Danny entered the house through the kitchen. And it was a big kitchen. It had a large table in the centre and a giant cappuccino-making machine by the cooker. It was also spectacularly clean.
This was a strange house. Some signs that the house was abandoned. Other signs that someone lived here.
Once in, Danny stood still and listened. He needed to gather information. The first thing was always to listen. He had learned that. There were footsteps upstairs in the room above. Paul Wire searching the house.
The second thing Danny did was ask himself what he was doing in this house. At first it had been to avoid Wire seeing him. Was that all he wanted? Just to be safe, then leave? Or did he want more? Could he get proof that Paul Wire was behind the footballers’ burglaries?
And could he do it without getting caught?
Danny took out his mobile phone and set it to video. Then he went to the front door of the house to make sure it was open as well as the back. He’d read about this trick in his book about burglaries. Have more than one escape route prepared.
Now all he had to do was get one piece of footage of Wire in this house, then he could go.
Easy?
He doubted it. But if he could do it he would have solved and proved one of the great football crimes of all time. It was too much to resist.
Danny walked into the hall and looked up the staircase. It was wide and curved round as it reached the next floor.
If he could just get a couple of seconds of video of Wire in the house …
Danny moved slowly up the stairs. He could hear Wire going through one of the rooms, pulling drawers open, dropping stuff on the floor. When he got to the top of the staircase Danny saw a reflection of Wire in a mirror of the bedroom, his back to the door. He seemed to be putting something on the floor in the doorway. Some sort of file or folder.
Danny raised his phone and pressed record.
He looked at his screen. There was Paul Wire, on his tiptoes, pulling boxes down from the top of a cupboard, throwing them behind himself on to a bed. And there he was going through the contents of the boxes.
This was good.
Every few seconds Danny glanced down the staircase. He had to keep it in his mind that Wire was not his only threat. The other threat was the unlikely – but possible – chance that another person might come up the stairs. The police? A security guard? The owners?
Just a few seconds more, he told himself. Then out.
He needed a better shot of Wire’s face. That was his only problem. He had to get closer.
That made it more of a risk.
But he was here now, wasn’t he?
Danny walked slowly towards the room Wire was ransacking. He could see the player still had his back to the door, going through a heap of things on the bed.
Danny moved to the other side of the door. If Wire came out now he would cut off Danny’s escape route. But it would be OK. Danny had surprise on his side.
He knelt and pointed the camera at Wire, so he could catch him at the moment he turned round. Danny was in the position of a sprinter at the beginning of a race. He’d get his image, then he’d be off.
Wire had yet to turn round. But Danny kept filming.
Until his attention was caught by the file that Wire had put by the door.
Why had Wire put that by the door? So he could take it when he left? Because it was one of the things he was looking for?
Maybe.
If Danny could just see what it was he was taking. What could it be? Papers, perhaps? What papers could be so interesting a burglar would take them? Deeds to the house? Details of bank accounts?
And then he saw Wire take out his mobile phone. Wire moved further into the room, so Danny couldn’t see him. But he could still hear him.
‘I’ve got the file,’ Wire said.
Danny glanced at the file. He moved a bit closer.
‘Yeah. Just seeing if there’s anything else. You know. Something interesting.’
Another pause. Danny had his hand inches from the file.
‘OK. I’ll be out of here in one minute,’ Wire concluded.
Danny listened to Wire going through some drawers or a cupboard. He reached out. He had to know. He kept his left hand steady against the door, filming, and leaned to reach the papers with his right.
Danny wasn’t sure what happened first.
Whether he fell and then Wire looked round. Or whether Wire looked round and then he fell.
Either way, it was bad. Very bad.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Wire shouted, stepping backwards in shock.
Danny didn’t reply. He scrambled to his feet to run, grabbing the file first.
But the problem was that – in his confusion and fear – he ran the wrong way. He ran into the back of the house. Away from the stairs.
‘Get here, you …’ Wire shouted.
And Wire was behind him.
Danny dashed along a corridor, gripping the file in his right hand. More stairs at the end. Although the house had seemed big, now the corridors felt narrow and small. He was trapped with no way out. Going up was mad, but he couldn’t go down.
So he went up.
To the attic.
The sound of his footsteps hammering on the stairs.
He expected to hear Wire’s feet behind him.
But when he got to the top there was silence. So he looked down. And there was Paul Wire looking up at him. Smiling.
‘You’re the lad from the pub,’ Wire said, not asking a question.
Danny said nothing.
‘Is there a helicopter up there? An escape ladder?’
Wire’s voice was horribly calm. That scared Danny even more than he was scared already. Wire sounded so comfortable.
Danny looked at the two doors at the top of the stairs. One was an ordinary painted wooden door. The other seemed to be reinforced. It had bars across it, although it was open.
‘I’ve got you trapped,’ Wire said, smiling again, ‘and now I’m coming to get you. Burglar in fall as he breaks into house. That sounds like a good headline.’
Danny swallowed.
Paul Wire put his foot on the bottom step.
This was it, Danny thought. His worst scrape yet. And he had absolutely no way out of it.
Paul Wire was thundering up the stairs.