‘Copy that,’ Dave said, through the earpiece. ‘I’ll meet you on the doorstep.’
‘Drive safe, James,’ John added. ‘And try not to wake the little girl up.’
John had checked out the Patel family’s medical records and discovered that three year old Charlotte suffered from asthma. This made using sleeping gas unacceptably risky, so John had settled on a less than ideal solution: Kerry would have to sit with Charlotte. Hopefully the toddler wouldn’t wake up. If she did, Kerry had a bottle of juice mixed with a mild sedative that would help her go back to sleep. If Charlotte mentioned what had happened in the morning, she was young enough that her parents would assume it was a dream.
While Kerry settled on to a beanbag next to Charlotte’s little bed, James headed downstairs. He let Dave in the front door, then began searching for the car keys. Dave had a backpack full of listening devices and would spend the next hour wiring up the Patels’ house so that no snippet of conversation got missed.
The keys were in Michael’s coat pocket. Dave stood on the kitchen table, replacing the light bulb with one containing a bug, as James made to leave.
‘I’m off,’ James said. ‘Keep an eye on Kerry if the brat wakes up. She’s hopeless with little kids.’
‘I will,’ Dave nodded. ‘Later, James.’
James headed out on to the driveway and climbed into the Patels’ car. He’d driven a few now, but he still got a buzz every time he lined up in front of a steering wheel looking at all the switches, knowing that there weren’t many kids his age that got to hare around in two tonnes of BMW. He pulled the seat forward so he could reach the pedals, belted up and turned the ignition key.
It was a nice drive, the roads were empty and the car had plenty of grunt. Unfortunately it was only five kilometres. He pulled up a turning at the side of a bridge and crawled along an unlit, cobbled lane with a line of railway arches along one side. The arches were mostly used for storage, but he passed a plumbing suppliers and a couple of auto repair shops. The last one had a light shining out of its open doorway. James turned cautiously into a floodlit garage filled with equipment for respraying cars.
John and Greg were waiting. They opened the doors on the passenger side before James had even got out. He’d parked next to a BMW 535i that looked identical in every detail to the Patels’ one. Not just in terms of model and colour: it had the same number plates, a small amount of parking damage on the front bumper had been carefully replicated and if you’d opened up the bonnet and done a detailed inspection, you’d have found the same serial numbers on the chassis and engine block. The only visible difference between the two cars was the personal effects inside the one that belonged to the Patels, and that was about to change.
John grabbed the rubber floor mats from the Patels’ car and transferred them to the duplicate. Greg dealt with the contents of the glove box, while James clambered into the back, pulled out the child seat and picked up dozens of Charlotte’s toys and books from the surrounding area.
While James struggled to fit the child seat into the back of the duplicate car, Greg transferred the pushchair and junk in the boot. John even went as far as to move the sweet wrappers in the ashtrays and the dried-out orange peel in the centre console. By the time they’d finished, there was no way the Patels would have been able to tell the duplicate car from their own.
‘Can I drive the copy back?’ James asked.
John shook his head. ‘No way. You need a bit of strength to drive this one, she’s an absolute pig. Greg’s gonna take you back to Palm Hill. You’ll need your beauty sleep, it’s gonna be hectic tomorrow.’
02:17
John pulled the BMW on to the front drive of the Patels’ house, being careful to position it in the exact spot James had removed the original from forty minutes earlier. It wasn’t easy because the power steering wasn’t rigged up properly and the wheels were out of alignment.
After climbing out, John raised the bonnet. He slid a screwdriver out of his jacket and used it to lever the top from the plastic compartment at the back of the engine bay that contained