Prologue
This is the part where I explain how I ended up here. It’s also the point – I think this is right – where I explain how terribly sorry I am about all the poor decisions that landed me here in the first place.
I’m not very remorseful, to be honest, although I hope that fact doesn’t come out at trial. I’m ratherembarrassedto be here, especially given how many lovely homes I’ve been in over the years, but self-pity is a terrible look, and I had a pretty good run until all this. And as for poor decisions … I think I would have ended up here anyway sooner or later. I just came by the scenic route.
Incidentally, you wouldn’t believe how easy it is to get access to a computer in here, provided you aren’t too fussy about things like ‘the internet’. I’ve signed up for a course inIT Literacy, meaning I get an hour a day on a whacking great Dell in the badly named Information Suite (it’s less a suite than a cupboard, and most people come out of it worse informed than they went in). Not many people want to use the Suite. The PCs in it were forged around the Late Cretaceous, meaning they are a) the size of a room and b) almost completely useless. Also, I guess a lot of my colleagues here were arrested by a PC, so the term has bad associations.
But these ancient, hulking computers – seriously, they’re actual desktops, it’s like being in the nineteenth century – do have a few things going for them. They have Windows ’95, for one, with the full Office set, meaning that I can log on, ignore Gertrude the IT instructor, and type for a solid 57 minutes each day, with a three-minute Solitaire break at the end as a little treat. I might get this published one day, if I play my cards right. Although if anyone pays me for this, will it count as ‘proceeds of crime’? Might do. I’ll have to circle back to that once the trial is over. And I’ll have to think of a decent pen name too. That shouldn’t be a problem. My master pseudonym list is currently up to 86 entries.
Ilovea prison opening to a story, by the way. Sorry. That’s another distraction, because you’re already champing at the bit to get on and find out how I – a bright young man with marketable skills and good prospects – managed to end up in more trouble than anyone else in almost the entire cell block, piss off both the lawandthe criminals, and nearly get himself killed about six times along the way.
But I do love a prison opening. You can’t beat them. JustwatchKind Hearts and Coronets, or read the one about that girl who literally murdered all her relatives and still managed to make herself seem like the wronged party. A prison opening tells you this is going to befun. It also gives away that I live to tell the tale, although to preserve a bit of mystery I won’t tell you what sort of state I’m in right now. I’ll tell you this for free: my skincare routine has seen better months.
Anyway. My current circumstances are south London and medium security. They don’t tie you down at night, which is how you can tell it from a maximum security place, but theydocheck the locks on the doors every few days, which is how you can differentiate it from minimum security. I argued that maybe I should be in solitary for my own protection, but they laughed and told me not to be a drama queen. I think solitary must cost them a lot more.
Although I’m actually in the Info Suite right now, typing this up under Gertrude’s lazy eye, imagine me sitting in the Visitors’ Room. This isn’t one of those fancy American set-ups, with the little phone and the wipe-clean screens. No, this is a proper British public-sector environment, which means durable carpet tiles and plastic-coated single-seat armchairs. They have uncomfortably high arms, so it’s hard to get at your pockets, and they’re positioned nice and far from each other, to make it that little bit harder to hand over any contraband that avoided the friskings.
Right now, I’m waiting for a friend (lawyer) to turn up and tell me how the rest of my story is falling out. My trial is considered much lower priority than the others, but there’s alsonowhere to bail me to. Not only that, nobody had any inclination to pay my bail, so I’m just waiting around. It’s probably the best place to be; the story I set in motion is prompting quite the kerfuffle out there. I’m not surprised, really. Any story featuring luxury property, big-money fraud, international espionage and high treason will snag the attention of even the thickest newspaper editor.
So those are my circumstances. A bit under-vegetabled, a bit short on vitamin D, some split ends (do men get split ends?), but alive, and typing with all the fingers that still work. As for how it all started … God. That’s harder. I have considered the various points where it ‘began’. There’s the moment we heard the shot, of course, although that’s too neat. Then there was the bit where I met Em and her friends for the first time, although if she and I hadn’t already been in the same line of work, we’d never have teamed up.
In fact, I know where it started: 14 Cadbury Lane. My last solo job. If that had gone well – all right, if I hadn’t screwed it up so badly – I’d still be a free man now. I wouldn’t have encountered Davy, or Mr Bowling Ball, and I wouldn’t have found out about the yacht’s-worth of money that got me into this whole mess. I wouldn’t have met Em, Elle or Jonny, and I wouldn’t have become the primary focus of at least three law enforcement agencies and eight criminal gangs. I wouldn’t have got someone else shot, or myself banged up.
