Under Suspicion (13 page)

He did. For five minutes he held forth on the error of my ways and the cardinal sin of Levity. An episode
referred to later by a gleeful Jason as The Sermon on the Swivel Chair.

After which, Mr Burnside unfolded his master plan. ‘As I was saying, before that facetious interruption,’ he glanced reprovingly in my direction, ‘we will arrange a cut in electricity to the Vanheusen property. The estate must have either a dedicated supply from the local substation – it’s big enough for that – or be fed through an overhead line. When Vanheusen phones the electricity company, it’ll be easy enough to fix things to our advantage.’

He punched in a number on his desk phone. ‘Tomás? We’re going to need you tonight. How would you suggest we go about arranging a power cut to a large property without affecting anyone else? Mm…I see. OK. Hold yourself in readiness.’

He put the phone down with a satisfied swivel of his chair. ‘It seems it’s just a matter of pulling the fuse, either at the substation or on the pole carrying the line to the property. The pole would be more discreet. The fuse is enclosed in a plastic box. We remove the fuse and put the box back in position. The UNELCO lettering on the van will be our passport to invisibility. No one will be the wiser, and Vanheusen will be completely in the dark.’

Joke. I was off the hook. Gerry had recovered his good humour.

The white UNELCO van had been stopped for some minutes. Entombed in the tool-locker, I couldn’t see or hear a thing. I was curled, sweating, knees to chin, in a space that was tiny, cramped and airless. I had an overpowering urge to straighten, stand up. Mind over matter, I told myself. Summon up the Alpha waves, divorce yourself from your surroundings, imagine yourself… Impossible. It was definitely a case of matter over mind. I’d have to stretch out my legs, just
have
to…

I released the bolts holding down the tool-locker lid and cautiously pushed it up. Total darkness. The hand I moved in front of my face was visible only where it broke the thin grey-black line marking the top and bottom of the van doors.

Through the thin metal walls, came a faint murmur of voices.
Click, click, clunk.
Keys rattled in the lock. Tomás was giving me as much warning as he could that he was about to throw open the van doors. I sank down, closing the lid quietly behind me and fumbled for the bolts. They slid into position with a soft
snick
.

Tomás’s muffled voice: ‘There you are. Just the usual gear.’

Yellow light filtered through the row of air holes in the base of the chest. The van lurched as someone heavy clambered in. Metal scraped as equipment was shifted aside. I heard the
thump thump
of cable and plastic tubs being moved.

A rough Spanish voice growled, ‘What’s in there?’

‘PPE. Personal protective equipment. Wet-weather clothes, boots, overalls.’

‘And here?’ A hand slapped on the lid above my head.

An exasperated sigh from Tomás. ‘Gas bottles.’

‘Gas bottles? What d’you need
them
for,
hombre
?’

‘Soldering joints. Heat-shrinking the PVC on cables.’ Tomás feigned impatience.

My box shuddered. Beside my ear, bolt sockets creaked under pressure as a hand tried to lift the lid.

Tomás again, ‘Locked. I keep that locked. There’s stuff people want to steal in there – as well as the gas bottles, there’s valuable apparatus for fault-tracing and that sort of thing. Got the keys in the front of the van if you want to waste your time and mine too. Hurry up, mate. Your boss’ll be wanting the lights back on.’

‘Right, get them.’

I think I stopped breathing.

The bluff hadn’t worked.
Shit
. Operation Canary Creeper done for, binned.

‘Host-ia!
Bloody jobsworth.’ Tomás was cool and calm, at least on the surface. The driver’s door slid open with a rumble. Rummaging noises, then, ‘They’re here somewhere…’ More rummaging. ‘Got ’em.’

One of Gerry’s strengths was that he took into account that things could go wrong, and planned
accordingly. If the worst happened, my instructions were to take advantage of the element of surprise and use minimum violence. With luck, Vanheusen would simply regard the whole incident as an attempted burglary. Damage minimised.

It all depended on my not being recognised. I pulled the black silk balaclava over the lower part of my face. Inflicting violence on others is definitely not my scene, but one thing for sure, when the guard opened the lid, I wasn’t just going to lie there a quivering jelly in my black outfit. He wouldn’t
really
be expecting anything untoward, certainly not a belligerent jack-in-the-box. The element of surprise would be on my side. I’d knock him down and dodge into the bushes. In a brawl Tomás was well able to look after himself.

