The next morning, I felt so much clearer despite a bottle and a half of wine the night before. One of Dr Riley’s suggestions was to replace the drinking with something else, something more productive. Perhaps something I’d used to enjoy, but hadn’t done for a while. I’d texted Tommy the night before to tell him that I was going to take the day off, so with the whole day in front of me I dug my old trainers out from the back of the cupboard that they’d lived in for God knows how long, and put them on. My original plan had been to go for a run, but I ended up just going for a walk as I didn’t fancy being seen out running in daylight. One step at a time after all. That’s what Doc Riley had told me.
I stuck to beer and the occasional bottle of wine, then gradually eased up on both as well over the course of a couple of weeks until I wasn’t drinking much at all. I also managed to get out and go running a few times, which to my surprise was a big help. Doc Riley had been right. My biggest victory was knocking the cigarettes on the head, replacing them with large amounts of nicotine gum. Over the course of a few weeks, I went from a wheezing sweaty overweight jogger to a slightly fitter version, one who didn’t have to stop and lean up against things every few minutes. I still only went out at night though, to hide under the cover of darkness.
What I discovered was that the deep-seated anger still burning inside me wasn’t affected in the slightest by not drinking, or more specifically, not drinking as much as I had been. It was always there, like a malignant companion. Being sober just helped to crystallise it to the point where my idle daydreams started to get more detailed. My need for alcohol had been replaced by something much darker, much more sinister.
The tipping point, for want of a better word, was when I was out running one night and I saw a familiar looking red BMW with personalised plates driving towards me. It was Robert, still behind the wheel although he was still banned. He’d kept the same car that he’d killed Jennifer with and was now driving around in it. I watched, incredulous, as Robert drove past me, music thumping from the stereo in his car. He was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music and didn’t even notice me as he drove past. Not a care in the world. If I had to pinpoint the moment that I’d decided to act on my anger, it would be that precise moment. Why should he not have a care in the world? Jennifer was dead, at his hands, and I was a broken man. That wasn’t fair.
Finding out where he lived was easier than I thought it would be in the end. I saw him again a few nights later, but he was on foot this time. I just followed him home to a small block of flats on the Yarmouth Road where he let himself into the main door. I saw lights come on in a ground floor flat a few seconds later. I was sure that he lived down on Riverside somewhere, in one of the posh new developments near the football stadium, and the more I thought about it, the surer I was. Jennifer told me once about Robert losing the plot over someone using his allocated parking space underneath the flats, and it turned out that it was some bloke who’d gone to a football match at Carrow Road. Robert must have moved since then, although why he would move from a nice flat on Riverside to a shabby looking block on the outskirts of the city was beyond me.
Once I’d got his address, I hung around outside the block a couple of times to get an idea of his routine. I was quite used to blending into the background. It was a skill that had served me well in my previous career. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I established a vague idea of where he went, and when. I watched him go to a pub called The Griffin one Thursday evening, which was probably the closest pub to his flat and would, therefore, be his local boozer. It was a squat white building just off one of the main roads back into Norwich from pretty much anywhere to the east of the city. Anyone driving from Great Yarmouth back to Norwich would have to drive right past it, but it wasn’t the most popular of pubs by a long stretch. I’d been in there a few years ago, I couldn’t remember why, but I remember that it was a bit crap for a pub.
When I watched Robert leave The Griffin that Thursday night, he’d obviously drunk a fair amount judging by the way he was walking. He was still leaving well before closing time, which I was quite happy about as I’d spent the previous hour waiting for him to leave. I watched from my vantage point across the road as he disappeared down an alleyway at the side of the pub, coming back a moment later zipping up his fly. He couldn’t even be bothered to go to the toilet before he left the pub. I followed him at a distance as he made his way home. I’d already decided that if I saw him driving again, I’d call the police and grass him up, which was something I’d never done in my life, but other than that one evening I saw him he never seemed to use the car. The idea of him being arrested and jailed for driving while disqualified was a pale punishment, anyway. Him being on foot made it a lot easier to follow him though, so I wasn’t complaining.