But much like the Crown Prosecution Service, these things are sent to try us.
Here’s how it began.
1
When it comes to breaking into someone else’s house, there are rules.
The rules aren’t to protect the house, of course. The rules are to protect you. Although confusingly, looking after the placeisone of the rules. If you’re going to be an interloper, which is my term for my highly specific profession, you have to treat the property as if it’s your own. If you manage that, more often than not the few people you encounter will genuinely believe you own it, provided they didn’t see the rightful owner there last week. The rules will always guide and defend you.
Case in point: here I am, outside one of the nicest houses in the whole of this little Sussex village, about to break in. I should be very tense indeed. But I’m perfectly calm, because I have the rules on my side.
I don’t want to make my work as an interloper sound twee, incidentally. I’m not a fucking Borrower. My job is glamorous, enjoyable and yields big rewards, but it does come with risks attached. And one of those risks, not that I know it yet, is about to bite me right on the arse.
Here’s how this whole mess started.
10.03 a.m.Paul Lethbridge – prosperous and fifty-something – is leaving for the airport. ‘Prosperous’ is my polite way of saying he’s let himself go a bit in his middle years. But he does look wealthy. He’s got a kind of base suntan that you can tell he’s proud of, and that he doesn’t let get below a certain level even in midwinter. If he has to go to Antigua in January to top it up, then off to Antigua he will go. Even the band where his wedding ring used to lie is now the same uniform honey colour as the rest of his finger.
Paul’s not a bad guy, probably. He’s a bit short with people, a bit too confident in his own abilities, he’s got a high-pressure job, and he’s also been a bit too solitary for a few too many years to be considered truly ‘socialised’ any more. But I could say the same of myself. And I’mcertainlynot a bad guy.
Mr Lethbridge isn’t going to Antigua today. He’s setting off on a three-week trip to the Middle East to conduct some of the legal work that has paid for so much over the years: this house, mainly, and the primary residence in the city. His work even manages to pay all the maintenance fees now required of him, more or less on time. He’s leaving his car at home (a nice, newish proper Porsche; he’s sure all this electric nonsense will blow over in a few years) and cabbing to Gatwick. Dev, theminicab driver, has been waiting twenty minutes already, but he doesn’t mind. Mr Lethbridge is a reliable customer in an Uber-stricken industry. Dev’s freshly vacuumed Toyota is waiting on the drive, inside the slightly overwrought-iron gates.
Out of the front door comes Mr L, frowning a bit when he sees the car and the tracks in his nice clean gravel; he wishes they’d wait on the road like he requested on the phone. He locks the door, checks it, waits while young whatever-his-name-is loads his enormous case into the boot, conscious that it would be improper to offer any assistance, checks the door again for good measure. Then he crunches across the drive and clambers into the back seat. The gate swings ponderously open, and the car – a little lower on its wheel arches thanks to Mr L and his luggage – moves out onto the one-lane road and away.
10.04 a.m.Quiet descends once again on this little back road of this posh little village. In the car, Mr L asks Dev to turn off Magic FM immediately, and checks his phone to see he’s booked into the right first-class lounge at the airport. He doesn’t even glance at the rear-view mirror. Neither does Dev.
10.05 a.m.Back at the house, I emerge from the nearby lane, and start my day’s work.
I hope Mr L has a wonderful time in Jordan, but I’m glad he’s gone. He and I would make terrible housemates. And for the next three weeks, his house – gorgeous, Georgian from the look of it, tastelessly modernised but still with some wonderful original features – is mine.
I don’t look like much, incidentally. I’ve got a shirt and jacket on, a Covid mask (the greatest innovation of the last decade as far as my line of work is concerned), and dark blue jeans, tucked into some bog-standard old Dr Martens. I could be literally any member of the gig economy right now, and I’m about as memorable. Consider the last person who delivered a package to your place. Do you remember what they looked like?
Thought not.
Right now, I’m keeping as many of the rules as possible active in my head. You know how most plane crashes happen on take-off and landing? Interloping is just the same. Get in and get out OK, and the time in between practically takes care of itself. Here are just a few of the rules I’m obeying already:
