It was much harder to watch a house if you didn’t have a car. Mum was away somewhere in the van and the hearse was too conspicuous, so Hannah was doing surveillance on foot. In a rich street like Cumin Place there were a lot of Neighbourhood Watch signs and twitching curtains. She’d worn black trousers and blouse, didn’t want to wear a hoodie and leggings and get taken for a troublemaking yoof.
She leaned against a low wall and pretended to check her phone. Phones helped to hide you, if she’d been here without a device she would’ve looked like a maniac. She glanced up occasionally at number forty-nine.
Jenny had got her up to speed. Hannah called Vanessa’s GP surgery, put on an old woman’s voice, gave Vanessa’s date of birth and got the details for her next appointment.
A few doors down a middle-aged man was pottering in his garden in that way that looks like you’re busy but is really just justification for a beer afterwards. Shouldn’t he be at work? Maybe people in Cumin Place were so rich they didn’t have to work.
The door to forty-nine opened and Francesco pushed Vanessa out in a wheelchair. He gently helped her into the passenger seat of the Mercedes parked in the drive. It took effort but he had muscles and youth. Vanessa kissed his hand as he went to fold the wheelchair and place it in the boot. He got in and helped her with her seatbelt, his arm around her like an embrace, the two of them smiling, a sense of sadness maybe from Vanessa.
They drove off and Hannah waited a few minutes, phone still out. The guy pretending to garden went into his garage, and she pushed away from the wall, felt the weight of the backpack on her shoulders and strode across the road. She went to the house and took out the keys Jenny had given her. She unlocked the mortise and Yale, pushed the door.
A piercing alarm shrieked around the house, making her ears throb. She went to the ADT box on the wall and punched in 4546, the number Jenny had got from the Chalmers kids. The alarm kept wailing. Fuck. She checked the note on her phone, tried it again. The alarm still ricocheted around the walls and into the street.
‘Fuck,’ she said.
She looked at the box, at her phone, then punched in 4645 and the alarm stopped with a double beep as if to say ‘well done’.
‘Christ.’
Hannah stood in the hall, sweating in the silence. She stared at the front door, waited for someone to come and knock. But people around here weren’t best friends with neighbours, they didn’t go and investigate a few seconds of alarm, despite the Neighbourhood Watch schtick.
She went to the bedroom on the ground floor, looked around for the best place and picked the top of a crowded bookshelf, full of old bonkbusters by Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins. She opened her backpack and took out a motion-sensitive spy camera. These were new ones connected to the cloud by Bluetooth, and they were discrete too, good resolution and better motion sensors.
She took a chair to the bookshelf and stood on it. She switched the camera on using the touchscreen and placed it between the edge of the shelf and a well-thumbed copy of Valley of the Dolls. She adjusted it, stepped down and went to the bed. She lay on it and checked the bookshelf, it was hard to spot between the dark wood and book cover. She put the chair back and checked on her phone that the camera was transmitting.
She did the bathroom next, it was harder to find a discreet spot, brighter lights and white décor, but there was a two-level basket on a shelf, aspirational magazines on top, dusty old toiletries below. Dust meant they weren’t used and Hannah set the camera in there, checked the position and feed, moved to the kitchen.
The old farmhouse décor in here provided better cover. She took a stool and placed the third camera on top of a corner cupboard, good view of most of the room. She was still on the stool, checking the online feed when she heard a key in the front door.
‘Fuck.’
The door opened, then a docile beep from the alarm, she knew that was the sound of the fob against it to unlock it when it wasn’t set.
‘Strange.’
Francesco’s voice, baffled about the alarm.
Hannah climbed down from the stool, lifted it back into place, zipped her phone into the backpack and put it on, ready to run. She stood at the kitchen door, behind the wall, waited and listened, blood screaming in her ears. She was fucked if he came into the kitchen, but she didn’t dare make a run for it, not yet. She imagined him staring puzzled at the alarm box.
Eventually she heard footsteps. It took a moment to realise they were heading upstairs. He must’ve forgotten something they needed for the appointment. She left the kitchen and stood in the hall listening. She stared at the closed front door. The lock would make a noise if she opened it, and anyway Vanessa was probably in the car right outside.
She heard footsteps coming downstairs.
She went back to the bedroom, looked at the large patio doors. She crept over and unlocked them as quietly as possible, slid the glass enough to squeeze out, closed it behind her. She kept close to the house then scuttled to the side wall, squeezed behind a bush and waited, sparrows chirping, sprinklers running somewhere.
Eventually she heard the front door going, footfall down the path, a car door opening and closing. She breathed out heavily and crawled from the hedge, brushing leaves from her clothes as she walked calmly round the house and away down the street.