Under Cover (Agent 21) (17 page)

Ricky considered that. It could mean waiting all night, and they’d freeze crouching here for that long. Plus, Izzy could easily change her mind about all this in the morning.

‘No. We need to go through with it now. Who else is likely to be in the house?’

‘Just my mum,’ Izzy said. ‘She’ll be asleep, I’m sure of it.’ She glanced downwards. ‘She takes these sleeping tablets—’

‘And there’s no, what do you call it, staff?’ he interrupted her.

Izzy shook her head. ‘Not at night.’

‘OK. Where’s your mum and dad’s bedroom?’

‘They sleep in separate rooms. Hers is on the second floor at the top of the stairs. You see the dormer window? That’s it. She has her own dressing room on the other side of the house.’

‘And what’s that room where your dad is?’

‘His office. He sleeps in the bedroom next door.’ She suddenly gave him a sharp look. ‘Have you done this sort of thing before? You sound like you know what you’re doing.’ She swallowed. ‘My dad . . . he’s doing something really awful, isn’t he?’

He blinked at her, but didn’t answer. In his head, though, he heard Felix’s voice.
You’ve already shown me time and again that you have a very high degree of aptitude for the work involved. Your attitude is a different matter, of course, but we can work on that . . .

‘You’re sure this part of the garden isn’t covered by the security cameras?’ he asked instead.

‘Positive.’

‘And you can get to the kitchen door without being seen?’

She nodded.

They waited. Ricky kept his eyes fixed on the figure in the window. It stood motionless for a couple of minutes, then turned and walked further into the room. The light stayed on, but he could sense Izzy relaxing slightly.

‘Are you ready?’

Another nod.

‘Then go. Make sure you leave very clear footprints in the snow.’

Izzy swallowed hard. She stood up. ‘You’ll be here?’

‘All the time.’

She headed left along the wall, ten paces, before turning right into the main body of the garden. Ricky kept one eye on her as she weaved round a little vegetable patch. He kept the other eye on the window, and he thought he could make out movement in the room – the flicker of a shadow pacing up and down – but the window itself remained clear.

Now Izzy was creeping past an old swing towards a flower bed. She was alongside the house and gingerly picking her way up to the kitchen door, where she stopped. Ricky watched as she looked back in his direction, peering but clearly unable to see him. She did an about turn, then followed her tracks back along her exact route, glancing over her shoulder every few minutes to see if her father had reappeared.

When she was back by the swing, he did.

Izzy froze. So did Ricky.

Jacob Cole stared out of the window for what seemed like an age. Ricky zoomed in on him with his sharp eyes. The man looked like he was scanning the garden.

Had he seen Izzy? Did he think there was an intruder? Would he see the footprints in the snow? Thank goodness the clouds were hiding the moon . . .

Cole disappeared back into the room and Izzy started moving again, quicker this time. She was obviously freaked. When she reached Ricky her breath came in short, terrified gasps.

‘Do you think he saw me?’

Ricky looked back towards the window. He could see the moving shadow inside again. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t think he did.’ He turned back to Izzy. ‘I can take it from here,’ he said. ‘If you want to leave.’

She looked up to the top of the wall, then back to her father’s window. Ricky expected her to go, but she shook her head. ‘I’ll stay here. Just in case . . .’

‘OK. But if it looks like everything’s going wrong, don’t wait for your dad to catch you. Get out of here.’

‘Ricky?’

‘What is it?’

‘What are you looking for, exactly? I mean, I know you want evidence that my dad’s doing something bad, but what would that look like?’

It was a question that had been bothering Ricky, and he answered as honestly as he could. ‘I don’t know. I’m just hoping I recognize it when I see it.’ He found himself half wondering why he was doing this alone, without Felix’s help. A quick glance at Izzy, and her remarkable similarity to his dead sister, reminded him. This was for her, not Felix and his crew.

Without waiting for a reply, he readjusted his cap so that his face would be hidden by the peak, then turned and followed the tracks Izzy had left in the snow. He moved very carefully, making sure that his footsteps matched Izzy’s prints exactly. Past the vegetable patch . . . past the swing . . . past the flower bed . . .

