Dead Man's Time

the occasional gurgle.
    Mummy sounded tired; exhausted. Within minutes of finishing and putting him back in his cot, she would go back to bed and fall asleep.
    And he would be ready.
    Rain was lashing down and the wind was still rising. It was like an autumn-equinox gale out there, not a late summer’s night, and that could not have suited his purposes better.
    His clothes and equipment were laid out. His night-vision goggles were okay, but didn’t give him as much clarity as he had hoped, so he was taking a small torch, in order to see to carry
out his handiwork; but that was the only time he intended to switch it on.
    He studied the floor plans of the Grace house one more time. Apart from one closet in a different place, the interior was a mirror image of this house he was in now. He had googled several
websites to try to see how blind people coped in unfamiliar territory, and he had practised moving around in here, in darkness, every night for the past week. He had done one final practice this
evening.
    The unknown factors would be pieces of furniture that he might bump into, something left on the floor he might tread on, and the dog, but the goggles should pick those up.
    And the dog should not be a problem.
    Mummy’d let the dog out onto the little terrace, where it shat and pissed every night. And tonight it had greedily gobbled up the shin of beef, stuffed with enough powdered barbiturate to
knock out a horse, which he had dropped from the fire escape in front of its nose. He had done the same last night, too, as a test, but without the barbiturates. The dog had loved it, wolfed it all
down, and then looked up at him wanting more.
    It was a simple and effective way of neutralizing guard dogs, and he’d done it plenty of times before in his younger days. Just as he’d broken into numerous buildings in the past,
and almost always at night, in the dark.
    He removed his clothes, completely, until he stood naked. Then he put on a one-piece body-stocking, leaving only his head exposed, which would reduce the chances of him dropping any skin cells
or body hairs for DNA. Over that he pulled on a thin black polo neck, black tracksuit bottoms and a black hooded top. Then he stretched a black Lycra swimming cap over his scalp, pulling it down
over his ears and the back of his head, trapping all his hairs, and then pulled black neoprene windsurfer boots onto his feet.
    Next he clipped on a webbing belt, threaded through the hoops of a zipped nylon pouch which contained his tools: a glass cutter and suction cup; lock-picks; screwdriver; chisel; small hammer and
some small but extremely strong levers; a small roll of masking tape; bottle of chloroform and a small cotton wool pad. His intended route into the Grace house was through the house’s roof
hatch, but as yet he had no idea how it was secured. If the fixings were the same as his own, it would be a doddle, but he thought it very likely that Grace, with his policeman’s mind, might
have fitted something more robust. If that proved the case, at least with his kit he had plenty of options.
    One final item lay on the floor: a barber’s razor he had recently bought for this purpose. No better tool had ever been invented. He put that in the pouch, carefully checked the rest of
the tools, then zipped it shut and went into the bathroom to check his appearance.
    He could barely recognize himself in the mirror. A black face with panda eyes stared back at him. He grinned.
Oh yes, very good, very good indeed.
    He returned to his post, poured himself a whisky for some Dutch courage and lit a final cigarette. He looked at his watch again: 11.50 p.m. He picked up the headset and listened. It sounded as
if the feeding was coming to an end.
    He smoked the cigarette right down to the filter. It was now five minutes to midnight. He crushed it out in the ashtray, drained the last drop of the whisky, stood up and said to himself,
‘Rock’n’roll!’
    As he began climbing up the loft ladder he thought, for an instant, that he heard a sound downstairs, and felt a flash of panic.
    The wind, just the wind, that’s all, he reassured himself, then reaching out and gripping a wooden support, he hauled himself off the top of the ladder and into the loft.
    Downstairs, the front door closed silently.

96
    It felt strange that Roy was not here, Cleo thought, as she lay in bed looking at the pictures and details of the cottage in the estate agent’s brochure. She loved it;