The burglar had watched Danny with interest. Who was this boy waiting in the woods until he was seen off by the nine-thirty security shift? He can’t have been a burglar too. Not a decent one. He’d made too many mistakes. Particularly being seen, the worst mistake of all.
The burglar assumed the boy was just a fan who had found out the address of his footballing hero and couldn’t resist having a look. Albeit on a night he should have known the player was away. In Spain.
He smiled.
That was why he was here. He knew Didier François, the owner of this opulent house, was over a thousand miles away in Madrid. The burglar had even watched the first half on TV, before coming out. Seen City take the lead.
It was two in the morning now and he had been sitting in the tree for six hours.
Waiting.
He checked his watch. It was fifteen minutes since the last security patrol had started a circuit of the street. From high in the tree he could see the pair of guards work their way back to their office.
It was time.
He dropped down from the tree, branch to branch, five or six metres to the leafy floor.
He knew about the electric fence. It had taken him just five minutes to find its weakness on his first visit here a week ago. It was all very well having an electric fence round your gated community. But it was a mistake to build a shed right next to the fence, under the thick bough of a tree that hung perfectly above it.
He climbed that tree now and shimmied along the bough, stopping every ten seconds to listen. It was dark, so his sense of hearing was all the more important.
But there was no noise above the rustle and scuffle of the woods, sounds he knew were animals and birds from having spent hours among them.
Human noises were entirely different. Clumsy and out of tune with the wood.
His soft trainers made no sound when he dropped on to the roof of the shed. He spread his weight immediately, in case the shed had a weak roof. Although he knew from last time that it didn’t.
He had done his homework. He’d found the same design of shed in a large DIY store near the City Stadium. He’d gone inside and checked the structure of the roof. Three two-inch-thick supports evenly spread. He even knew where to put his feet, so that he would be standing over the supports. It would carry his weight, no problem at all.
The burglar eased himself down from the shed, his heart picking up a pace.
Because this was the dangerous bit. Out in the open. If someone looked from the window of any of the houses now, they would see him. And he wouldn’t know they’d seen him. Fatal.
He jogged across the lawn of the house he was going to break into tonight. Gazing in through the patio doors at the huge TV screen on the wall. The Ferrari coffee table he’d seen already in HELLO! magazine.
As he made his way for the cover of a two-metre-high wooden fence that surrounded the bins, his heart stopped. The garden suddenly flooded with light and he was exposed.
He ducked and hid behind a wheelie bin, catching his cheek on some branches. But he kept his back turned, so his face would not reflect light. His clothes were all as black as the shadows. His face stung where the branches had caught him.
But what was this? There was no security light. He’d seen cats and foxes move across this lawn and no light had come on. And he’d entered this way when he had broken into another house in the street earlier in the week and no light had triggered that time.
He sat perfectly still, not moving. Just listening. That was how he would deal with this surprise. No need to panic.
Then he heard it.
A rushing sound.
Water escaping down a pipe.
He looked up at the neighbouring house and saw a bathroom light go off. Now he was in darkness again.
The burglar smiled.
That had been no security light. Just someone next door with a weak bladder going to the toilet in the middle of the night. Just another person who was unaware that there was a man outside who was about to break into a Premier League footballer’s house.
Getting into the house was easy. He couldn’t believe that someone with so much money had such a cheap back door. Most of the houses he had done before had had thick wooden doors that were very difficult to get through.
Not this one.
He took out his Stanley knife and sliced through the white plastic of the door, towards the top of one of the lower panels. Then he pulled out the foam stuffing that insulated the door and cut through the plastic on the other side. These doors were cheap. He knew. He used to have one at home.
He checked to see if there was a key in the lock on the other side.
Unbelievably there was.
The burglar sighed. The owner of the house might be one of Europe’s most intelligent footballers, but he was an idiot when it came to household security.
The burglar alarm was on. He could hear the quiet beep-beep-beeping that meant he had up to sixty seconds to disable it.
He went to the cupboard where he knew it was. Through his binoculars, from the tree, he’d watched the player go to the alarm twice. And key in 2-3-1-1-8-4. A pathetic security code. The footballer’s date of birth. Available to all on his fan website. Idiot.
Then the burglar’s heart sank.
The little cupboard where the alarm keyboard was kept was locked. You could see the timer switch ticking away through a hole, but there was no access to the buttons to stop the alarm. The man looked around desperately for the key. Felt around the top of the cupboard.
He had thirty seconds left.
Nothing there.
His heart had picked up now. Beating too fast.
Fifteen seconds.
He even looked behind him. Panicking that someone was there.
That was when he knew that he was losing his cool. He had to focus.
He had ten seconds now.
How would he open this little cupboard? Or should he get out now? Run? Fail?
No way.
The burglar put his hand in his pocket again. He took out a small twenty-centimetre piece of iron. One end was curved like a crowbar.
He smashed it into the corner of the cupboard with all his force.
The cupboard disintegrated immediately, leaving the alarm keyboard exposed.
Then he tapped in the code – 2-3-1-1-8-4 – and the noise stopped.
And then he smiled.
The burglar knew that there was no one home. And no dog. So he went straight to the bedroom.
Bedrooms were where people kept their most prized things. Jewellery. Cash. Even guns.
He went through shelves, drawers, a blanket chest. When he found the cash in the sock drawer, he couldn’t help smiling. The holder of a World Cup winner’s medal keeping a wad of money in his sock drawer!
The burglar didn’t bother looking for the medal. He knew that had to be in a bank vault. Even footballers couldn’t be that stupid.
The cash was enough. A two- or three-centimetre-thick wad of twenty-pound notes. That had to be at least five grand. Maybe more.
And with such a haul he had no need to steal anything more.
He went back down the stairs. In the dark. Counting the steps he’d counted on the way up.
Now it was time for the bit he really enjoyed.
He went to the fridge and took out a beer. He flicked it open, the bottle top ricocheting across the kitchen work surface. He’d leave it there. It was his calling card.
He took his beer into the sitting room and drew the curtains across the patio doors. Then he found the remote control and flicked on the giant screen.
The channel on was Sky Sports News. Highlights of the night’s games.
The burglar lay back on the sofa. This one was comfortable. The most comfortable so far. He put his feet up on the coffee table: the red Ferrari.
Then he sipped the beer and looked around the room. A basket full of PlayStation games. Hundreds of CDs and DVDs. A statue of an Egyptian cat or dog – he wasn’t sure which. It was tasteless rubbish, he knew that much.
And then he sighed. This was how Premier League players lived. And for the next five minutes he was a Premier League player.
Another swig of beer. Another sigh. Then a smile when he saw a footballer on the TV screen: the very player whose beer he was drinking now. The very player whose cash he had stuffed into his pocket.
And this was just the beginning.