A couple of days later, I changed my routine and went for a run fairly early on a Sunday morning, joining all the other overweight occasional runners in the area. I made sure that I went past The Griffin pub as well as from the pub to where he lived. There was a sign outside the pub advertising “Quiz and Chips” on a Thursday evening. I stopped by the entrance to the alleyway, trying to look like a jogger having a breather, and looked to make sure that there was no one around. Seeing nobody, I walked down the alley to see what was down there. The main thing that I was looking for was security cameras, but as I’d figured, there weren’t any. Tommy had done over this pub a few years ago. I couldn’t remember why I’d not been on the job, but he’d said it was an easy entrance for almost bugger all reward. The pub obviously hadn’t bothered beefing up their security since Tommy’s visit. The alleyway led to a small enclosed yard full of empty beer barrels behind the pub. There was a trapdoor that led down to the cellar with a big thick padlock on it, but other than that there was nothing security wise. It was also not overlooked by anything or anyone.
I left the alleyway and jogged slowly towards Robert’s block of flats. It was maybe a ten-minute run, so only a mile. I kept looking out for cameras, net curtains with nosey old people hiding behind them, anything that might make it a dangerous route for someone who wanted to avoid being detected. There were a couple of shops on the way. I made a mental note to ask David to have a look at them. He was much better at spotting things like cameras than I was although I couldn’t see anything obvious.
As I reached the outside of the block of flats that Robert lived in, I had the beginnings of a plan in the back of my mind.
The day it all came together started off pretty much like any other day. I woke up, I went to work, and I did what I would do any other day of the week. It was cold for November, getting colder every day, but when I looked out of the window before I left for work I didn’t think it would snow. I left the flat and then had to nip back inside to get a pair of gloves and a woollen beanie hat I’d forgotten. It was chillier than I’d thought.
It was a Thursday, which as well as being quiz night at the Griffin was also a day to catch up on office related stuff. Tommy and David had done a few home visits that needed writing up, and I’d undertaken an assessment of a marketing startup in the middle of Norwich. Why a startup wanted to spend hundreds of pounds on a security was beyond me. There was nothing at all in the place that was worth nicking, but I left that part out of my final report.
The three of us had a quick lunch in the office before going our separate ways. I had to go back to a previous client for a follow-up visit, Tommy was going to see a potential new client, and David had an assessment to do for another friend of Andy’s. Although we were well enough established now to make it with no help from him, pretty much every week a new client called who was “a friend of Andy’s”. Given that all of his friends seemed to be well off, we weren’t complaining. There’d been several visits I’d done with Tommy where I’d known we’d be able to make an absolute packet from the place if we turned it over. There was a painting on the wall of one of Andy’s friend’s houses that Tommy swore was an original painting by some eighteenth-centu
ry painter he knew. I’d been sceptical at first, figuring that Tommy knew as much about eighteenth-century painters as I did, which was next to nothing, but he’d kept going on about it and even shown me a photo of the painting taken on his phone. The next day, Tommy had brought a flyer from an auction house he’d printed out off the internet. He’d waved it at me.
“There you go, Gareth,” he’d said. “Bloody told you so.” I looked at the flyer and the small thumbnail picture on it. Tommy was right, and the guide price for the painting was £25,000 to £30,000. For a painting of a boat.
Later on that evening, we’d met up in The Heartsease for a few beers. I wasn’t completely teetotal then, but not far off it. I was on a three pint a night limit which worked well seeing as there were three of us. One round each, nice and tidy. By the time I got to the pub, the other two were already there.
“Evening gents,” I said as I walked up to them and sat down on a rickety chair which creaked as I eased myself onto it.
“How do?” Tommy replied, while David just nodded at me. “You have a good afternoon?”
