Miss Take - Chapter 3 (3579)

Chapter 3 (3579)

Saturday morning. If she could have stayed indoors, she would have done. She’d had all morning to make up her mind to either go to work or call in sick. Eventually, after lunch, she had decided to go and had changed out of her pyjamas and dressed. She lived in a small flat. Small in more ways than one as all the furniture had been bought with her height in mind. The table and chairs were low, there were no high shelves and the mirror she was currently looking into was low down on the wall, at the perfect height for someone under five feet tall.

Kelly was dressed in a black blouse and skirt. She wore black tights and a pair of second-hand black court shoes that some child had grown out of and given to charity. Today she wore no glasses, but she still had her hair tied back in a tight ballerina's bun. Looking at herself in the mirror, I am a tiny wee black woman, she thought to herself. She was still tense after seeing the police yesterday, so lingered longer at the mirror than usual. If they ever make a film about my life, I would be impossible to cast, she thought. She turned her head to the left. People had told her she was pretty though, in an baby-faced sort of way. She'd do well on Tinder, she supposed, if all she put on there was head-shots. If she ever met someone, they'd have to be pretty short too, she hated people looming over her.

'Come on then,' she muttered to herself, reaching for her coat. Living alone as she did, she had a habit of narrating her life.  ‘Complications like that are the last thing you need.’

She put on her tight fitting Superdry jacket and zipped it up to her neck. Once it was on, she put her keys in her pocket and left the flat, pulling the door shut with a snick behind her. She never carried a bag.

The catering job she was going to was in the afternoon, two bus rides away. A party for a rich kid at a big redbrick mansion-house in the west end of town. The agency she worked for almost always had something for her to do at the weekends. She walked up the long drive, following a wave from one of the local staff and went around the side of a long wing of the building to the kitchen. She nodded at some familiar faces as they were gathering and chatting prior to the event starting. She really didn't want to be there, and she avoided talking to the others. They were mainly eastern Europeans and Asians, all of them talkative and friendly. It didn’t take long for the head-caterer to get things moving and once the party was underway Kelly started circulating with trays of party food for the children, occasionally helping herself to a sausage roll when no-one was looking. Later on, she started serving drinks to the adults. After that, as the kids started leaving, picked up by their parents or minders, crunching the gravel in the driveway under their expensive wheels, all that was left were a few adult drinkers, getting hammered in the marquee that was set up in the large walled garden behind the house.

'I just need three, the rest can go home now,' said the head caterer and Kelly elected to leave as she had just enough time to go the gym before it shut at nine. She'd kept her mind on the job and not spoken to a single soul the entire time.

At the gym she did her usual round of warm-up exercises and a bit of stress-busting on the treadmill she headed to the climbing wall. The gym she went to had the best one in Edinburgh. She knew their wall intimately now though and went up and down it a few times, taking the hardest route, the one which tested her strength the most. She could easily lift her small body up with one hand, a feat that had not gone unnoticed with some of the others.

After she’d been up and down a few times, at the bottom of the wall, a thin bearded man in his forties smiled at her as she came down.

'You should join our club,' he said. 'You'd get a lot out of it I think.'

This was not the first time this man had asked her to join the Edinburgh Climbing Club. She smiled and nodded, unable to think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound rude.

'Something to think about anyway,' he said a little awkwardly after her silence dragged out for a few seconds. He then turned and headed towards the changing rooms, wiping sweat from his forehead. She didn't want to seem unfriendly, but if this guy started getting any pushier, she'd have to find a new gym.

Showered and changed, she was back at her flat by ten. She flopped down onto the sofa and sat watching TV for all of three minutes before she stood up again and went to her bedroom. She then opened the fitted wardrobe and pulled out piles of shoe boxes to reveal the back wall. She found a small hidden clasp and pushed the wall aside. From this recess she pulled three large gym bags which she hauled up and dropped onto the room's single bed. She unzipped the largest of the bags and started to carefully unpack it.

