madness years before when they’d briefly looked set to be the next essential fashion item. I’d been a first-year student at the time, which is as good an excuse as any. I stuffed my hair inside a black ski cap, and I was all set. I know the Famous Five burned corks and rubbed their faces with the ash, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything that ridiculous. Besides, I had to drive right across town to get to the airport, and I didn’t rate my chances of convincing any passing traffic cop that I was on my way to a Hallowe’en party.
On my way out the door, I stopped in my study and picked up one of those compartmentalized mini-aprons that tradesmen stuff with obscure tools. Mine contains a set of lock picks, a glass cutter, a kid’s arrow with a sucker on the end, a couple of pairs of latex gloves, a Swiss Army knife, a small camera with a spare film, pliers, a high-powered pencil torch, a set of jeweller’s screwdrivers, a couple of ordinary screwdrivers, a cold chisel, secateurs and a toffee hammer. Don’t ask. Before I set off, I filled up a mini jug kettle that runs off the car cigarette lighter. Like I said, don’t ask.
Less than half an hour later, I was cruising down the country lane I’d been in the night before. I pulled up in the same gateway and plugged in the kettle. As the water boiled, I lifted the lid and let the car fill up with steam. I got out and looked at the windows, satisfied. Anyone passing would be more likely to be jealous than suspicious.
I set off, hugging the infested hedgerows, just in case. I eased round the corner of the track, and saw with relief that there were no cars parked outside the shed. I crept slowly round the edge of the clearing till I was parallel to the big front doors. A quick look around, then I slipped across into the shadow of the shed. I took out my torch and shone it on the lower of the two padlocks. My heart sank. Some locks you can pick after ten minutes’ training. Some locks give experts migraine. This wasn’t one of the easy ones. I wished I’d brought Dennis with me. I gave it twenty minutes, by which time my hands were sweating so much inside the latex gloves that I couldn’t manipulate the picks properly. In frustration, I kicked the door. It didn’t swing open. I just got a very sore foot.
I shone the torch on the other padlock, but it was another of the same. The steel bars didn’t look too promising either. Muttering the kind of words my mother warned me against, I skirted the corner of the shed and worked my way down the far side. Although it didn’t look much, it was actually a deceptively solid building. I’d have expected to find the odd loose board, perhaps even a broken window. But this shed looked like it had been given a good going over by the local crime prevention officer. There was one window on the airport side, but it was barred, and behind it was opaque, wire-reinforced glass. I reached the far corner, but I couldn’t get down the back of the shed at all because of the insidious creeping of the undergrowth. Frankly, I doubt if Mickey Mouse could have squeezed through that lot. With a sigh, I turned back. No chance. That was when the spotlight pinned me to the wall.
At least, that’s what I thought at first. I froze like a dancer in a strobe, not even daring to blink. Then, as the light swept over me and my brain clocked on, I realized it was only the cyclops headlight of a tow truck from the cargo area. I threw myself to the ground and wriggled back to the front of the shed. Not a moment too soon. As I reached the doors, a battery of floodlights snapped on, bathing an area fifty yards away with harsh bleaching light. A truck was towing a train of boxes from one cargo holding area to another. This wasn’t the time or place for burglary, I decided.
I inched backwards on my stomach towards the short drive leading to the road. And that’s when I spotted the skylight. Gleaming in the blackness of the roof, it reflected the lights like a mirror. Even though it was a good twelve feet above the ground, the really exciting thing about it was the two-inch gap at the bottom. I gauged the distances involved, and saw there was a way inside the shed.
Getting out again was going to be the problem, I realized as I hung from the edge of the skylight, torch between my teeth. I tried to direct the beam downwards, to see what I was going to land on when I let go. I saw what looked like a chemistry lab constructed by a bag lady. If I dropped from here, I was going to end up either impaled on a bunsen burner or shredded by the shards of a thousand test tubes. That probably explained why the skylight on the blind side of the roof was open. Even with fume hoods, cooking up designer drugs is a disgustingly smelly occupation. The chemists doubtless decided the need for fresh air was greater than the security benefit of being hermetically sealed. At least having a factory out in the middle of nowhere meant there weren’t any neighbours to complain about the pong.
