were lights on in a garden next door, the kind that glow green, half hidden among the bushes, but none here. It was very dark and there was no moon. Lance went up to the french windows and peered at the keyhole. As he had hoped, neither White Hair nor his girlfriend had taken the key out after they had locked the door. He could see the tip of its shaft inside the hole. Poking it through would be a skilful business, best taken slowly, because if it jumped out when he pushed at it with the screwdriver he had brought with him it might easily jump away from the door and land inches away on the carpet. And that would be the end.
His eyes had become accustomed to the lack of light. He could see the keyhole quite clearly and no longer regretted not bringing a torch. Very carefully he prodded at the end of the key, felt it move, then wobble, teeter on the edge of the keyhole and as he just tickled it with the screwdriver's tip, drop straight down surely no more than an inch in from the bottom of the door. Lance had brought a strip of thin card with him in his backpack. He slipped it under the door, which he could now see must have been a full centimetre above the carpet edge. It was then that his difficulties began. He told himself he must be patient. If he got into a state, if he lost his cool, he would make a mess of it and perhaps only push the key away, further into the room. At his fourth attempt, he felt the card slide under the key. By tilting the card very slightly upwards, he began to move it towards the bottom of the door. He lost it and had to start again. Very slowly he pulled the card backwards, praying it wouldn't catch on the base of the door and stick. It didn't. He couldn't remember a moment he'd been so happy since Gemma kicked him out, as he was when he saw the brass shank of the key – to himself he called it a golden key – ease its way out and into his waiting hand.
Though he unlocked and opened the door very quietly, the burglar alarm still went off. The chances were it wasn't the kind that summoned the police, only frightened the intruder. He was made of sterner stuff. He moved quickly round the room, scooping up stuff into his backpack, ornaments, statuettes, pretty things he couldn't identify, glass and silver, and from the top of a cabinet, evidently dropped there by the girlfriend, a gold necklace set with green stones. All this took about two minutes before he was back once more in the garden, the french window secured behind him and the key in his pocket. White Hair would change the lock, of course, but there was no harm in giving it a go.
He dared not go back through the gateway. There were signs that the neighbours were getting excited by the braying of the burglar alarm, which was just as audible outside as indoors. Voices were raised. A woman somewhere in the front said loudly that she was going to phone the police and someone else said it was probably a false alarm. Lance began to feel trapped. He padded down the path towards the wall at the end of the garden where he detected a sturdy-looking trellis supporting the dense thickets of creeper. It was as good as a ladder. The lights were still on in the garden next door but no one had come out. In the distance he could hear voices raised in an argument over what, if any, action to take. Gaining a foothold on the trellis, he began to climb up, his hands already scratched by the creepers, which were a lot more thorny than ivy. As he swung his right leg, then his left, over the top of the wall, the side gate opened and a man and a woman came into White Hair's garden. Lance swore. He should have locked that gate. But the people hadn't seen him. He hung on to the top of the wall on the Pembridge Villas side, watching them through the leaves, and he nearly laughed out loud when he saw them glance at the locked french windows, their glass intact, mutter something to each other, turn and go back the way they had come.
His hands sore and bleeding, he let himself drop on to the soft ground below. The house whose garden he was in looked unoccupied. No lights were on. The people who lived there might have gone away for the holiday weekend too or just be asleep. He could still hear the rising and falling howl of White Hair's alarm but now, quite suddenly, it stopped. The silence that followed it was broken only by the sound of a big expensive car purring its way towards Westbourne Grove. Lance found he could creep along towards the road at the back of the thickly planted border where the shrubs were tall and where, within a few yards of the house, a forest of bamboo took over. Its stalks were twice his height and they sheltered him until he reached these people's side gate, a wrought-iron door, easily climbed though hard on his sore hands. Within thirty seconds he was out in the street, all his difficulties behind him and surely a small fortune in his backpack. He was particularly pleased with the necklace, which he was already telling himself was gold with emeralds.
It was past 11.30. The streets here were silent and empty. He seemed to be alone, a solitary man in a hoodie with a heavy backpack, but when he looked over his shoulder he saw someone far behind him. It was no one he recognised. All he could be sure of was that it was of the male sex. The cafes and wine bars and pubs of Westbourne Grove were busy, brightly lit and noisy. It had been a fine sunny day so there had been tables out on the pavements and people were still out there drinking and some eating a late supper. It was then that he saw a man he thought was Fize, leaning against a pub wall talking to another Asian, but he showed no interest in Lance, seemed not to see him, though the deadline for bringing the thousand pounds would be up in ten minutes' time.
He passed the corner of Gemma's street and after that, perhaps because there were no pubs and no cafes and the only place still open was an all-night Asian grocer's, quiet returned. A group of men about his own age were running along the opposite pavement but they disappeared down a side turning. The Portobello Road lay ahead of him and a few hundred yards further north, Raddington Road and Uncle Gib's place. But here there was no one and nothing, the place dark but for the occasional street lamp. From a single forlorn little all-night shop a feeble yellow glow spread out on to the pavement. He would have liked a bit of noise, he was used to it, even a radio playing softly, a human voice. But the only sounds were in the far distance, almost unheard, the murmur of London half a dozen streets away.
Quite suddenly, two men appeared from nowhere, walking abreast and coming towards him. They moved slowly, looking in his direction, looking at
Lance stood still. He didn't know what else to do. The black man was the first to close with him. He walked right up to him, the way no one ever does unless they mean something bad, and kneed him in the groin. When Lance doubled up with the pain of it and sank forward on to his knees, Ian Pollitt pulled him up and punched him on the chin. Lance tried to cover his face with his left arm while he hit out with his right. They both attacked him then, along with Fize who had appeared from somewhere, pulling the backpack off him and flinging it half across the roadway, punching his head and shoulders. When he was down, past getting up again, one of the white ones kicked him hard in the small of his back. The others followed suit, a heavy kick to the stomach from one of them and from the other's heavy boots struck what he felt might have been his kidneys. He was only dimly aware when they left him of them all kneeling round his backpack, pulling it open, some objects flung out and others stuffed into pockets.
The Asian man emerged from the all-night grocer's when Lance's attackers had gone. He phoned for the police and an ambulance and, sitting beside him on the pavement, waiting till they came, stared in wonder at the shattered glass, the battered silver and broken statuary scattered across the roadway.
CHAPTER TEN
Ella had confessed to leaving the necklace Eugene had given her for her thirty-ninth birthday on top of the cabinet in the drawing room. She had been wearing it with her trousers and sweater, decided it was too 'dressed- up' for a drive to Sussex and taken it off, meaning to put it in her suitcase. Eugene was never cross. All he said was, 'Never mind, darling. These things happen. I'll buy you a nicer one for your fortieth.'
He was more concerned about his netsuke animals, which the burglar had also taken, and the Nymphenburg porcelain the police had found smashed on the corner of the Portobello Road. All of it had been stolen, it seemed, by a bunch of thugs who had finished off their spree by beating up an innocent young man on his way home after a harmless evening out. The police had been rather severe with Eugene, scolding him for leaving his french window key in the lock and not bolting his side gate. He had been so sweet to Ella that she didn't say she'd told him so.
The pleasures of the weekend were still with her when she walked into the medical centre on Tuesday
