Danny sat in his front room. He was alone.
His sister was out with her new boyfriend.
Holt wasn’t answering his phone.
But these things were nothing compared to the fact that Charlotte was out with that idiot Ian Mills. And it was dominating Danny’s thoughts.
He just couldn’t understand why she would go out with someone like him. It made no sense.
But, after Mills had tried to wind him up, Danny had not said a word about it to Charlotte. And she had not said a word about it to him. It wasn’t like Danny and Charlotte were going out with each other, but it made Danny feel sick to the stomach, sicker than he had ever felt before. He hated feeling like this. Feelings like this were beyond his control.
Danny even found himself wishing his sister, Emily, was at home to talk to him and take his mind off it. It had to be bad.
But he needed something to clear his head.
Crime.
That was what he needed.
To think about crime.
And the crime on his mind was the burglaries.
Danny walked up to his bedroom. His box of maps and notes were all there. Passing into his bedroom he told himself that, once he was in his room, he was only going to think about solving crimes. Not about Charlotte. Not about what she was doing with Ian Mills.
He could do this.
He settled down, switching on the angle lamp at his desk and turning off the main light. This made him feel like the character from his dad’s favourite novel, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiel Hammett. The character – Sam Spade – would sit in his office in the light of a small lamp. Drinking whiskey. Thinking. Asking himself questions. Cool as a cucumber.
Danny didn’t have whiskey, like Spade would have. But he did have Coke. He popped a can. Because he had a question to ask himself. It was think about this, or go mad.
Why – after Wire had confessed to the burglaries – did Danny not believe Wire was the real culprit?
Surely the case was solved. There was nothing to worry about. Danny had to ask himself what was making him think like that?
Wire had been in the house. That was true. But what, Danny couldn’t help but ask, was he doing in the house?
Was he stealing money?
No.
Was he stealing things he could sell to make money?
No.
Why was he so interested in the file? It was just a load of papers to do with City FC. Nothing of value. Except that it was valuable, perhaps, as information.
Maybe that was it. Maybe whoever Wire had been speaking to wanted the papers. Danny cursed himself again for leaving them in the house.
But the usual pattern of burglaries was the theft of money, of valuable objects. Not papers. Not information.
These were different types of burglary. Danny had read about this in the book. There were different types of burglary because they were done by different burglars.
The latest robbery was not like the previous ones. Danny didn’t even know if the house they’d been in had anything to do with a footballer. He didn’t know who lived there.
So to the next question. Why would Paul Wire claim that he had done all the burglaries?
Danny leaned back and took another swig of Coke.
His mind weaved around all the stories he had ever read, then back to this book he had been reading about why people commit crime.
And that was the question. Why did Wire commit the crimes? Or, why did he say he had?
For glory.
That was why.
Danny was sure of it.
Because he wanted to be known as the thief. Because he liked the notoriety, the fame. And if he couldn’t have fame for being a footballer, he would take it for being a criminal.
It seemed crazy to Danny. But there was something in it.
If Danny was to believe it, he needed another suspect. Someone else who would be in a position to steal from footballers and motivated to do it.
Who?
Was it gangsters like they were saying in the chat rooms – the organized criminals who lived for crime, who did it as a job?
Danny wasn’t sure. It seemed too easy. And why would they know about footballers and where they lived?
So who else?
Opportunists. People who saw an empty house and decided to rob it.
No, Danny thought. It would be far too much of a coincidence for that to happen to six footballers.
And then something he’d not thought through shuffled back into his head. That it needed to be someone who had access to information about footballers’ houses.
Who was that?
One name came to Danny’s mind.
Ian Mills.
He had players’ addresses, didn’t he?
But why would it be him? Danny almost laughed. He was not much older than Danny. There was no way. Even if he did know all the players’ addresses. So what?
No, Danny decided, this was crazy thinking. He was thinking it because he hated Mills. Because Mills was with Charlotte tonight. That was all. How many times had he read a crime book to his dad where a detective missed a vital clue because he hated – or even loved – one of the suspects?
Inspector Morse, for instance. He always fell in love with the woman who turned out to be the murderer in the story, throwing him off the scent.
And yet … if it was Mills …
Danny stood up.
He was going out.
Now.
Because his head felt hot inside. Because he was losing control of his thoughts. Thoughts that were telling him to go and find Mills. Because, if he was involved, then he was not only a suspect. But a threat.
A threat to Charlotte.