***

This is crazy, thought Kelly. What I am doing right now is crazy. It was four in the morning and she was now skulking in the bushes, looking up at the windows of the house she had been catering the afternoon before. She never took chances like this. She always spent weeks casing a place she planned to burgle, carefully selecting her ingress and egress routes, working out the weight of everything she planned to take and practising any climbs involved until she could reach for every hand and foot hold in total darkness. All the break-ins she had ever done had been done like that, up until this one. Well, and the end of the one before this one, she admitted to herself. She always enjoyed the rush, from the first step into the property, all the way to sorting through the loot and selling it to Treacle, walking away with a bundle of notes in her pocket. Planning a job and doing it well, that too she took pride in. She revelled in the reputation she had earned in the newspapers and all the head-scratching she imagined went on amongst the police. This job, though, stank of desperation. She was getting no thrill from it at all, just fear and trepidation.

Why was she doing it at all? She’d asked herself that all the way here on the bus. Well, one of the reasons, she reassured herself as she watched the back door, was to try and get that scumbag Paul Bevy off the hook. He was either under arrest now, or being watched like a hawk.

Another cat-burglary in the same style as Orlando and Wraithston would surely help get him off? She had no idea, she wasn't interested in how the police did things, being of the opinion that the more she knew, the more she’d be scared of being caught and that this fear would put her off her game.

She couldn’t resist keeping copies of the local newspapers that ran any story on ‘The Squirrel’ though and she’d learned from reading them that the police had more or less worked out that it was the same person that had carried out all her break-ins. They had got that right at least.

The newspapers had assumed it was a man, of course, and even had an artist’s impression doing the rounds, dreamed up from god knows were, of a villain with a scar across his face and a crucifix tattoo on his neck.

The other reason, maybe, was that this house, and this night, was such a gift. It was old, hundreds of years old, and had no security system of any kind. The current owners had only bought the property a year ago and were still renovating it. From scouting the place out in the afternoon, she had learned that the alarm system was not wired to anything, it hadn’t worked in years and they owners had not got round to fixing it or replacing it. Perhaps they relied on the fact that there were always at least two or three people in residence and presumably they locked their windows and doors, but from her little secret tour of the house in the afternoon she knew one of the guest room windows was unlocked because it had been her that had unlocked it.

There were still people chatting and smoking weed down at the marquee and one or two of the lights inside were still on. There were people in the kitchen too, and she was waiting for them to shut the door so she could make a run to the wall and get up to the window she had left open.

All evening she had played a game with herself, betting on the outcome of random events to determine if she was really going to go through with this last-minute burglary. He's a little toe-rag, but he doesn't deserve to go to jail for murder, she had said to herself while unpacking her gear back at the flat. If the night bus to the west-end is late, then I'll not go, she'd told herself, but it had been bang on time. If the driver stops at the Haymarket and anyone in a red coat gets on, then I’ll get off and walk home. Only a drunk old man in a donkey jacket had got on.

The last thing she'd done before leaving the flat was kick off the 'alibi-app' on her phone that liked posts on Facebook and Twitter at random intervals until it shut down not long after three. She'd never have to rely on it, but the theory was that her phone records would prove that she'd not left the flat all evening. On the night bus she used a burner phone, not to do anything with, but just as a prop, reasoning that it kept away unwanted any attention and anyone without a smart-phone these days looked odd. On the bus she wore her black hoodie, just another teenager going home after a Saturday night out. She sat downstairs in the seat behind the driver, facing inwards, with her head down and hood up. If anyone speaks to me or clocks me, if I have to look up for any reason, I'll call it off, she had thought to herself, but no-one had. It seemed that Fate had decreed that she should rob this house tonight.

A drunken woman lurched out of the kitchen door and crouched down by the bins. She pulled down her jeans and began to urinate, at the same time as trying to light a cigarette. After a rather undignified conclusion she then staggered back in again and a man reached out and shut the door behind her.

