A Rob Wyllie paperback
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Rob Wyllie Books, Derbyshire, United Kingdom
Copyright @ Rob Wyllie 2021
The right of Rob Wyllie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted. in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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The Ardmore Inheritance
Rob Wyllie
Chapter 1
Polymath. There was no doubt about it, that's what he was, although he'd only come across the word a couple of days previously, in some podcast or other he'd been listening to on the train. A person of wide knowledge or skill. That's what it had said when he'd googled it, and yeah, that's what he was, too bloody right. And wasn't that rather marvellous for this Geordie lad, and only thirty-one years old too? He learnt the basics when he was in the Navy, but since he'd came out, he'd done well. Bloody well. Street artist and master hacker, those were now his core skills and where it had all started. But then pretty soon afterwards he'd added a third, a skill that was a bit more old-school, but no less satisfying. Cat burglar.
It had been a bloody long journey, trekking up the M1 and the M6, and when he'd got to Glasgow, four hundred miles and seven hours later, and in the pissing rain too, the sat-nav was telling him he'd still got another fifty-seven miles and an hour and half to go. But he'd pushed on, and now he was parked up in the big Q7 in a little inshot right alongside the loch, no more than fifty metres from the gates to Ardmore House. As he jabbed the stop-start button to kill the engine, he reflected how much he loved his wicked Audi SUV, kitted out with every option in the catalogue, and acquired only three months earlier. How many lads his age could afford a motor like that, bought and paid for all perfectly legit from the proceeds of his very lucrative business activities? Yes, all perfectly legit, apart from the cloned registration plates it was running on, keeping him free from both speeding tickets and detection. He allowed himself a smile of satisfaction as he zipped up the dark bomber jacket and taking the black silk balaclava and matching silk gloves from its pocket, slipped them on. Cartoon burglars always had a bag slung over their shoulders, labelled swag, but he didn't need one of those, labelled or otherwise, because the items he was planning to nick, two of them if he got lucky, would comfortably fit in a back-pocket.
The late April sun had long since dropped behind the craggy mountain ridge to the west, but the moon was up, reflecting hazily in the lapping waters of Loch More. He had no definitive idea of what hours the family kept, but it was now half an hour past midnight so it had to be a good each-way bet that all four would be safely tucked up in bed, if in fact they were all at home. He knew the twins would be there, at least according to that morning's barrage of Instagram posts, and of course that was why he'd made the bloody expedition in the first place. As to the father and their older brother, he didn't know their movements but he'd just have to play that one by ear and deal with any difficulties that might arise as and when.
The house was equipped with one of these wireless alarm set-ups that could be armed from a smart phone, and they'd also gone to the trouble of installing a few cameras around the place that allowed their home to be monitored remotely, no matter where in the world they were. But luckily they hadn't gone to the trouble of protecting the system with a fit-for-purpose usercode and password combination, which is why for the last two days he'd been able to case the joint whilst supping a cold beer and lounging on his comfortable sofa back in his Battersea flat. For the usercode, his old mate Commodore Roderick Macallan (retired) had chosen his personal email, r_macallan@supermail.co.uk. Not exactly difficult to crack, even if it hadn't been in the public domain, which it was. And then the password? Obviously, the Commodore wanted something nice and easy to remember. So naturally he'd picked the birth-date of his beautiful twin daughters, Pixie and Posy. And finding that date wouldn't have taxed even his ninety-year old granny, given that the influencer twins were determined to play out every second of their lives on social media.
He'd been worried the 4G signal would be a bit patchy up here but in the event it was more than acceptable, allowing him to do a final remote sweep of the house and grounds on his smartphone before leaving the car. There was a camera covering the front gates, but it was too dark to make out whether they had been left open or not, although his earlier surveys had suggested they never bothered to close them. Too much of a pain when driving in and out, he assumed. The cameras in the house were confined to the hallway, kitchen and upstairs landing, but he saw that all the lights were off and so it was reasonable to assume that everyone had retired for the night. Time to go in. With a deft swipe he disarmed their alarm system, then tucked his phone in an inside pocket and got out, quietly closing the driver's door behind him. He didn't bother locking it, smirking as he weighed up the chances of two thieving bastards being active in this remote neck of
