“Christ, what the fuck are you doing wandering around the house with a knife?”
“I heard a noise,” Sam grinds back, breath quick. “I thought someone was in the house. Your car’s not here.”
“I had the car in for a service,” James says, tone flat and irritated. “I was having a lie down.”
A nap. Of course. The one time I break into a house I stumble into a power-snooze-kitchen-slasher crossover.
Their voices shift away. I keep my cheek pressed to the cool wall and listen to footfalls. My legs have discovered advanced trembles. I silently negotiate with my calves. Please stop. I will hydrate better. I will buy magnesium. I will stop drinking coffee as a personality.
“I’m heading out,” James says.
“Where?”
“Post office.”
Post office. Somehow that sounds more ominous than “underground vault” or “secret lair.” Only a true villain pops to the post office after a nap.
A few seconds later, pipes clank. A rush of water. Sam’s shower spits to life, the sound thick as rain on a tin roof. Steam ghosts out along the upstairs landing. He’s in the bathroom. Knife presumably put down. Or maybe he showers with it. Who knows with him.
This is my moment.
I ease the door a fraction wider and step out, trying to move like a person who is not currently made of maracas. The office looks exactly as I left it—screen dark, chair at a guilty angle. I slide the memory stick deeper into my pocket until the rectangle digs like a talisman.
Twenty-five video files.
Twenty-five little bombs.
Back door. No cameras on the back path.
Outside, I breathe, re-plant the key under the pot with the kind of care reserved for ancient relics and scoot through the bushes.
On the pavement, my head is a radio changing stations every second. Go home. Watch the files. Call Craig. Go home. Post office—James—post office.
The memory stick digs again, reminding me I have twenty-five tiny reasons to leave.
But curiosity is my most toxic trait, after pastries.
I glance up the road and there he is: James, hands in his pockets, face calm, walking like the street owes him rent.
I follow at what I hope is a casual distance.
We drift onto the main road. Daylight has that Bristol autumn brightness that feels slightly suspicious, like it’s hiding rain behind its back. James moves with purpose. I move with panic.
We cut through the side streets, past Victorian terraces with doors the colour of expensive moods, until the trees begin to thin and the Downs open up ahead — wide, windy, smugly picturesque. The kind of place people go jogging to prove a point.
The grass is still damp from earlier rain, that silvery kind of damp that soaks into your shoes and your soul.
A woman in a puffer jacket throws a ball for a golden retriever who clearly identifies as upper middle class. Cyclists zip past with the sort of aggression only achievable through Lycra. A man jogs by wearing shorts that feel like a personal attack on my eyesight.
James strides on, unbothered. I follow a good fifty metres or so behind him.
We pass an elderly man walking a dog that looks like a footstool with eyes. The man nods politely. I nod back, trying to look casual, as if I’m not halfway through a light espionage mission disguised as cardio.
And still, we keep walking.
Definitely not towards a post office.
No, James is heading for the south side of the Downs — the part that overlooks the gorge.
