Mind the Gap (14 page)

“Ten days ago,” Jazz said. “That was the first house we did.”

“The first,” Harry said. “The one with the fancy topiary and swimming pool in the garden.”

“What about the second?” she asked. “The one we did five days ago?”

“No mention yet.” Harry stood and dropped the paper. “But it was well chosen, Jazz. Well chosen by me.”

“And what about the third?” Stevie Sharpe asked. Jazz could have hugged him. One day soon, she promised herself there and then, she would.

All eyes turned to her.

“Yes, Jazz girl,” Harry said. “What about the third?”

“Tomorrow morning,” she said. “Easy. But we need to plan.”

Harry grinned, bowing to Jazz like a performer at the end of a play. “Then plan we shall.”

Jazz chose her moment well. Between traffic passing along the street, front doors closing, curtains being drawn open, the postman passing by, and pedestrians clicking their expensive shoes and high heels as they hurried to work, she walked across the street from the park, through the front gate, and down the several steps to the house’s basement entrance.

She looked back across the street at Switch. He was reading on a bench in the park, and though he had his back to her and the house, she knew he’d been watching her. If there was any sign that she’d been seen, he’d let her know.

He turned a page, rubbed a hand through his hair, and carried on reading.

Jazz checked her watch. Five minutes. She was hidden from the road by the bulk of the steps leading up to the main door, and the basement door was set into the steps’ side wall. The only way she would be seen was if Mort decided to visit his basement in the few minutes before leaving.

They’d decided that Jazz would be the only one to go inside.
Too many cooks,
Harry had said, and he was right. The more who went in, the greater the chance of being caught. But the others were here, providing what Harry had called protection and distraction. Switch sat reading in the park, Gob and Hattie walked up and down a neighboring street, Marco did as his namesake and explored alleys, back streets, and service roads in the area. Stevie had taken one of the most dangerous jobs—scruffing himself up and sitting at the corner of Mort’s street, begging. They all knew that he’d be moved on by the police soon, but that was one more distraction for the local beat bobbies while Jazz did her thing.

Switch looked at his watch and closed his book. That was the signal that the time had come. Jazz had already inserted the skeleton key into the door’s lock, and now she started turning and probing, feeling the tumblers click back as the key found its way in. Still listening for the sound of the front door opening above her, she concentrated hard.

If Mort opened the door, set the alarm, and came out before she had this one open, it was all over. Even if he didn’t see her—and the chance of him missing her was close to zero, by her estimation—they would have missed their best opportunity to get inside. There were other ways, of course, but with an alarm system like this, it was best to fool it right at the start.

There! The lock snicked open and she grabbed the handle, ready to go inside.

The front door opened above her. She turned the handle, pushed the basement door open, and started counting.

One, two…

She slipped through, turned, and pushed the door shut behind her. She eased the handle closed with her hand, not wanting to risk its springs snapping it back into place. She had no idea of the layout of the house, no inkling of how sound could carry.

Three, four…

Jazz paused for a heartbeat to get her bearings. The basement had once been a well-appointed room, perhaps a separate dwelling in its own right, but now it was crammed full of old furniture, boxes sealed with packing tape, and a huge bookcase packed solid with old hardback books. Her route across this space would be slow, and the far door was closed, perhaps locked.

Five, six…

There was a motion detector in one corner of the room, flashing red where it was fixed just below the ceiling. Once the alarm was set and the flashing stopped, it would be active.

Jazz moved. Over an old sofa, clouds of dust puffing up around her and tickling her nose. Through a forest of dining chairs, upright and upside down, and her rucksack caught on one of the legs. She paused and spun around, catching the chair just before it hit the ground.

Seven, eight…

She stepped around a pile of small sealed boxes, wondering what they contained.

Footsteps came from above as Mort hurried along his hallway, needing to set the alarm and close the front door by the count of thirty. After that, he’d set it off himself and have to explain to the police what had happened.

Nine, ten…

From her rucksack, she pulled a canvas cozy Hattie had made, elastic band sewn into the edges. Stretching it with her fingers, she slipped it over the motion detector, let it snap into place, and then ran on.

Thirteen, fourteen…

She made the far door and tried the handle. She sighed when it opened, then stepped out into a dimly lit corridor, the only light bleeding through a glass-block wall at one end. There were two doors on each side, and any one of them could be the one leading upstairs.

A motion detector watched the corridor as well. This house was well protected.

Seventeen, eighteen…

She snapped another cozy over the detector in the hall. When the alarm activated, the motion detector would be effectively blind. She tried the door five steps along from the basement door. It opened onto a blank space, a basement that had never been completed. Bare concrete walls and exposed ceiling joists were swathed in spiderwebs and dust. She closed it and crossed the corridor to the door immediately opposite.

Twenty-two, twenty-three…

Last chance. She’d have to stop soon, because she couldn’t trust counting in her head. Three seconds off and everything would be ruined.

I’m in his house! I’m in Mort’s house, and if the alarm goes and he comes in, catches me, he could kill me here and now. Or knock me out, tell the police it was a false alarm because he didn’t set it in time, see them on their way with a cup of tea and a friendly wave, come back down to where he left me, slit my throat. Kill me when I’m unconscious.

Twenty-five, twenty-six…

Jazz opened the door and saw the short staircase leading up. Here, too, a motion detector flashed its readiness. She closed the door gently behind her, hurried to the top step, and pressed her ear against the door. A third canvas cozy was clutched in her right hand.

Twenty-eight…

She heard hurried footsteps, the front door slamming shut, and then a few seconds later the alarm let out one long beep. That was it. Set.

Jazz froze. She turned her eyes up and to the side and saw the steady LED of the motion detector.