– Stop! Don’t move! He’s there!

He was indeed, staring out of the window. Closer now, Ricky could make out his features better. The thin, pinched, unfriendly face. The searching eyes. He stayed absolutely still for a full minute, until Jacob Cole disappeared from his window once again.

He continued to follow Izzy’s footsteps, carefully placing his own feet in the impressions they had left in the snow. Moments later, he was outside the kitchen door.

He looked back. To his relief he saw that Izzy was entirely hidden at the bottom of the garden. But he could once more see Jacob Cole’s shadow on the snow, framed in the rectangular patch of light from the window. He had the sense that Cole was nervous – all this pacing and staring out of the window. But why?

He retrieved the key Izzy had picked out of the snow from his pocket and slid it into the keyhole. It opened easily. Ricky stepped into the kitchen and quietly closed the door behind him.

He was in.

– This is crazy. What are you even doing here?

– Snooping.

– If they catch you, it’ll mean the police. Felix won’t help you. You’ve walked out on him and he doesn’t even know what you’re doing.

– Then I’d better make sure they don’t catch me.

Ricky allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the kitchen. He could smell the remnants of whatever meal had been cooked in here last, and he suddenly realized how hungry he was. He’d let Izzy eat most of the food in McDonald’s – she had needed it more than him.

– Keep your mind on the job. You’re here to find incriminating evidence on Jacob Cole, not steal from the pantry.

He made to lock the kitchen door again, but once more he heard Felix’s voice crack in his mind.
You
always
want an escape route
. So he left the door unlocked, and tiptoed across the kitchen. He was aware of snow falling from his shoes and trousers, but it instantly melted into puddles on the heated floor.

There was a loud creaking sound. He stopped statue still, his heart pumping fast.

– It’s an old house. You’re going to get noises like that at night.

Ricky breathed again and continued to the door on the opposite side of the kitchen. He opened it slightly, and looked out onto an oak-panelled hallway with a large Christmas tree. The lights were still twinkling, and Ricky felt a pang as he remembered Christmases in his past life, with his mum and dad. Those days had long since passed. There were still gifts under the tree – Izzy’s, Ricky assumed. He wondered how long they would stay there.

There was a sweeping staircase bending out of sight from the main hallway, but also a door to another dark room. Ricky crept past the Christmas tree and into this room.

Creak!

He froze again.

– Just the h—

– Yeah, I know, it’s just the house.

He was in a large living room. Sofas, a fireplace. The curtains were closed, but this room obviously looked out onto the street because it was suddenly half lit up by the headlamps of a passing car. The lights made Ricky’s shadow seem massive against the wall, but they died away very quickly.

To the right of the fireplace was a writing desk. Ricky tiptoed towards it and, using the cube method Felix had taught him, swiftly examined all the drawers. He found nothing except blank stationery, a bottle of ink and some paperclips. He scanned the room again for anywhere that might conceal incriminating documents, but there was none, so he quietly left.

At the foot of the staircase he looked up and listened hard. Silence. Should he head upstairs? Jacob Cole was still awake and about. The closer Ricky went to that room with the light on, the higher his chance of being caught . . . He took another deep breath and crept upstairs.

On the landing, he could see light seeping from around the door to Jacob Cole’s study. It was the third door on the right – one of many that led off this long, broad landing. Along the landing itself he saw an elegant, old-fashioned sofa with curved wooden legs and, opposite it, a small marble statue on a pedestal. Above him, the stairs wound up to the next floor where he knew Izzy’s mum would be sleeping. He considered following them up, and searching the house from the top down. He knew, in his gut, that if he was going to find anything to incriminate Jacob Cole, he would find it in that office. But then he remembered what Felix had once told him when he’d failed to find that tiny key in his apartment.
Forgive me, but if you’d looked everywhere, you’d have found it.

– You need to look everywhere
.

Silently he headed up the stairs.