Kelly was no more than a shadow, dressed all in black, with her hoodie up and a balaclava masking her face. She wore a black pair of climbing shoes and a pair of tight-fitting leather gloves. Even if someone was looking right at her, against the dark background of the garden they wouldn’t have seen her. She waited another minute, trying to find a reason not to go ahead with the break-in. Come on, Miss Take, she growled to herself. This is it, now or never.

Even so, she continued to hesitate. Things had really escalated. A murder. The police would be taking things much more seriously now. Was she just asking for it? Part of her enjoyed the feeling of the high-anxiety creeping over her. This was the same feeling she had felt on her very first break-in, a feeling of such snapping tension that it felt like every nerve in her body was standing on end. It was this sensation that finally drove her out of her hiding place and in a surge, she rushed towards the wall, and was straight up the drain pipe and onto the windowsill of the first-floor guest room in a matter of seconds.

She peered in the window to see that a couple were inside, sleeping on an old four-poster bed. She kissed her teeth and considered for a moment. The window was still unlocked and she could cross the room silently enough, but she doubted an old window that probably hadn’t been opened in a hundred years would do it soundlessly. With no further hesitation she kept climbing until she was on the roof.

Kelly knew the east wing of the house was uninhibited so she headed in that direction, walking sideways along the slanting tiles, with one hand on the roof and the other held away from her body for balance. There were three gable windows on the roof she was on, but all were locked and shuttered. She kept going, around the end of the house until she was on the other side of the building. Three gable windows graced this side too, and these were also locked. The next part of the roof was a large half-moon window that looked down over the entrance hall from the back of the central staircase. The sill under the window was narrow, but provided enough foot-hold. One of the small square windows set into the half-moon was slightly ajar and overlooked the stairs. She pushed it gently open then dropped down onto the oak banister. From there she hopped onto the landing as lightly as a cat.

She started her burglary downstairs, moving quietly into a sitting room just off the hall. There were plenty of interesting items here, so she switched her headlamp on and off as she picked up and examined figurines, ornaments, and any object d'art that was made from silver or gold. With having done no research beforehand though, she was flying blind, and ended up filling her bag quite quickly with things that she had no idea of the value of, but that had taken her fancy. She moved from room to room. When she found a discarded coat, lying tossed over a sofa by a dying fire, she checked its pockets and pulled out a wallet and a set of car keys. She put the wallet straight into her bag and mused a moment over the keys. She had never stolen a car before, but decided to hold onto them just in case.

Having explored the west wing, she circled back round to the main hall. All that remained down here was the east wing where the kitchens were and presumably contained some die-hards still boozing and chatting through the night. She decided to skip it entirely. Besides it was being renovated so probably didn’t contain anything valuable.

She crept upstairs, testing each step as she went for creaks, keeping close to the wall. Her bag had very little room left in it for anything else, but she was on the job now and always hated not getting a good look at everything if she could. Who knew what she would find upstairs? She cold always make room in her bag for something that caught her eye, and her trousers and hoodie had pockets.

As she walked past one of the rooms in a long corridor, she was startled by a cough, an angry exclamation and footsteps behind the door. She ducked into a side passage just as a man stumbled out of the room and wandered off down the corridor, trying door handles, looking for another place to spend the night.

The door he had left by was shut by an unseen hand and Kelly heard a female voice say something that she couldn't make out, but that sounded sharp and angry. Kelly took a few deep breaths. She had never been so close to people before, in any of her break-ins and after her initial euphoria of a full swag-bag she was beginning to feel once more like she was making a tremendous mistake. She was also starting to feel like a fool. She knew she was a dilettante, a visitor, only, to the world of crime. She was a tourist, underneath she knew that, and even sometimes admitted it to herself. She was small, light and agile, all things that naturally made her an excellent cat-burglar and normally she had nerves of steel, the result of a hard up-bringing she supposed. But, over the years, she’d become to complacent, to smug. She’d lost her edge. She loved, more than anything, making the police look like idiots, but she realised now, after a big dose of reality at Wraithston that she had entered into a world she was not prepared for. She was chancing jail, or worse.

