‘Hey up. I ordered a car alarm, was supposed to be a guy round to install it last night between—’
The Wilmington client that Karl had stood up. Karl hung up, unable to face dealing with him. He was angry at his own paranoia – if people were going to come for him, they would have done it last night. They hadn’t – ergo, all was fine. Ergo, Liz had it wrong. He hit the accelerator.
The phone rang again. Katie this time. His foot slipped off the accelerator, and the van started to slow. His eyes latched onto a petrol station whose forecourt he could use to swing the van around if she suddenly said there were men trying to kick in the door.
‘What’s up?’ he said, keeping his voice calm.
‘The shed’s been broken into,’ she said, angry.
It felt like a drip of ice water had just trickled down his spine. But he told himself to think logically: could be pure coincidence. ‘Damn idiots. What’s been taken?’
‘I don’t know. It’s all junk, isn’t it? But it’s a right mess. And the lock’s busted. I saw it from the kitchen. There’s a bag of grass seed been spilled everywhere.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Just junk. I’ll clean the mess. Everything else okay?’
A pause while she calmed. ‘Yeah.’
‘Let me call you in a minute when I pull over.’
She signed off, and he hit the brake. The same honking idiot behind him butted the horn again. Black Corsa with stupid flame stickers on the bonnet. He turned into the petrol station and pulled up at a pump.
He clicked an application on his phone with a camera icon. His phone could connect to his home desktop computer which managed the house’s CCTV recordings. The camera activated whenever the burglar alarm was live, which meant it had been recording all night. He clicked on the file, and the screen filled with a video image of his back garden from a tiny camera hidden in a potted plant on a side fence. The house was on the left, the shed on the right. The image had a bright green hue. Night vision.
He played it in fast forward. The only thing moving was the timestamp, and he prayed it would stay that way. Someone honked behind him. A guy waiting to use the pump. He flicked a glance in the mirror. The Corsa was there again. Karl drove forward and joined four vehicles waiting to exit the forecourt. A young yobbo in a baseball cap bounced out of the Corsa. For a moment Karl stiffened, certain that this young thug had been following him, that he was one of them. But his only offence was to flip Karl the bird before grabbing a nozzle to fill his macho ride.
Something blipped on the screen like a subliminal message at 01.18 a.m. Karl felt his heart thud. He rolled the video back and watched at normal speed. A green cat strolled across his garden.
Five drivers waiting to leave the forecourt became four as the head car pulled out and vanished. Karl inched forward with the others. All three were indicating to turn left, but Karl was still unsure which way he should go: left, to the shop, or right, back to Katie?
Onscreen, on his mobile, at 02.13, the kitchen light blinked on. In night vision it was like a nuclear flash and washed out the entire image for eighteen seconds. Probably Katie getting more water.
Four cars became three as a Mondeo spotted a gap and leaped into the road. Karl grabbed the indicator stalk, but didn’t move it.
Onscreen, at 03.58 two green men climbed over his green back gate.
‘Jesus Christ!’
Shaking with nerves, he watched the two men move left-to-right across the screen, towards the shed. He zoomed in. The men seemed to be wearing one-piece outfits. ‘Fuckers,’ he hissed as one of the men bust the hasp on the shed and yanked the door open. The door opened towards the camera, so he lost sight of one man as he stepped behind it. The other guy just stood and watched, turning his head to look around from time to time. That guy looked dark-skinned, even as a bright green alien-like figure.
The guy ransacking the shed moved away thirty seconds later and closed the door. Then both scuttled across the grass, and Karl felt a shiver run up his entire body.
Because they didn’t head towards the gate. They weren’t fleeing the scene with a trowel. They weren’t there to rob the shed.
They went to the back door of the house.
Three became two. Karl’s van pounced forward, almost striking the back of the car in front. He tried to flick on his right indicator, to race home to Katie, in case these fuckers came again in daylight. She was his priority. She and Michael were the only things he cared about. But the right indicator was already ticking away. He wanted to call her, but couldn’t bring himself to end the video. He needed to know what happened next.
One of the burglars put his hand on the back door’s handle, then yanked it back quickly, clutching it in obvious pain.
‘Electrified, dickheads,’ Karl shouted at the phone.
The other guy went to the kitchen window and put his face close, scanning the edges. Karl knew he had seen the metal strip running around the frame. He touched it with a finger, and yanked his hand away fast.
Karl clicked, and the image changed. He had three cameras covering the back of the house. Now he watched the video from the one above the kitchen door. It was the size of a cigarette packet and the colour of the brick it was planted on, invisible in the night. The lens was aimed downwards at an angle, covering just a few feet in front of the door, and it showed the two hooded men in glorious definition. The guy who’d fingered the window was dark-skinned, while the other was a white guy with thick stubble covering most of his face and neck. The white guy scratched his head, momentarily pulling back his hood, and in that moment Karl hit the button to capture a screenshot of the guy’s face.
They were talking to each other, one sucking his finger, the other spitting on his own burned digits. They were animated, angry. Karl waited for them to leave, to abandon this target and move on to another. But they didn’t. They lurked by the door, talking and pointing. Karl’s heart beat faster as he realised what this meant. Normal burglars would have given up by now. But these were not men who had randomly chosen a house and been foiled. They needed to get inside this house. His house.
They were the men who’d hunted Liz Grafton, and now they had come for the man she had dragged into the cesspool with her.
Another honk from behind. Corsa yob, waiting to leave. Ahead, the way was clear, and probably had been for some time. Karl waited for a gap in traffic and exited fast, which got yet another noisy response from a pissed driver. He turned right. Ten minutes until home. He jabbed Katie’s number. They would have to get out of the house. Which meant he would have to tell her. Tell her everything.
He kept the wheel hard right and turned again into the forecourt. This conversation could not be done on the road, despite how eager he was to get home. This time he parked in front of the car wash to avoid blocking the pumps.
* * *
‘Katie. I met a woman last night.’
A line that had destroyed a million marriages, but, strangely, he used it to warm her up for the main event.
A pause, and then, ‘Right. Okay.’ Suspicion, but not the poisonous kind: he was a joker and certainly not a ladies’ man, so she was doubtful that he was about to admit to an affair.
‘It’s not what you think. It’s no one I’m seeing, no one I’ve done anything with.’
‘Karl, what’s going on?’ Confusion now: she couldn’t deny the worry in his tone.
‘She was running. Running away—’
Another horn blared. In his mirror, surprise, surprise. The yobbo got out of his car and threw his arms wide like someone at his wits’ end.
‘Karl, what are you saying? What’s going on? Has this got something to do with the shed? You’re scaring me now.’