Keys jingled, very close.

‘
Mierda!
It’s not the right bunch. Must have left them back at the depot. Well, it’ll take me
only
forty minutes, I suppose.’ A heavy sigh from Tomás, full of resignation. He should take up acting as a second career. ‘Just log my time of arrival so Mr Vanheusen will know the delay’s not UNELCO’s fault.’ When it came to improvisation and quick thinking, Tomás was on a par with Jayne.

A grudging growl from the guard, ‘Leave it, then.’

The van lurched again. The doors clanged shut.

My whole body was shaking in the aftermath of
an adrenalin rush. I sucked in a lungful of stale air and let it out slowly.

A
toot toot
, an amicable salute to the guard and a signal to me, a revving of the engine and we were on our way up the drive.

As we jolted slowly over traffic bumps, I reviewed the strategy for my entry to the house. A guard would be waiting, alerted by Security at the gate. He’d escort Tomás to the main consumer unit, allowing me to slip inside the building and make for Monique’s office. Simple but effective. If things went according to plan.

They didn’t, of course.

The engine was switched off.
Crunch crunch
of feet on gravel and Tomás calling, ‘One of you guys going to show me where the consumer unit is? Right, I’ll just get my voltmeter and toolbox.’

The van doors opened. Tomás whistled a few bars of ‘Tea for Two’. Two guards. It was unlikely that both would go with Tomás. Problem. Big problem.

I heard, ‘If the fault lies at the substation or at the line pole leading into the property, I’ll have to look for a fault there. But first let’s go and check at your consumer unit.’

The voices faded. I slid the bolt, and slowly… slowly…eased up the locker lid. As arranged, he’d left the van doors slightly ajar, activating a dim glow from the van’s interior light. Also as arranged, he’d left a clear passage to the doors through all the equipment
– wooden ladder propped against the three-tiered tool rack, T-bar sockets, giant wrenches and what appeared to be a couple of short-handled giant soup ladles, pushed to the side out of harm’s way. When I made my exit, there’d be no giveaway clink of tools or rattle of latch.

I slithered over the edge of the tool-locker and lowered the lid back into position. It wouldn’t do for a guard to take a look in the van and find a box, last seen closed, now with its lid open. I crouched there listening. The drone of a plane on its final approach to Reina Sofia airport…the distant hum of
autopista
traffic…from Vanheusen’s lake the rhythmic
whurr
whurr
of frogs, doubtless heavy-jowled thugs of the American bullfrog variety. And, close at hand,
scrunch scrunch.
Gravel, boots pacing on gravel. Approaching…receding…

I pushed gently on the van doors. A pity Gerry’s powers hadn’t extended to organising a blackout in the sky. The all-too-bright moonlight floodlit the strip of driveway and silvered the dark stems of a clump of giant bamboo. Bright moonlight generates very dark shadows. A shadow amid the shadows, I crept out of the van and peered round its side.

A hundred metres away the firefly glow of a cigarette cupped in a hand. I couldn’t see the pale blob of a face, so the man’s head must be turned away. It would take only seconds to cross from the van to the open door of the building. But could I risk those
tantalisingly few paces? That guard’s peripheral vision might well pick up movement, and then… The trouble was, I couldn’t afford to wait too long.

The schedule laid down for me by Gerry was tight. At the briefing Tomás had been confident he could spin out the inspection of the consumer unit for ten minutes, perhaps a bit more. Precious minutes had already gone. I’d have to make my move very soon or abort the mission to break into Monique’s office.

How could I distract Security’s attention and give myself those vital seconds to get to the service stairs? I fumbled among the objects on the bottom tier of the tool rack. I needed something small.
Clink
. My hand closed on the bar of a socket holder. The socket heads must be…here, in a neat row. I grabbed a couple – I wasn’t to know that the ones I selected were hellishly expensive
and
the most useful of the whole set, was I? – and lobbed one…then the other…into the exotic planting that screened the service area and office wing from rolling lawns, landscaped gardens and the house proper. My mini-decoys dropped through branches, caught, dropped again, with satisfyingly loud rustles that positively shrieked
investigate
.