The second-floor landing was smaller than the first and Ricky realized he was in the converted loft of the house. There was a faint smell of perfume in the air, and of the two doors leading from the landing, one was slightly ajar. He walked up to it and peered through the darkness into the room. He saw the outline of a bed, and heard heavy breathing – that had to be Izzy’s mum’s room. What were the chances of finding incriminating evidence in there? Small, he decided, and in any case: to wander around someone’s bedroom while they were asleep was incredibly risky.

He backed off and headed over to the second door. It creaked as he opened it. Ricky slipped inside and stood very still as he waited to see if the noise had woken anybody up.

Silence.

He peered through the gloom. There was a dressing table with a mirror at one end of the room. Thick, warm carpet. Rails of clothes on either side. And it was from in here that the smell of perfume came.

– Izzy’s mum’s dressing room?

– Looks like it.

– You should head back downstairs. This is all clothes and jewellery.

Jewellery. Ricky found his eyes fixed on the dressing table at the far end of the room. He approached it quietly. There were several jewellery boxes on its surface.

– Old habits die hard, eh?

Ricky ignored the voice in his head. He selected the largest of the jewellery boxes and undid the clasp on the top. It concertina’d open to present three layers, each full of necklaces. He felt his eyes bulging in the darkness. There had to be hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of jewellery in this box alone.

He would only take one item, he decided. The loss of all this jewellery would indicate a break-in, whereas the loss of a single necklace could be explained away in other ways – and maybe not even noticed.

– So Felix was wrong. You
are
just a sneak thief.

Ricky selected an elegant necklace dripping with diamonds. There was no time to admire it. He simply shoved it into his rucksack and closed the jewellery box. Moments later, he was creeping out of the dressing room and back onto the second-floor landing. He could still hear the heavy breathing of Izzy’s mum. Clearly he hadn’t disturbed her. But he decided he was wasting his time up here. He needed to get back down to the first floor and into Jacob Cole’s office if he was going to find anything of use.

The trouble was, Cole was in there too. From his vantage point on the stairs, he could still see the light escaping from the door frame of the office.

Ricky decided that he would just have to wait. Let Cole go to bed, then silently gain access to the study and search it at his leisure.

He looked up and down the landing for somewhere to hide. Behind that elegant sofa perhaps? Or maybe he should sneak into one of the other rooms. Maybe he should—

He froze.

Cole had suddenly turned off the light in the study and Ricky could hear footsteps heading towards the door. Light-footed, he ran past the office and crouched down behind the far end of the sofa. He peered over the edge of the armrest just in time to see the office door open. The figure of Jacob Cole stepped out into the corridor.

Ricky held his breath as he watched the silhouette of Izzy’s dad. He hadn’t yet closed the door behind him, but was standing in the corridor, perfectly still.

He looked left, towards the stairs.

Had he heard something? Did he know there was an intruder?

Then he looked right, towards Ricky.

– If you move, even just a few centimetres, he’ll see you.

For once, Ricky didn’t answer the voice in his head back. He concentrated on remaining absolutely still.

Jacob Cole continued staring in his direction for what seemed like minutes. In reality, Ricky knew, it was probably only a few seconds before he turned again and closed the office door. There was the solid clunk of a latch closing. Then Jacob Cole walked a few metres along the corridor to his own bedroom. He entered and shut himself inside. A faint glow of light seeped from the edge of the bedroom door-frame.

Ricky didn’t move for a full five minutes. His palms were sweaty with nerves, and half of him wanted to run as quickly as possible back to the kitchen door and get out of there. But he knew, deep down, that he was at least going to try to search the office, and that meant waiting a little longer. So he waited until the light spill from Cole’s bedroom disappeared before he stood up and – very slowly – crept to the office door.

Silently, carefully, he tried the handle.

Locked.

Ricky cursed inwardly.

– What kind of lock is it?

He touched the key hole underneath the handle. It was a Yale lock. That meant he could use his snap gun.

Ricky quietly took his rucksack from his shoulder, removed the snap gun, then shouldered the bag again. He glanced towards Cole’s bedroom and strained his ears to listen for any sound of movement.