As he had suspected, the door led into a small cloakroom, a half-dozen or so outdoor jackets hanging on hooks, and several pairs of walking boots arranged neatly on a low shelf, none of which he could imagine belonging to the glamorous twins. And then he heard it, coming from the direction of what he surmised was the kitchen. A low snuffle and a louder yawn, then a slow pad-pad-pad as the old labrador wandered over to greet him. Silently.
'Good boy, good boy,' he whispered, gently patting the animal on the head and scratching under its chin. The dog gave a sigh and nuzzled its nose against his jacket pocket, evidently detecting the receptacle that held the treats.
He kneeled down, taking a crunchy bone-shape biscuit out of his pocket, then held out his palm. The labrador picked it up with surprising delicacy then flopped onto his stomach as he turned his attention to despatching it. Whilst the animal was distracted, he took out the chocolate buttons, burst open the pack and spread a generous quantity on the flagstone floor. The dog looked up momentarily but continued working on the biscuit.
'Good boy,' he said again as he edged his way into the kitchen, closing the door behind him. The dog, trapped in the cloakroom, made no sound of protest, evidently looking forward to his date with the chocolate buttons. The intruder killed the torch, the room being adequately illuminated by the silver glow from the clocks of the oven unit and microwave. He'd prepared a sketch of the place, roughing out the location of each room, but now that he was in the house he was able to visualise the layout quite clearly in his mind. On the ground floor was a grand entrance hall with four or five doors leading off, which he guessed would include a couple of living rooms, if that's what they were called in this kind of place, a big dining hall and maybe a study or a library. All of which was completely irrelevant, because neither of the social-media-obsessed twins would have left their phones downstairs when they went to bed, not in a month of Sundays. Which meant if he wanted to steal them, which was the whole point of his mission, then he was going to have to go upstairs and exponentially raising the risk factor, slink into their rooms and snatch them away whilst they slept. He could feel the adrenalin start to surge, his face beginning to redden as he psyched himself up for the most dangerous part of the operation. In his mind, he ran through the sequence of events once again. Creep into the hall, tiptoe up the stairs, slip into each bedroom in turn, pray the phones have been left lying on a bedside table, do the snatch, beat it. It had all seemed perfectly straightforward when he'd mentally rehearsed it on the way up the motorway, but now, on the ground, doubts were beginning to surface, the principle one being, what if one of them was awake, or woke up as the theft was in progress? The problem was, both women boasted a feisty reputation, and he didn't think it likely that either would just lay down supinely if they found an intruder in their bedroom in the middle of the night. He didn't like violence but he didn't want to get caught either, which presented a dilemma.
He was just about to make his move when he thought he heard movement upstairs. Damn, but perhaps it was just one of them popping up to visit the loo. So what if he had to give it five or ten minutes for them to drop off again? He had plenty of time. But then suddenly, he heard a shout, the voice muffled but just loud enough for him to make it out. A voice which definitely seemed to emanate from an upstairs bedroom. What the hell are you doing? And then a loud crack, which could only be a shot from a gun, followed by a blood-curdling shriek of pain. And then, no more than a few seconds afterwards, another shot rang out. Shit shit shit, this wasn't part of the plan. Momentarily frozen to the spot, he tried to weigh up his options, rapidly concluding that there was only one. Get the hell out of here, and fast. But then he heard something else. The thump of footsteps banging down the stairs and then the squeak-squeak of a pair of sneakers skittering across the varnished parquet flooring of the great hall. Then a grating creak, which he assumed was the heavy front door being dragged open, but with no corresponding bang of it being closed behind the escaper. As his composure began to return, he slunk over to the door that led to the hall and edged it open. Through the gap, he heard the rah-rah-rah of a starting motor turning over, followed by the distinctive rasp of the hot-hatch's powerful engine firing into life, shooting up a shower of gravel as the driver sped away, foot nailed to the floor.
Now the house was deathly silent, and for the first time he noticed the quiet tick-tick of the roman-numeralled clock mounted next to the hob. Twelve forty-seven. Feeling calmer now, he reappraised the situation. It would be a shame to leave the place empty-handed, especially when he knew that knowledge was power and could be turned into money too, a mountain of the stuff. If he'd learnt anything in the two years he'd been in the hacking business,