The red arc of the cigarette end launched into darkness. As the probing beam of a powerful torch flitted over the bamboos and oleanders, I crossed the narrow gap between the van and the house and darted through the open door. No shout of alarm pursued me. At the bottom of the stairs to the basement I
could see the reflected glow from Tomás’s krypton spotlight. A murmur of voices drifted up.

The service stairs lay straight ahead, shadowy in the dim emergency lighting. He would draw a blank with the electrics downstairs and head off for the fictitious inspection of the substation and pole. I’d have precisely fifty minutes in Monique’s office before he returned to reinspect the consumer unit and test the power.

I made my way up to the first floor. When she had shown me round after the job interview, Monique had pointed out the security camera positioned over the entrance to the office suite. Naïvely she hadn’t treated it as a major security lapse to reveal that at thirty-second intervals it stored in its memory pictures of the corridor and, of course, of anyone passing. Tomás had warned it would still be active despite the power failure if it had a back-up battery.

I eased the service door open a crack. The corridor beyond was patched by moonlight shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows. No red light on the camera. I waited. Ten seconds…fifteen…red light. The light went out. According to Monique, the camera wouldn’t be reactivated for another thirty seconds. Should I go now? Never take anything for granted. I started counting…twenty seconds…
light on
. Ten seconds early, perhaps she hadn’t been so naïve, after all. The light went out. I had only twenty seconds, but it was time enough to dash the ten metres, key in the
security code and close my office door behind me.

The office was not as dark as I’d expected. Moonlight through the half-closed blinds barred the walls and glinted on the chrome legs of the office furniture. There was no need to use my pencil torch to cross the room. The inner office door was secured by a simple mortise, an easy job for my picklocks. Five seconds and I was in.

I closed the door behind me and leant against it. Here in Monique’s sanctum, the heavy curtains excluded most of the light, apart from a silvery-blue triangle up at the curtain track. Safe to use the torch. The narrow beam swept round the room, fingering the terracotta Teide mountain, lingering on the intricate locks on the door of Vanheusen’s office, finally coming to rest on the filing cupboard.

In the cardboard boxes labelled
Members
,
Contracts
, and
Properties
, there was a good chance I’d find out why Vanheusen was so reluctant to sell El Sueño. Time was limited, so which box was most likely to yield results? I’d go for
Properties
.

I stepped forward, but I’d forgotten Monique’s aping of that interior-designer fad, curtain-puddling. Why couldn’t she have curtains of normal length like everybody else? One foot was trapped in the pools of curtain material spread across the floor. As I tried to free it, I clutched for support at the elegant spindly legged desk. A bad move, for it wobbled alarmingly, toppling one of the silver-framed photographs. The
onyx calendar nudged towards the edge, heading to certain destruction on the marble floor. I dropped the torch on the table, lunged forward and rescued it in the nick of time at the cost of sweaty palms and thumping heart. If it had broken, I might as well have left a card announcing,
Intruder was here.

I set about restoring the items to their positions on the desk. How had the calendar stood in relation to the photographs? Behind…no, in front. I drew it forward a couple of centimetres, and felt my arm brush against the torch. I watched helplessly as it rolled over the edge of the desk. It hit the ground. The beam flickered and died.

Shit
, plunged into darkness. Without a torch, I couldn’t read those files. Mission a failure. I dropped to my knees and crawled round the desk, making slow methodical sweeps with my hands. It was only a matter of time…sure to find it…keep calm. I felt for the corner of the desktop. If the torch fell off about there… It couldn’t have rolled far. Got it! I snatched it up and flicked it on.

Were there any other nasty little surprises on the way to Monique’s fancy filing cupboard? I sent the beam dancing ahead of me across the smooth white marble floor and thereby avoided the traps of a gilded wastepaper basket and another stagnant pool of green curtain.

I tackled the flimsy lock on the armoire.
Click click.
The levers yielded to my picklock. Nineteenth-century
cupboards weren’t designed to act as safes. Thirty-five minutes left… I pulled out the box marked
Properties
. I wedged the torch between two of the other boxes to free both hands for a proper rummage and began my search. I flipped through the first section –
Properties
for Sale
. Nothing significant, only photos of El Sueño and other luxury villas, with ground plans and specifications.