As Danny came down the stairs he smelled bacon.
Bacon? At home?
His mum hated bacon because it stank the house out. They were never allowed it, however much Danny loved a bacon sandwich.
He pushed the kitchen door open. And there was Emily. Sitting at the table in the window.
‘I heard you get up,’ she said. ‘I was going to bring you a bacon sandwich.’
‘Thanks,’ Danny said.
‘Do you want it now?’ his sister went on.
‘Go on then.’
Emily smiled, then got up from the table and went towards the frying pan.
Danny gazed out of the window and wondered if he should say something. He and Emily had never done small talk. But Danny was aware that she was still trying to be nice, for whatever reason. And that maybe he should be nice back. It was worth a go. Maybe this was a chance for them to get on better.
The thought came into his head that he should tell her about the photo fit. It was still pressing on his mind that he could get into a lot of trouble. But it would be madness telling her. Danny realized he must be missing his dad. It was the kind of thing he might be able to talk to his dad about.
If his dad was here he could even tell him about the reconnaissance he was doing for Holt. His dad might have some good ideas to help him. Or at least offer him moral support.
‘What are you doing today?’ Danny asked, deciding to play it safe.
Emily turned with a huge grin. ‘Seeing a friend,’ she beamed.
The boy. Danny knew that much.
‘Is he nice?’ he asked, hoping she’d take it the right way.
‘He is.’ More grinning.
Oh no, Danny thought. This is serious. Whoever this boy was he was having a good effect on Emily.
They sat and ate. Emily passed Danny the ketchup without him having to ask.
And then she asked, ‘Do you ever think about leaving home?’
Danny shook his head, his mouth full of bread and bacon. What was this?
‘Imagine. Bacon sandwiches every day. Watching what you want on TV. A bathroom to yourself.’
Danny shrugged. ‘I suppose you’ll be going to leave soon anyway,’ he said. ‘If you go to university.’
‘If!’ Emily said.
Danny swallowed his next piece of sandwich before he spoke.
‘If?’
‘Yeah. If … Maybe I want to stay here now.’
Danny wondered what their mum and dad would say to this. That Emily didn’t want to do what they had always intended her to do. Get a full education, they called it. They expected it of Danny too. And he was fine about that. He knew he was going to university. And he knew what he was going to study.
Criminology.
‘What about you?’ Emily said.
Danny considered opening up to her, saying he wanted to study crime, that that was his passion. But then she changed the subject.
‘What are you doing today? Seeing that journalist friend of yours?’
‘Anton?’
‘Yeah. Anton.’
Danny shrugged. ‘I doubt it. He’s busy.’
But Emily was away grinning at nothing again.
Upstairs, in his bedroom, Danny got a box down from the top shelf.
It was the box containing the things he had had on his wall until a few weeks before. The things he used to help him solve crimes. The things his mum and dad had asked him to take off his wall because they were worried he was taking his criminal investigations too far. That he was putting his life at risk. Like the time he’d been caught trespassing by the police while watching the City FC stadium. And the time he’d been shot at by Kofi’s dodgy football agent.
Everything was there.
A large map of the city, dotted with coloured stickers showing where certain crimes had taken place. Three notebooks, two of them full. Four scrapbooks full of cuttings from newspapers. All about crimes. Then some more interesting things. A wind-up torch. A camera. A balaclava.
His detective kit. His football detective kit.
Danny spread the map out on the floor. He immediately felt happier than he had for weeks. He missed his map. He had, in the past, spent hours just staring at the map, looking at where burglaries had taken place, or bank jobs, post office raids. All the crimes of the city over the last year or more were there, things he’d read about in the paper.
Danny took out a sheet of stickers. He needed a new coloured sticker to mark the five footballer burglaries. He chose blue. He’d not used blue ones yet.
He pulled a list out of his pocket: details of the burglaries – according to Ian Mills the day before.
He had one of the burgled footballers’ addresses. The one he’d been at Wednesday night. Everyone knew that Didier François lived there. But he hadn’t known the addresses of the other burgled players. Until Ian Mills had told him. And he’d also told him where some of the other players lived.
He stuck them on the map. Just like he’d read in a book. A detective novel he’d read to his dad. The detective – an amateur like Danny – had plotted out crimes on a map and solved it.
Now Danny had to choose a footballer’s house that had not been burgled yet. But who would it be? He’d probably get it wrong.
But what else could he do? A proper detective would do more than just waiting all day to go and watch a house that may or may not be going to be burgled.
Then what Anton said came into his mind again. About who could be doing it. Maybe he should start there and not with houses. Paul Wire. The ex-City player who he had a lead on.
Could it be him?
It could. Maybe. Danny had read a lot of footballer autobiographies. Most were ordinary, about how players had been picked up by a professional club when they were young. How they’d become successful. Who their best friends in the game were. Nothing controversial. All pretty much the same.
But some were different. Players whose careers had fallen apart, who had got involved with drink and drugs. Some who had ended up in prison. He remembered one player who had gone from a Premier League winning team to stealing alcohol from a supermarket within three years. Another who had been sent to prison for killing a family in a car accident, while drunk.
So it could happen. It was possible. An ex-City FC player may well now be involved in burglary and trying to sell on the rewards of his robberies.
Maybe he should go and watch for Wire again. Not go to some random house. It made sense. And it was as close to a lead as he could get. Just go and watch. He should have done it for longer yesterday. This was the only answer.
Danny stood up. That was what he’d do. Watch, gather evidence. Not get distracted by idiotic ex-footballers like Ian Mills.
He pulled his hoody on. Then went to his computer to check his emails.
But he never got as far as his emails.
His home page was BBC Football news. He had it like that so he could always see the latest football news as soon as possible.
He read the headline:
Alex Finn disturbs burglar in his £3M converted barn
Danny ran down the stairs, feeling – he had to be honest with himself – excited that there had been another crime. He shouted goodbye to his sister, then took out his mobile phone. Now was the time to go looking for Wire. If he was going to catch him out it had to be now.
And he knew that this was getting serious. Very serious.