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Authors: Chris Ewan
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awkward carrying the case in my left hand and I kept accidentally bumping it against the walls or catching it between my legs. I’d tried switching to my right hand, naturally, but the weight of the handle had been painful against the build-up of crystals in my fingers. It made me realise I’d have been better off investing in a record bag that I could have slung over my shoulder, but then again I wasn’t certain how big the painting was, and it would be just my luck to break in with a bag a fraction too small.
All of which thinking had distracted me from how many floors I’d walked down. I paused and tried to figure it out in my head. Then I leaned out over the banister and looked up towards the top of the stairwell but it didn’t help in the slightest. I was disorientated. There was a door to my side and I poked my head through and triggered the light sensor in the corridor. I could see the rubber plant and the tan banquette so I was one floor too high. I shut the door, hoisted the suitcase once more and made my way down to the third floor of the building.
Once I got there, I stood very still and listened for any noise from the corridor I was interested in. Then I dropped to my hands and my knees and studied the quarter-inch gap at the bottom of the door. I couldn’t see any light and I couldn’t hear anybody moving about, so I cracked the door open and peered through. The corridor was in darkness. I stepped out, instantly triggering the wall lights, and blinked away the sudden glare as I made my way to apartment 3A.
Facing up to the door of the apartment, I nudged the suitcase out of sight with my foot, then straightened my clothes, patted my hair flat and knocked. There was every chance somebody was inside. If it was Bruno, I’d make up some nonsense about dropping by to say hello. If it wasn’t Bruno – well, I’d deal with that if I had to. But it was beginning to look as if I was in the clear because my knock went unanswered.
I knocked again, just to be sure, and when there was still no answer, I slipped my gloves back on, wondering as I did so if there was some way to tear the plastic away from the two fingers that were bothering me without destroying the gloves altogether. I wasn’t concerned about the cost of replacing them, you understand, because I had a whole box of gloves at home. It was just that I only had one set of gloves with me and after all the trouble I’d gone to, I wasn’t keen to delay the job for the sake of one glove.
Then again, you could argue it was a bit too late to be worrying about gloves at all. The fact is I hadn’t worn them when I’d broken in with Bruno, so my fingerprints were already on the locking mechanism and scattered liberally around the apartment too. Would a few more hurt? Possibly not. But I guess in some ways I was keen to a draw a distinction between the two break-ins. The first one had been a mess, the kind of poorly executed plan that might have earned me a grade E at burglar school. This time, I was aiming for an A-plus and since I didn’t want to be marked down for inconsistency, I resolved to keep the gloves on.
Besides, there were adjustments I could make to minimise the pain as much as possible. When I removed my pick and got to work on the lock on the apartment door, for instance, I used only my index finger and my thumb. It took a little longer to do things that way, and it felt kind of weird, like writing left-handed, but I only set off the pain in my knuckles perhaps three times and it was worth it for that if nothing else. As soon as the lock had withdrawn, I pulled down on the door handle and opened the door.
You thought I’d forgotten about the alarm, right? Well, guess again, because I was ready and waiting for those friendly pips and they weren’t going to jeopardise my A-grade in the slightest. I fairly glided down the hallway to the storage cupboard and casually flipped down the panel on the fascia of the alarm control box before
All of which thinking had distracted me from how many floors I’d walked down. I paused and tried to figure it out in my head. Then I leaned out over the banister and looked up towards the top of the stairwell but it didn’t help in the slightest. I was disorientated. There was a door to my side and I poked my head through and triggered the light sensor in the corridor. I could see the rubber plant and the tan banquette so I was one floor too high. I shut the door, hoisted the suitcase once more and made my way down to the third floor of the building.
Once I got there, I stood very still and listened for any noise from the corridor I was interested in. Then I dropped to my hands and my knees and studied the quarter-inch gap at the bottom of the door. I couldn’t see any light and I couldn’t hear anybody moving about, so I cracked the door open and peered through. The corridor was in darkness. I stepped out, instantly triggering the wall lights, and blinked away the sudden glare as I made my way to apartment 3A.
Facing up to the door of the apartment, I nudged the suitcase out of sight with my foot, then straightened my clothes, patted my hair flat and knocked. There was every chance somebody was inside. If it was Bruno, I’d make up some nonsense about dropping by to say hello. If it wasn’t Bruno – well, I’d deal with that if I had to. But it was beginning to look as if I was in the clear because my knock went unanswered.
I knocked again, just to be sure, and when there was still no answer, I slipped my gloves back on, wondering as I did so if there was some way to tear the plastic away from the two fingers that were bothering me without destroying the gloves altogether. I wasn’t concerned about the cost of replacing them, you understand, because I had a whole box of gloves at home. It was just that I only had one set of gloves with me and after all the trouble I’d gone to, I wasn’t keen to delay the job for the sake of one glove.
Then again, you could argue it was a bit too late to be worrying about gloves at all. The fact is I hadn’t worn them when I’d broken in with Bruno, so my fingerprints were already on the locking mechanism and scattered liberally around the apartment too. Would a few more hurt? Possibly not. But I guess in some ways I was keen to a draw a distinction between the two break-ins. The first one had been a mess, the kind of poorly executed plan that might have earned me a grade E at burglar school. This time, I was aiming for an A-plus and since I didn’t want to be marked down for inconsistency, I resolved to keep the gloves on.
Besides, there were adjustments I could make to minimise the pain as much as possible. When I removed my pick and got to work on the lock on the apartment door, for instance, I used only my index finger and my thumb. It took a little longer to do things that way, and it felt kind of weird, like writing left-handed, but I only set off the pain in my knuckles perhaps three times and it was worth it for that if nothing else. As soon as the lock had withdrawn, I pulled down on the door handle and opened the door.
You thought I’d forgotten about the alarm, right? Well, guess again, because I was ready and waiting for those friendly pips and they weren’t going to jeopardise my A-grade in the slightest. I fairly glided down the hallway to the storage cupboard and casually flipped down the panel on the fascia of the alarm control box before
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