Now was when the long, slow, fun part began. She’d hoped to avoid it, but no such luck.

Harry had told her that motion detectors used in domestic house alarms were only so sensitive. They could be fooled, but it took someone with a steady nerve and grace of movement to do so. He’d said that if Jazz moved as slowly as she could, she would be able to cross a room covered by a detector. It would take a while. And any slight jerk, sneeze, or slip could set it off. But it was possible.

Jazz reached up slowly and closed her hand around the door handle. She shut her eyes—slowly—and willed it to be unlocked.

It was an old-fashioned round brass handle, similar to those on the basement doors, and she had to grip it tight to provide enough friction to turn it. She moved her hand clockwise, hearing the lock squeal slightly, amazed at how tensed her muscles had become in her efforts not to move. She was crouched on the top step and her right leg was below her, already aching and burning where it took her weight.

She could not ease up, stretch her leg, or shift position. Every movement now had to be relevant and necessary. Surely only the main corridors would have motion sensors, and even then perhaps only on the lower floors.

It was going to be a long, slow journey through the house, but she had all day.

The handle slipped in her palm, all the way back to the closed position.

“Shit!” Tempted though she was to slap the door, she could not.

She turned her eyes again, looking up at the red eye of the motion detector and silently cursing its electrical patience.

It turned off.

Jazz gasped. It was no trick of the light or a fault of her eyes. Did this happen once the alarm system was set? It had been maybe five minutes. Did all the detectors suddenly switch off the LEDs even though they were still active? She thought it unlikely—they were there for a reason, after all, and it seemed strange that they would no longer display their alertness.

She heard a sound beyond the door. It was a light metallic click, like a tool snapping shut or a door latch finding its home.

Mort!
He hadn’t gone to work after all. He must have forgotten something, returned home, and…

But she had not heard the front door open, nor the beeping of the alarm that would count down the period he had to get inside, enter the code, and disable it. She’d have heard all that. She had been concentrating on the handle, true, and the beaded sweat on her forehead attested to that. But she would have heard Mort coming home.

Footsteps passed by outside, very soft, as though barefoot. Mort always wore expensive shoes. She remembered that of him; he’d prided himself on his appearance, and there was no way he’d have left the house in anything other than exquisite dress.

Jazz had still not moved, for fear that the detector was active—but if it was, then whoever was out there would have set it off. If Mort had returned, then he must have deactivated the alarm system without her hearing. Remote control, perhaps?

If it wasn’t Mort, then she had to see who
was
out there.

Wincing, preparing herself for the shriek of the alarm, Jazz stood and backed down a couple of steps.

Nothing happened. She let out a sigh of relief, then a groan as pins and needles rushed into her leg. Kneeling, she looked under the door, able to see right across the hallway. The dark-oak floor was highly polished, broken up here and there with rugs, and across the hall stood at least two closed doors. She turned and looked to the left, just in time to see a foot lift out of view onto the staircase. It had been wearing soft-looking shoes, like a dancer’s. And now it was gone.

Jazz’s heart thumped. Who could it be? Maid? Cleaner? But no, not if Mort had set the alarm on his way out.

She kept looking for a while, waiting for the foot’s owner to come back down. But there was no more movement.

Another thief? What were the chances of that? But right then it was all she could think of. There would have been no reason for Mort to set the alarm if he knew there was going to be someone in the house; therefore, he did not know. So whoever owned that soft-shoed foot was not supposed to be here.

Jazz took a deep breath and considered her options. She could turn around and leave, pick up the others and go back down below, tell Harry that someone had beaten them to it. But that felt like failure, and it also meant that she would have no more opportunity to find out about Mort, his relationship with the mayor, and what it had to do with her and…

Mum. She shouldn’t forget her mum. The owner of this house had been there when she was murdered—not in the same room perhaps, but certainly in the same house. Maybe he’d heard her fighting, heard her gurgling as her throat was slit and the air rushed from her lungs, blood spewed from her arteries…

No, if Jazz left now, it was not only knowledge that would elude her. It was some measure of revenge.

She held the door handle and gently turned it. When she felt the latch disengage, she opened the door an inch and peered through the crack. The hallway was large, hung with several expensive-looking paintings and adorned with four huge porcelain vases on their own metal stands. The porcelain was cracked and chipped in a couple of places, which meant that they were old and probably worth a lot.

She’d save them for on the way out.

The staircase was wide and it curved up and to the left. Banister and newel posts were ornately carved from oak and polished to match the hall floor. The stairs ended with a wide landing that overlooked the hall, and there was no one in sight. Whoever had climbed the stairs was busy exploring the second floor.

He or she doesn’t know I’m here,
Jazz thought.
Need to keep it that way.
She slipped off her trainers, tied the laces, and slung them around her neck. Her socks left sweaty imprints on the floor as she walked across the hallway, but by the time she reached the stairs and looked back, they were already fading away.
Like a ghost’s,
she thought, and smiled.

She stood on the lower stair. The whole first floor was available to her to explore. There could be a study down here, a drawing room, library, other places where she could find stuff worth taking and perhaps something that would tell her more about Mort. She fingered the short folding knife in her pocket and looked at the paintings, and the urge to destroy was great. She hoped that Mort loved this place, hoped that his parents had handed all these nice things down to him, because she was going to ruin them. Petty and basic, maybe, but it would make her feel a little bit better.

But upstairs called to her. Whoever the other person in the house was, they seemed to have forsaken the first floor to go up. Which led Jazz to believe that they knew something she did not.

She climbed the stairs quickly and quietly. The open landing at the top had one door at the end, which was closed, and beside this another, smaller staircase led up to the third floor. To her right, a corridor branched away, lit by open doors.