“Yeah, I did,” I said. “Another happy client. Plus, we got a good commission off the security stuff they bought. How about you?”
“Another big old house with an old couple knocking round it. Very nice area, just near Eaton. Like a bloody oven inside, though. God knows what their heating bill must be like.” Eaton was one of the posher areas on the outskirts of Norwich which had aspirations to be a separate village but was in reality still a suburb. The usual demographic that lived there was rich and elderly. The fact it was close to the hospital no doubt helped with that, and I knew in the past the area had been a happy hunting ground for Tommy. “They wanted to have a think about it, but I reckon they’re in for a few grand of security at least. We’ll get an assessment out of it, if nothing else.”
I nodded at Tommy, pleased that he was getting the hang of bringing new clients in. He had just the right mixture of cheek and guile, and older people loved him. I looked at David, who seemed lost in his thoughts.
“How about you, David?” I asked him. “How did you get on?” He regarded me through his greasy fringe, almost looking offended at the question. One thing was certain about David, he would never be front of house.
“Yeah, standard visit really. Easy money. Not much in the way of improvements to suggest in the house itself.” He glanced sideways across at Tommy. “At least not that I could see.” David was very much the junior member of the team in that respect. His skill set was far more technical. “So then I did the assessment of his home network.” I knew this was the main reason for the visit, and that the security assessment of the house was more for show than anything else. David took a sip of his beer, flicking his fringe as he put the glass back on the table.
“Well, how was it?” Tommy said, his impatience obvious. David paused before replying.
“Man, he had the largest collection of porn I’ve ever seen in my life,” David laughed, a rare sight and as I saw his yellowed teeth, I was reminded why this was. For a while, I’d been considering stumping up for him to go to a cosmetic dentist as a kind of staff benefit, but I’d not had that conversation with him yet. “He was talking about how tech-savvy he was, and that his network was pretty much impenetrable while I was stealing his wi-fi and scrolling through his files.” Tommy and I both laughed at the thought of it.
I’d not seen David this talkative for a long time but had heard a rumour — from Big Joe, who else — that there was a lass working in the supermarket down the road who David was sweet on. About bloody time, I thought, before making a mental note to phone up a dentist and get a rough quote for the lad.
“Gareth?” I heard Tommy call my name. “You still with us, mate?”
“Yep, sorry, got distracted,” I replied.
“I said, is tonight the night?” he said in a stage whisper, although we were the only people in the pub apart from a couple sitting on the opposite side of the bar well out of earshot. David leaned in before speaking.
“The CCTV out the front’s all set up,” he said, nodding like a wise old man. We’d persuaded Big Joe to let us install a camera over the front door to the pub. I’d paid for it, mind. It would provide proof for anyone who might need it that they were at the pub. At least, it would provide them with video showing they’d arrived, and left. This was why, when I’d arrived at the pub, I’d made sure the camera got a good look at my face as I walked in through the front door.
“Yeah, I reckon so,” I replied. I looked at my watch. “I’ll head away in about an hour. He normally leaves The Griffin at about ten, straight after the quiz.”
“You all set then?” Tommy asked.
“Yes mate, good to go,” I replied.
“And you’re sure you don’t want me to come with you?” I looked at Tommy as he asked me this. Part of me would have loved him to come along, even if it was just to stop me bottling it at the last minute, but this was something I needed to do myself.
“I’m good, cheers. Just make sure you stay in here so we can all leave together in case I need an alibi.” I glanced at David who nodded in reply. “Right then gents,” I got to my feet and looked at their glasses. “Same again?”