Too much thinking and not enough looking, she told herself sharply. She knew she was naïve, a child playing at being a criminal, because even now, after so many jobs she still narrated her activities, just as she did in her own flat, usually in her head, but sometimes out loud. She was doing it now.

‘Talk to yourself, or don’t talk to yourself,’ she whispered. ‘It doesn’t matter. But enough with the thinking. Time for all the self-doubt later. Just get this job finished first.’

At the end of the passage was a door that hung slightly open and as she entered, party streamers fell over her head and into her eyes. She gave a little squeak, then muttered, 'the daring Miss Take entered the next room, not the least bit concerned by what she had thought was a massive spider’s web...’

She flashed her light around briefly. It was a play room, containing an odd mixture of old and new toys. There were some antique looking Victorian dolls, all jumbled up with Lego and action figures. She had heard that some of those old dolls could be valuable, but she had no idea what to look for. The Lego Millennium Falcon that sat on a dresser in the corner could be worth more than any of them for all she knew. Either way, they were all too big to fit in her bag.

Miss Take carefully moved through to the next room, her inner monologue ran on, the daring cat-burglar, spotting a hidden side door moved silently across... oh stop it! Even talking to myself isn’t helping calm my nerves any more. This was all fun until Wraithston. Now I'm just petrified. What a mess I've made.

She felt like slapping herself, as if she was slipping into a funk and needed to snap out of it. Even if she felt like she had been living nightmare the last couple of days, the door she was about to peer through was very real and inviting. She could never resit one more door, not just for the treasure that might lie behind it, but also to get a glimpse at other people’s lives and to live a little, however vicariously, through their belongings. People that seemed happy, she liked most. People that did not, perhaps, have dead mothers and absent fathers and that had full interesting lives. She had now entered a tiny bedroom, used by a nanny or au-pair most likely. It had a slanting roof, a narrow window and a single bed. There was a small wardrobe and a dresser with a backpack tucked underneath it. The dresser was covered in all sorts of things, mainly hair and make-up products, but also a mirror, a half-full six-pack of crisps, a chocolate bar, the size of the ones they always offer you at petrol stations, and three empty tea cups. Knowing instantly there was nothing of value in here she none-the-less opened the dresser drawers and rummaged around. Socks, tights, bras and pants in the top drawer. T-shirts and summer shorts in the lower one.

She dug around in the pack and finding nothing more than clothes and a dog-eared paperback, she sat down on the bed, then lay down on it and looked up at the ceiling. A little moonlight was coming in through the thin curtains and fell across her legs. What a mess, she thought again. What an idiot. She reached over and took the chocolate bar, unwrapped it, then lifted her mask just enough to be able to eat it.

Make this the last one, she said to herself as she ate. The last one for a while anyway. If Paul is off the hook after this, then that's the main thing. Miss Take, The Squirrel, or whatever, can retire for a while. God knows I've made enough money out of this while carry on already. I'm such a stupid person, just a stupid little girl. Whoever lives in this room is doing better in their life than me. I think I'm so clever, but I'm going to end up in jail. Just like my uncle. Just like my father.

She finished the chocolate and got up. 'Screw self-pity,' she cursed herself as she tossed the wrapper onto the floor. She checked the wardrobe and threw some of the blouses, coats and jeans that it contained onto the floor, just to make it clear the room had been burgled, then left.

She re-entered the play room just as a young blonde woman came in from the other side, switching on the light as she did so. She took one look at Miss Take, masked and all in black as she was, and screamed at the top of her lungs. Without being able to stop herself, Kelly screamed in reply.