In the morning Judy left five minutes after the nanny arrived. Wilderness took the opportunity to hide the stash he had brought out of Finland. He still hadn’t counted it and didn’t now—it was whatever it was, less the thousand dollars he had given to Janis Bell.
As a scarcely reformed thief he was well aware how difficult it is to hide anything from the probing, devious mind of a cat burglar. As hiding places went, mattress, chimney and cistern were little better than planting a flag reading “here’s the swag.” The discerning man needed to go a step further to keep his ill-gotten gains from the next ill-getter.
Years ago, before he was married, he’d set a safe into the wall behind the lavatory cistern. Your average burglar would lift the lid on the cistern—he’d be unlikely to go in for the plumbing required to turn off the water and unmount the cistern to find the nine-inch metal door it concealed.
His Finland stash joined the remnants from other rackets, some now quite distant. He really should take those white five-pound notes into a bank—they’d not been legal tender for five years now. They’d been the foundation of what he thought of as his running-away-from-home fund. It was just that he’d never found running away from home to be necessary.
Bolting the porcelain cistern back into place he wondered why he’d never told Judy about it. He and Judy had much in common and many differences. The one that sprang to mind, monkey wrench in hand, was that she believed a husband and wife should have no secrets—and he didn’t.