Did you see them talking into phones or radios?’

‘No. And they seem to have run out of things to say to each other. Most of the time they’re just sitting there.’

‘Are they trying to be discreet or do they want you to know they are there?’

‘Oh no, they’re pretending not to be there.’

‘They’re probably fuzz-balls then,’ I concluded rashly. ‘There’s two ways to go about it. You can pretend you haven’t noticed and then give them the slip or you go out there and confront them.’ I couldn’t see any other possibilities because right now I wanted Tim here at Mill House so we could make a move towards getting at the Penny Black.

‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Chris.’ Tim spoke slowly, still thinking. ‘If they’re fuzz then they could only be here for two things, the break-in at Telfer’s house or something I pulled off a very long time ago. The best thing is to pretend I haven’t noticed them and do nothing suspicious at all. I’m just an IT guy at Bath Uni, doing my normal day-to-day stuff and I’ve got nothing to hide.’

‘Did Annis tell you about the new job the bastard has lined up for us?’

‘She did.’

‘Well, then you know I need you here right now. There’s not much time. Try and give them the slip.’

‘I don’t like it, Chris. I thought I’d lost them on the way home and yet they reappeared.’

‘That’s because they know where you live, dummy.’

‘And do you think they don’t know we’re mates and where you live? If we go breaking into the stamp-man’s place together it’ll be like bringing my own arresting officers with me. We can’t risk that. You’ll have to do it yourself.’

‘But I’m rubbish at that kind of thing.’ Eloquent silence at Tim’s end. ‘Feel free to contradict me at any point. And he’s bound to have the thing in a safe.’

‘You won’t know that until you’ve been looking. But even if he has. .’ He hesitated. ‘I could perhaps lend you my gear, show you how to work it. . but I think it’s best we don’t have direct contact at the moment. You had a look at the house, did he seem to have lots of security?’

‘None, as far as I could see,’ I admitted. Rufus Connabear didn’t even have double glazing to shut the draught out, let alone locks on the windows to keep out burglars.

‘There you go. You can have a stab at it then. A kid could do the place over. Only be careful, just because you can’t see security doesn’t always mean there isn’t any, though most people make it obvious to discourage you from even trying. How many people live in the house?’

‘I think the guy lives alone. He’s retirement age and a bit deaf.’

‘There you go, if it’s in a safe you can use dynamite. Just kidding. You’ll have no problems, mate, it’ll be a doddle. .’

Tim was right of course but breaking into people’s houses, even though I’d done it before, all in a good cause, you understand, wasn’t a task I relished.

‘I’ll come with you if you like,’ Annis offered. ‘As long as we don’t have to climb up ladders or go up drainpipes.’ Annis was fearless at sea level but couldn’t stand heights.

‘No, there’s no point. The fewer bodies on this journey the better.’ Especially with someone as accident prone as me at the helm. ‘I’ll do it by myself and I’ll do it tonight.’

The feeble beam of the Norton’s headlamp was half drowned by the downpour and illuminated nothing but ten yards of rain bouncing hard off the slickened tarmac on the nightblack lane. I approached the house from the other side, that way I could avoid going through Monkton Farleigh; the otherworldly exhaust note of the machine might stick in the minds of light sleepers in the village. Despite having pored over a map earlier I had no exact idea how far away from Restharrow I was, but when at last I spotted a passing place in the lane that wasn’t filled with several inches of water I gratefully parked the bike, stuffed my gloves into the helmet and hung it on the handlebars. The rain had returned at midnight and had fallen relentlessly out of black skies since then, yet I had eschewed Annis’s offer of the Landy. It was much easier to find a place for stashing the bike than a bulky Land Rover. The drawbacks of using two wheels however became quickly obvious: I was wet, very, very wet. I shivered inside my rain-heavy, sodden gear and set off. My left boot had sprung a leak and before long I had managed to step into a good-sized puddle with it and was miserably squelching along in near total darkness. I had hoped to negotiate my way to the house by starlight but with a hundred per cent cloud cover and pouring rain I was soon forced to use the Mini Maglite I had brought. After five minutes of trudging along the undulating lane I realized I had parked too far from the house. A couple of minutes later I was wondering whether to go back and move the Norton when Restharrow appeared as if out of nowhere, looming darker in the darkness on my right. I killed the light and stood in the big, cold, wet darkness for a while. It yielded nothing. No light was showing at the house. In fact there was no light anywhere and I couldn’t hear a thing beyond the relentless rain. I wondered how weather affected the burglary figures but not for long because this burglary couldn’t wait for a balmy summer’s evening. The only good thing about the heavy rain was that it might help to mask little sounds, like me squelching off the road and walking painfully into a fence I hadn’t seen. I clicked the torch on at short intervals to get my bearings then tried to battle on without it but the darkness out here seemed complete. After slipping and falling once, bumping my knee against the stone wall twice and repeatedly getting my jacket caught on invisible snags I’d had enough and turned on the torch for good. I was bound to make less noise that way.

I managed to scramble over the wall — a child would have done it in half the time — towards the back of the garden and dropped into a muddy flowerbed on the other side. Something hard and thorny travelled up my trouser leg as I did and sliced my calf open as I came down. Before I could stop myself I had informed the darkness in pithy, monosyllabic words of what I thought about this development.

Well, Rufus Connabear was either still asleep or he wasn’t. If he was awake and looking out of his windows then he’d be calling the police about now, if not then I had the smallest chance of getting away with this lunatic effort. I had to keep the torch on all the time now just to avoid big pots full of dead-looking plants everywhere and some concrete bunny rabbits with scary, knowing smiles. At last I got to the back of the cottage and the dense evergreen shrubs that obscured the window I had unlocked on my previous visit. I had to crouch low and come up close to the wall to get through there at all. The windows opened outwards. I put the Maglite in my mouth and got my fingernails under the frame and pulled. Nothing. I pulled harder. More nothing. I got out my keys and used one as a lever. It bent. I trained the torch beam higher to where the latch was. It looked open. Of course when I’d unfastened the latch earlier I hadn’t had time to try whether the window actually opened. For all I knew it had been painted shut three generations ago. I fought my way out of the wet and scratchy shrub and decided I was already thoroughly cheesed off with the way my night was panning out. Having squeezed under the tiny ornamental porch of the back door for some shelter I fumbled with muddy hands for a cigarette that was already drooping with dampness when I prized it out of the packet. Miraculously I got it lit. For a brief moment I stood there, pressed against the kitchen door, and enjoyed the illusion of warmth my smoke provided until a large and well-aimed drop of rain extinguished the glow with a hiss. Disgusted, I flicked the wet thing into the darkness; one for the forensic boys.