About thirty minutes later I left The Heartsease by the back door and stopped for a smoke in the beer garden. As I finished my cigarette, I ran my hand up and down the battered baseball bat in my jacket pocket. It was a child’s baseball bat, about half the size of a proper one, but it was made of wood and solid as anything. I pushed the picnic table over to the fence and used it to get over the fence. There were no cameras behind the pub or on the other side of the fence where a strategically placed wheelie bin provided an easy way to get down into the alley. I pushed my gloved hands into my pockets, shivering against the cold as my breath appeared in front of me in white clouds. It was definitely getting colder. The Griffin pub was only about a ten-minute walk if I’d taken the most direct route, but if I’d gone that way I would have been picked up by about three cameras. At least, that’s what David had told me, so I took the route he’d recommended as being the safest.
By the time I got to the car park opposite The Griffin, I was breathing hard. When I was about halfway there, I’d realised that it would take me longer than I’d thought, so I’d had to get a shift on. I stood in the shadows of the community centre over the road from the pub where I hoped Robert would be. I was sure I couldn’t be seen where I was hiding, but I pulled my beanie hat down to just above my eyebrows just in case anyone spotted me. I wasn’t sure if Robert had already left or not and started to get anxious in case he’d left early. I looked at my watch, figuring I’d give it fifteen minutes, twenty at the outside, before heading back to the warmth of The Heartsease. In the end, I’d timed it right.
Only five minutes after I’d arrived, a familiar figure opened the door and stepped out into the night. Robert shivered, blowing into his hands before turning left and walking through the car park of the pub. Bollocks. I was hoping that he’d go into the alley down the side of the pub, but not tonight. There wasn’t a Plan B, but now that I was here I might as well see what I could come up with. I gave him a few seconds head start before setting off after him.
I kept about a hundred yards behind him as he made his way down the road, running through various scenarios in my mind. One challenge would be getting close enough without him realising. A much bigger challenge was the amount of traffic on the road. I guessed that the fact it was so cold meant that more people were using their cars than usual, but the odds of being spotted if I tried anything in the open were high. I had two options. There was a patch of scrubland two hundred yards in front of him that was right next to the road. I knew that in the middle of the scrubland was a large patch of clear ground. Maybe I could drag him in there and away from the main road. As an alternative, there was a railway bridge further along where the footpath and road separated for maybe twenty yards. Beyond the bridge were a few shops and businesses with cameras,
so whatever I did would have to be this side of the bridge.
Robert seemed oblivious to his surroundings as he almost lost his footing on the icy pavement. He didn’t look behind him once, so I closed the gap between us to about fifty yards. I ran my hand over the baseball bat in my pocket, making sure I could pull it free without it snagging on the material of my coat and looked around to make sure that there wasn’t anyone else around. To my dismay, I saw two men walking in the same direction as Robert and I, but on the opposite side of the road. They were both hurrying, dressed for winter in hats, thick jackets, and gloves. They were faster than I was, and I resigned myself to tonight not being the night as they walked past me. I swore under my breath as they overtook me, and I slowed my pace down as I considered the best way to get to The Heartsease. By the time I’d worked the route out in my head, the men on the other side of the road were only a few yards short of Robert, who was just walking past the patch of wasteland before the railway bridge. Although I was on my own, I was still lost for words when the two men broke into a run and crossed the road, each of them grabbing one of Robert’s arms and dragging him into through the bushes into the scrubland.
I swore again to myself as I broke into a run, reaching the edge of the wasteland a few seconds later. I stopped, trying to work out the best thing to do. I crept into the bushes just far enough to see what was going on. I was dressed in black anyway, and as long as I was careful I should be able to get near the clearing in the middle. In the end, I couldn’t get as close as I wanted to. The frozen ground was noisier than I’d expected, so I settled for a spot on the edge of the clearing where I could just see the three figures through the gap between the bushes. Robert was standing between the two men, his arms either side of him with palms extended. I was too far away to hear anything other than muffled voices, not helped by the traffic on the main road only a few feet away. Robert looked as if he was trying to placate the men. The two men both had their backs to me, but I could see in the glow of the street lights that Robert was scared, his eyes wide. White clouds puffed from his mouth as he spoke quickly.
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