With a groan, I flexed my complaining shoulder muscles and hauled myself back up and out again. I sat on the edge of the skylight and stared into the night. I’d only let myself over the edge in the first place because my torch hadn’t been powerful enough to reveal the contents of the shed. And if the torch wasn’t, the flash probably wouldn’t be either. I had to come up with another idea, and quickly. I’d already had to wait an hour for the cargo area to go dark again, and I didn’t know how long it would be before they took it into their heads to shuffle the packing crates again.
I could come up with only one possibility. Sighing, I eased myself off the skylight until my feet were in the guttering. Spread-eagled against the roof, I edged along until I came to the end of the roof. Slowly, cautiously, I slid down the corrugated asbestos until I was crouching, most of my weight on the guttering. I gripped the edge and half rolled off the roof, stretching my legs downwards as far as they would go. Then, thanking God for all the Thai boxing training I’d done, I gradually let myself down. I couldn’t feel the roof of the Peugeot under my toes. I’d just have to pray I was in the right place. I released my handholds.
The drop was only a few inches, but it seemed to last minutes. Gasping for the breath I’d been holding, I slithered down the hatch back on to blessedly solid ground and opened the boot. I lifted the carpet, and there, tucked into the spare wheel, was the answer to my prayers. I grabbed the tow rope, coiled it round me like a mountaineer, gently closed the hatch and clambered back up the car and on to the roof.
I fixed the rope to a downpipe that was conveniently near the skylight and dropped it through the hole. I bit on the torch again and slowly started the precarious descent. Needless to say, the tow rope wasn’t long enough to take me all the way to the floor, but it left an easy drop of a couple of feet, and I’d be able to reach it again if I moved a lab stool under it.
Getting in was the hard part. Doing the business with the camera was easy. I just started by the doors and worked my way through the shed, photographing the battered equipment, the jars of chemicals, the lists of instructions taped to the walls above the benches, and the plastic bags of white crystalline powder that made my gums numb. I don’t know a lot about the drug world, but it looked to me as if there was much, much more than a bit of crack coming out of Jammy James’s kitchen.
What there wasn’t was paperwork. No filing cabinets, no safe, nothing. Wherever Jammy James kept his records, it wasn’t here. I decided I paid enough in taxes. I’d done most of the work; it was time the Drugs Squad did their bit.
Wearily, I shifted a lab stool under the rope and climbed on top of it. My shoulder muscles were threatening to phone the cruelty man as I dragged myself up the rope and over the sill. I carefully lowered the skylight, restoring it to its previous position, give or take a millimetre or two. Then I untied the rope, did my crab imitation along the roof again. This time, the transfer of weight from feet to arms didn’t go quite so smoothly; my shoulders were too tired for a gradual lowering, and my arms jerked uncomfortably in their sockets, making me let go sooner than I should have. I wondered how I was going to explain the depression in the roof to the car-leasing company.
My body wanted to get into bed as soon as possible, but my head was singing a different song. I had two films from the shed that needed developing. It would help my case if I could show the prints to Turnbull. The devil on my shoulder told me to go home and crash out for a few hours, then go into the office early to develop my films. But I knew myself well enough to know what my reaction would be when the alarm shattered my sleep at seven. And it wouldn’t be to leap out of bed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to rush to the office and fill my lungs with the noxious fumes of photographic chemicals. With a groan, I shoved
I managed nearly four hours’ sleep. Never mind what Richard owed me in fees; he owed me more sleep than I’d ever catch up on. For once, it wasn’t Davy who woke me. It was Chris. She stuck her head round the bedroom door, followed by a hand waving a mug of coffee like a white flag. ‘Come in,’ I grumbled. ‘Time is it?’ I would have rolled over to look at the clock, but I couldn’t find the energy.
